In a Washington Post editorial this past Saturday, two prominent Democratic pollsters wrote that President Obama, who promised a new, post-partisan era during his campaign, has been the most bitterly divisive and partisan President since Richard Nixon. The authors then spell out the parallels between Presidents Obama and Nixon.
President Obama has used the office of the President to make wildly false and partisan attacks against political enemies. Even the New York Times has noted the lack of evidence to back up the White House claims that Rove and others have been funneling illegal foreign money to Republican candidates.
And the President's troublingly flaccid grip on the truth is not limited to false accusations against Karl Rove, but extends to major policy initiatives:
Obama is walking a knife's edge. He has said that the 3.5 million "shovel-ready jobs" he had referred to as justification for the passage of the stimulus bill didn't exist - throwing all the Democratic incumbents who had defended the stimulus in their campaigns under the proverbial bus.
Although he said, as part of his effort to enact health-care reform, that the health-care mandates were not taxes, now his administration acknowledges in court papers that they are, in fact, taxes.
The editorial makes sobering reading. It is more sobering when you read the warning these same two pollsters made in March of this year about the consequences of pushing an extremely unpopular health care bill through Congress.
When influential members of the President's own party begin denouncing the President's behavior in Washington Post editorials, one is hard pressed to think of any word to describe the situation but "Nixonian."
I wonder what the remaining Dems in Congress will say about the President Wednesday. My prediction: not pretty.
Perhaps the phrase "not pretty" is understated. Maybe "coyote ugly" would be more accurate.
Today at Mass, during the consecration of the host, this old hymn began singing itself in my head. These hymns often pop into my head during the consecration of the host. It is one way I know a miracle is happening.
A beautiful, simple hymn:
I am Thine, O Lord, I have heard Thy voice, And it told Thy love to me; But I long to rise in the arms of faith And be closer drawn to Thee.
Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord, To the cross where Thou hast died; Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, To Thy precious, bleeding side.
Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord, By the pow’r of grace divine; Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope, And my will be lost in Thine.
I remembered on the way home that a version of this hymn is sung in the movie "Bella" as the young protagonist understands what he must do.
If you haven't seen the movie, rent it. Beautiful. The hymn is a perfect fit.
Speaking of wonderful hymns, listen to this, by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. You may remember them from Paul Simon's "Graceland" album.
"The Lord bless you, and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace." Numbers 6:22-27.
A recent article in a left-leaning blog lambasted President Obama for not "getting it," The article quotes Rabbi Michael Learner, a liberal political figure, in a massive, oxygen sucking sentence that complains about every last thing Obama has not done for Progressives. The good Rabbi left no whine unopened.
"Progressives" are now raging against President Obama, in an effort to get what crumbs are left before the political avalanche in November. Jon Stewart is bashing Obama on a regular basis for being clueless.
The "Progressive" diagnosis is that the President has not been liberal enough. Apparently the trouble facing the Democrats in November would not have occurred had Obama spent more, taxed more and punished business more.
Wow. That's like betting your underwear because you lost your car shooting craps.
16 months ago Eternal Optimist suggested that the "Progressive" agenda would succeed or fail politically based on whether it worked. It will not be punished politically because the American people are too dumb to "get it," but because the American people are unhappy with the results. After all, Americans voted for President Obama and the Democratic party in droves in 2008. They are not averse to voting for a Progressive agenda, provided it works.
"Progressives" won in 2008 because the economy was tanking. Two years later "Progressives" are busy running on anti-Bush: "W" is the reason the economy continues a-crappy (new word EO has coined) and unemployment is stuck at about 10%.
Progressives cannot be blamed for this tactic. Roosevelt did it for 3 election cycles in the 30s, as his economic policies extended the Depression from an ordinary 2-3 year cycle to the "Great Depression." Apparently America does not have the stomach for this anymore.
News flash (this just in): VOTERS DON'T CARE ABOUT DIALECTIC. They don't care about Bush anymore, either. Americans hired President Obama to fix the economy, not to make great speeches explaining how the crappiness is not his fault.
Economy: Craptastic. Mathematical Opposite of Fantastic. Photo Credit
Bottom line: we've forked over a couple trillion (literally) in debt over the last 22 months to fix the economy and pay for all the cool government stuff. And the economy is still stuck. And our entitlement programs are not fixed. Goldman, Sachs is doing well, thank you, having invested heavily in President Obama. The rest of us, not so much.
