Business

I'm not hostile to Obama. I just think he should not be president. Completely unqualified. Fine at the level of alderman. But national? -- international? No. And now he's doubled down on his healthcare takeover. Not by pursuing direct socialism -- by attacking business. Those insurance companies or do I mean banks right now ... whatever ... they're making profits! Let's git em!! He's taking the populism route. How noble. Or corrupt. Maybe both? Why not. Both, then. Black is white.

Back when Bush said, talking tough about the lost war on terror, "Bring it on" -- well, how cringe-making. Because lives were at stake. They, the terrorists, would bring it on by killing women and children. Not a prudent selection of verbiage. But verbiage wasn't Bush's strength. Now Obama is saying bring it on. Tough guy, taking on American capitalism. Grr. But why exactly is he picking this fight? Are there no laws, by which we control and punish criminals? And if they, them, the companies, damn companies, of any description, are acting according to law, why pick the fight?

Obama is careful now in his increasingly careless speeches to repeatedly repeat that it isn't about him. "It's not about MEEEEEEE," he stammeringly orates eloquently. Well. I for one most certainly do not want the president to fail. Since his job is to boost and protect America, I want him to succeed. But such reasoning, sound though it is, is not sound. This particular president isn't playing by the same rules. It is about HIMMMM. He is a product of the ME Decade, the Seventies, now to be known as just another Obama Decade. They are all ObaME Decades. That's the rule. Well, fine. He can have any size ego he wants. But he needs to chose the correct enemies. At least Bush, when he said bring it on, was speaking to the enemy. Obama is speaking to America.

Someone said last night that Republican isn't the party of the rich, it's the party of people who want to be rich. Yes. Wanting to be rich is an odd enemy to pick. Not the politics of it -- politics is about opposition, and convincing or compromising with it. Do the health insurance companies that Obama hates so much have no employees? Are these employees not American? Are there no stockholders -- moms and pops, people saving for their kids' educations -- who hope to make a reasonable or terrific return on their investment? Investments in companies that provide an in-demand service, at a competitive, non-monopoly-dictated price? Who exactly is Obama fighting? Executives? They make too much money? I agree. But that's a stockholders issue, not the government's.

When Coolidge said, "The business of America is business," he was right. Not businessmen, not products, not capitalism. Business is code, shorthand, for life. Biology has metabolism, civilizations have economy. Business is how people interact with each other, in almost any other context than social or purely recreational. When we say business, we mean the livelihood that people make for themselves. Whether it is the Left's fetish, of enfranchising illegals who sell ice cream from pushcarts, and empowering drug addicts by legalizing pot shops next to playgrounds -- or the Hollywood bete noir, the American capitalist -- it's about money and the getting of it. Money itself, after all, is just a token that you trade for things. We're all monkeys pushing buttons for peanuts. Just a matter of finding interesting buttons to push.

Obama is a complete fool. Now the lacquer facade is chipping, and we're seeing the emotion. Brittle. Hollow. Again, competence justifies a multitude of faults. He's not competent. I figured it out, the profound secret of his eloquence. It's not that he delivers every sentence he utters with the clipped and rising tones of a punchline. It's that he has the forensic style of a really good high school student. The charismatic one, who gets elected student body president, and prom king, and all those good things. Good athlete too. But he never grew beyond it. And the oratorical tricks that work in high school -- well, they are good tricks. But do we want a trickster leading us?

Point is, fools don't learn. They are unteachable, by patience or harshness. They double down. They personalize opponents as enemies. They burn down Rome as their funeral pyre. We didn't elect Obama ... we ... to change us into Europe. Did he lie? Did we misunderstand? The change we were promised -- was that too open-ended a slogan? Any change at all, no matter where it ends? And hope -- was it meant to be evangelical? Eschatological? We hope that these are the End of Days? Not with this messiah.

Ah well. I guess I've solved all the problems and answered all the questions. So I believe. You should have elected me. We'd all be happy now.

J