WaPo writer E.J. Dionne…
…is taught a few lessons by his commenters, nearly all of whom have a great deal more sense than he does.
Dionne still thinks it’s all about “the narrative.” His commenters think it’s actually about the poor decisions made by President Obama and this Congress.
Here’s a good one, and quite typical (by “Letscheck,” at 2:11 AM on January 18):
Smoke and mirrors have been blown away. What is going on in Obama World has been apparent to many for years. Every single day, more people wake up to the reality of who Obama is and what he is doing to this country.
Lies piled upon lies just won’t do it any more. No one believes them.
Blaming others night and day won’t cover up the people who are actually responsible for this terrible turn in our country and the fact that it is being driven forward by this Obama Administration and this Congress.
Attacking business, organizations, people, and news stations to get the focus off of what goes on in Washington is no longer effective. The bag of tricks is out in the open and we don’t like it at all…
Democrats are running from their own party. I suspect most Obama voters are as embarrassed by the result of their vote as I was when I believed Jon Cozine’s lies, and voted for him for NJ Governor. That was over four years ago and I still smart from the revelations of the true Corzine a month into his Governorship.
Corzine was the Obama canary test. He flew so they threw in Obama. Too bad they didn’t pick up on how NJ felt about Cozine after he was voted in. If the Dems had, then they would have foreseen that Obama would end up in the same place.
Government leaders need to be adults.
For all of the blame the childish Dems place on Bush, it would seem that he was the adult and they are the spoiled kids who wanted to take over the house because they thought they knew better.
Give this guy Dionne’s job!
And here’s “radical centrist,” at 2:30 AM on January 18:
Dionne is not just drinking the Kool Aid. He’s passing it out. Keep it up and the Democratic Party will have committed suicide. It will lose 10 more Senate seats in November, not just four or five.
We all know the financial crisis and recession began on Bush’s watch. But we also know that Obama has done next to nothing to stimulate renewed growth and prosperity. We know the “stimulus package” was a Christmas tree of gifts to favored Democratic constituencies and not a carefully targeted jobs-generating program — at a cost of nearly $800 billion. We know that GM bailout was a gift to the UAW and Michigan pols. And we know that more than half of Obama’s time has been consumed by the obsession to pass a monstrosity of a health care bill that will gut Medicare and raise premiums and taxes while handing out more gifts to everyone from Big Pharma to hold-out Senators — at a cost of trillions (and we’re not so stupid as to believe the phony 10-year accounting gimmicks).
So don’t condescend to us out here, Dionne. We’re not punishing Obama for Bush’s sins. We’re punishing him for his phony unkept campaign promises, non-stop bull @#$%& and horrendous health care “reform.”
You’d better “get it” well before next November or there are going to be a lot more “unexpected” losses.
You can feel the heat rising from the computer. These people get it; Dionne does not.
All I will say is, “It’s about time!”
America gave Obama a lot of goodwill at the beginning: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/06/opinion/polls/main4923710.shtml
(Note the 31% approval even from Republicans). Dionne falls to the common partisan’s interpretation throughout time. Because some people in the opposition have Bad Motive A as one of their reasons for opposing us, therefore all of our opposition is entirely motivated by Bad Motive A.
There are indeed people on the right who are responding to their own favored narrative in interpreting current events. So what? That doesn’t explain the variance, which is what is important in discerning causes.
My Gawd ! Washington Pravda actually published these letters? Shocked is what I am.
Neoconscum, the links do not go to the WaPo, but to RealClearPolitics. So, they were not WaPo comments.
Gringo: You are correct. But if you go to the WaPo itself, there are also comments there, and they’re not too different from the ones at Real Clear Politics.
This is totally OT, but please don’t shoot me. Did any one notice that Eric Holder, along with Valerie Jarret, was invited to Michelle’s birthday dinner? That sounds like close family friend to me, and it makes me think that Michelle may have some input into whether Obama will ever try to reign in his AG.
Gringo, did you see this in the WaPo? It’s not exactly flattering to The Won.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/14/AR2010011403872.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Neo I have to give you credit for being able to go to these places and read the piece and the comments.
I can’t even do that anymore. It’s like going to the dentist sans novacaine. I did that for years, and even tried ‘reasoning’ with my liberal friends. I always thought they too wanted what was best for the country, for poor people, for working people, for families, etc.
Boy was I wildly wrong.
It’s like arguing with Hitler that maybe Mein Kampf had some bad ideas in it. The maniacs – and I consider all Dem/Progs/Libs to be maniacs at this point until preoven otherwise on a case by case basis – by definition think they are right on their ideas. That is what mania is, isn’t it? Can you argue with mania? Can you reason with mania? Can you even reach common ground with mania; or agree to disagree with mania? No! You can’t even do those ‘little’ things.
Thanks God for your training. People like us need people like you to wander into the madness and at least have a chance of exiting unscathed.
Dionne is a stone cold idiot. Really.
I’m not going to bother digging this out, but I remember a Dionne oped from 12-13 months ago as Obama prepared to take the Presidency. It was all about how capitalism had failed and how the new centrally planned economy was going to fix all of our problems.
The only political language that scares me today is this casualness the well off members of the left employ regarding the material well being and opportunities for economic advancement of the hoi polloi. Those 2 pct points difference between American and European unemployment rates represent some 3 million people and families impacted in the US. How many additional divorces, children that only see one parent regularly, bankruptcies, and foreclosures never happened because of those 2 percent unemployeed that never happened because of the mostly capitalist American economy (relative to Europe)? Mostly idle, rich lefties like Dionne want to extend health care coverage to the poor on the backs of the lower middle class and marginally skilled community of workers, the folks that really lose when the Dems decide to increase taxes on the rich. The folks that claim to feel our pain are selective about who they feel pain for.
Give this guy Dionne’s job!
Hell, give him Barry’s job!
Dionne has appeared several times on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. Dionne comes across as a cordial, rational fellow — not a brittle leftist trying to control Hewitt and the interview like George Lakoff does.
Nonetheless, Dionne and Hewitt don’t agree on much, and the problems are always much deeper than whatever issue du jour is on their plate.
The commenters are good but I suspect that were Dionne to read their comments, he couldn’t hear them since he is so deeply stuck in his own narrative.
> Too bad they didn’t pick up on how NJ felt about Cozine after he was voted in. If the Dems had, then they would have foreseen that Obama would end up in the same place.
Now THAT is funny.
C’mon — Think.
When have libtards EVER looked back at what they did to see what the aftermath was?
Seriously.
If they did, they’d be libertarians or conservatives, because 90% of all things they support doing don’t work in actual practice.
That inability to look back and see ramifications — whatever the source (unwillingness, conceptual blindness, or outright stupidity, or some variant mixture of all three) is the central hallmark of what makes a libtard into a libtard.
If you want a defining concept for modern leftism (ideological lefties, not political lefties) — it’s a lack of common sense, or wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to learn from mistakes — yours, and, ideally, those of others.
If you drafted a “wisdom quotient” test, I will virtually guarantee you that — if you tested people who self-identify as lefties, greens, and so forth — that you would find upon testing them with your “WQ” test, that they would consistently rank in the bottom 25% of all humans.
And the above observation identifies how/why the Dems failed to do as it suggested — they have no capacity to actually perform the act in question.
…And, for my mind, it defines anyone on The Left as pretty much synonymous with the worst possible individuals to be in charge of long-term decisionmaking.
When have libtards EVER looked back at what they did to see what the aftermath was?
Never. They subscribe to one of the Dilbert axioms: what you did isn’t important. It’s what you say you did and what you say you’re going to do that is important.