Having themselves invested a couple trillion (I like how that sounds) in President Obama, middle-class Americans want unemployment fixed. What they see at present is NADA (a technical economic term). So they are ticked off. Making well-crafted speeches about why the investment went sour is not the same thing as fixing the problem.
That's how Americans are. Ask the Yankees or Phillies how their fans react when they lose. "Boo!" say the fans. Doesn't matter you just won 97 games. "Boooooo!" Then they say things like "YOU S#$@" And much worse.
Aside from having been very expensive and not having worked, the "Progressive" vision suffers from an historical disadvantage. The "Progressive" diagnosis is that America is not regulated enough, not taxed enough, and doesn't have enough entitlements. The solution? More government. MUCH more government. Everywhere, all the time.
But if this is so, then somewhere, somehow a perfect command society should be humming along in perpetual bliss, a living rebuke to our selfish and stupid American aversion to big government. There's been no lack of commitment to the "Progressive" vision during the last century. Plenty of societies have taken the vision to its logical conclusion: Lenin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
It hasn't worked out. All command societies wind up delivering the same basic product: (a) a chronically broken economy (b) mass starvation and (c) the Gulag. This historical fact has a way of rapidly eroding confidence in the "Progressive" vision, no matter how earnestly peddled or honestly believed. No matter how good the speeches are, and no matter how bovine the opposition is.
One does not have to be a fan of unbridled capitalism to be nervous about Progressives in control.
An electoral tsunami is headed toward Washington. There are still a lot of hopeful articles about how voter discontent and the Tea Party will hurt Republicans as much as Democrats. My suspicion is that this is magical thinking, of the "I am the Emperor Napoleon and I shall ride a winged unicorn from barren Elba" variety.
Fortunately for Democrats, their opposition party is the Republicans. Based on past history, these folks are more likely to make a stop for a highball at the "Ear-Mark Bar and Grill" than they are to bring the electoral paycheck home to the wife and kiddies. When they come out of the bar there is an 80% chance they will trip on their own shoe-laces and fall off a curb. So Progressives can just relax for a couple years. Things will be better in 2012.
Come to think of it, both parties tend to be more attractive while out of power. This ensures they rotate endlessly, which probably helps ensure our freedom, in a painful but strangely human way. "Through institutionalized folly, freedom."
It's been a fascinating 3 weeks in the life of Eternal Optimist and Mrs. Optimist. We are racing toward our 29th wedding anniversary, but continue to be astonished at the things we learn about each other.
"Mawwiage, its what bwings us togever."
For instance, about 2 months ago EO decided he would buy his lovely wife a bicycle for her birthday. The calculus was simple. Wife's bike - purchased many years ago at WalMart (don't hate us) - doesn't shift anymore. Brakes work, sometimes. Getting it fixed will cost more than the price of the bike. Wife likes to ride bikes.
Therefore, reasoned EO, buy her a bike.
EO hatched a plan to get this done, involving other people chipping in for the bike.
In the meantime, unbeknown to EO, Mrs. EO had hatched a plan to buy a bike for EO. This situation resembles the time, 15 years ago, when both of us bought the complete Fawlty Towers videos for each others' Christmas presents. If you've ever seen "The Germans," you'd understand why this was THE BEST PRESENT EVER!!
One evening Mrs. Optimist gloatingly told EO that she had thought up the best present for him, and he would never guess. I said "I know what you're getting me. It's a bike." The stunned look on Mrs. EO's face said it all. It took her a day to admit it, but eventually she did, saying "how did you guess?"
At which point I had two paths before me, that of deception and power, or truth and humility. I could have pretended I have supernatural powers that enable me to read her mind. Or I could just tell the truth, which is that I've been keeping a secret too long, and "bike" was forefront in my mind, and it was a total guess. Although the Fawlty Towers episode did flash in my mind right before I blurted. So there was a little ESP involved.
I told the truth, which made her laugh. She remembered Fawlty Towers very well. We both laughed a lot.
That's not the end. Oh no. 29 years of mawwiage is much more involved than that.
