Roxanna’s book club: you wanna join – it’s better than Oprah’s

I think – and my blogging is all about what I think – that people are angry because they are afraid. I think people are afraid because they’ve lost trust: trust in our valued institutions (banks, for instance), trust in our leaders (approval ratings of congress are at an all time low) and trust in each other (do we know we are going to still be employed 12 months from now?)

So we are angry because we’re afraid and afraid because we can no longer trust that the tried and true methods of dealing with the massive world changes are working.

In Joshua Cooper Ramo’s book “The Age of the Unthinkable” he talks about how we keep doing the same things (that worked in the past) to deal with events that are constantly changing. He says: “we’ve left our futures… in the hands of people whose single greatest characteristics is that they are bewildered by the present.” And that the “sum of their misconceptions has now produced a tragic paradox: policies designed to make us safer instead make the world more perilous.”

“History’s grandest war against terrorism, for instance, not only fails to eliminate terrorism, it creates more dangerous terrorism. Attempts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons instead encourage countries to accelerate their quest for an atom bomb.”

Here we are. Van Jones was forced to resign from his White House job because, fundamentally he is a communist and a person who believes that not only is white America deliberately polluting the poor (read that, black) neighborhoods in this country, but he believes that the American government was involved in the 9/11 murders of nearly 3000 people:

Now Jones is being sought after to speak at private high schools and given a job at Princeton.

The people’s response to this man in the White House – even if his office was in the basement behind a stack of storeage boxes – and thanks to men like Glenn Beck who put the spotlight on him, caused his weak-end (that is not a typo) sneaky departure.

But he’s like Superman: he can’t be killed. I mean that in the metaphorical sense, not the literal. In other words an idea can’t be stopped. His idea, wrong headed as it is, is that of American communism. And it seems that no matter what we do, we can’t kill the idea, we can’t stop the spread of this cancer in our collective system. People like him intend that the communism cancer is spread and becomes all consuming:

We got Jones out of a government position but he comes back stronger and more popular in another form and with a new function. We won one battle but the war drags on at another front.

This is just a minor example of the paradox that Ramo talks about in his book. But it’s the minor skirmishes that seem to bother me the most. If we can’t eradicate the minor things (like the Van Jones ideology) how do we ever think we can win the big ones (like a world safe from Al Qaeda?)

We won 2 world wars. There was a beginning and an end and the United States ended them. I’m in the old mindset that Ramo talks about: We are a good and right people and we can beat anything. But now, I am afraid that I can no longer trust that way of thinking.

Is it no longer enough to be good and right? And why isn’t it? The subtitle of his book is “Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it.” Maybe by the time I finish it, I’ll have my answers and I’ll be less afraid.

Obama-ites need to stay out of the deep end

Biggest bungle of a lifetime: party crashers with Biden, initially blamed on a Secret Service lapse.

Desiree Rogers, best known for her bungling of the Indian state dinner at the White House that allowed uninvited guests into the presidential bubble, has apparently resigned for greener pastures. How any pastures can be any greener than the White House, is beyond me, however.

Asked if she was hit hard by the resignation [of Desiree Rogers], longtime friend and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett told POLITICO in an e-mail: “No, it didn’t hit me hard. Desiree never intended to stay more than about a year.”

An easy-out, kinda like “I’m resigning to spend more time with my family.”  Kinda like the easy-out of Anita Dunn, who only planned on being in the WH for the first year.

Yea, sure. We all believe that. (insert rolley eyed emoticon here.)

Around the same time, she began appearing at fashion shows in New York City without telling anyone in the East Wing and committing the first lady to events without reaching out to East Wing staffers, the source said.

At one point, Rogers wondered why she didn’t have her own driver, the source said.

There’s that entitlement mentality again: “I want my own driver, a personal secretary and a chef. After all, I’m owed this for the bang-up job I’m doing for my BFF! Who gives a damn if the tax payers are paying for me and all this bling!”

Desiree Rogers from the WSJ Magazine

“It became the Desiree show,” the source said. “She was far more interested in being a principal herself and people started to notice, including the First Lady.”

No one better upstage Michelle or she’ll flex those famous and envied biceps of hers. She’ll put you right out of the People’s House.

“The West Wing was really embarrassed by Desiree’s behavior,” the source said.

“She never really seemed to get the protocol and what was appropriate and what wasn’t,” the source said. “She was politically tone deaf in a way that you wonder how she made it in the corporate world.”

More evidence that this WH is in over their head. Another high profile member of the Chicago staff who has no clue what the job really is or how to even behave in the position. If you can’t swim with the big fish, stay out of the water and it’s for damned sure, don’t go in over  your knees!

These people are utterly clueless and one after another, they keep drowning from their lack of class.

From Politico.com