All of a sudden this evening I had this image of Dorothy and her friends kicking their heels in the air and trotting off down the Yellow Brick Road singing, “Weeeeeee’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard Obama! We hear he is a wiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was. If ever, oh ever a wiz there was, the Wizard Obama is one because, because, because, because, because, because . . . because of the wonderful things he does!” And so, off they trot, sure he’ll save Dorothy and her Auntie Em from the financial tornado that blew their house away, make the Scarecrow a genius so that he can come up with a brilliant solution that will bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, give the Tin Mullah a heart so Iran won’t be mean to people anymore, give the Cowardly Lion courage to hope to be the change that he’s been waiting for, stop the rise of the oceans, heal the planet, and so on. And in his spare time, maybe replace the BCS with a playoff system.
And when they get to the Emerald City–errr, White House–and present their list of requests, what happens? They’re sent off to help the Wicked Witch of the West get her flying monkeys off the ground–they’ve eaten too much pork, and their wings won’t support them. Through a rather complicated process, they succeed (it involves fitting the monkeys with parasails and pulling them behind charging rhinos), and return to the Wizard to present their requests–and that’s when Toto goes growling off and discovers the man behind the curtain: not a great wizard, but just a Chicago politician after all.
You know, that last would make a great political cartoon–”Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Moe Lane
PG DeFreese
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Dan Spencer
Nope, the Chicago Politician isn't behind the curtain........
Kenny Solomon (Diary) Saturday, February 14th at 11:17PM EST (link)That’s the big mystery…… who are his string-pullers/button-pushers ?
It’s easy to say George Soros, but I’ve had this gut feeling since the Primaries that the real puppet masters running Ol’ Barry Boy and his Fascist/Socialist sycophants make György Schwartz look like a hot dog vendor on any NYC street.
Take the Crapulus Bill for example. It’s too detailed and too much of too much……… That thing had to be planned and written long before the election and maybe before Teh Mess-I-Yah got the nomination.
I'm sure Andy Stern has got his meathooks in
civil truth (Diary) Saturday, February 14th at 11:26PM EST (link)…and his second tier cabinet appointees and the various policy czars and advisors not subject to Senate confirmation should give some clues.
But surely the Chicago folks who’ve cleared the path for Obama’s ascension are key players – but you’d have to check with those familiar with the Chicago machine to come up with names.
Pat Hickey probably has a really good handle on this, I’d suspect
The greatest evil…is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern. -C.S. Lewis
http://www.gmsplace.com/
Oh, no doubt he has IOUs out
theancientmariner (Diary) Saturday, February 14th at 11:38PM EST (link)but I don’t think he’s just a figurehead; if nothing else, I think he has IOUs out in too many places for any one person or group of people to be able to call the shots. I agree that George Soros, Andy Stern, the Daleys, various folks in the Chicago machine, are all unelected power players in this administration; I doubt, though, that there are folks out there as terrifying as you invoke. Sure, the porkathon was drafted well before the inauguration, but probably not before the election–as big as it is, it was probably a fairly simple thing to assemble; Pelosi got her chieftains together, they all brought their wishlists, and they threw them all together. That kind of bill is one that old DC hands can draft pretty quickly. (It’s the ones that transfer money and autonomy outof Washington that are painful and unnatural to them.)
In any case, in writing this, I was thinking more of people buying the illusion, and how empty it all really is, than about the specific contents behind that illusion.