Schooling Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachman would be well advised to take a course or two at an accredited seminary where she would quickly discover the fallacy in accusing God of the massive destruction, deaths, and injuries resulting from natural disasters. One realizes, of course, the mindlessness of such remarks, but it’s time people like Bachmann are held accountable for the cruel implications their words have for the innocent victims of Irene, Katrina, etc..

Why did Americans allow Axelrod, Plouffe, and Daley to take over the country?

David Plouffe: "All hail the Messiah!"

Early in the Obama Administration, an upcoming Sunday sermon in my liberal church fellowship was titled, “The Obama Era.” Seriously. My God, I thought, they’ve anointed him pharaoh. I stayed home that morning.

The Obama Era emerged from the messianic campaign messages of David Axelrod and David Plouffe who, with the aid of Bill Daley, are apparently still trying to get all of us peasants to bow down to the One.

I don’t recall how Michael Tomansky responded to the Obama presidential campaign. He may or may not be one of the disillusioned who were once swept up in the glory days of 2008. Today, he’s in touch with reality in this post at the Daily Beast titled, “The Obama Team is Blowing it”:

We were told, as I recall, that Barack Obama had to seek a debt deal with the Republicans to please independent voters. Well, the independent voters are speaking, and they don’t appear to be especially appeased. There’s a new Gallup poll just out showing that independent voters hate the deal. Their views on it are far more similar to the GOP’s than to the Democratic Party’s.  Combine these data with the president’s approval numbers, which are swiftly heading south, and we have little choice but to conclude that this brilliant stratagem backfired. Isn’t it time for someone to say: this new White House political team is worse than the previous one?

First let me run you through the numbers. Americans disapprove of the deal by 46 to 39 percent. Democrats support it 58-28. Republicans oppose it 26-64. Independents oppose it 33-50. A second question asked of respondents: Was the deal a step forward or backward or neither with respect to “addressing the federal debt situation?” Democrats lined up 30-14-50. Republicans, 15-28-52. Independents, 16-25-50. Finally, independents also align more closely with Republicans on the question of whether the deal will have a good or bad effect on the economy.  Whereas 29 percent of Democrats think the effect will be good, just 12 percent of independents and 8 percent of Republicans believe that.

Let’s see, what else? The immigration speech from May? What, you don’t even remember it? If it was at least partly intended as a sop to Latino voters before the campaign really revs up, it seems to have left them largely unmoved—Obama is below 50 percent with Latinos in some surveys. OK, how about the more recent Midwestern jobs swing? Probably did no damage, but certainly did no good. The Vineyard vacation? I don’t begrudge the man a little R and R, and maybe it’s a small thing, but that destination—a bad symbol, Martha’s Vineyard. He might as well have gone to California wine country. Last I checked, there are golf courses aplenty to be found in North Carolina, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

When David Axelrod left to go to the campaign office in Chicago, and Rahm Emanuel left to become mayor, the spin was that David Plouffe and Bill Daley, their respective replacements, would, if nothing else, bring fresh and unwearied perspectives to these admittedly grueling and thankless jobs. But they appear to have given Obama bad advice at nearly every turn. Plouffe, from what I can see, just looks to be in over his head in this job. He was a whiz at organizing a campaign field network. But this is a different game.

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Steve Jobs: “You’ve got to find what you love”

Technolism.com

Word that Steve Jobs has stepped down as CEO at Apple Computer has set the tech world in turmoil. But reading this commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005, published online by the Stanford University News, helps put it all into perspective:

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

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Let’s march in protest this Labor Day!

How will you celebrate this Labor Day?

I agree with Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley and author of 'Aftershock':

Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be more appropriate than a parade.

Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American companies continue to cut wages and benefits. The median wage is still dropping, adjusted for inflation. High unemployment has given employers extra bargaining leverage to wring out wage concessions.

All told, it's been the worst decade for American workers in a century. According to Commerce Department data, private-sector wage gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last ten years, adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).

Big American corporations are making more money, and creating more jobs, outside the United States than in it. If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court's twisted logic now insists, most of the big ones headquartered here are rapidly losing their American identity.

CEO pay, meanwhile, has soared. The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs at 350 big American companies surged 11 percent last year to $9.3 million (according to a study of proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by the management consultancy Hay Group.). Bonuses have surged 19.7 percent.

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For anyone who recalls 2008, Obama’s poll numbers are shocking

Remember 2008?

Here’s the latest from Gallup:

President Obama finds himself in tight races with a handful of his Republican rivals, according to a new Gallup poll of registered voters released Monday.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads Obama, 48 percent to 46 percent, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry ties the president at 47 percent. The president holds a two-point lead over Texas Rep. Ron Paul and a four-point edge over Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

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Rebels advance to Tripoli

Celebrations in Libya as rebels advance in Tripoli

With the support of NATO’s air strikes against Gaddafi’s regime, rebels have advanced to Tripoli. Thomas Erdbrink and Liz Sly at the Washington Post report: 

TRIPOLI, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s four-decade-long rule over the country was crumbling at breakneck speed as hundreds of rebel fighters swept into Tripoli and took control Monday of the symbolically significant Green Square in the heart of the city.

With rebel leaders saying late Sunday that Gad­dafi’s compound was surrounded, that his son Saif al-Islam had been captured and that his presidential guard had surrendered, the six-month-old battle for control of Libya appeared to be hurtling toward a dramatic finale.

In a written statement, President Obama said: “Tonight, the momentum against the Qadhafi regime has reached a tipping point. Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant.”

Early Monday there were reports of heavy clashes near Gaddafi’s compound. Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Rahman said that tanks had emerged from the complex and began firing, AP said.

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In the good old days when Obama pledged to transform a broken Washington

Maureen Dowd’s acerbic, literary style is at its peak as she chides President Obama in today’s NY Times column, Of dystopias and alphas, and incidentally gives a favorable nod to Bill Clinton. One has to ask, though, where was Dowd’s razor sharp intellect in 2008 when she followed the lemmings over the cliff in support of Obama while doing her utmost to destroy both Bill and Hillary Clinton?

Ah, well, perhaps we can still enjoy seeing Dowd’s talent rescued from the trash bin of history and put to better uses in the summer of 2011:

President Obama was on the way to Alpha when a plea came for him to be, well, more alpha.

LuAnn Lavine, a real estate agent from Geneseo, a rural town just up the road from Alpha, Ill., the last stop on the president’s Midwestern bus tour, told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny: “Everyone was so hopeful with him, but Washington grabbed him and here we are. I just want him to stay strong and don’t take the guff. We want a president who is a leader, and I want him to be a little bit stronger.” 

Hers was a gentler message than the sign stuck on a post outside Alpha: “One Term President.” 

But her three words summed it up: Washington grabbed him. Why did this man whose contempt for Congress is clear, who ran on the idea that he could transform a broken Washington, surrender to its conventional timetable and bureaucratic language? 

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