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The Democrats officially ceded the seat of their fallen hero—a seat they had held since the late Ted Kennedy’s brother occupied the White House—when Vice President Biden administered the oath of office to Republican Scott Brown this week. Brown’s arrival in Washington sounds the death knell for the dreamlike demands of President Obama’s liberal base. Gone are the days of health care optimism and cap and trade consensus. Silence reigns where there were once cries for a second stimulus and righteous calls for a New York City civilian trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

At least Obama had fair warning. Fragmentation of Democratic majorities began last November in New Jersey and Virginia. At the time, I described the gubernatorial victories of Republicans Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell as needed boosts for a desperate Republican Party, not direct repudiations of Obama’s policies. For the GOP to continue such success, it would have to court Independents and field “the right candidate…trumpeting a tailored message.” Three months later, despite doomsday predictions of the Tea Party’s rise, Republicans have utilized this game plan to perfection. The American public has indeed rejected the Democratic mantra of more: more spending, more debt, and more centralization of power in Washington. Judging by history, however, Obama should be quietly cheering his party’s fall from grace this coming November. Yes, you heard me correctly—root for the Republicans, Mr. President.

Telling of a man who grounded his 2008 campaign in centrist rhetoric, Obama has been willing to punt the liberal agenda to Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill. On top of the criticism that boxes him in from his left and right, the president has watched the center slip from his fingers. Therefore, Obama cannot tie his legacy to Democrats in Congress if he has any hope of turning his fortunes. In fact, working with a resurgent opposition party after 2010 would insolate the president from warring factions in search of his head. Then-candidate Obama enraged many Democrats when he claimed that Ronald Reagan had altered the trajectory of the political landscape in a way Bill Clinton had not. He did not mention that, as Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal reminds us, both Reagan and Clinton, the most popular and successful recent chief executives, shared power for significant portions of their terms. Detractors to the divided government theory may argue that George W. Bush benefited from Republican majorities in Congress throughout most of his presidency. How did that go for him in the end?

Data derived from the American Presidency Project demonstrates the counterintuitive notion that a Congress run by the rival party need not cripple a sitting president. The combined concurrence percentage of combined House and Senate votes to the expressed wishes of President Eisenhower (an underrated president) was roughly 70 percent. This statistic is relatively high until you consider that less successful presidents like Jimmy Carter (77%) and G.W. Bush (81%) witnessed better levels of concurrence. Reagan left office with a 62 percent concurrence mark and a 63 percent approval rating. Clinton’s Congress voted for his policy proposals only 57 percent of the time, but he exited the White House with support from two-thirds of the nation.

Christie, McDonnell, and Brown are just the first wave. Voters are frustrated with the priorities of Democrats in Washington. The economy is slowly recovering, but it will be a long march out of the woods. Republicans are priming viable, jobs-focused candidates in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Shift to the center and Obama could enjoy a Clintonesque revival after the midterm elections. Embrace arrogance and partisanship, and Obama’s legacy will follow the path blazed by Carter and Bush.

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If you’re MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who for one hour forgot that President Obama was black.

Really.

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Some quick thoughts:

More vilification of the Banks, big business. This is the populism he thinks will resonate with the “midddle class:” make villains out of the entities that create jobs and opportunities with your blanket blackballing. No mention of Fanny or Freddie. Too much empty rhetoric. Too much condescention. Too much blaming Bush. And calling out the Supreme Court on “Citizens United” decision was bad form.

He’s not moderating, he’s staying the lefty course.

Message of Massachusetts definitely NOT received.

Seriously, the most painful 70 minutes I have spent this year.

And oh yeah: BINGO.

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Enhancing your viewing pleasure.

H/T Patriot Post

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Moe Lane adds some good commentary about a recent discovery of “pro-Obama astroturfing” lately.

He writes…

I bring this up because some people – God help us all – actually take me seriously on some issues, and I want to give some advice to conservative political website administrators: think about why you have a comments section in the first place. If it’s to add value to the Online Right, then aggressively monitor your comments section. If it’s to ‘foster a debate’ or some other nice-sounding rhetoric, accept that ‘fostering a debate’ to the Online Left means ’sh*tting on your floor.’

Philly’s Daily News was the victim of one of these fraudulent letters just the other day.

