Some good news for a change

After living thru “Black Friday” (in both the literal and figurative sense) while working at the local Walmart, it was good to hear the report from the manager today that yesterday was a great day… for our store at least.  Total sales… half a million dollars!! 33% higher than last year!

While a one day report from a single store does not a recovery make, it is a nice contrast to all the doom and gloom that has been a steady drumbeat all around for much of the last year.  Something along these lines….

As long as people continue to think things are this bad, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Follow up:

From historian Victor Davis Hanson:

…We are witnessing a new hysterical style, in which the Baby Boomer “me generation” that now runs America jettisons knowledge of the past and daily proclaims that each new development requires both a radical solution and another bogeyman to blame for being mean or unfair to them.

We haven’t seen such frenzy since the Y2K sham, when we were warned to stock up on flashlights and bottled water as our nation’s computers would simply shut down on January 1, 2000 — and with them the country itself.

Get a grip. Much of our current panic is psychological, and hyped by instantaneous electronic communications and second-by-second 24-hour news blasts. There has not been a nationwide plague that felled our workers. No earthquake has destroyed American infrastructure. The material United States before the September 2008 financial panic is largely the same as the one after. Once we tighten our belts and pay off the debts run up by Wall Street speculators and millions of borrowers who walked away from what they owed others — and we can do this in a $13 trillion annual economy — sanity will return…

Well said!

Same old, same old

So now that the Obama cabinet appointments are beginning to put meat on the bones of his “change” mantra, let’s see what we have so far.   A somewhat extended quote from Jim Geraghty’s blog puts it in perspective this way:

So How Do You Define ‘The Same Washington Players’?

Barack Obama, December 27, 2007: “The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result.”

Vice President Biden: First elected to Washington office in 1972.

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: Worked on his first congressional campaign in 1980; first presidential campaign in 1984; moved to Washington in 1993. Worked as Clinton staffer for five years; went to the board of Freddie Mac; elected to Congress in 2002.

Expected Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton: First came to Washington in 1993. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.

Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Janet Napolitano: Anita Hill’s attorney during the 1991 hearings; Clinton appointee to be U.S. Attorney in Arizona in 1993.

Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle: First elected to Washington office in 1978.

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder: first began working at the Department of Justice in Washington in 1976.

Boy, good thing this administration isn’t full of the “same Washington players.”

UPDATE: Two more:

Greg Craig, the incoming White House counsel, began his career at a Washington law firm and started his career inside the Beltway as an aide to Ted Kennedy in 1984.

Peter Orszag, the incoming head of the Office of Management and Budget, worked on Bill Clinton’s National Economic Council starting in 1997 and went on to work at the Brookings Institution and the Congressional Budget Office. He is the “fresh face” among the named staffers so far in the sense that he has only been in Washington for about 11 years.

Oh yes, sounds like “change”, doesn’t it?  Not!!

You’ve got to be kidding

OK.  So  Warren Buffet — economic advisor, I get that one.  While I don’t agree with his views on taxes, at least the man has a demonstrated record of making money and building companies.

But… Jennifer Granholm — economic advisor??  You’ve got to be kidding!!  The governor who has run the state of Michigan into the ground with excessive taxes… who put Michigan into a “one state recession” while the rest of the country was still booming???

Jennifer Granholm???? Economic advisor????  Really??

What next?  Paris Hilton as Secretary of Education??

From the past to the present

Anyone who knows me knows my fondness for Civil War history.  So you can imagine my delight in finding this gem amidst the finger pointing on the conservative side of the aisle for the last several days.  I am a strong believer in learning the lessons that history has to teach us… and this is one such time.  Having stood on the battlefield at Chancellorsville where Stonewall Jackson was killed and having just finished (two days ago) a book about Phil Sheridan’s exploits at Cedar Creek, the timing couldn’t be better.

Bill Whittle, I salute you!  May your tribe increase!

My job search

This is how I feel at times with my job search!

