American History 101, by Rahm Emanuel
Did you know that these are “the toughest times any president has ever faced”?
Rahm Emanuel knows. And he’s saying goodbye to all that.
I don’t know what’s more frightening: that this is what the president’s Chief of Staff for the last one and a half years actually thinks, that this may be what President Obama actually thinks, or that either or both of them thinks the public will actually buy it.
[Hat tip: Drew M. at Ace.]
You know what times these are? These are the most hyperbolic times… ever… in the history of the world, the universe and pre-time time.
Wait till Twinkletoes finds out how much a good pair of toe shoes costs these days.
Gosh…Abraham Lincoln sure had an easy time of it and as easy as times were then, it STILL took forevah to free the slaves!
I choose D: He needed something dramatic to say even if it made no sense. or E: None of the above.
PA Cat: about pointe shoes.
When I was first was dancing they cost about 3 dollars, I seem to recall. By the time I stopped, it might have been $40 or so. I am VERY surprised, however, on doing a quick search just now, to find that the price has not gone up all that much in the (many) years since I’ve bought them. Retail varies between about $60 and $80, but the online prices tend to be in the 40s and 50s.
I wonder why they haven’t gone up that much with inflation.
texexec: I’m sure if Obama had been president at that time, the freeing of the slaves would have been accomplished more quickly, and peacefully to boot.
Hey David,
Before you take off for Chicago, why not invite Potus to spend a weekend touring Gettysburg and Antietam? Count the graves, and remember that they contain Lincoln’s countrymen. Then read the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural. And finally trot back to DC with your tail between your legs, gather your bags, and head off for Chicago with your boss in tow. You both are disgusting wimps.
Galloping narcissism. These are the toughest times I have faced, and therefore the toughest times anyone has faced, because there’s me and there’s…well, that about it, actually. Everyone else is just a character who exists in my Sim City game by my leave.
I’m counting presidents backward to see who had it easier… Ford, probably; Eisenhower – but he had his hard times in WWII; Harding…
Not many. Obama is actually on the low end of the bell curve on Presidential difficulty.
For someone who fancies himself a tough guy Rahm sure is a Pansy ass.
It’s frightening to contemplate how this president would have responded to with 12/07/41 or 9/11/01, for starters.
Gee, these narcissists certainly feel everything they’re involved in is the “most [fill in the blank] ever”, huh? Then again, Obama has proved many times how little he knows about history and the constitution.
Ref shoes. Some years ago, there was a flood in Houston which took out some cultural items, including the ballet locker room–which is probably actually said in French–and one of the bigwigs said that most of the ballerinas had lost thirty or more pair.
Richard Aubrey: most professional companies pay for their dancers’ shoes. Otherwise it would be prohibitive to buy them on a dancer’s salary.
That’s quite a loss, though—thirty pair per female dancer!
No scarier that some one Adam Green believing the following:
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, called Emanuel “one of the chief voices telling the Democratic Party to cave instead of fighting — even when voters overwhelmingly supported progressive positions like the public option (on health care) and breaking up the big banks.
If someone can go through the last year and truly believe that, ten they will believe anything. Find enough of those kind of people and this country is not long for this world.
I have often wondered what it must have been like to be in Harry Truman’s shoes in July/August 1945. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision he had to make then.
To risk perhaps a million American lives in a conventional invasion or to nuke one or more Japanese cities.
And dancing shoes for the stage do not last long…
@ effess 4:41 p.m. It’s frightening to contemplate how this president would have responded to with 12/07/41 or 9/11/01, for starters. Not nearly as frightening as to contemplate how he will respond if (when?) the next big terrorist strike hits us during his term.
It’s frightening to contemplate how this president would have responded to with 12/07/41 or 9/11/01, for starters.
How about October, 1962? Sure, JFK through his inexperience and incompetence caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, but never mind the provenance of the situation. Imagine Prince Hussein going eyeball to eyeball with someone other than a squishy Republican. Hell, he’s wet-his-pants terrified of Sarah Palin.
kaba Says:
October 1st, 2010 at 5:43 pm
I wasn’t in Truman’s shoes, but I don’t think that was a difficult decision at all.
If he had gone ahead with the invasion, just imagine what would have happened if the existence of the atomic bomb later became public. He would have been impeached and put on trial for treason, and rightly so. He would have gotten very little sympathy from the families of the soldiers whose lives he had needlessly thrown away.
You have to understand what this means – it *is* one of the toughest times any President has ever faced.
There have been few (if any) that went from the heights of popularity to so far that even your own parties adds talk about standing up to you in less than two years.
Recall they do not believe that terrorism is a problem, that the economy is a problem, that all these things we are talking about exist. That they are simply fear tactics by Republicans. As such our time is really really good an peaceful.
He is facing attacks from every corner of the political world and can’t figure out how to counter them. Few presidents have even had their own parties turn on them as he is having his do, few have faced an upcoming midterm election that is probably going to be damaging to him, and few have ever had this rapid or large a descent in popularity to face. Few have also found this ideas failing as often and as bad as his.
If you remember they do not believe in the “hard times” and are certain they are correct and it is everyone else that is an idiot then what he said makes perfect sense.