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In recent days, the public has received a clearer picture of what was known, and when, about the attempted Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his plot to destroy an American-bound airliner in its descent to Detroit. From the National Security Agency to the Central Intelligence Agency to the National Counterterrorism Center, pertinent information was scattered across the national security spectrum. While the Obama Administration has insisted there was no “smoking gun” prior to the attempted attack, the government report detailing the systematic breakdown highlighted the inability of the intelligence community to connect the dots on the suspect’s background and deadly intentions.

In fact, the report often cites the shortcomings of the government and the deficiencies of particular agencies, communities, or organizations in protecting the homeland. Yet, what the report does not remind its audience, and what is absent in the furor over the White House’s response to the terrorist plot, is that these institutions, no matter their power, are made up of error-prone individuals. Human systems, despite technological advances and computer intelligence, are inherently flawed and, thus, could be compromised. For all that has been done to establish a centralized federal government capable of intercepting, decoding, and making sense of valuable intelligence in the name of security, an all-knowing and efficient entity is not within reach. David Brooks of The New York Times put it this way in his column, “The God That Fails”:

Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations that can be filed and collated. Human institutions are always going to miss crucial clues because the information in the universe is infinite and events do not conform to algorithmic regularity.

This is not to suggest that we give up or stop trying. For all the money expended on security measures, the public rightfully demands results (and they get them in the vast majority of cases). We should never cease in our efforts to improve our methods at the same time we remain aware of unavoidable holes in the net. Sadly, regardless of our preparations or the amount of money we dole out, perfection will never be achieved. As the old cliché goes, we must be forever vigilant and bat 1.000 when dire situations do arise. Those who wish to do us harm, however, need only succeed one to win.

Criticism is warranted, of course, when failures occur. The buck, as Obama channeled Harry Truman, stops with him. But the chattering classes’ incessant finger-pointing for the sake of finger-pointing is not synonymous with the useful tasks of delegating responsibility and placing blame. No one denies that public officials like Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy National Security Adviser for Counterterrorism John Brennan now have to redouble their efforts to secure our interests and counter threats to the United States. Nevertheless, insisting that someone, anyone, be fired or forced to resign after the system is exposed for its weakness does not guarantee change. Substituting one official for another is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Whether it is an argument over the appropriate leadership and direction from Washington or airport regulations across the country, a reasoned and rational approach is not possible unless people understand who is running the Great Bureaucracy: Us, we, you and me—simple, imperfect human beings.

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“Another year over,…and a New One just begun,….”

Anyway, Happy New Year to the PaWC crew! Was it just me, or did the Penn’s Landing Fireworks suck in the rain?

You’ll probably hear more of my rantings as the Global Obama Payback ramps up later this year.

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President Andrew Jackson prided himself on being the first “outsider” to ascend to the White House. From George Washington to John Quincy Adams, America’s first six chief executives were creatures of the Eastern aristocracy. Jackson, however, was not a member of this established order. While the Founding Fathers sought to apply the ideals of the revolution throughout their terms in office, they were ever cautious of the threat of mobocracy. Political giants of the Jacksonian era, men like Senators John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster, worried that the president’s popularity with the “common man” would diminish their congressional powers and foment a monarchy or military dictatorship.

Old Hickory, of course, viewed the situation in a much different light. Furious that an apparent “corrupt bargain” between Clay and Adams had solidified his electoral defeat in 1824 (despite having won the popular vote comfortably), Jackson captured the presidency in 1828 and again in 1832, determined to serve as a steadfast representative of the people. The political battles his White House waged with Congress, most notably on the issue of the recharter of the powerful Second Bank of the United States, focused on Jackson’s desire to play the role of Robin Hood to the nation’s elite—in essence, to weaken the monopoly of power in the hands of the few. At a time when settlers grappled with the thorny issue of Indian removal in places like Florida and Georgia, and South Carolina leaders frustrated by high tariffs threatened secession, Jackson always trusted the will and wisdom of the majority.

American Lion, author Jon Meacham’s seminal examination of Jackson’s life, notes that the president favored the work of the French philosopher François Fénelon in Telemachus. After years of political education under his mentor, Telemachus asserts that the “multitude, though fickle and capricious, does not fail sooner or later to do justice, in some measure, to true virtue.” Such words, no doubt, were akin to Jackson’s own convictions. He was aware that leadership was tragic, roiled by “disappointments and injustices and failures of imagination…” Jackson, Meacham posits, “understood that governing was provincial—no single bill or single election would ever bring about the perfections of all things–but his experience suggested that the American people, if given world enough and time, would come to a right conclusion.”