Quotes

From Jonah Goldberg’s blog…

Quote of the Day, from a reader on Obama’s victory:

“It’s kind of like being diagnosed with testicular cancer.  You hope to live through the treatment, but you don’t look forward to what you’re about to lose.”

From Peter Kirsanow:

It’s all well and good for Republicans to congratulate Obama today, and on Inauguration Day. The GOP shouldn’t oppose merely for the sake of opposition. But if they were paying any attention to what Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Schumer, etc, have been saying over the last year, they should realize that on the major issues of the day, liberals are determined to take the nation down a hard left path that will, in the words of Obama, “fundamentally transform” America.

Republicans and conservatives will be taking a needed hard look at ourselves. Losers usually do. We must reassess, recalibrate and argue.

But in the meantime, we still have principles to defend and we must defend them vigorously. Particularly in the first 100 days when many of the most objectionable bills will likely be brought up.

For those inclined to make nice, which of the following Democratic agenda items are you prepared to sign on to so that you’ll get invited to the right parties?

* Employee Free Choice Act
* Fairness Doctrine
* Freedom of Choice Act
* Nationalization of health care
* Estate tax increases
* “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (driver’s licenses for illegals)
* Capital gains tax increases
* Defense cuts
* Liberal judicial appointments
* Racial and ethnic preferences
* Income tax increases
* Bans on oil drilling
* Global poverty tax/Kyoto

These are but a few. Perhaps the most worrisome agenda items are those that will betray a fecklessness in foreign policy that could lead to a nuclear Iran, a vulnerable Israel, an imperial Russia, and an imploding Pakistan…

A look back before moving on

I know there are lots of people celebrating the “historic” election of Obama.  While I do not share in the celebration, I am realistic enough to know that an Obama presidency is going to be a reality that will have to be dealt with.   I think I have made my views clear on what I expect from this… but it is going to be what it is going to be.  As the old saying goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

However, before we turn the page, I think it is important to take a moment and look back at the disgraceful treatment that President Bush has received from far too many people in this country.  I have felt this for quite some time and these views were crystallized by a column in the Wall Street Journal today.  Jeffrey Scott Shapiro (who incidentally was an intern on the Kerry legal team 4 years ago) titles his column The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace, with the subtitle What must our enemies be thinking?

Some excerpts:

…Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.”

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president’s original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them…

And…

…The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House…

(end excerpts)

While there have been times where I have disagreed with the President’s choices, especially on the Meyers nomination and the immigration issue, I still have tremendous respect for him and I believe that history will treat him much more kindly than the current biased media or his other contemporary critics.  His greatest achievement has been the prevention of any further terrorist attacks on America for the 7 years following 9/11.  Ironically, I believe it has been that very success that has led to the complacency that permitted so many to be willing to take a chance on an untested foreign policy naif like Obama.

Joe Biden said he (Obama) would be tested in 6 months.  Wrong… its happening already!  Note the provacative statements this morning by Russian President Medvedev about placing missiles on the border of Poland unless the US abandons plans for missile shield for Eastern Europe.   Watch for Obama to talk a good game but ultimately fold on this one!  I fear that this will be his modus operandi on this and many other tough issues on which he no longer gets to vote “present”.

But I didn’t really want this to be so much about what lies ahead…that will play out in its own time.

President Bush… I salute you for your service.  I trust that God and history will judge you fairly!

“Don’t say we didn’t warn you”

Since my son has chosen to post an entire article by Andrew Sullivan ( a person with a very strange idea of what it means to be “conservative”) castigating Bush and praising Obama, I am posting a full article by Jonah Goldberg exposing the lies of the Democrats and the many problems with Obama.  It closes with the appropriate phrase “Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”:

The prospect of a Barack Obama presidency makes me very nervous.

Obama’s entire campaign has been based on the need for radical, transformational change, which implies there is something very wrong with America.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that he has painted the bleakest picture of America instead of acknowledging, as a starting point, that we are still the greatest nation in the world.

