This just might be the most depressing thing I've ever read.
Seriously.
The experiment was prompted by Obama's recent comments that things like ATM's, airport check-in ticket scanners, and other technologies have killed a lot of jobs.
The piece from New York magazine that I linked yesterday (The Trouble With Liberty) is getting kicked around The LibertySphere, and will probably continue getting kicked for a while. Here's part of Radley Balko's take on it, mostly about a statement that libertarians promise an unrealistic utopia just like every other political animal does:
No, they don’t. People use the utopia canard to make libertarianism seem creepy and cultish. Look, politics is a dirty, corrupt profession that rewards people who display the characteristics you least want in someone in whom you entrust important decisions about your life. The general premise of libertarianism is that people should be free to make their own decisions about their lives—that as much of our lives as possible should be kept within the sphere of civil, voluntary society, and out of the sphere of political society. There would still be problems in a libertarian society. There would still be crime, income inequality, acne, nu metal, and reality TV. Most libertarians merely believe that in a libertarian society, most people would be better off than they are now—that being free to make more of your own choices is preferable to having politicians make them for you. Most conservatives and liberals also believe that most people would be better off if their own policy preferences were implemented. That isn’t in the same ballpark as promising utopia. People will still make bad decisions. They should be free to do so.
If anything is utopian, it’s the idea that the world would be much better off if only we put more of society in the hands of a few very smart people who somehow know all the answers. And that somehow the political process will ensure that those all-knowing people always end up in a position to make all the decisions.
Here's Jack Kelly writing about how The Thrill Is Gone. A brief excerpt:
The low point came when Mr. Obama professed not to know whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the woman he appointed to head the Minerals Management Service, resigned or was fired. No one expects the president to don scuba tanks and plug the hole himself. But he at least ought to know what's going on with his own people.
"He came across as a beleaguered bureaucrat in damage control," wrote Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly.
Here's Maureen Dowd, a former worshipper of The Obamessiah:
It’s impossible not to feel sorry for President Obama, pummeled by the cascading disasters, at home and abroad, unleashed by two war-mongering oil men — plus scary escalations by Israel, Iran and North Korea. (Dick Cheney’s dark influence is still belching like the well. BP just brought on a new public relations executive: Anne Womack-Kolton, who served as Cheney’s campaign press secretary in 2004 and worked in W.’s White House and at the Energy Department.)
Well, actually it is possible to avoid feeling sorry for the Messianic muttonhead. I know a lot of people who accomplish the feat every waking hour.
If you like, you can go here for a similar column written by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.
IMAO, what we're dealing with is the inevitable disappointment in the leadership style of someone who has been given the toughest job in the world, but who has never even had to deal with the heavy burdens of running a Whataburger night shift.
What kind of competence were they expecting?
I hope you're enjoying the B.B. King/Eric Clapton jam. (That's a much younger, less bald Phil Collins on the drums, BTW.)
I found this in the comment field of the New York Post article up at the top:
Bush has been out of office for almost 2 years and you're STILL crying about him. Did Reagan ever blame Carter for the mess he left? Did Carter ever blame Ford for Nixon? For ANYTHING? Did Nixon ever blame Vietnam on Kennedy or Johnson? Did Kennedy blame Ike or Truman for the Cold War and the Cuban Missle Crisis? Did Truman blame FDR for WW2? Did FDR blame Hoover for the Depression? Or did these men focus on the issues instead of acting like a child and pointing fingers?
Well, they probably did. But I don't have time to research it.
It's been a year and a half, and the guy and his minions still can't speak to the media without saying the phrase "what we inherited". What they're doing is "more of the same".
I hope you'll listen to King and Clapton all the way through to the end. The last minute of that video is like listening to Zeus talk to Thor. Great stuff.
How is that "Hope" and "Change" thing working out for you? Have you noticed a huge improvement since The Teleprompter Jesus began dwelling among us? I didn't think so.
Remember all the carping about THE FIERCE MORAL URGENCY OF NOW ???
Here's the money quote from the Andrew Sullivan link:
One way to get the Obama administration's attention on civil rights is for gay people to stop funding the Democrats. That's all these people care about anyway when it comes to gays: our money.
The Libertarians are different, of course. We support your rights on principle, not because you're a dependable constituency.
And we don't have any money.
But let us know if you get tired of throwing money down the DNC money pit.
Yet another coat of whitening to Instapundit for the links.
