Bozniaks

What in the hell are Bozniaks? I kept picturing a cult of guys dedicated to following the ways of my buddy Boz, watching sports at any given chance, and sending witty rejoinders to Vegas Heavy-T’s hilariously pessimistic assessments of Philly sports teams within 30 seconds of receipt. Was Joe Biden really responsible for getting these guys to get along with the Croats and the Serbs? Do Croats and Serbs share the anxiety of the Bozniaks during Phillies games? I don't see the connection. This is the kind of verbal gaffe that would be watched incessantly for years by the extreme left whenever they need to flatter themselves about how smart they are in comparison to their cretin political opponents, who are several steps back on the evolutionary ladder, not that these yahoos even believe in the evolutionary ladder. It's OK to make fun of these things, but when you have a microphone in your face nearly 24 hours a day everyone is going to have such gaffes.

Let’s be honest. She could have come to the debate falling on her face drunk, and he could have promised the Hatcher billions of dollars in government contracts in answer to the first question, and it still wouldn’t affect my vote. So why watch? Wife of Hatcher made me watch a few minutes before we put on the Tivo version of Prison Break. I saw the sub-prime mortgage question. Palin lays the blame on greedy predatory lenders. Oy vay! You see, the American people are a bunch of suckers easily led to borrow more than we can handle and so it is necessary for government to make sure we don’t get the loans we apply for. I know it’s the populist answer, it’s probably what most people want to hear, but it still bugs me. Also saw some foreign policy question, which brings up my own questions.

The big knock against Palin is foreign policy, but how expert do you have to be to mimick Obama’s likely foreign policy? It will clearly be solely about soft diplomacy, meaning he will never commit the military to any large scale operations. Here is a little secret – anybody can do that. Pluck my third graders out of their class and ask them to recite the rules of their class, and one of them is don’t be a bully. There is no rule that allows you to kick the ass of a bully. Since my kids are rule-bound authoritarians as a simple matter of genetics, they would clearly apply these rules in foreign policy. So there is no confronting a bully – you just stop trading Pokemon cards with them. Of course, this doesn’t really affect them much because they just steal more Pokemon cards from the kids they bully. That’s not to say that you confront all bullies, but if your basic philosophy is that no bullies are to ever be confronted, well then a 3rd grader is capable of that, not to mention France. Or you tell the teacher. The problem is we are the teacher. That's why the world hates us - we're always cutting recess short.

Anyway, here we are in day 10 or so of the economic apocalypse. I am not worried and I’ll tell you why. I just watched the Inconvenient Truth. And brother, if you want a sure-fire cure for worrying about the rate on your credit cards, just contemplate Wall Street under 75 feet of extra ocean water. Why worry about a hang nail when your body is ravaged with cancer I always say! (Well, that’s actually the first time I’ve ever said that). Anyway, I hope to share some thoughts on that in next week’s blog.

In the meantime, Jim O has asked in a comment that I grade President Bush’s presidency. Without giving a letter grade, I would say right away that it will likely be viewed more kindly in time than it is now, and substantially so. We have a decent President governing in very difficult times, and I think we are about to get a very mediocre one who will also be governing in very difficult times. The difference may not be pretty. The Clinton nostalgia mistakes the man as a cause of his times, as does the Bush ennui. Clinton was the Calvin Coolidge of his time (heartfelt apologies to Calvin Coolidge), except he could never shut up as compared to Silent Cal. Remember that Churchill lost the first election after WWII. Remember that after 9/11 the economy was rocked, and yet we never dipped into recession (and still are not officially in one yet). At the time, people thought it was highly likely we’d be hit hard again, but we haven’t been. We’re winning in Iraq. You might complain about the deficit spending, or the pure level of spending, and I would agree, but the big dynamic of his administration hinges on what happens in the Middle East going forward. (Also, with respect to the deficit, the structural deficit – i.e. our known future liabilities for social security and medicare versus what we might expect to raise in taxes dwarfs any current deficits, and that has been a known problem throughout the 1990s – Clinton did nothing about it, Bush tried to reform Social Security, but failed).
And don’t give me we lost the respect of the world, blah blah blah.