House of Eratosthenes

Via blogger friend Rick, we have some video of Sen. Chuck Schumer sticking to the meme that is going to lose the next several elections for his oh-so-powerful democrat party…and the Senator is blissfully unaware of what’s coming out of his mouth.

Like a dumb schoolgirl in the tenth grade, he thinks the elections were all about who’s wonderful and who sucks. They were, of course…we spent a lot of time and energy talking, and listening, to all the points about how cool Barack Obama is and how much George W. Bush sucks. But there is this little thing called time. Leftist politicians and pundits consistently forget about it. All history didn’t begin when our country invaded Iraq — and you don’t get to win at something and say “and we lived happily ever after” like it’s a Grimm’s fairy tale. There will be other elections. The fact that the democrats won this one by being cool, should be of glaring concern, because nothing stays cool for four years.

I understand he’s mocking “traditional values…strong foreign policy”; it’s not his intent to say from here on out, we embrace weirdo pervert values and stupid foreign policy. But the thing of it is — those are his words, and it’s kind of a Freudian slip because that’s exactly what his party going to be forced to sell us in the years ahead. Yes, half a year ago they were able to keep the limelight off policy. That was relatively easy. The voters weren’t demanding a discussion of policies.

If the democrat’s policies don’t cause any pain, maybe that won’t change. If they do, then it certainly will.

What are the democrat policies? Weaken the military exactly when North Korea is sending missiles flying; make our financial position stronger by placing us neck-deep in debt; put the government in charge of everything, so that all human affairs are conducted with all the efficiency of the line in which you’re waiting at the DMV.

There will be pain. Voters will become interested in policies. Schumer’s pals will be stuck selling degenerate values and weak dumbass foreign policy.

It’s not “all over,” Chuckie.

Rob, quoting from JohnJ, marks off exactly where the gray-matter has been removed, or failed to grow in the first place, in left-wing thinking:

I think the reason why liberals seem to believe in form over substance is because they actually do not believe in substance. Liberals do not believe in objective truth, so for them everything is only a matter of perception.

Perfect. Absofreakinglutely perfect. Liberals just jumped up and landed all over the idea that “perception equals reality” back in the ’90s (remember that?) When you add this to Morgan’s insight that trusting your own perceptions enough to put your ass on the line changes everything forever, I think we’re getting to the unbridgeable divide between liberals and normal people.

Perception-equals-reality when you have the luxury of building a reality around an untested perception. When there’s nothing that really matters to you dangling by a visible dependency upon what’s true, you then get to run around…just casually perceiving things. Yay, we vanquished the Republicans, we’re cool, now we get to live happily ever after and Barack Obama is so awesome! Socialism works! The reason it hasn’t worked yet is because the right people weren’t in charge, but by golly we fixed that!

But via Lucianne, we see the bloom is coming off the rose — already. So far, it’s looking like Obama’s major achievement in the first hundred days, is to get people educated in ways He did not intend to.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama was one of the most inspirational candidates in a long time, able to draw huge numbers of new voters to the polls by engaging them with a message of change and hope.

Now that he has been in office for two months, reality is overtaking charisma. Obama’s positive aura is dissipating under the relentless pressure to get results and make compromises. He is colliding with the same dynamic that other recent presidents have faced–Washington’s divisive and cynical atmosphere, and problems, such as healthcare and overuse of fossil fuels, that are endlessly complex and seemingly intractable.

Obama is facing an additional problem that has been little noticed by the media and little discussed by his own strategists, at least in public. He is turning out to be what he said he wouldn’t be: a polarizing figure. Each of his immediate predecessors was popular with core members of his own party–Bill Clinton with Democrats, George W. Bush with Republicans–but alienated the other side. That’s what’s happening to Obama as his ratings remain strong with fellow Democrats but slide with Republicans. Independents remain up for grabs.

Obama is learning the limits of his inspirational brand of leadership. In Washington, a mass movement, even one propelled by a dramatic slogan such as Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In,” gets a president only so far. Obama’s movement is essentially a liberal one aimed at using government to improve American life and lift the economy out of its current crisis. But this has little or no impact on less-government legislators from safe conservative districts and states or interest groups that are immune or opposed to the liberal agenda, especially the aggressive use of the federal government to right society’s wrongs.

That little bit of edification we lifted from Neo-Neocon’s pages yesterday, about Obama being favored while His policies are reviewed with deep suspicion, even by His adoring fans — proves prescient:

Obama continues to be more popular than his policies. The share of Americans who approve of his job performance is hovering at about 60 percent, a healthy number, but his calls for vast increases in government spending and his energy agenda, especially his plan to impose limits on carbon emissions, draw far less support. This could mean that he is in for more trouble in selling his ideas, no matter how much people like him personally.

