Posted inPolitics: National

Secession — A good idea this time

The Republic is beset by many distractions: Dick Cheney running madly in the midair of potential war crimes prosecution, a la Wile E Coyote; cowardly Democratic Senators bowing to tales of Osama's boys living on welfare in Oklahoma City, watching for those "green shoots" that mean we can go back to business as usual.

I don't put the Texas secession dustup in that category. We should take it seriously. We should even look on it favorably.

Note that President Obama doesn't seem to dwell on Lincoln any longer — the Lincoln who said that if he failed, he would be the last president of the United States. Obama's judicious mind has persuaded him that the crisis that seemed to engulf the nation last fall was overstated. He has been enveloped in the protective visions of his moneymen, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and, behind them, Bob Rubin. The Obama administration will be Clinton 2.0, without Bill's missteps and with the magnificent oratory — as was done yesterday in the glow of the Constitution — that makes one proud to be an American.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Two roads to the future?

With the exception of LBJ, Democratic presidents since 1960 have fared badly in their legislative agendas, even when Congress was controlled by their party. President Obama, for all his gifts, may be on track to fare little better. Health care. Cap-and-trade. Financial reform. Big-time tax evasion. Even for this cool-handed moderate, it's a tough sell.

Meanwhile, the media and the salesmen on Wall Street are in a constant search for "green shoots" — signs this historic recession is over. Nobody is thinking through what these shoots will turn into, exactly what the road ahead looks like. But for many, including policymakers, we find a desperate assumption that the economy will pick right up where it left off in 2006.

Two schools of thought are at work here. One says the fundamentals are sound, as President Hoover put it, and the future will look much like the recent past. The other, found more among the outliers, argues we have hit a historic pivot point — but will we realize it and save ourselves?

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Posted inPolitics: National

The bigger hostage drama

The rescue of the American captain from pirates — handled with cool competence from President Obama to the SEAL snipers — gives the nation a much-needed boost. This comes after eight years of "bring 'em on" grandstanding by the Bush administration. And now, as the company that once stood for American success and the rising middle class, General Motors, faces bankruptcy. At least we can still do something right.

This should not distract us from piracy that has been happening on Wall Street, and that the Obama administration seems committed to, at best, merely applying a nip-and-tuck. It emerges that Obama chief economic adviser Larry Summers not only received $5.2 million from a hedge fund and $2.7 million in speaking fees from big financial institutions after he left Harvard. He also was working for a hedge fund while he was president of Harvard. Frank Rich asks, "Can he be a fair broker of the bailout when he so recently received
lavish compensation from some of its present and, no doubt, future
players?" Ben Stein answers, "I know people and I know money, at least the basics. If anyone thinks
that a man who has had a taste of honey from Wall Street on that scale
will ever really crack the whip on Wall Street, he’s dreaming."

Larry Summers, the man leading Obama's reckless push into socialism; sorry, SOCIALISM!! (or is it fascism? — the right-wingers can't figure it out). What's really happening is that the pirates are winning, and there's no SEAL team out of D.C. to protect taxpayers — or the future of this republic.

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