The Bell Tower

Democrats vs. The Supreme Court

“Democrats say Alito crossed the line when he mouthed the words ‘not true’ during President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday night.”

First of all, it’s the President who was out of line. It’s fine if he wants to disagree with the decision but whipping the US Congress into a frenzy and attempting to belittle Justices on the court during the State of the Union address in front of a national audience is disgraceful. It’s playground populism. This is how little kids behave when one of them does something objectionable on the playground. You might expect it from Hugo Chavez, certainly not Barack Obama. Besides, Obama calls him out in front of a national audience while he’s on a podium making a speech and Alito is supposed to just sit there and take it without even daring to mutter to himself? Give me a break.

Second, it’s ironic to find the nation’s first black President deriding the Supreme Court for overturning a century of law. That’s exactly what the court did in Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954. The court upended years of precedent, the will of Congress and the will of the people.

And speaking of the will of the people, how do these Democrats feel about Perry vs. Schwarzenegger? The plaintiffs of this case will ask the court to throw out a direct referendum by the people of California. If they agree, would you call that judicial activism? Isn’t that the court interfering with the will of the majority - in an individual state no less?

The court was right to ditch campaign finance reform and they will be right to ditch Proposition 8 as well. Democracy cannot trump the Constitution.

It’s like I’m sittin here playin cards with my brother’s kids…

“I think the fading of the public option from the Senate bill really hurt the Democrats’ prospects in the Senate [race], because they were seen as following the typical pattern of tax and spend and caving to insurance companies.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! (Excuse me while I clean the coffee off my monitor).

Are you kidding me? What planet do these people live on? Wait, here’s Congressman Polis’ rationale for that hilarious statement:

“The night of the Massachusetts election, three liberal groups — Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and MoveOn.org — paid for a poll of a thousand people who voted for Obama in 2008 and either switched to support Republican Scott Brown for Senate or didn’t vote. It was conducted by Research 2000.

The poll also upended the conventional understanding of health care’s role in the election. A plurality of people who switched to Brown — 48 — or didn’t vote — 43 — said that they opposed the Senate health care bill. But the poll dug deeper and asked people why they opposed it. Among those Brown voters, 23 percent thought it went ‘too far’ — but 36 percent thought it didn’t go far enough and 41 percent said they weren’t sure why they opposed it.”

That’s what I always do when I want to know what the average American thinks. I hire a bunch of hippies to poll 1000 “random” voters in Massachusetts and then publish the results in the Huffington Post. Will there be any Democrats left in 2012? That may be appealing to many on the right but quite frankly, I’m rooting for the return of Gridlock Congress. The more partisan, the less they can do to us. After a full year of Obarchy, the only silver lining is that Obama, Reid and Pelosi have been stunningly ineffective. Even so, a mere 3 months of actual legislating has probably set the Republic back a good 10 years.

And I know Democrats are funny but do we really want a massive shift to Republican power? I can just picture the Republicans with the power the Democrats currently have: federal raids on local strip clubs, 24 hours of Sesame Street and the 700 Club on every cable television channel, James Hetfield in federal prison for dropping F bombs on stage, naked strip searches to get on community buses, free wiretap installation with every cell phone contract, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow sent to a top secret CIA black prison in Lithuania, an invasion of the Amsterdam red light district to crack down on the drug problem, mandatory open carry gun laws for all children over the age of 5 in public elementary schools… No thanks. Right now, the Democrats are like the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX. They suck so bad, you almost feel obligated to root for them just so the game will be interesting.

Let’s hope they don’t do this. The results would be frightful for the economy but also, we still want to have some Democrats left to kick around when the Obama years are all said and done. A divided Congress and a weak Republican president - what more could anyone ask for? Come on Democrats! Make it so!

Finally something half way respectable.

“When you see more and more of the financial sector basically churning transactions and engaging in reckless speculation and obscuring underlying risks in a way that makes a few people obscene amounts of money but doesn’t add value to the economy — and in fact puts the entire economy at enormous risk — then something’s got to change.”

I think what’s so angering about Obama is the extraordinary nerve and hypocrisy that he exhibits on almost a daily basis. This guy has been President for a year and was a member of Congress before that. The federal government is by far and away the most irresponsible financial institution in this country. Leave aside the astounding waste and debt that this President alone has already initiated in his short period in office so far. The federal government enacted the regulatory reforms that allowed this to happen on Wall Street. Much more importantly, it was Obama’s wing of the Democratic party that triggered what he calls “reckless speculation” in the first place by bullying banks to ease lending restrictions on people who could not possibly pay back the debt they incurred.

Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton, John Edwards… what are these people, paupers? They’re the fattest of fat cats. For Obama to stand there and lecture banks on “reckless speculation” is extraordinary. It’s like Tiger Woods giving marriage counseling advice. How about a little dose of humilty Barack?

Nevertheless… Some of these reforms should be supported by Republicans - however difficult the populist lecture is for them to swallow:

“‘The better answer is to modernize the regulatory framework and not take the industry and the economy back to the 1930s,’ said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group that represents large Wall Street institutions.”

Yeah, wouldn’t they love that? I’m pretty sure that’s what they called it when they abolished the regulations that led to this crash in the first place. Sorry pal, you’re wrong. Obama is right to try and reign in the gargantuan size of these financial institutions and specifically, he’s right to support Volcker’s restriction on proprietary trading. All of this populist nonsense about limiting executive pay and taxing the banks is garbage but serious, bi-partisan regulatory reform is the only way we’re going to fix what was broken over the last decade. It may already be too late.

Republicans Liberate Massachusetts

Well, I didn’t see that coming. It’s abundantly clear that the people in this country are angry about Obama’s leftward governance but a Republican in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts? It seems ridiculous.

Republicans had best tread lightly here. Mid term elections are historically bad for sitting Presidents but this is not a midterm election, it’s only one year into this guy’s term. It’s sort of like rifling through your entire play book by the end of the first quarter. There are still three quarters of football left to play.

Americans though are seriously disillusioned - especially those who thought Obama represented actual change. They’re like the guy who tries to meet girls at a strip club and then gets disappointed when the phone number he got dials the local laundromat. Real trans-formative leaders are extraordinarily rare. So far Obama is not one.

Perhaps he actually governs from the center that he campaigned from in the general election now. The problem - as I said way back during the election - is that the radical left wing of his own party will not permit this. For example, they’d rather scuttle the entire health care bill than push one through that really does make a difference. Listen to Bob Shrum try to convince centrist Democrats who won’t be fooled:

“If they walk away, they will jeopardize themselves to a much greater extent than the jeopardy they face if they stand together, get health care done, and move on to jobs.”

Take one for the team guys. This is our last chance to ram through this radical left wing agenda before America throws us all out. Grease the union leaders, explode the debt, empower the health zealots and bankrupt the taxpayers while you still have a chance. More stubborn ignorance from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on Larry King last night:

“I think you have to remember that the health care industry has spent over 100 million dollars against health care reform. So when people say health care reform, they’ve been confused. It’s been what is this, what is that? It’s big government. But when you ask them, do you want to have — get rid of preexisting conditions? Do you want to have affordability? Do you want to carry health care when you lose your job? They liked it.”

Yes, evil big business is spending millions of dollars to confuse the mob. Nobody is spending any money to promote this health care bill. And Americans are too dumb to see through it.

I’d like a 2 million dollar mansion on the water with a private helicopter and a swimming pool but if a guy on the street hands me a brochure saying he knows a secret and easy way to get it for me if I just pay him $250 for a set of CD’s, I know better than to believe him. That is where the American people have arrived on health care. Sure, they want a lot of the things Townsend mentions and Obama promised during his campaign. But perhaps they have finally realized that spending gazillions of taxpayer dollars to destroy private markets and empower corrupt unions and big government is not really the best way to get there. Too bad they didn’t see that a year ago.

That’ll show ‘em

“Michigan Representative David Camp, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said while he and other Republicans find bonuses being paid by banks that got bailouts ‘irresponsible’ and ‘outrageous,’ they are concerned that taxing banks will hurt lending, and thus job creation.

Still, he said, the proposal puts Republicans in a box.”

That’s because Republicans and the public are foolish. The banks will absorb the cost and pass on the tax to consumers. Businesses do not pay taxes, consumers do. This should be fairly easy for Republicans to explain. Unfortunately, politicians and voters are like cavemen. “Bankers bad! Give tax! Take evil money from fat cats! Booga!” Meanwhile, the banks will shrug it off like a mild hangover, downsize a few employees and the cost for average citizens to do their banking will rise.

Here’s another great quote from the brilliant Obama team :

“’They’ve had a year to figure out how they wanted to participate in the nation’s recovery and they don’t somehow seem to have gotten that message,’ said Anita Dunn, former White House communications director.”

So let’s take more of their money! That will make them lend. Where does Obama find these rocket scientists?

Obama and the Democrats have spent way too much money. Despite this spending spree (and partially because of it), the economy continues to tank. Tax revenues are dwindling. The debt is increasing faster than the universe is expanding. He can’t raise taxes because the public will notice and get angry. But what if he could somehow make it look like he was sticking it to the “fat cat” bankers while actually passing a hidden, regressive tax onto the poor and middle class? Bingo.