Friday, September 7, 2012

Noonan on the Democrats

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal on the DNC:

"Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can't reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.

Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut?

Here's what I'm seeing the past 10 years. The baby boomers have been supporting their grown children and their aged parents. They are stressed, stretched and largely uncomplaining, because they know that as boomers—shallow, selfish—they're the only generation not allowed to complain. And just as well, as complaints are the only area of national life where we have a surplus. But they are spiritually and financially holding the country together, and they're coming to terms with the fact that it's going to be that way for a good long time. They're going to take a keen interest in where Medicaid goes.

Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue."

FUll article here

"Tore Up" on a Friday: Jerry Garcia Band


The Hank Ballard classic performed by the Jerry Garcia Band in 1993. "Tell me what did I do/to make you go away"....At around 6:55 JG unleashes a short burst of what it's all about...Melvin Seals gives an awesome tutorial on the blues piano..a great, late, Jerry Garcia Band performance...