The Bosque Boys

Last week for my birthday the older son and daughter-in-law took my wife and I to a concert by the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing at his university.

Wow. The Sound Continues. The Duke is dead, but the band continues, like a living organism replacing members as they die or move on.

It is a tribute band, playing tunes written by Duke, or perfomed by his band. But it also is a living jazz band, blessed with wonderful, inventive soloists who express their own creativity within the charts.

For an introduction to the music of Duke, here is the official band site, with music.

If you need an introduction to Edward Kennedy Ellington, the Duke, then go here, or here.

When Ellington died in May, 1974, a radio station in another town announced they would devote the entire evening to his music. I got in the car and drove until I could pick up the station, then pulled into a field driveway to sit and listen. Royalty deserves respect.

In late winter I did a funeral for a Texas woman who had been in a nursing home for several years. Her husband preceded her in death. Both of them went into assisted living together when they could still dress themselves and walk to the cafeteria. Together they had operated a small-town grocery for a time; and he had also been a housepainter (after the store, I think). When they were first making plans to leave their house, the accountant suggested they give up their assets to their children so that Medicaid, and perhaps other government programs, would pay for the cost of care. The man refused. He believed that people should take care of themselves, and not go on charity unless absolutely necessary. His children agreed. So the couple paid their way.

In a few years this story will seem a fairy-tale.

We want to help people. But, an unintended consequence of helping can be to destroy self-reliance.

When I went to seminary my wife and I had a small savings account. The seminary--the best endowed in the world--could afford generous financial aid. Tuition cost was factored on the ability to pay. The first year, because of the savings account, I had a small tuition cost. After depleting our savings, the next two years I paid no tuition. It did not take a genius to figure out that if we had spent the money rather than saved, I would have paid no tuition the first year. We could have had some fun with the money, and then been taken care of.

We want to help people. But, an unintended consequence of helping can be to destroy a sense of responsibility.

The evil of a welfare-state is that it nurtures dependency rather than independency, perpetual childhood rather than maturity, sloth rather than prudence.

This morning I caught a Steve Inskeep interview with Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and so-called budget hawk. The South Dakota Democrat spent five minutes explaining how to be a fiscal conservative while helping the president actualize New Deal 3.0

That was good for a laugh, but then things went from funny to alarming with the following exchange.

When reminded that "some Republicans have used the word bankruptcy," Conrad assured us that the opposition was just engaging in lose rhetoric.

"You know it's really not that much of a possibility," asserted Conrad, "because governments can print money."

More Conrad:

"We know the history. Governments can inflate their way out of debt, but that has consequences, doesn't it? So when our Republican friends use that word [bankruptcy], it's not reality. What is a real threat is a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar and the threat that would pose to the economic security of the country."

SAY WHAT!?!

That's great. Don't worry about bankruptcy. We can always hyper-inflate and all be millionaires before that would happen.

Don't worry about NOT being able to swim, the fall will probably kill you first.

Is the Honeymoon Over?

I am now watching the press conference live...

In my view, to put it mildly, the President is struggling.

After a performance of this caliber with any other modern president, we would expect some pretty horrid press coverage.

The Experiment:

Let's monitor the media. Link your favorite press reports and summarize the tenor in the comments section.

Don't let me and Tocqueville have all the fun.

UPDATE: so far there are ELEVEN comments--and they are all mine. Come on, guys, throw me a bone here.

Two of the coolest hands on our side of the aisle (make that this side of the planet Earth) are Michael Barone and Charlie Cook.

How smart is Michael Barone? He is a savant. His encyclopedic knowledge of every congressional district in America is beyond parallel. Why does FOX News election central never make a wrong call? Because Michael Barone is in the back analyzing every crucial precinct on the big board. When John McCain led in Ohio by a couple-hundred thousand votes, I was starting to feel giddy (might we have a chance?). Michael Barone said "not so fast." He stopped me in my tracks. Why? He didn't like the looks of the margins in the McCain areas. McCain was winning--but not big enough where he needed to. I could tell by the look in Barone's eyes that we were in for a long night. Sure enough, two hours later we were calling Ohio for the next president of the United States, Barack Obama. Just one example--but I have a ton of them. Trust Michael Barone. He is a virtuoso at separating out his predilections from his prognoses. Barone takes more pleasure in being right than partisan.