We go bike shopping at the local Hotville bike shop, which is way cool. Lots of bicyclists in Hotville. We (kind of) settle on a combo-mountain-road bike, since I like both. Meanwhile Mrs. EO picks out her own present, which always works better in the end. She buys a cute little lime green Schwinn bike-about-town, with fenders and a back platform from which she can hang panniers (bike-ese for carry bags). Mrs. EO orders same from WalMart (don't hate us), for much, much cheaper than at the local bike store.
One day we are in the car, talking, and somehow we get on the subject of Mrs. EO's bike, mostly because the issue has been gnawing at me. There is something off kilter, and I don't know what it is. I question Mrs. Optimist closely, and learn that the reason she "wants" the bike for a present is because it's something I like, and she has a vision of riding bikes with me - it is something we can do TOGETHER.
On to something now, I press her. "No, I mean, what do you WANT? What do YOU want?" She reiterates her want. I say "No. What if I were dead? What would you want then?" She looks stunned, then says, "oh, that's easy, I'd take a trip to see my daughters."
Finally, the very center of the onion. It has taken several weeks to get to this point. What my wife really WANTS, in her heart of hearts, is to take some trips to see her daughters.
When someone asks me what I want for my birthday, my answers are very simple. The answer will be something I want. It does not involve togetherness, or how this will connect with me doing things with my wife and family. That would be icing on the cake, but it is not the cake. It is not that I don't love them; I do, with all my heart. It's that my mind just doesn't work that way.
When someone asks Mrs. EO what she wants, it is a much more complex question. Her own wants and likes are so wrapped up in the welfare and happiness of her husband and children that it is nearly impossible to disentangle them all. It can only be done over weeks, with repeated, intense interrogation.
So that's it, right? Not so fast.
The WalMart bike (don't hate us) comes in, but we have to ask several layers of management to get them to actually put it together like they said they would. Then, when the Schwinn is finally "put together," we go to the store to pick it up. Back brakes are locking, seat doesn't work, gears are not shifting. We leave WalMart and thank the young unter-manager for actually getting wheels on the bike.
I go back to the bike store and ask them to tune the bike up. They are very gracious, in part because I have decided to go ahead and buy me a bike. And not the sensible combo-mountain-road bike, mind you, but a straight, fast, road bike.
Why? Well, my daughter's father-in-law is basically the Pope of bicycling in Big Cold Town, where we are from. I ask him and he says "don't get the combo. It doesn't do either thing well. Just make a decision." I tell him its road, then. He tells me what bike to buy, in my price range.
So there I am at the cool bike store getting my wife's WalMart bike worked on, and lo and behold, the young and earnest bike salesman has the very bike recommended by the Bike Pope, like it is waiting there for me. All silver and light and fast. I take a test ride. I've never ridden anything close to this. I'm buying it.
I buy it. I bring it home. The wife is SO proud I've finally taken the plunge and quit studying all this. She LOVES the bike.
Last week we took three long rides together, Mrs. Optimist riding my old mountain bike and me, I'm riding my new, lyrically fast road bike. Great stuff! I love being able to accelerate up hills! Wow!
This morning we picked up the WalMart bike, all fixed up. Mrs. Optimist rides her bike to the car, in the parking lot, just to test it out. "Now I get to ride this one and see if I can keep up with you" she says, off-handedly. Just as off-handedly I say "not gonna happen. It's too heavy."
Just FYI, when I say something off-handedly, it is off-handed. When my wife says something off-handedly, not so much.
We stopped for breakfast. Mrs. Optimist is looking at me with her beautiful, sad eyes. I say "what's wrong?" She says "I realize I bought this bike when I thought you were getting the mountain-combo bike. But I'm not going to be able to keep up with you on this one."
I start laughing. "but I thought you liked that bike." Silly me.
Bottom line: WalMart bike goes back to WalMart, Mrs. EO will be buying fast street bike to keep up with EO. Cause EO likes riding fast. And Mrs. EO likes talking with EO. So Mrs. EO has to ride fast.
Not to worry. By our 50th wedding anniversary we will have this all ironed out.
By the way, Mrs. EO will be taking trips to see her daughters for her birthday.
Timothy Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury. Eternal Optimist will call him Timmy, since he is starting to bug me.
Timmy recently said that letting Bush tax cuts expire - they had a "sunset" provision when passed - would be the "responsible" thing to do, since the higher taxes would help balance our budget and send a message that we are serious about getting control of the deficit.
