Articles in Folder “Threats to the Republic”:
2559.\\ The Greenroom » The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
This, folks, is what it looks like when government is doing too much. Government is too big. Some of us have been pointing this out for decades, but I think more and more of the Americans who don't pay much attention, as long as their lives don't have to change too much, are now waking up and realizing that government has gotten big enough to actually fulfill Michelle Obama's promise: to actually change our lives.The truth is, Americans don't want government to change our lives. Government that does less is what more and more people are realizing we need. We don't want government that's big enough to force us to buy health insurance - or to make lesser and cheaper medical treatments the "norm" in order to save "society's" resources. We don't want government that thinks it has some reason to care how many rooms there are in our homes, and how they are heated and cooled. We don't want government that's big enough to force talk radio, TV, or internet content into a state-approved homeostasis between "left" and "right." We don't want government that can kill our jobs by making it too expensive to employ us. We certainly don't want government that employs members of a thuggish service employees' union and caters to their demands - demands that can only be satisfied by confiscating more and more from the private sector's producers: those to whom the same union employees display a surly and unhelpful demeanor when the taxpayers have the misfortune to need to do business with the government.
The ugly face of big government is plastered across every facet and every communication medium of modern life, here in 2010. What we need to realize is that it isn't possible to have big government that looks and acts any other way. This is it: this is what activist government - government that won't let us go back to our lives as usual - looks like. The time has come for government to stop "fixing" things.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Big Government, Congress, HotAir, Liberty, Michelle Obama, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2557.\\ Some Reasons for Optimism
Amid the doom and gloom of America's fiscal destruction and abolition of liberty at the hands of Obama and the Democrats, there is some glimmer of hope for the Republic.
USA Today illustrates the future demographics of the major nations of the world with its usual colorful graphics.
It isn't a panacea, but it sure does look good compared to, say, the debt and military power projections for the same time period.
TAGGED AS: America, Decline, Demographics, Economy, USA Today
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PERMANENT LINK2556.\\ Obama's Health Care Illusions
If you think anything contained in Obamacare will reduce the cost of health care, you're delusional.
Blanket statements aside, there are a series of facts available to disprove anything Barry says about the monster socialist bill he's trying to ram down the throat of America. Robert Samuelson does the work the rest of the press ought to have been doing since last summer by neatly destroying any notion of Obama saving you money on health. The reality is that socialized medicine costs more, produces less and makes everyone unhappy.
Don't believe it? Think this reporter is a right-wing nutjob? Inclined to believe in ancient astronauts and 9/11 conspiracy theories instead? Well, read the piece and then argue the facts. And this article comes from the guy who hasn't voted in 30 years cause he thinks it interferes with journalistic integrity.
Best bit:
You probably think that insuring the uninsured will dramatically improve the nation's health. The uninsured don't get care or don't get it soon enough. With insurance, they won't be shortchanged; they'll be healthier. Simple.Think again. I've written before that expanding health insurance would result, at best, in modest health gains. Studies of insurance's effects on health are hard to perform. Some find benefits; others don't. Medicare's introduction in 1966 produced no reduction in mortality; some studies of extensions of Medicaid for children didn't find gains. In the Atlantic recently, economics writer Megan McArdle examined the literature and emerged skeptical. Claims that the uninsured suffer tens of thousands of premature deaths are "open to question." Conceivably, the "lack of health insurance has no more impact on your health than lack of flood insurance," she writes.
How could this be? No one knows, but possible explanations include: (a) many uninsured are fairly healthy -- about two-fifths are age 18 to 34; (b) some are too sick to be helped or have problems rooted in personal behaviors -- smoking, diet, drinking or drug abuse; and (c) the uninsured already receive 50 to 70 percent of the care of the insured from hospitals, clinics and doctors, estimates the Congressional Budget Office.
Though it seems compelling, covering the uninsured is not the health-care system's major problem. The big problem is uncontrolled spending, which prices people out of the market and burdens government budgets. Obama claims his proposal checks spending. Just the opposite. When people get insurance, they use more health services. Spending rises. By the government's latest forecast, health spending goes from 17 percent of the economy in 2009 to 19 percent in 2019. Health "reform" would probably increase that.
