Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
There is an irony to the shutdown situation, which is being missed by most of the people talking about it. But before we explore the irony we need to explore a key concept, a concept so crucial to the whole thing that it would justify a new word. I’m reluctant to go ahead and come up with the word, since the word must already exist…it certainly should…and yet, it seems, there is no such word. This is odd, because the thing the word describes becomes an important thing any time humans trade with other humans, which is something that’s been happening for thousands of years.
What the word would describe, specifically, is the asset you have when your opponent is punished — by some external force, something that is not you — for failing to achieve compromise with you. It puts time on your side. Think of a man in a suede coat that he values very highly, pounding on the locked door of a house when it’s just about to rain. “Bargaining chip” is not sufficiently precise. The thing this word would describe, is punishment and not reward. It is a factor in an classic psychological approach-avoidance conflict.
If your opponent has this tool, and you don’t, you’ve already lost. The rest of it is just theater, futile face-saving. Following through. Nothing more. The problem you then have, is this: Your difficulties are costless to everyone else involved. The simple truth of the matter is that you can’t come out ahead that way.
So the “shutdown” is really just Congress and the President trying to seize this asset, this tool. Each side using P.R. to try to elevate the cost of the other side failing to give everything up.
This is where Barack Obama’s unsuitability for the office of President really comes out. It isn’t because He lacks knowledge about some particular thing, or that He’s stubborn. You have to think about: Why is it that He got elected in the first place? Getting elected to this office means prevailing in a championship, winning in a tournament, rising level by level until you come out on top. So Obama, like any other president, is a champion. Of something. Of what, exactly? It’s a question that has been asked ever since the first democrat called Obama “the real deal” back in 2007 or 2006…(Brokaw?): What exactly does that mean? To this very day, none of Obama’s slobbering toadies can answer the question about what, precisely, is unique about Him.
The answer is: With America’s social dynamics the way they are in this day and age, with all the materialism and the superficiality and the race-guilt and the false sense of sacrifice of individual desires for “the greater good”…if you send Obama into negotiations to represent you, you probably won’t have to give anything up. Obama is a tool. A tool for short-circuiting the negotiation process, just like a paper clip is a tool for closing a circuit after a fuse burns out.
Good enough for now; contrary and offensive to the system’s original design; servicing the immediate demands of one immediate user in a “tragedy of the commons” situation; a damnable disgraceful safety hazard.
The irony is that while Obama is avoiding the “business end” of this negotiating bully-cudgel I tried to define as a single word up top, at least in one way, in another way He’s bearing the brunt of it. He is in a no-win situation. Everything He has to sell has to do with refusal to compromise, refusal to give up His half of a loaf. It is His product. It is His legacy. That’s how we got ObamaCare in the first place, isn’t it? When one side enjoys a bit too much of this “time is on our side” cudgel, and the benefits that come with it, we get wretched, rotten legislation. And that’s what happened there. The democrats did not compromise because there was no reason for them to. Now, they want the same benefits because, well gosh darn it, it feels like that’s the way things should be. And they would be that way, if the country wasn’t so far in debt that a Continuing Resolution becomes necessary, which the Constitution requires originate in the House of Representatives.
So Obama’s gotten Himself into trouble here. He never did anything to stop up the government’s hemorrhaging of money because, again, there never was any reason to. Just blame Bush, sign whatever, and go golfing. Now He’s in this situation in which a lot of other presidents have found themselves, where true compromise becomes a necessity. Because, Congress. And so the situation is one in which the mighty oak cannot survive the storm unless it bends a bit. This He cannot do, because it would jeopardize His brand.
Yes, skin color is a part of it, but why get into that. It’s just a gimmick that is part of the overall product. It certainly is an important part of it — everyone who disagrees or challenges Obama on anything, is immediately branded a racist. That’s how it works. Figure out what you want to do, have Obama go in and sell it, if anyone frustrates the movement in any way just call ’em a racist.
But that isn’t really Obama’s product. Obama is the brittle oak. That’s what He has to sell.
And what we’re learning is that Obama’s product is bad — even for the people who buy it, His sponsors, the ones who send Him into the negotiating room to not-negotiate. At the very end of it all, what we have found out is that real leaders and real winners do give-a-little on certain things. They use their intelligence to prioritize, to differentiate what can be left on the table, from what cannot be. The brittle oak, after all, is the one lying supine when the dawn comes, after the storm is over. The more flexible one that bent & swayed a little bit as the winds battered it, will still be standing.
Obama is completely unqualified here, just as He is unqualified for any other thing that has to do with being President of the United States, besides reading a teleprompter.
The bottom line is, there is no reason for the government to be shut down right now. It all has to do with who’s in the White House…and, what exactly He’s doing there, what got Him there.
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But…but… He’s brilliant, He’s a constitutional scholar, He’s a Law Professor, He’s a Community Organizer, He gives great speeches!!!
I always wondered who the hell gives their credit card info to a stranger on the phone, or agrees to pay in full before the job is complete to some schlub who merely knocks on the door, or plays some card game for money on the street corner with some stranger named “Rufus”, etc. Now I understand, Obama voters.
- tim | 10/10/2013 @ 09:31[…] the problem in terms of obligation to find a solution. Obligation? Not really obligation. I’ve explored this concept before, vis-a-vis the government shutdown. None, or few, others are paying any kind of a cost for the problem’s […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/07/2013 @ 07:37