President Obama shows he’s serious about diplomacy with a stunning video message to the Iranian people seeking a new beginning to the relationship between our two countries.
Author: Gerardo Orlando (Page 42 of 169)
I enjoy reading Peggy Noonan because she’s never shy about her point of view. She also writes beautifully.
That said, for every great column, she produces at least two clunkers. Today’s column, with the subtitle of “The unbearable lightness of Obama’s administration,” is particularly bizarre. Here’s the introduction.
He is willowy when people yearn for solid, reed-like where they hope for substantial, a bright older brother when they want Papa, cool where they probably prefer warmth. All of which may or may not hurt Barack Obama in time. Lincoln was rawboned, prone to the blues and freakishly tall, with a new-grown beard that refused to become an assertion and remained, for four years, a mere and constant follicular attempt. And he did OK.
Such impressions—coolness, slightness—can come to matter only if they capture or express some larger or more meaningful truth. At the moment they connect, for me, to something insubstantial and weightless in the administration’s economic pronouncements and policies. The president seems everywhere and nowhere, not fully focused on the matters at hand. He’s trying to keep up with the news cycle with less and less to say. “I am angry” about AIG’s bonuses. The administration seems buffeted, ad hoc. Policy seems makeshift, provisional. James K. Galbraith captures some of this in The Washington Monthly: “The president has an economic program. But there is, so far, no clear statement of the thinking behind the program.”
What a jumbled mess. She sounds like all those journalists who were lecturing Obama early in the campaign that he had no chance of winning if he stayed calm and refused to go negative on Hillary.
She asserts there’s “something insubstantial and weightless in the administration’s economic pronouncements and policies,” when liberals and conservatives recognize that Barack Obama has proposed the most daring and ambitious budget of our generation. Conservatives hate the budget for that very reason – Obama wants to fundamentally change how we meet the challenges of health care, energy and education. Somehow, Peggy Noonan has missed all that, getting distracted by the daily Washington soap opera that plays out on cable TV.
Barack Obama is trying to put out a bonfire cause by years of irresponsible behavior in Washington and on Wall Street. His critics are howling that he hasn’t snapped his fingers and slayed this economic monster with a silver bullet. The bottom line is this – Obama and Bernanke have put together a sensible package of programs that just might get us out of this mess. Of course, Ms. Noonan has nothing to say about the actual substance.
She isn’t comfortable with Obama’s style, probably because she’s been in Washington so long she can’t process anything other than the scripted nonsense of previous administrations. She shouldn’t confuse message discipline with sound policy. Obama is selling his policies on his terms, and he refuses to treat the American people like idiots. Critics might quip that he comes across as “professorial,” but many Americans appreciate a President who doesn’t try to turn every policy proposal into a dumbed-down soundbite.
News about the Obama administrations plans for cuts in weapons systems is starting to leak out.
Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the officials said.
More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.
As a former CIA director with strong Republican credentials, Gates is prepared to use his credibility to help Obama overcome the expected outcry from conservatives. And after a lifetime in the national security arena, working in eight administrations, the 65-year-old Gates is also ready to counter the defense companies and throngs of retired generals and other lobbyists who are gearing up to protect their pet projects.
“He has earned a great deal of credibility over the past two years, both inside and outside the Pentagon, and now he is prepared to use it to lead the department in a new direction and bring about the changes he believes are necessary to protect the nation’s security,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.
Gates is not the first secretary to try to change military priorities. His predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, sought to retool the military but succeeded in cancelling only one major project, an Army artillery system.
Former vice president Dick Cheney’s efforts as defense chief under the first President Bush, meanwhile, are cited as a case study in the resistance of the military, defense industry, and Capitol Hill. Cheney canceled the Marine Corps’ troubled V-22 Osprey aircraft not once, but four times, only to see Congress reverse the decision.
The article highlights the difficulties Gates and Obama will face as they try to cancel these unnecessary and ridiculously expensive programs. This time we’re in the middle of a financial crisis, and Republicans have been howling about spending, so now Obama will be able to turn the tables on them.