If you buy the Obama snake oil on health care reform, then you'd better pony up and get yourself some nice flood insurance too.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Failure, Fraud, Health Care Reform, ObamaCare, Obamanomics, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2552.\\ Sowell: Too Many Apologies
Brilliant piece today by Thomas Sowell.
I think he hits it straight on when he identifies and laments the absence of personal responsibility in our society. It has been creeping for years, of course, even decades. But the success of the American Republic is absolutely dependent on individualism and responsibility not collectivism and blame.
We are now embarked on a grand experiment in collectivization and group think. It may work out. But it certainly represents the end of the experiment that began in 1787.
Best bit:
For more than a century, the intelligentsia have been trying to get us to focus on the "root causes" of crime-- supposedly created by "society"-- instead of locking up thieves or executing murderers.If some people don't have the money or the achievements of others, that too is society's fault, in the eyes of those for whom personal responsibility is an outmoded idea.
Personal responsibility is a real problem for those who want to collectivize society and take away our power to make our own decisions, transferring that power to third parties like themselves, who imagine themselves to be so much wiser and nobler than the rest of us.
Aimless apologies are just one of the incidental symptoms of an increasing loss of a sense of personal responsibility-- without which a whole society is in jeopardy.
TAGGED AS: America, Constitution, Thomas Sowell
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PERMANENT LINK2550.\\ Don't Mess With Rhode Island
Failing schools, poor community and students at risk. Bleak picture to be sure. In one Rhode Island town the school superintendent saw an opportunity to increase the role of education in solving the social ills of the community.
She asked the teachers (who make 3 times the median income of the town) to help tutor the kids a bit and give them an extra 25 minutes per day. The unions revolted. So the superintendent fired them. All of them. Every last person at the school.
One suspects the replacements will be more than happy to help the kids out a bit.
Best bits:
"However, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that the teachers and administration at this school are a big part of the problem. Asking teachers making three times the average of the town's median income to contribute an extra 25 minutes a day to rescue students in obvious failure does not seem like an outrageous request. The two-week summer training period may have infringed on their vacation plans, but their school faced an existential crisis, and their students were being doomed to a lifetime of competitive handicaps. One may have thought that teachers and administrators would have a sense of mission, rather than a sense of entitlement, especially considering the failure to which they had all contributed at least in part."
Another good example of why the government shouldn't be in the business of educating our children. It is the role of parents and local communities. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton.
TAGGED AS: Education, Public Sector, Rhode Island, Ronald Reagan, Schools, Unions
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PERMANENT LINK2549.\\ Confiscation of Freedom
Thomas Sowell takes a somber and sobering look at the state of freedom in the United States. It is frankly pretty depressing to read how we are incrementally being deprived of everything the nation was founded to protect.
I renew my prediction of armed insurrection if the trend continues.
Best bit:
Another dangerous power toward which we are moving, bit by bit, on the installment plan, is the power of politicians to tell people what their incomes can and cannot be. Here the resentment is being directed against "the rich."
The distracting phrases here include "obscene" wealth and "unconscionable" profits. But, if we stop and think about it-- which politicians don't expect us to-- what is obscene about wealth? Wouldn't we consider it great if every human being on earth had a billion dollars and lived in a place that could rival the Taj Mahal?
Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced--and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting "the rich."
You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called "unconscionable" but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Health Care, Liberals, Liberty, Taxes, Thomas Sowell, Totalitarianism
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PERMANENT LINK2548.\\ Krauthammer: Closing the New Frontier
NASA is on the chopping block and the US is abdicating space. This is sad and depressing. Not to mention dangerous to our national security.
I happen to think that space travel should be driven by the private sector. But the market isn't there yet. It'll take a few more decades for private industry to get the right mix of cost, performance and safety. Until then the government is the only mechanism for incubating the needed industries and technologies and ongoing research.
And we're totally giving that up. Defeat and retreat. We're leaving control of space to China and Russia because we can't scrounge up $3B extra per year to fund the space program. How much are we spending on porkulus and porkulus II ? Oh that's right, trillions.
Nice work Mr. Obama. You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy.
TAGGED AS: China, Finance, Krauthammer, NASA, Obama, Politics, Porkulus, Space
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PERMANENT LINK2545.\\ The Case For Deficits and Against Spending
Just go read it. It makes sense.
