I have read that “Sununu”, in Arabic, means “little bird.” Hard to resist punning on that. John Sununu, on July 17, in a Fox interview, is quoted saying about Obama, “He has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S., he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2012/07/17/sununu-classic/#ixzz22JMAb6SD And later went on to say “I wish this President would learn how to be an American.” Presumably the first step would be staying away from Hawaii and Chicago, and maybe also politics?
So, let’s see, it doesn’t even matter whether Obama can produce a valid Hawaii birth certificate because Hawaii isn’t really American anyway (so why are the birthers wasting our time, and their own?) and neither is Chicago. (What? Okay, Indonesia really isn’t the US, but so what? Romney’s family spent a couple of generations in Mexico to evade prosecution for polygamy, but nobody is sideswiping him with any Frito Bandito labels.) Being a community organizer is a “socialized structure” (socialized? As in “people getting along with each other”? I think the organization he worked for was established under Section 501 ( c) (3) of the US Internal Revenue Code, which is about as unsocialist as you can get. Can’t imagine what else he could mean by “socialized.” Never thought I would be accusing myself of lack of imagination when examining American politics.
Sununu did later apologize for “using those words,” though not with any degree of specificity. We don’t really know which words he was apologizing for—the slurs on the Americanness of Hawaii and Chicago, which could conceivably lose Romney a lot of votes in those places, and among people with family from those places? The evocation of bizarre images of the infant Obama smoking “something” in his cradle? The impolitic slur on Indonesia, which does after all have a history of authoritarian anti-communist government and a good deal of oil under its territory, both things “real Americans” tend to like? The mind reels.
And above all, what does it really mean to be an American, and how does one learn it? Watch this space.
Red Emma
Come on, don’t you know the only real Americans are those who live in the Midwest and South. Which is funny since the only major American industry that I can think of that doesn’t receive government subsidies is the film industry which is centered in Los Angelas. The folks running Hollywood are the only true capitalists.
As a native of the state of Tennessee, whose state bird is the mockingbird, I must protest the use of the mockingbird for political purposes. Mockingbirds are really neat. We always had them in our yard and they can sing the song of many other birds. They will also attack you if they think you’re a threat to their nesting chicks. The University of Tennessee had a particularly aggressive mockingbird by a library and the university put up a sign warning people not to go near the tree where it had it’s nest.
Hollywood gets all sorts of special tax breaks. I agree with Glenn Reynolds that it’s about time Hollywood pay it’s fair share, and Mustang Sally learn what she’s talking about.
Mustang Sally, now baby
Oh Lord!
Guess you better slow that Mustang down
H’uh! oh Lord!
Listen, you been runnin’ all over town
OOOW!
I have to put your flat feet on the ground
H’uh!
What I said now, yeah
Saw Sam and Dave perform that in Memphis at Captain Bilbo’s. Yes!
Just for you, DADvocate, an entirely apolitical use of mockingbirds (with a bonus cat): http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly6khcCxez1qd9a66o1_500.jpg
Neat
i grew up with mockingbirds too, in South Florida, so I certainly didn’t mean any disrespect to those brave and intelligent creatures. Please get the Audubon Society to take my picture off of its target.
Ah, now I remember, this is where the “escape” to Mexico reared its head. You are quite right that you did not deride the governor for his ancestor’s trip to foreign lands (I wonder if they had valid passports?).
I must say that I did live in Chicago for four years. It seemed pretty American at the time up to and including significant voter fraud Mmy wife was attempting to cast her vote when the poll worker advised her that she would be willing to help. My wife demurred saying she had figured this thing out and entered the booth and began pulling various levers. The worker than advised her that she was only allowed to pull one lever and multiple lever pulling would invalidate her ballot.Mayor Daley knew how to run an election and deliver victory to his candidate.
“Being a community organizer is a “socialized structure” (socialized? As in “people getting along with each other”? I think the organization he worked for was established under Section 501 ( c) (3) of the US Internal Revenue Code, which is about as unsocialist as you can get.” (WS)
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It apparently comes down to what kind of country a person wants.
We KNOW which kinds works best – the most market-oriented there is. Those like Hong Kong’s and ours through the 1950s are very good at producing jobs and a relatively high level of prosperity along with being a lot less efficient at providing the “free things” we’ve come to call “entitlements.” Groups like ACORN and other “social justice” groups tend to be “entitlement mongers,” and given that entitlement spending is what wrecks an economy the easiest, they generally DON’T have a pro-prosperity agenda.
Margaret Thatcher was right when she addressed a Labour Party official and told him, “You’d prefer to see the poor poorer, so long as the rich were less rich.”
I think it was then that I first began to detest the Left for its economic ignorance. I STILL believe that the vast majority of well-intentioned “liberals” can be turned around on that score.
IF the COMMAND (“government-run”) economy COULD work, then Haiti and Zimbabwe are poor ONLY because they too dumb to set up the kinds of bureaucracies that Europe, Japan and America has!
FACT is, without a vibrant private sector, there’s no funding upon which that public sector might exist.
Even here in the USA, the more business-friendly the more market-based the administration, the better the economy for the people.
The Misery Index (the Inflation and Unemployment Rates added together) has long been one of the best measures of how an economy is treating the people.
History repeats itself;
Carter
1977 13.55
1978 13.69
1979 17.07
1980 20.76 (RECORD HIGH)
Reagan
1981 17.97
1982 15.87
1983 12.82
1984 11.81
1985 10.74
1986 8.91 (The MI dropped EVERY year until it reached single digits in 1986, where it stayed the rest of his term)
1987 9.84
1988 9.57
Bush, G.W
2001 7.57
2002 7.37
2003 8.26
2004 8.22
2005 8.48
2006 7.85
2007 7.47
2008 9.65 (look at THIS spike while he cooperated with Pelosi-Reid on the mad spending spree)
Obama
2009 8.94
2010 11.27
2011 12.11 (heading in the wrong direction)
http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbyyear.aspx
If American=market-oriented, then Chicago politics are quintessentially American.
Are Chicago politics anti-market?
I’m not familiar with Chicago’s political scene at all, so I’m just asking.
That WOULD BE ironic, given that Milton Friedman himself taught for decades at. . .the University of Chicago and his free market school of thought is known to this day as “The Chicago School” of economics.
Still, all one has to do is to look at the unemployment and inflation rates, the 2 rates that most impact the people (together they generate the “Misery Index”) and see that under Reagan, they both dropped EVERY year until 1986, when they reached single digits and they stayed in the single digits for the remainder of his tenure.
Sadly, Obama’s economic legacy seems to be following Carter’s disaster, rather than Reagan’s “miracle.” He came into office with a single digit Misery Index and has presided over 2 straight years of rising, double-digit Misery Indexes!