The “standard speech” for the liberal position is time-tested and short: Life is troubling; We will save you no matter how long it takes; It will cost some money and require your full cooperation.
Excerpt from → A Political Speech: Troubling Times
Neo said:
“texexec: I’m sure if Obama had been president at that time, the freeing of the slaves would have been accomplished more quickly, and peacefully to boot.”
Exactly, Neo. He would have bowed deeply to Jefferson Davis, apologized to him for all the wrongs the North did to the South, and then, overcome by Obama’s charm and charisma, Davis would have surrendered before a shot was fired.
tex, that is fricken hilarious.
It’s like that scene from Les Miserables, where the priest gives Jean Valjean the candlesticks he stole, and it converts him on the spot. You know how many people use that as an example of why we should give money to criminals? Hullo, fiction people, fiction!
Along the same lines, is anyone else bothered by Hillary apologizing to Guatemala today? “I am so holy that I can apologize for 1940s researchers, and that proves what a great person I am because no one else has apologized yet.”
kaba said:
“I have often wondered what it must have been like to be in Harry Truman’s shoes in July/August 1945. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision he had to make then.”
I had the great good fortune to serve under an officer who was Truman’s Naval attache. (Yes, I’m that old!) He accompanied him to Potsdam and was privy to Truman’s style of leadership up close and personal. His stories about “The Old Man,” as he affectionately referred to Truman, emphasized Truman’s common touch, superior common sense, and decisiveness. His stories made me realize what a truly big, tough job the president has and raised my opinion of Truman immeasurably. He was a common man who did uncommon things with a steely resolve. A far cry from the president we have now.
Two thoughts :
1: I thought this was “the Summer of recovery”
2: Im pretty sure it was tougher for the President of the United States in the War of 1812 when the the freakin US Capital was burned and occupied by foreign troops!
Never mind, we have an ideologically foreign President occupying the White House-irregardless of where he was born!
Since Obama already suggested that he was like Lincoln, “It took a long time to free the slaves”, Rahm’s comments make sense in what Occam’s Beard well describes as the “galloping world of narcissism.”
Republicans freed the slaves. Somehow that fact has been lost. But the democrats have worked long and hard to enslave them again. And now they are working on the rest of us.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J.,
You should jot down those anecdotes about Truman and pass them along. They sound priceless.
The now-ex Chief of Staff has to have SOME excuse for the abysmally poor performance of The Big zerO.
“It took a long time to free the slaves”
It wouldn’t have taken nearly as long if the Democratic Party of the day had supported said freedom!
I thought Rahm was a long time Chicago political figure. Apparently not. I found this article about him very interesting:
http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/2010/10/rahm-emanuels-future.html
Remind me why anyone believes anything any of these jokers say anymore?….
Suek…
Freddie and Fannie were caught OVERSTATING their incomes. By doing so they were permitted to give out BOX CAR sized bonuses to Democrats. The total combined payouts to these apparatchiks was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. All that at a time when the GSEs were being bankrupted by counterfeit credit — which is what Subprime MBS were.
The wound that can’t heal, Freddie and Fannie are wiping out the middle class to save the mega-banking class.
All traditional Real Estate stats are now hopelessly corrupted. Sales at the courthouse steps are routinely recorded by NAR as being at full asking price — a complete lie. The rationale is to firm up prices with these false prints.
Until real estate is correctly priced there can be no recovery.
The GSEs are wasting critical time. They need to shift over to 180 month mortgages, period. End the 30 year and 40 year debt. It’s the out years that make lending on such instruments lethal to lenders.
Shorter maturities would cause land values to drop. Good.
I suspect that HELOCS are dead for generations. Good.
If only we could get Ben to stop hyperinflating the currency.
Remember, hyperinflation got its name from its LATE STAGE PROPERTIES, but is always due to official-counterfeit money printing.
First the PTB gave us counterfeit-credit ( RMBS ) — now it’s on to counterfeit-money ( wide open money printing directed by to friends an family of the Fed )
What could go wrong?
Blert…
I’m reasonably aware of all that you say… http://market-ticker.denninger.net/ is one of my daily stops, though I don’t pretend to understand a lot of what he reports. The graft, corruption and out and out dishonesty, though…that’s something he’s made pretty clear.
What was a surprise to me was Rahm Emanuel’s complete lack of solid qualified background. It appears as if his doctorate degree is in wheeling and dealing – and not much of anything else. That was a surprise. He hasn’t even been in actual politics as in _doing_ anything – just seems to have bought results.
A review of Rahm’s Wikipedia listing, updated through Oct. 1, reminds us that he earned $17mill in 2.5 yrs working for Wasserstein Perella, and that he sat on the Fannie Mae board while Fannie and Freddie executive corruption (all Dems they) began to be publicly known. He had no business finance background before this, though he is said to have raised big bucks from weathy American Jews for Bill Clinton.
Now he wants to be the Daley heir.
Draw your own conclusions.
Mine is that he aims to have his personal wealth exceed that of the Clintons, and they’re now worth >$100mill.
I hope he receives more dead fish, from the right folks this time.
It can be the toughest times from the point of view of a bunch who are in over their heads. 2012 can’t come soon enough … but what choices will be have then?