And then we slide headlong into why those tables are going to turn, and turn hard.

Obama’s theory is that America isn’t divided fifty-fifty, as it was under George W. Bush. Instead, Obama believes there is a sensible center that will ally itself with the Democrats or the Republicans, depending on which side offers the most effective and pragmatic solutions to the country’s problems, according to Democratic strategists close to the White House.

Now, I don’t know if democrats and their strategists really believe this behind closed doors, and I don’t think it really very much matters. Because the sale is going to be conducted according to this flawed premise, that when we marched off to the polls in November of last year, we were voting on “effective and pragmatic solutions to the country’s problems.” Hah! Yeah, some of us were voting that way…our side got creamed. The People spoke up, loud and long, and their message was that they found effective and pragmatic solutions boring. Just pick the cool kid out of the class, make Him the ASB President, and send Him into a room somewhere to go talk this stuff out.

And from what The People know about those solutions, they aren’t too crazy about ’em. Fix our economic problems by spending all our money on bullshit? Come again?

I perceive what’s written above, to many of us is simply stating the obvious; but I further perceive there is this prevailing sentiment that whatever disenchantment there is going to be over Obama and the democrats who are aligned with Him, has already hit us. The worst is behind them.

That makes perfect sense — or it would, if the worst of the pain was behind us.

It’s early April. If the worst of the pain was already behind us, they wouldn’t be bad policies. As it is, all of the money hasn’t even been spent yet. The programs haven’t had a chance to underperform and disappoint. People haven’t had to wait in line for their government-backed car warranty transactions. We’ve only had one tinpot dictator kick sand in our faces; two, I guess, if you count the pirates. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t widely understood how urgently destructive Jimmy Carter’s policies were, until the hostages were taken in Iran; that just sunk the message in. November 4, 1979, late in Carter’s third year. From that point forward, Carter gratified nobody. Nobody, anywhere, was saying “I’m so sorry I voted against Jimmy Carter.” Nobody was saying “I can’t wait to re-elect Jimmy Carter.” In fact, for decades afterward the best thing Carter’s adoring fans could possibly say about him was “well, ya gotta admit he’s probably the best ex-President we’ve ever had!”

Now, I hope we’re not looking at anything like what happened in Tehran, in 2011 or any other time. But it does inspire a question that I think really does need to be asked, both by party strategists and by the rest of us. In the wake of an event like that…how much does it really matter that thirty-six months previous, the guy got voted in, even by a landslide…because he was just so mega-awesome?

How many things do you have in your dresser drawer, or in your garage, that are three years old and were super-duper-cool when you bought ’em — and you still look at them that way? Especially when you’ve endured some disaster that can be connected to your having bought it?

I see a connection between the liberal mindset’s fascination with what’s-cool-versus-what’s-uncool, and this lack of awareness about time. It’s like their brains work with snapshots. I guess it’s natural. You hand out these commands to your slobbering followers to remember the invasion of Iraq, but forget all about what came before, and they obey. I suppose after awhile you’d forget that things happen as a consequence of other things. Especially if you’ve been raised from childhood to think that nothing you do really matters, every little bad thing that happens to you is just plain bad luck, you didn’t cause any of it, and the whole point to your existence is to play video games and be happy. And, of course, if some pressing decision comes up and it involves something that is a really tedious and monotonous confrontation to your gnat-sized-attention-span, just elect someone who isn’t boring to go into a room somewhere and handle it for you.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

I seem to be a better blogger now than when I had a blog.
- JohnJ | 04/10/2009 @ 12:40
Ah, you gotta love ol “Chuck-You” Schumer. He is another liberal who seems to think that all that’s been holding up social and economic progress in this nation for so long…is those eeeevil conservative “hard right” Republicans.

The next few years are going to bring a nice cold shower to Chucky there. In a way, having the Left win complete control of the government is a good thing…now they’ll have nobody to blame for not getting the work done and lifting the economy out of the gutter.

I hope Morgan enjoys that steak dinner. He’s going to be getting it for sure. Should have bet on the 72-ouncer that they serve down in Amarillo, TX. You know, the one that’s free if you can stuff it down in an hour.
- cylarz | 04/11/2009 @ 01:50

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Coolness, Suckage, Pain and TimeFriday, April 10th, 2009

Coolness, Suckage, Pain and Time
Friday, April 10th, 2009