Timmy said extending the Bush tax cuts would be "irresponsible," and would actually hurt the economy, because bond investors would think we were not serious about deficit control. Letting the tax cuts expire brings in an estimated $700 billion in taxes over 10 years, says Timmy. About $70 billion a year.
BTW, letting "tax cuts expire" is the same as "increasing taxes." We'll just call it tax increases (what it is) from now on.
And double BTW, having just burned through about $900 billion in debt for "economic stimulus" while having no effect on joblessness is fine, okie-dokie, no problema, good for America. Never mind the moon-sized hole you just blew in the budget in 2009, the generations of interest payments you just laid on my children.
And FYI, the jobless needle is still stuck on "E" - 10%. No movement for that $900 billion we just forked over in 2009. Still driving on fumes.
And double FYI, this budget fart was $900 billion in ONE YEAR, not over 10 years. So triple FYI, investors already know Timmy's views on "deficit control," and spraying some air freshener around is not going to make the smell go away.
We will call this "Timonomics." Under Timonomics, when you increase the deficit by borrowing $900 billion, that is good, and opposition is irresponsible. When you reduce the deficit by raising taxes, that is also good, and opposition is irresponsible. Heads Timmy wins, tails you lose.
The only way to make sense of Timonomics is to realize that in both cases government gets more power - that is, more money.
Enlightenment.
It is one thing to insist that government needs to get bigger, no matter what. It is quite another thing for Timmy to pose as fiscally prudent while Super-Sizing the government's beer belly. The first is a straightforward political position that I happen to disagree with. The second is a fraud scheme.
Eternal Optimist does not believe it when the Congressional Budget Office says our new health care system will be in the black.
CBO reports are not like an audit from an independent accountant. When a company gets audited, the accountants have to follow generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Of course, the accountants can be bribed, or bamboozled, but there are objective standards to apply. If the accountants have integrity and savvy, they will catch the problems and report them in a way everyone can understand.
CBO logo: is that really a labyrinth? Photo Credit
Not so the CBO and Congress. Congress makes up its own accounting standards, and then has CBO do the math and issue reports. It is as if Enron got to make up its own accounting standards and have its in house accountants issue "audit" reports.
In fact, one of the great scandals in the Enron case was that Enron pushed and bullied its way to get changes in GAAP that helped conceal billions of real world problems. This was a sobering lesson about how bad it gets when a company hides its rotten financial condition by hi-jacking the auditing process. The lesson applies to Congress, except that Enron was a single-cell protozoa compared to the Congressional Moby Dick.
Congress makes up its own accounting rules, and the very smart people at CBO and other government accounting offices have to accept Congress' rules about how to add up the numbers. This means that whatever crackpot assumptions Congress makes, the CBO has to grin and bear it. If Congress says its new health care bill will cause Martians to invest in the stock market and pay income tax, CBO has to assume that is correct, and add up the new tax revenue from Mars based on Congressional formulas. Which means CBO reports are normally smoke-screens, sometimes more, sometimes less.
It seems insane, but that's how it works. To get an accurate accounting to the mass population, you have to rely on the media to do the hard work of digesting and fairly reporting independent accounting analysis. And if the media wants to believe the smoke-screen, that ain't happening.
Take Medicare. Tim Geithner, Secretary of Treasury, said that Obamacare has put Medicare on the road to financial soundness. But Medicare's own actuary recently said the assumptions on which the program's soundness is being predicted are ludicrous. Based on the assumptions used in previous (less crazy) years, the program is in deep trouble. Read about it here.
The actuary said that the Medicare Trustee's Report - on which Geithner based his happy talk - radically underestimates the actual costs of the program and radically overestimates other savings. The Report does this because it is required to accept Congress' scoring and budget rules, however crazy they are.
A smart guy like Geithner comes out and says Medicare is in great shape, people can't believe he would be flatly, clearly wrong. That would be a lie, which simply does not compute. A classic text on propaganda had this to say about why big lies work better than small lies to fool the average joe:
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
Eternal Optimist read an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealerabout St. Peter's, a Catholic parish in downtown Cleveland that has decided to defy its bishop by retaining its worship services at a new building after the bishop closed the church. Of course the article's viewpoint is a kind of sympathetic "power to the people" "democracy in action" take. To be expected. The bishop wouldn't comment for the article, which meant all the talking was done by the priest and his congregation.
