Columnist.
It may well be -- I wouldn't deny it for a minute -- that Barack Obama has less to recommend him as a U. S. president than any predecessor of the past century. Vain, cocksure, morose, disabled from admitting a mistake or a bad guess -- what a guy! Small wonder no present poll shows him with majority public support.
Proving that bad ideas never go out of style among particular kinds of people with particular mentalities, The New York Times advertises on its front page "the growing concern inside and outside the Fed that inflation is not rising enough." And, yes, that something ought to be done about it!
President Obama, Oct. 21, addressing Obamacare's website failures: But I ask: Isn't that how we got to this point of a nation and its government immobilized over a program opposed by -- according to CNN's Oct. 20 poll -- 53 percent of Americans? It brings to mind then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's famed argument for whipping Obamacare through the House with zero Republican backing.
Unto the jungle gods of politics we commit the bodies of our Republican brethren -- earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- in sure and certain hope of these ignoramuses' political extinction ... Well, now, isn't that the media narrative as to the hooting and hollering in Washington, D. C., over debt ceilings, government shutdowns and so on and so on?
The governorship of Texas is getting like the governorship of New York and California: a venue for spotting political trends and up-and-coming national leaders. Which helps explain all the media oooh-la-la-ing over Wendy Davis' bid to become the next Rick Perry -- colored blue instead of red. Could Texas, under the witching spell of a future Davis administration, turn from gun-toting, business-loving, Bible-quoting conservatism to cuddly, hand-in-someone-else's-pocket liberalism?
So, then, just how did we get here? Obama said *X*, and Cruz said *Y*, and O'Reilly and MSNBC and Reid and Pelosi went into hyperdrive, and ... and? The chronological congruence of the government "shutdown" crisis and the launch of Obamacare (I exclude current foreign policy topics for reasons of space) suggest the need for aspirin washed down with a couple of stiff ones.
Those very, very, very loose cannons, known as Muslim jihadists, have been shooting off around the world -- massacring Christians in Pakistan, Africans in Nairobi and all kinds of Syrians, and in the process, reminding serious Westerners (we still have a few) of the need for clear leadership amid clear and present dangers. So far, we can be sure only of one thing: We have no line on what's happening. Accordingly, we don't know what to do.
Fresh from terrorizing the Russians and bringing everlasting peace to a war-torn Middle East, Barack Obama undertook Monday to work on the Republicans the same tactics that worked so resoundingly on the trembling Vladimir Putin. He made a speech. Obama makes a lot of speeches because he has a lot to say on all topics. The one he made in the Rose Garden, touting his impending triumph over the country's economic woes, had all the right props, from impressive background to worshipful audience. The language was robust: "Republicans in Congress don't seem to be focused on how to grow the economy and build the middle class. I say 'at the moment' because I'm still hoping that a light bulb goes off here.
So much for the long-anticipated U.S.-Syrian smasheroo, with missiles and accusations flying through the air. The whole thing appears, unexpectedly, to have ended before properly beginning. Or at least we are entitled to guess that on the basis of Monday developments. The Syrians, with an assist from the Russians, appear to have saved the day, along with the political hide, such as it is, of the president of the United States.
Here's one major reason the Syria debate is so dispiriting: We've got a president few appear able to trust. Nobody in this, the fifth year of the Obama era, can assume Barack Obama necessarily means a word he says. He may; he may not. We just can't tell any more. Not after five years of maneuvers and speeches whose chief inspiration seems to be the accruing of personal credit and the shifting of blame to those who resist his magisterial gifts.
A news story out of New Mexico reminds us how hard it has lately become to be an American: a traditional American, I should say, concerned with trivial stuff like conscience and faith and personal integrity. New Mexico's Supreme Court last week declared a mom and pop business, called Elane Photography, had violated the state human rights act by declining to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony seven years ago. Why did the owners decline? On account of their belief in the ancient norm of heterosexual marriage.
The world was never in better shape than when the British Empire was in full flower. So on from one abiding truth to another: Things never go well unless and until the good guys and the top dogs are one and the same. What follows is an argument from common sense and precedent in favor of American supremacy in every aspect of international life.
Donna Brazile, the Democrats' all-purpose spokeswoman for civil rights, was at it again the other day, flaying "Republicans" for conspiring to suppress the voting rights of black and minorities. "Republicans," as she put it in a USA Today column, "are pushing restrictive voter ID legislation in states around the country that will make it more difficult for people to make their voices heard." She singled out North Carolina for "an extreme law" requiring students attending college outside their home counties to tender government-issued identification -- e.g., drivers' licenses -- instead of student ID cards.
The creeping insanity of the 21st century United States gets its latest affirmation in the news that Congress doesn't have to live under the laws it writes even when it claims the opposite. Yes, of course, this is about health care. Isn't everything about health care these days?
Just ahead of Congress as it takes an August recess, the president fares forth to "chart" -- in the words of his communications director -- " a course where America needs to go ... to restore this country's basic bargain for the middle class." Let us see whether we can anticipate: Congress (assuming the President gets his way) will pass some laws, raise some taxes, spend some money. We'll restore the bargain. And maybe the Democrats won't take the licking that circumstances seem to predict, what with Obamacare causing mass public confusion, the president's approval ratings down in the mid-40s and Democratic control of the Senate threatened in 2014.
Among the A-No. 1 reasons for growing indifference to the terms of marriage and family life is ... I guess we could look at a lengthy story this week from The New York Times. To wit: "It is now pretty well understood that traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline, replaced by 'hooking up' -- an ambiguous term that can signify anything from making out to oral sex to intercourse -- without the emotional entanglement of a relationship."
Gone is Ann Richards, the late, leathery, white-haired feminist champion whose life was celebrated in a Broadway play -- "Ann," starring Holland Taylor. The play is closing prematurely since there is insufficient demand for white-haired feminist champions. Never mind that for now. We've got a second Ann, it would appear. She is a fellow Texan, to boot: State Sen. Wendy Davis, who just talked to death a bill meant to tighten abortion restrictions. The betting around the nation has been that Wendy Davis was sure looking like a prospective governor, if not, according to some of the more excited acolytes, a president of the United States.
Whoever would rend his garments over the Supreme Court's gay marriage decisions is certainly welcome to do so, but I wouldn't advise spending undue time and emotion on such an enterprise. Rarely does a democratic government, in its embrace of some daring new notion, truly outrun the voting public. A little, sometimes, just not wildly, outrageously so. This is to say America's, not to mention the Western world's, astounding embrace of gay rights is the main element in the two marriage cases decided last week. That our highest court would have given a big, ripe Bronx cheer to a society wedded overwhelmingly to the historic concept of marriage as ordained solely for a man and woman only -- I think not.
The Waw-uh, as some in my neck of the woods probably still call the Late Unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865 may be over officially but depend on the federal government to keep the action going for as long as possible. The U. S. Supreme Court's decision Monday to kick a college affirmative action case back to the lower courts for more intensive review reminds us of the interminableness of the issue known roughly as what's-your-race-where-do-you-want-to-go-to-college. Neither the white student, Abigail Fisher, who filed the suit originally, nor the University of Texas, which rejected her application, finds repose in the court's 7 to 1 judgment that the same legal ground long trodden down over needs some more treading.
