or tsar, or csar... is to be created by Obama soon. I really wonder how many czars one country can have. Under my understanding of the primary and secondary definitions of czar, we would seemingly be limited to some extent. But hey, what's one more czar when we already have a border czar, homeland security czar, and health and family services czar... What? A health czar? Apparently so, and it isn't the Secretary of DHFS...
President Barack Obama filled out his health-care overhaul team Monday by naming Nancy-Ann DeParle, a veteran of the Clinton administration, as the White House health czar.
DeParle will join Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary
Now I'm confused. From any of the definitions linked above, it would seem unlikely that someone who is a czar would be a member of a team... Alas, another example of our cultural obsession with overusing a word because it sounds cool.
Also, for those three readers out there, I apologize for my long dry spell of posting. It has been a busy couple of months... coaching little league (2 teams), buying a house, selling a house... a lot going on. I guess I need a blogging czar to keep me on track.
I really don't often pay much heed to Mr. O'Reilly, but in looking at some recent polling data, I took note that he seems much more interested in polls than he did a mere six to ten months ago. Here's Bill's talking points memo from March 16th, entitled "Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy fires up."
Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Scott Rasmussen — perhaps the most accurate pollster in America — reported that President Obama's job approval rating has now slipped below that of President Bush back in March 2001.
Perhaps the most accurate pollster, well maybe, but maybe not? (Nice attempt to build credibility, Bill). Also note, that O'Reilly doesn't mention the actual approval rating, because you would think he would then have to admit that a 62% approval rating during an economic recession isn't half bad. Or, one would think. But yesterday's talking points memo proves me wrong. Bill fires out that Obama's approval rating has slipped to 58%. He then postulates with such wisdom as to why Obama is suffering such declining ratings. What could it be? Left-wing, Eurocratic socialism fears, of course...
Writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, the former prime minister of Denmark says:
"In Europe, we have been protected from the worst effects of the [economic] crisis thanks to welfare states built up over the past 60 years to cushion citizens from the threats posed by the free market. We can all count on state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support and other universal, tax-funded services. The simplistic dictum of more markets and less government championed by Reagan, Thatcher and their ideological heirs has failed on a momentous scale. I am hopeful that the G20 will make progress. We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice."
Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better.
Well, Bill, I have to agree that Marx likely couldn't have said it better. However, I'm not sure Marx would make any of those statements, sans perhaps a tangential reference to justice. The equating of a modern democratic welfare state to something Marx would endorse is quite assinine, as the last I checked Denmark still has a pretty thriving private enterprise, with a quite happy populace.
Under any circumstance, you know O'Reilly is working with some weak sauce when he tries to lambast the President for having a plus minus of 26 in approval ratings... Given the number of Glen Beck's, Lou Dobbs, and O'Reilly's out there preaching and fear-mongering against global governance, I'm quite pleasantly suprised in the ability of the American populace, at large, to realize many of our current problems will require global solutions and/or cooperation.
Now, I'm not a profesional pollster, but I believe when a President's polling data looks like this:
and the public's view of the economy looks like this:
Somebody must believe that we are heading in the right direction... Oh wait, here are some polls showing that's the case. I know that polls are everything, but by jesus, I get tired of someone using polling data as a weapon, when in fact, the polls are fundamentally juxtaposed against their ideological predispositions.
Today's NYT OP-ED featured a disturbingly odd piece by Dowd.
How could the White House be classy when the Clintons were turning it into Motel 1600 for fund-raising, when Bill Clinton was using it for trysts with an intern and when he plunked a seven-seat hot tub with two Moto-Massager jets on the lawn?
How could the White House be inspiring when W. and Cheney were inside making torture and domestic spying legal, fooling Americans by cooking up warped evidence for war and scheming how to further enrich their buddies in the oil and gas industry?
How could the Lincoln Memorial — “With malice toward none; with charity for all” — be as moving if the black neighborhoods of a charming American city were left to drown while the president mountain-biked?
How can the National Archives, home of the Constitution, be as momentous if the president and vice president spend their days redacting the Constitution?
Good ole Glenn Greenwald does a much more thorough job on deconstructing the lunancy that poses as balanced journalism, but I felt compelled to post the text here. I don't understand how one could argue oral sex is even remotely congruent to running roughshod over the Constitution. But, of course, I don't understand this crap either.
I have been driving from Madison to Indianapolis this evening, so I must have missed the fact that Rahm Emanuel has accepted the chief of staff position in the Obama administration. I don't know if he really thought about it much, but I think this is a fairly solid choice. Rahm isn't going to shake up the world, but he does know enough of the inside baseball to give a good solid nudge to the process when need be. He is in many ways the prototypical fixer... which is what any CoS worth their salt is at the core.