For the past eight years, Democrats have slandered America as an imperialistic country that always prefers force to diplomacy; that attacks nations without provocation to enrich itself and to project its power; that intentionally targets civilian lives; that encourages sadistic torture of enemy prisoners, as opposed to tough interrogation techniques to extract information to save the lives of its people; that eavesdrops on private conversations among its citizens rather than monitoring terrorist communications into its borders; and that abuses rather than goes out of its way to accommodate the savages in Guantanamo’s prison. None of it is true.

For eight years, Democrats have poor-mouthed the mostly growing economy. They’ve lied that Bush’s tax cuts for all income groups were only for the wealthy and that the cuts reduced revenues. They pretend to be deficit hawks, when Obama’s new spending plans alone will make Bush look like Scrooge. They said Bush wanted to destroy Social Security, when he’s the only one in the past 20 years who had the courage to try to reform it. All lies.

They’ve preached bipartisanship while exhibiting the nastiest partisanship in my lifetime, calling Bush “King George III,” “Hitler,” a “murderer,” a “war criminal,” a “reckless cowboy,” a “moron” and a “Christian throwback.” They’ve caricatured Bush as an unbending partisan who wouldn’t reach across the aisle, in the face of his countless and mostly rebuffed bipartisan overtures and legislation. More disinformation.

They’ve deliberately divided this nation on the basis of race, class, gender and religion while telling us, falsely, that conservatives are racists, greedy, sexists, homophobes and religious bigots.

The propaganda triumvirate — Democrats, the liberal media and leftist bloggers — have portrayed President Bush, Vice President Cheney and America as dark and evil forces and have whipped the country into a frenzy of desperation, setting the table for a charismatic leader to deliver us from the despair they’ve manufactured with relentless precision.

Barack Obama, with his mysterious past and messianic aura, then burst upon the scene with the focused purpose of capitalizing on the public’s perceived woes by offering dramatic change and unspecified hope. As if the script had been written just for him, he stepped right into his role, expanding on this theme of despair. He stressed how bleak conditions are, how unfair America is to the less fortunate and middle class, how ugly America is in foreign affairs, how the values of average Americans are warped (bitter clingers), how hardworking producers who oppose confiscatory tax rates but who contribute more to charity than Obama and his running mate even contemplate are selfish, and how America is a global environmental menace.

With all respect, almost everything about Obama’s campaign is fraudulent. He masquerades as a uniter while dividing, polarizing and alienating us. He denies he’s liberal, when objective sources score him as the most liberal senator. He says he barely knows militants and radicals with whom he has spent his lifetime cavorting and whose worldviews — horrifyingly — he shares. He brazenly disguises welfare redistributions as tax cuts. He and his surrogates keep changing his tax plan.

With his ideas about spreading the wealth, entrepreneurial selfishness, the ongoing “original sin” in our Constitution, the inherent evil of corporations, nationalized health care, and the civil rights movement not doing enough to bring about “economic justice” — a euphemism for “Marxism” used by radicals, such as Bill Ayers, who still hate America — are you not concerned at just how far Obama might go if he’s got a nearly veto-proof Democratic majority at his back?

With his known discomfort with American exceptionalism, his naive mindset about good and evil in the world, his reckless underestimation of threats to America, his stated intention to disarm our nuclear weapons unilaterally, his open-borders extremism, his willingness to relax our intelligence monitoring, and his misguided concern for terrorists’ rights, how can America be as secure under his watch?

With his sordid background in “community organizing” and his symbiotic relationship with an organization that is engaged in a systematic effort to steal this election, his thug tactics to investigate and silence his critics, and his Democratic colleagues’ willingness to use government to shut down conservative talk radio, are you not worried about our liberties under an Obama administration?

Before our very eyes, America stands poised to elect as president the most radical man ever to run for this office credibly. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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