Speaking in the days after Jackson’s death, historian George Bancroft said “that the whole human mind, and therefore with it the mind of the nation, has a continuous, ever improving existence; that the appeal from the unjust legislation of to-day must be made quietly, earnestly, perseveringly, to the more enlightened collective reason of to-morrow…” As Jackson was known to say, “the people, sir—the people will set things to rights.”

Political scientist John Mueller reminds his audience that democracy is naturally based on apathy, discord, hasty compromise, inequality, and “manipulative scrambling by special interests.” Even if large and controversial solutions to national problems garner enough support, they are likely to be severely compromised compared to their original composition. This dynamic was on display in recent months during the health care debate, as Democrats did battle over the public option plan and other progressive priorities. What happened to the tense days late last year when the electorate appeared ready to back extreme measures in the face of widespread economic distress? What of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s infamous, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” pronouncement? The reality, though, paints President Obama as a lonely voice of power amid outcries from both his liberal base and the center he struggles to hold.

Like Jackson, Obama came to Washington as a self-proclaimed outsider; he applied lofty rhetoric in his promises to foster bipartisan support for an agenda that would tackle growing concerns in the health care, energy, and financial sectors. Obama spoke often of the necessity of restoring the trust the American people once held for their national government. The current administration was hailed as the next champion for the rights of the struggling masses, those whom were mistreated by greedy Wall Street bankers and nearsighted bureaucrats. In Jackson’s terms, the aristocracy or privileged class. Yet, after a year of rancor and infighting, Obama was left to dump the public option, cater to Democratic legislators opposed to abortion, and shower benefits on key states to produce those 60 critical votes in the Senate chamber. As Mueller made clear, freedom is unfair because it grants access and equal opportunities to all so that they may make themselves politically unequal in influence and power.

No matter what comes of the combined health care bill expected in the months ahead, Obama’s Washington would be wise to remember the words of a forgotten figure from the age of Jackson. Edward Livingston, serving as a senator from Louisiana from 1829 to 1831 and later as Jackson’s secretary of state, warned against zealotry and the “excess of party rage.” He called for calm and common sense at the height of such heated discourse:

It arrogates to itself every virtue, denies every merit to its opponents, secretly entertains the worst designs…mounts the pulpit, and, in the name of a God of mercy and peace, preaches discord and vengeance; invokes the worst scourges of Heaven, war, pestilence, and famine, as preferable alternatives to party defeat…”

Democracy has its limitations. The difficulties of governance produce special interests, political deals, and questionable compromises that, more often than not, lead nowhere. Through it all, the people “will set things to rights.” Progress is slow and incremental; if the health care bill is flawed and ineffective, new legislation will account for previous failures and the social contract will move forward. As it was in Jackson’s America, so it remains in Obama’s.

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(1) By Jim Geraghty’s reckoning, the Allentown slice of the porkulus spent over $11 million on various projects with no identifiable jobs created. “Hey, I think I spotted the problem with the economy! All of this money is being thrown around, but nobody’s created any jobs with it!”

(2) The CEO of Emerson Electric Company is not liking what he’s seeing coming out of Washington (emphasis added):

The federal government is “doing everything in [its] manpower [and] capability to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” says David Farr, chairman and CEO of Emerson Electric Co., in a presentation at the Baird 2009 Industrial Conference in Chicago Ill., on Nov. 11. In comments reported by Bloomberg, Farr added that companies will continue adding jobs in China and India because they are “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something. I am not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.“

Farr cites Cap-&-Trade, the expensive but non-targeted stimulus, the debt, the deficit, inflationary monetary policy, Obamacare, and general taxation and regulation.

Emerson is an S&P-500 component and has a market capitalization of over $30-bn.

(h/t to Eddie at Doubleplusundead)

(3) Maybe that’s why a majority of Americans want to cut their losses on the stimulus.  Calls for a second stimulus (or third, depending on your count) will fall on deaf ears.  (I seem to recall a certain Senate candidate who feels the same way.)

(4) Even youngsters are souring on Obama’s policies, though they have yet to bail out on Obama himself.  It’s a start.  (Translation for candidates: attack the policies, not Obama.)

(5) The return of the Misery Index does not bode well for Democrats, especially now that deflation has been transitioning into inflation.