Lots of dioceses around the country are merging parishes and closing churches, usually because the parishes and their dwindling congregations can no longer afford to stay open. The closings usually affect inner city parishes, because they are older, their populations have moved or are aging, and they have big, old, expensive buildings to support. They can't make it financially. The closings are usually unpopular and oftenface vocal opposition.
The bishops take enormous flak for these decisions. I am relatively sure none of them like or enjoy closing churches. The congregations are not simply turned out into the street. Parishes are typically merged with other parishes, and one of the priests involved may lose his pastoral role and be reassigned elsewhere.
The Cleveland situation is made more painful by the open disobedience of a priest. The bishop directed that the congregation not celebrate mass except in a church or other location authorized by the bishop. Under church rules, this is the bishop's right. The priest and the congregation have decided to disobey.
My suggestion to the priest and his congregation is that they are now "protestant." They've found something they can't tolerate about the Catholic church, and are now in revolt.
Having lived most of my life as a Protestant, here are some things you may want to iron out before they become problems. You will be amazed at how quickly they come up.
Your priest is now your new Pope. Or something more like a Pope than he was before. That is, there will be some type of authority structure in your church. The question is typically "who," not "whether."
From whence does his authority arise?
If from his personal virtue, that's good, except who determines what is virtuous? Do you use the norms of the Church? Why?
If from God's anointing, when and where?
At some point he will exercise some authority to balk someone's good idea for reasons that seem unconvincing to you. What happens then?
Why him? Why not a Council of Elders? A Board of trustees? Presbyters? No one?
Why not you?
What happens when he dies?
Bible still authoritative? Why? Historically the Catholic Church wrote and selected the books of the New Testament. Does that part of Church law still apply? Which parts do and don't, and why?
These and many more questions will arise and have to be ironed out. All of them, and 10,000 besides, have vexed Protestantism since its advent in the 16th century.
Another Famous Protestant. Different denomination.
I wish you all well on your journey, and hope you find what you are looking for. My long and painful experiences with church splits suggest otherwise. There are presently about 30,000 separate Protestant denominations out there. So chances are you'll get to experience more than one split during your Protestant career.
Each split will leave its own, distinct taste of bitterness in your mouth, its own distinct aroma of failure.
A little insight on how this usually pans out. Some of you will wind up back in Catholic Church, some in a dwindling congregation under an increasingly irascible and bitter former priest, some in another Protestant congregation, and some in no church at all.
I don't wish this on anyone. But experience - unfortunately, copious amounts of painful experience - tells me I'm right.
Peace be with you all. God has a wonderful way of bringing his children home to himself by ways as diverse as they are mysterious.
PS: A Navy ship saves a man on a desert island, where he has lived for 3 years by himself. The man proudly shows the captain all he has built in order to survive and even thrive. The captain is quite impressed with the man's expansive palm hutch, which contains a kitchen, dining room, living room, bath and two bedrooms.
The captain sees another, even bigger grass hutch a little way down the path. The captain asks what the building is and the man responds warmly "that's my church." The captain sees another grass hutch nearby and asks what it is. The man's lips tighten and he says "that's my old church."
"I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else." Winston Churchill
"Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures." St. Thomas Aquinas
"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper." George Orwell
"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Samuel Johnson
"He chewed more than he bit off." Ernest Hemingway, on Henry James
"Progress, not perfection." Stuart Smalley
"I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." Abraham Lincoln
"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner. " Samuel Johnson
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Mark Twain
"Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding." Jonathan Swift
"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Abraham Lincoln
"It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop." Confucius
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." Winston Churchill
"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love. It is the prerogative of the brave." Mohandas Gandhi
"There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America." Otto von Bismarck
"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." C.S. Lewis
"A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one." Benjamin Franklin
"On the day of judgment, we will not be asked what we have read, but what we have done." Thomas a Kempis
"Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections . . . have patience in all things, but first of all, yourself." St. Francis de Sales
"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." Edmund Burke
"It is impossible for a Cynic, who makes indifference his end, to know any good but indifference." Justin Martyr
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P.J. O'Rourke
Making America Safe for Partisans.
