Hold the Mayo

October 15, 2009

This I Cannot Do

This was going to be another in the "GET A JOB" series of posts but it changed.

I saw an ad for a Graphic Designer at The Daily Beast. I have never visited the site though I know what it is. A news/commentary site that takes the approach that CNN and MSNBC are too conservative. I was going to write about the thought process behind the question "could I work there?" I could do the job required easily enough, but could I look myself in the mirror long enough to shave in the morning?

I probably would have toyed with the idea of submitting an application, but including a link to this site as well as my portfolio. Just to see what response, if any, I would get.

I couldn't do a post like that, or make a decision like that, without doing some basic research first. The decision to not submit an application was fairly easy to make after reading this by Peter Beinart, Senior Political Writer for The Daily Beast, Professor of Journalism and Political Science at City University of New York and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Mr. Beinart thinks liberals are being too hard on The One. Unfortunately most of his own defense of Dear Leader comes off as damning with faint praise. Let's examine the piece in some detail:

He’s on his way to an historic health-care win. The stimulus was huge. The market’s back. The left should stop complaining the president hasn’t accomplished anything.

If by a historic health-care win you mean passing a bill out of a senate committee that will fail in the house, or passing a bill in the house that will fail in the Senate, or that only way they are going to win anything in the senate is through parliamentary tricks then yes, he's on his way. If by health-care win you mean that the White House crafted a dynamic heal-care reform package and and is successfully steering it through Congress then I think he has a long way to go.

Yes the stimulus was huge. At least the the cost was huge, the stimulation, not so much. The One told us that if they passed Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reed's massive spending pork-fest it would keep unemployment somewhere around 8%. Unemployment is poised to top 10% and keep climbing.

"The Market's back." It's nice to see someone on the left touting the success of greedy Wall Street capitalists as a good thing. But there are problems with the rise of the stock market. One is that the price of gold has also gone up as much or more than the market. So in terms of gold purchasing power, the market has done nothing. Another is that this is a tax dollar rally built on tremendous moral hazard. The Federal Government bought the concept of too big to fail at cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. I'm sure there are lot of players on The Street who are investing with the idea that there is little or no downside risk. Sure you've got a payroll czar telling AIG and CITI Bank what they can and can't pay in bonuses but what does that really mean? It means they have to make their millions in other ways such as using tax dollars to drive up the market to enhance their own portfolios.

I agree that the left should stop complaining about how little The One has actually done. Because if he listens to them he might try to do more.

Then there was this line, it actually appears toward the end, but Beinart or his editors thought so much of it they used it a decked quote:

If he gets health-care reform, Obama will have done more to rebuild the American welfare state in one year than his two Democratic predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, did in a combined twelve.

He writes that like it's a good thing! We don't need a rebuilt and vastly expanded welfare state. All the existing welfare state does is perpetuate the state of welfare. We need greater self-reliance and self-responsibilty not greater dependence on government.

Then we get into the damning with faint praise which starts with equating what Beinart sees as The One's inevitable comeback with sexual harassment.

Barack meets public; Barack loses public; Barack regains public. Bill Clinton was great this way: Whenever things were getting monotonous, he’d grope an intern just to make life interesting.

So Bill Clinton wasn't a perjurious, adulterous sexual predator after all. He just hooked up with Monica Lewinski to get some good press.

The One is different though.

Obama, on the other hand, is relentlessly disciplined, pragmatic, and calm. Beneath the fascinating exterior, he’s dull as hell.

I don't personally find his exterior all that fascinating mostly because it seems rather transparent and that there really is no interior. But If my supporters were singing my praises by labeling me as "dull as hell" I'd be little ticked off and a little concerned.

After describing the not so stimulating stimulus as "one of the most important pieces of liberal legislation in decades," Beinart closes with a completely ridiculous non-sequitor.