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… or is it an itch?

During President Obama’s speech in Allentown, PA today he scratched his head with his extended middle finger as he named the mayor of Bethlehem, PA. John Callahan supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary.

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Vice President “Straight outta Scranton” Joe Biden tells a couple different versions of the same speech.

Each time, it’s a different northeast Pa city.

Not to mention snagging President Harry Truman’s words to do it.

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Amidst the economic crisis and 10.2% unemployment, the President and the First Lady inspired hope with a lavish gala that was the Obama’s first state dinner, letting the unemployed and downtrodden know that yes, the glitterati do still exist in these tough times, if only amongst the Washington and Hollywood elite. And, boy do they know how to party!

Not to be outdone by her husband in patronizing the guests of honor, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Mrs. Gursharan Kaur, ‘Chelle was up into the wee hours of the morning in the days preceding the event, personally supervising “the compilation of a guest list 400 names long, the creation of a menu of global cuisine, ‘possibly including a curry dish’” and scouring the pages of Woman’s Wear Daily for an Indian-American designer — any Indian-American designer – to produce something with an “Indian flair” sans her signature Klingon Belt. The Divine Mrs. O decided to rock this opulent number by relative unknown Naeem Khan, marking “a shift into more sophisticated, luxurious, and regal attire, rather than the playful, accessible, less-polished clothing she’s worn thus far.” Indeed, J. Crew is soooo last January! It’s time she started dressing like the royalty that she is!

Sorry, ‘Chelle, but even with your trademark “guns” blazing, this number dresses our dining room better than it dresses you! Our readers say that this dazzling number would look better on their Thanksgiving table, and can be had for a mere $24.95 (set of 8 napkins included) at any Bed, Bath and Beyond.

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So I was thinking…

Given that the recovery.gov website is a fictional mess featuring ridiculous amounts of money per job created, wouldn’t it be great if our state’s Auditor would look at the numbers & spending?

Especially if said Auditor is running for Governor?

You know, prove that he’s independent of party or something…. hell, just even doing the right thing would be nice.

Or will he hide behind “that’s the fed’s business, not mine.” ????

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What the heck is going on here?

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Editor’s Note: Dick Stanton is an friend of the watercooler from Montgomery County, Pa.

Guest Post is a occasional feature at the watercooler… if you’d like to post a piece please email it to me, and I will put post it. Same rules apply as to the cooler contributors. You have to be a real person, no screen names… and it’s got to be watercooler topical. – Ed

In February of 2008, I was lucky enough to get tickets to the first broadcast of SNL following the writer’s strike. I ran into two friends of the Cooler in the lobby, and we all sat together. This was during the heated race for the Democratic primary, and the opening sketch was of a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. While the “unbiased” media peppered Hillary with hardballs, they asked Obama questions like, “Can I get you anything?” and “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Really, it’s no trouble.”

Fast forward to this morning’s Today Show, where Chuck Todd made that SNL skit seem like hardcore journalism. Sitting down one-on-one with the President in China, Chuck “covered” a variety of topics. On the war in Afghanistan, Obama told him virtually nothing other than we’re changing strategies in a few weeks. Chuck’s response – “This decision, will it be the decision that ultimately ends the war?” to which Obama replied, “This decision will put us on a path towards ending the war.” And as John McLaughlin used to say, “Next issue!” No follow-up for detail at all.

They then moved on to KSM, a topic which, even as just a former collegiate journalist writing sports, had me licking my chops (but I guess being from Philly we’re of a tougher mindset than most “reporters”). His question – “Can you understand why it is offensive to some for this terrorist to get all the legal privileges of an American citizen?” The reply – “I don’t think it’ll be offensive at all when he is convicted and the death penalty is applied to him.” He then cited Obama’s former occupation as a constitutional law professor, and showed Obama saying, “People are not gonna be offended IF that’s the outcome. I’m not prejudging it, I’m not gonna be in that courtroom…I have complete confidence the American people and our legal traditions” and talked about the tough New York prosecutors.

They then switched gears again, and started to discuss missed deadlines that the administration had set, followed by a softball about getting healthcare legislation signed prior to the State of the Union, or by the end of the year. Finished up with the President’s perceived weight loss. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a metaphorical reference to his dealings with the Chinese.