Here’s more information on the F-22.
Gates’ first showdown looms with a $350 million–a–pop fighter jet. He has to decide by March 1 whether to add more F-22 Raptor fighters to the 183 purchased by the Bush Administration. For years, the Air Force has wanted to double the fleet, while Gates has made clear that he thinks 183 is sufficient. A month ago, some Air Force officials were saying privately that maybe 60 more F-22s would suffice. The Pentagon’s acquisition boss, John Young, recently detailed why more F-22s might be a poor investment. The F-22s that exist are ready to fly only 62% of the time and haven’t met most of their performance goals. “The airplane is proving very expensive to operate, not seeing the mission-capable rates we expected, and it’s complex to maintain,” Young said. Besides, he added, the Air Force plans on spending $8 billion to upgrade most of the F-22s it already has.
We can’t afford to spend more money here.
More like incompetent media if you ask me.
Liberals bloggers are having a field day ripping John King for his terrible interview of Dick Cheney. Naturally, Arianna Huffington skewered King with her usual flair.
Jon Stewart’s Jim Cramer interview was a pivotal moment — not just for Stewart, Cramer, and CNBC but also for journalism. It was a bracing reminder of what great research and a journalist more committed to getting to the truth than to landing the big get — and keeping the big get happy, and ensuring future big gets — can accomplish.
Stewart kept popping into my head as I watched John King interview Dick Cheney on Sunday. Each time King let Cheney get away with spouting gross inaccuracies and revisionist history, I kept thinking how different things would have been had Stewart been asking the questions. Stewart without the comedy and without the outrage — just armed with the facts and the willingness to ask tough questions.
King consistently refused to challenge anything Cheney said by asking tough follow-up questions. Also, when citing problematic facts, he would always couch them with timid qualifiers.
“There are people…” “They would say…” “And they have some numbers to back up their case.”
These are not some numbers that belong to some people being trotted to make their case. These numbers are actual data — empirical evidence. It would be as if King were interviewing a flat-earther and asked him: “There are people on this planet, watching this interview right now, who would say that the earth is round. And they have some pictures taken from outer space to back up their case. So what would you say to someone out there who is saying that?”
King’s desperate attempt to distance himself from the question would be laughable if it weren’t so repellent. It’s not him asking Cheney why we should listen to him. It’s not him putting forward objective data. It’s some strawman viewers, so please don’t hold it against him. And please, please come back. And tell your friends.
This is the problem with King and too many in the Pontius Pilot traditional media: They are so caught up in the obsolete notion that the truth always lies in the middle, they have to pretend that there are two sides to every issue — and even two sides to straightforward data.
Someone needs to kidnap King and take him to a deprogramming center — preferably one run by Jon Stewart and his team.
If CNN can’t use John Stewart, then perhaps they can have Fareed Zakaria handle all important interviews. The executives at CNN should be commended for putting Zakaria’s excellent GPS program on the air, and to some extent that makes up for spineless hacks like John King.
In 2004, Jon Stewart went on “Crossfire” and said what most of us thought – the show sucked and the cable media was destroying journalism.
“Crossfire” was canceled several months later.
Naturally, Tucker Carlson wasn’t impressed with Stewart’s takedown of Jim Cramer.
“Jim Cramer may be sweaty and pathetic—he certainly was last night—but he’s not responsible for the current recession,” Carlson told POLITICO. “His real sin was attacking Obama’s economic policies. If he hadn’t done that, Stewart never would have gone after him. Stewart’s doing Obama’s bidding. It’s that simple.”
Begala said that “as an Overpaid TV Guy myself, I hate to see the Overpaid TV Community ripped apart in this time of crisis.”
As to whether Stewart’s takedown could again impact cable punditry, Begala said he had “no clue.”
FOLLOW US!
CATEGORIES
© 2024 NorthCoastBlog.com
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