Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/buzzmachine/~3/iKEWCVHCbA0/
The country is resembling the great divides between 2004 and 2008 that broke out over Iraq. This was not supposed to happen, given the fact that Obama once talked about bringing both sides to the table, and that the Iraq war is not as contentious as it once was.
Instead, I think the reason why Obama is proving one of the most polarizing figures in memory is not the usual suspects — the Tea Party, latent racism, the Koch brother conspiracies, etc. — but rather the persona of Obama himself. He has a strange, three-step habit that has the effect of turning off both opponents and his base supporters: (a) the initial audacity-of-hope call for civility, working across the aisle, and bipartisanship in melodic cadences; (b) followed by an unleashing of a Chicago-style assault on his opponents with a wide array of martial imagery (e.g. “hostage takers,” “gun to a knife fight,” “get in their faces,” get “angry,” “kick ass,” etc.), general derision (“moats and alligators,” “back seat,” “punish our enemies”), especially aimed at the affluent (“corporate jet owners,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “those making above $200,000,” “fat-cat,” “at some point” “made enough money,” spread the wealth, redistributive change, unneeded income, etc.). That has the psychological effect of making it nearly impossible for those targeted and caricatured to eventually work out a deal with the president.
Keep reading this post . . .
In New Jersey, where the last Democrat governor (while he was a US Senator) had a girlfriend who just happened to be the head of New Jersey’s largest government union, where the property taxes are the highest in the nation, and where the state faces a $10+ billion budget gap and the real debt may be as high as $176 billion, government union bosses have spent millions of their members’ money fighting the reforms Governor Chris Christie has been pushing.
To his credit, Christie has not backed down from the fight–even going so far as to call the state’s teachers’ union (the New Jersey Education Association) a “political thuggery operation.”
Now, however, government union bosses are banding together to attack Christie by filing a joint lawsuit against the taxpayers State of New Jersey.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Public workers, rather than Democrats, have been the Republican governor’s greatest foil. He gained national attention after calling on teachers to accept salary freezes and blaming the state’s financial woes on workers’ compensation packages, which he mocked in town-hall-style forums across the state.
Now, most of the state’s public unions are forging a united counterattack.
They plan to file a lawsuit as early as this week challenging the changes, including the elimination of annual pension cost-of-living-increases, union representatives said. The suit would be on behalf of at least 500,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other state and local workers.
“It’s being done strategically,” said Bill Lavin, head of the New Jersey Firefighters Mutual Benevolent Association. “The governor has tried?and the [state] Legislature to a lesser degree?to divide and conquer, to separate one from the other. The idea is to find what we have in common versus what separates us and file together.”
Of course, if the unions prevail in their joint assault, it will be the taxpayers of New Jersey that are left footing the bill. But, in New Jersey, that’s nothing new.
[* NOTE: If Democrat Rep. Mike Doyle [PA] and the Vice President Joey Biden have the audacity to�call tea partiers “terrorists,” then turnabout can only be fair play.]
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?I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.? Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
The country is resembling the great divides between 2004 and 2008 that broke out over Iraq. This was not supposed to happen, given the fact that Obama once talked about bringing both sides to the table, and that the Iraq war is not as contentious as it once was.
Instead, I think the reason why Obama is proving one of the most polarizing figures in memory is not the usual suspects — the Tea Party, latent racism, the Koch brother conspiracies, etc. — but rather the persona of Obama himself. He has a strange, three-step habit that has the effect of turning off both opponents and his base supporters: (a) the initial audacity-of-hope call for civility, working across the aisle, and bipartisanship in melodic cadences; (b) followed by an unleashing of a Chicago-style assault on his opponents with a wide array of martial imagery (e.g. “hostage takers,” “gun to a knife fight,” “get in their faces,” get “angry,” “kick ass,” etc.), general derision (“moats and alligators,” “back seat,” “punish our enemies”), especially aimed at the affluent (“corporate jet owners,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “those making above $200,000,” “fat-cat,” “at some point” “made enough money,” spread the wealth, redistributive change, unneeded income, etc.). That has the psychological effect of making it nearly impossible for those targeted and caricatured to eventually work out a deal with the president.
Keep reading this post . . .