Throughout this interview, NBC’s chief White House correspondent had a look of glee on his face that I could only imagine if my grandfather came back to life and I got to spend a day hanging out with him again.

So, if you’re scoring at home, we covered a revised Afghan strategy without actually learning anything, we were reminded that Obama once taught law, we found out that deadlines were missed because “Congress takes time to do things” and that he really hasn’t been losing weight, but he is, in fact, getting a little grayer.

Leaving every other issue aside, including how the Chinese are criticizing his healthcare plans, how could he possibly avoid the obvious questions about the national security holes being opened by this trial, and the parallels to the disasters that followed the trial of the 1993 bombers? And what of the potential safety issues of this trial? And the safety of the judge and jury? All of these have been dominating the discussion since this announcement was made, yet in a private interview, NBC left all of it out of the interview.

I wrote for the same college paper where Katie Couric and Brit Hume got their start – I’m guessing the latter, at least, would’ve handled this interview much differently. I am disgusted by the lack of integrity in the national media anymore. Forget the states, we’re really down to red and blue networks at this point, and it’s a disgrace.

You can see the video here.

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More fun with Excel & Recovery.gov

The numbers by Congressional District:

Red & Blue colors denote party affiliation. What’s funny are the Congressional districts in black. The 00th, the 65th & the 96th districts have never existed. Did anyone even do a cursory look at the figures? There’s only 50 states, so it’s not like 50 different bureaucrats would have been overworked.

I will still declare the Stimulus Package a success. It has led to the creation of a time machine. The 21st and 23rd districts haven’t existed since the 1990 and 2000 Census…

… ahh to long for the days of the Reagan administration and the wall falling.

Heady days.

Lisa Mossie sends along a link to Marc Steyn at the Corner. He writes about his own New Hampshire:

I like to think of it as somewhere up around the Fourth Connecticut Lake or the Indian Stream by the old bootlegging routes in from Quebec. I drive around in the forlorn hope that one day on a rutted Class VI road deep in the woods, just over the washed out culvert, I’ll round the bend and see the sign saying “Now Entering The 00 Congressional District. This $47,000 sign brought to you by the America Recovery & Reinvestment Act,” and the Emerald City of Oo will rise before me, its streets paved with Stimulus green and lined with dancing fountains of sparkling H1N1 vaccine and Obamatronic statues that bow as you pass by as if you’re the Japanese Emperor and they sing “Be Our Guest” in a faintly metallic voice. And I’ll be greeted by 2,873.9 gnarled old stump-toothed loggers with an average of 2.7 fingers between them, now federally retrained as green-jobs czars, NEA performance artists, end-of-life counseling coordinators, and Joe Biden speechwriters . . .

Obamatronic.

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I can’t believe my eyes are seeing this.

It can’t be right.

From the recovery.gov website…. here are Pa’s figures…

I plug these numbers into Excel… and behold.

I’m not really clear on how the fractional jobs are computed, but really now…. is the Obama administration telling us that each job “created or saved” in Pa cost US taxpayers an average of $613K?

Four and a half billion dollars, and that’s all we have to show for it? Seventy-five hundred jobs?

To put it another way, you could have used all $4.5 billion and written a check for Pa’s median household income of $48,000 to 95,000 of Pennsylvania’s households… or written a check for $48,000 for each of those 7500 jobs “saved or created” and only spent $360 million dollars.

Not surprisingly, the page is titled, “where is the money going?”

I have some idea.

Update: Here’s the breakdown by Congressional District.

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Those neo-con facists!!!!

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department’s subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that – according to their principles of unity and mission statement – work toward “promoting social and economic justice” and “social change.”)

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

Oh wait… This was the Obama administration.

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As Obama himself said a few weeks ago:

I don’t mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made. That’s what I signed up to do. But while I’m there mopping the floor I don’t want somebody standing there saying, ‘you’re not mopping fast enough.’ Or, ‘you’re not holding the mop the right way.’

Grab a mop, Alex.

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Funny line about the President from our very own Governor Rendell.

Talking about election losses and whether the President is taking on too much.

Is he taking on too much? He’s taken on too much, David, because there are crises. He inherited these crises. He didn’t go looking to take on these problems.

You have GOT to be kidding me Mr Governor.

Why the hell did he campaign then? For another checkbox on the resume?

Not to solve our problems?

Not to keep the waters from rising?

Not to bring back hope?

Not to give us change?

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