February 4, 2009
The Cookie Monster
President Barack H. Obama wants to be "different" from George W. Bush. Obama is the lightbringer, the agent of change, the avatar of hope. He is post-partisan, and he demands that the entire "old way" of Washington D.C. be defenstrated in favor of his new way.
And he is indeed "reaching out" to Republicans:
Can the shrill tone of Washington be changed through a presidential act of contrition? Or, perhaps, an enticing platter of oatmeal raisin cookies?
This week, President Obama has already served up both at the White House.
To one set of visitors, a gathering of Democratic and Republican members of Congress whom he invited to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, he carried around the freshly baked cookies as he mingled with his guests. To another set of visitors, the five broadcast and cable television anchors he invited to the Oval Office on Tuesday, he extended a blunt mea culpa and said he took responsibility for nominating aides with tax troubles.
By golly, that'll bring those recalcitrant Republican nay-sayers around!
At the same time, he is convinced that if we just sit down, without preconditions, and talk to the mullahs of Iran and to Mahmoud Achmadinejad, we can sort out our pesky misunderstandings and come to a concensus on how to fix all the problems of the Middle East (such as the existence of Israel). Group hug!
(In a geyser of irony that cannot have escaped even the One Himself, the Iranians rebuffed Obama's call with the blunt demands that Iran will only come to the table if the American president (a) gets on his knees, confesses America's criminality and apostasy, and apologizes for all the cruel and unjust attacks, verbal and military, we've made on Iran since 1979, and (b) that we defer to Iran -- that is, take orders from the Ayatollah -- when constructing our future Middle-East policy. The mountain may be willing to come immediately to Mohammed, but Mohammed insists upon some pretty hefty preconditions to meet the mountain halfway!)
What links these two policies? The oatmeal cookies are the perfect emblem: President Obama offers symbolic post-partisanship only in style, never in substance. He invites Republicans to his pad to watch the Superbowl; but he doesn't invite them into the process of crafting the misleadingly labeled "stimulus" package. No, that minor trillion-dollar boondoggle will be written entirely by the Democrats, of the Democrats, and for the Democrats.
And it's stuffed to the gunwales with weird spending -- billions to ACORN! taxpayer-funded foreign abortions! hundreds of millions for the SEIU, the UAW, and Hollywood's Democratic donors! -- that has nothing to do with helping the economy, the housing market, the credit market, or ordinary Americans... but everything to do with funneling gigabucks to reliable liberal Democratic constituencies which will perpetuate Democratic power for the next two generations.
This is "post-partisanship," Obama style:
President Obama warned Wednesday that failure to act immediately on his economic aid plan "will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession."
"Millions more jobs will be lost. More businesses will be shuttered. More dreams will be deferred," Obama said, as Senate debate continued on amendments to the stimulus package.
And so he hopes to buffalo the GOP into buying this pork in a poke, so that when it fails (as it inevitably will, given what's in it), he can spread the blame around: Don't stop, don't think, don't debate, don't amend, don't caucus, don't consult, don't talk to your constituents, don't read the bill, don't ask questions... just do something! We don't need talk -- we need action, action, action!
But please -- have a cookie.
Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 4, 2009, at the time of 6:04 PM
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Comments
The following hissed in response by: Geoman
What's sad - I think the Republicans were well and truly chastised in the last election, and would have happily and gratefully bent over backwards for the One, rider of unicorns.
Politics have become personal, and the personal has become politics. I give you a cookie, you give me billions to spend. What? You won't go along with that trade? The nerve of those Repubs....
The above hissed in response by: Geoman ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://biglizards.net/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 5, 2009 2:01 PM
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