Barone says:

"We've been hearing a lot of criticism of Barack Obama in recent days from pro-Obama corners..."

Barone senses a potentially debilitating crisis of confidence among supporters of the President.

Then there is Charlie Cook, who is never wrong.

Cook says independents may be catching on to the fork-tongued ways of the President.

Then there are the disappointed Democrats who keep coming out of the woodwork (Broder, Elinor Clift, Richard Cohen, et al).

Is it over? Is Tocqueville right?

Well, yes and no. It depends on what the meaning of "honeymoon" is.

Pertinent Question: why don't I just bite the bullet and admit Tocqueville is right?

Believe it or not, I am inclined to do just that--but that opinion just won't write.

Here is the thing. Yes. The President is absorbing some zingers from some friendly quarters (liberal pundits). But he is still not facing the wrath of an unfriendly press corps.

I cannot help but believe that with this uptick in the market--and just a bit more good news--we are going to be right back to hailing this fellow as the best president since John F. Kennedy--who, for most of the people who count the most, was the best president in American history.

The honeymoon may be over--but all of his structural advantages (invested press corps, majority in Congress, and an economy bound to go up in the near term) are still in tact.

Nobel prize-winning economist and NYT columnist, Paul Krugman, pronounces The Geithner Plan economic "hocus pocus" and dead on arrival.

Why is this good news?

For all his erudition and acclaim, Krugman is too often a pompous and grandiloquent fool. And history, possessing a keen sense of irony, tends to seek out the most bombastic and definitive statements for singular embarrassment.

In short, Krugman is salivating at the possibility of a failure so huge that the only solution is complete government control (and I suspect he would also relish a turn running Treasury). But a successful private-public partnership does not further his agenda for nationalized banking and a planned economy.

This is not the first time Krugman has let his preferences get in the way of his judgment. He possesses a track record for pronouncements of doom that turned out to be nothing more than wishful thinking.

Krugman on the SURGE in Iraq (September 2007):

The smart money, then, knows that the surge has failed, that the war is lost, and that Iraq is going the way of Yugoslavia. And I suspect that most people in the Bush administration — maybe even Mr. Bush himself — know this, too.

The Financial Crisis is Barack Obama's Iraq. Just as President Bush understood that Iraq (once engaged) was the one potential threat that could fundamentally alter American hegemony in the world, President Obama needs to understand that the potential Financial Meltdown possesses the same destructive capacity.

Just as the surge had to work to save us all, the Geithner Plan has the same scent of absolute necessity (and desperation).

I hope the "Krug" is just as wrong now as he was then.

Watching C-SPAN this afternoon:

Chris Dodd is mad. I mean really mad. Nobody can be angrier than him. He is livid.

Nobody is any more incensed about all these rich guys taking advantage of the American people. Really.

But don't any of you worry, he doesn't care about the politics of any of this. He is going to keep on fighting for the people of Connecticut.

He has spent a career doing what is right, and no matter how many lies anybody might tell about him, he is going to just keep right on a fighting for you.

Sleep well tonight, America. Congress is in session and protecting your interests.

NYT here with the politics of being Dodd.

UPDATE: How ANGRY is he? Video from RCP here.

Eighty-five Republicans joined 243 Democrats to impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on bonuses given to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at American International Group and other companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money.

So many big and obvious things wrong with this bill that I don't even have the time or energy to enumerate them.

Just when you thought the plunging market on Republican integrity and principle had bottomed out. Think again.

Political kudos to Nancy Pelosi for setting the buffoonery trap.

In Lawrence v. Texas Justice Kennedy announced: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." [Query whether this applies to the notorious Octo-Mom?] The architects and proponents of decriminalization assured us that Scalia's slippery slope argument was a canard--that the enshrining of homosexuality (once taboo) into law would not lead to the mainstreaming of other historically taboo but consensual relationships. Well, they were wrong.

It's finally begun. Here's the next vanguard in the "civil rights" struggle. Romania is set to decriminalize incest between consenting adults.

Who are you going to believe?

Me or David Broder?

Or Michael Goodwin?

Or Michael Barone?