The media should resign over President Obama’s failure.
Actually, they won’t have to resign. Given the continuing financial failure of newspapers, they seem to be getting fired. What will happen to Frank Rich when the New York Times finally goes under?
[Late morning update]
Whoops, there goes another one. After a hundred seventy four years, the Ann Arbor News is closing its doors this summer.
I pointed out a few posts ago that the current style in Washington is the Chicago Way. Now John Kass, who has been covering Chicago politics for a long time, agrees:
“Stunned, stunned is the word,” said Obama.
Stunned?
It turns out that his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—who didn’t pay all of his federal taxes but was still deemed worthy by Obama of collecting yours—knew all about the AIG bonuses weeks ago.
That was long before Washington Democrats began shrieking in pretend outrage over the bonuses, as if they didn’t vote for them, sort of like Chicago aldermen shrieking about corruption from the 5th Floor.
It’s like Mayor Richard Daley saying, “Gee, I dunno” when news breaks that his nephews are in another multimillion-dollar government deal. Or that time that Daley gave $100 million in affirmative action contracts to men he knows well, yet was stunned to learn later that they were white guys, not black females.
These days, the Washington Way is looking just like the Chicago Way. Those of us from Illinois can see it, what with City Hall guys pulling White House strings.
And no, that’s not a good thing.
And anyone who is surprised is a fool.
Glenn Reynolds has extensive coverage of the tea parties, which the press seems to wish would just go away so they can focus on ACORN- and ANSWER-sponsored events.
It’s the shade of the great economist, in a knockout.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Treacher has collected several that haven’t made the news yet.
Some thoughts:
Liberals are determined to mock and ridicule the notion that Obama’s moving America in a European direction. But of course he is. Liberals have been — unapologetically — pushing America in that direction for generations.
Anyway, what I didn’t get into in the column is how this contrasts with the theocracy-panic of five minutes ago. Back then, the liberal consensus was that we need to be very, very, very scared that the bible thumpers were going to take over everything and turn us into a Handmaid’s Tale (itself a classic example of paranoid fiction). But back then, if I had suggested that America’s rich history of religious tolerance and pluralism could stand up to the Orwellian onslaught of Bush’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives, I would have been laughed off as ludicrously naive.
But when Obama is literally spending trillions of dollars to move us in a European direction, conservatives like Mark Steyn, Charles Murray, and others are supposedly daft for thinking this is anything worth worrying about.
It’s just the substitution of one religion for another — worship of the state.
…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…an echo chamber…
[Late morning update]
More thoughts from Mickey, who is despairing of ever getting an invitation.
…and when did he not know it? And a bonus — “heckuva job, Timmy!”
I think I hear the bus starting to warm up its engine in preparation for its next victim.
By way of the AllahPundit we learn that TIME has been told that the Fed flagged the AIG bonuses to Treasury on Feb 28, ten days before word percolated to Geithner. What an operation – Geithner was at the NY Fed working with Hank Paulson on these bailouts, was brought to Treasury to provide continuity, and now has forgotten everything prior to Jan 20, 2009. Geithner needs to bring on some senior staffers so he can fire someone. Inshallah.
…FREUD IS EVERYWHERE: I know they are a bit down on Obama just now but this reflexive Bush-bashing from the Chi Trib blog is ridiculous:
This appears to be a case where the government’s right hand didn’t know what the left was doing. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner learned only last week about the bonuses, according to the Bush Administration.
Yes, we all miss Ari and Dana and what’s his name. But since this is the Obama Administration let me offer an editing suggestion: “This appears to be a case where the government’s left hand didn’t know what the far left hand was doing.” Just trying to help.
Maguire is a one-man wrecking crew on this story.
Jim Manzi has some useful thoughts:
Commentators on both the Left and Right seem to think that if only we could get the right person to take over these companies and clean up the financial mess, everything would be OK. All it takes is somebody competent and honest, because the answers are so obvious. A rotating series of scapegoats has been created. Paulson? Fool. Geithner? Moron. Liddy? Stooge. It’s funny how their idiocy didn’t seem to surface so much in their prior careers.
Maybe the issue isn’t with the men we’ve selected, but with the problem we’ve asked them to address. Some problems don’t have solutions. The American electorate seems to be intent on re-learning the lesson that how to effectively manage socialized means of production is one of them. The tuition for this course tends to be pretty steep.
I’m sure that Liddy is deeply regetting that he took the job, particularly given the (lack of) financial compensation. The notion that a government, or any one person, is smart enough to run an economy is what Hayek called the fatal conceit.
[Update early evening]
It’s cliché to say there’s a lot of blame but going around — but there is a lot of blame to go around.
Everywhere you turn in this mess, you can find government right there. To say this is a private-sector failure is ridiculous. It’s like Forrest Gump, where he keeps showing up at historic moments. Everywhere you look in this mess, again and again, you see government.
The most infuriating thing about these clowns, both in Washington and the press, is how a non-existent free market and “deregulation” keeps getting falsely blamed for this as an excuse for bigger government and more regulation.