Best bit:
"Unseen is how much higher our wages would be if our federal minders weren't spending over $3 trillion per year, and how very different and varied our collective employment outlook would be if our productive gains stayed in the private sector as opposed to the bloated government sector. It's said that government spending is compassionate, but what is compassionate about politicians spending money not their own?
If it's agreed that governments have no resources of their own, would readers prefer a balanced budget of $3 trillion plus, or a trillion-dollar deficit amid $1.5 trillion of spending? The answer here seems pretty simple. Since dollars are dollars, and investors don't seem concerned with the deficit, the most economically stimulative path would be to continue running deficits while greatly reducing the level of federal taxation and spending."
2544.\\ Coming to America: Crisis
Niall Ferguson's article in the Financial Times yesterday cuts to the core of the apparently insurmountable fiscal disaster we face. He repeats Larry Summers rhetorical question "How long can the world's biggest borrower remain the world's biggest power?"
I think it is absolutely fitting that the final implosion of Western Civilization is starting in the very birthplace of liberal democracy. Greece is doomed, that much seems increasingly clear. The dominoes will fall across the Club Med region. Berlin and Paris and London will attempt to right the ship, but it is a matter of rearranging positions in the lifeboat. The ship is lost. Europe has been on the slippery slope for years and is now in a headlong slide down the hill to ruin.
America seems next. Our collapse would make Greece's look like a minor nuisance. It seems pretty clear by now that the current one-term Administration is about as capable and up to the task of saving America as my 4 year old son. Unlike my son, however, Obama lacks modesty. He'll be the one at the helm loudly proclaiming how he, the second coming of Christ, did away with all the terrible things George Bush did as the bridge submerges and the stern rises out of the ocean. The reality is that while we might have been set on course to strike the iceberg by the previous Administration, the current one grabbed the wheel, locked in the course and put us a flank speed all the while loudly strutting and clucking about how great things will be because they took over the captain's chair.
It is, in short, a fast approaching disaster of epic proportions. Forget 1929, I'm talking 476 here. From this inflection point outward in the timeline, we will become a shell, a joke, America in name only. We'll be ruled by oligarchs and corporations and foreign governments, in short the barbarians. Oh future generations will still think of themselves as American, aping our ways and taking our titles, but they won't be any more American than the Ostrogoths were Roman.
Crisis, disaster, my friends, looming ahead. It may already be too late.
****UPDATE:
Von Mises agrees with me at least in part
****UPDATE 2:
And the BBC by way of Breitbart's Big Government
TAGGED AS: America, Debt, Deficit, Disaster, Finance, Financial Times, Niall Ferguson, Politics, Rome
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PERMANENT LINK2543.\\ The Next Man on the Moon Will Be Chinese
I don't like profligate spending. I'm against all sorts of government expenditure. I would like to see the space industry dominated by American private enterprise.
However, in eviscerating NASA and providing little to no incentive for the market to fill the void, Mr. Obama has permanently relegated America to second or even third-tier status as a space power. We will have no advanced launch capability. No refueling capability. No mechanism for protecting our dwindling space assets. Our national security absolutely relies on America dominating the near Earth orbital zone. Instead we will now be forced to rely on China, India and Russia for access to space.
Forget about the moon or Mars. Those are now the property of China Inc.
TAGGED AS: China, NASA, Space
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PERMANENT LINK2542.\\ Value Proposition
Mr. Sowell has entered the building. And with him comes an overall elevation of the intellectual discourse of the day.
Best bit:
"Since the only resources that the government has are the resources it takes from the private sector, using those resources to create jobs means reducing the resources available to create jobs in the private sector."
Which is why government is almost never the answer to any problem involving the market.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Health Care, Insurance, Thomas Sowell
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PERMANENT LINK2539.\\ The Debt Commission
I have some libertarian leanings. I'm not overly conservative when it comes to social matters. I'm not foaming at the mouth, ranting and raving from the lunatic fringe on the right.
More importantly, I hate taxes. I think progressive income taxes are unfair and unconstitutional. Payroll taxes are simply socialist wealth redistribution in disguise. The State confiscates my property routinely and gives it away to others and spends it on some pretty dubious things.
That being said, however, I am also cognizant of the yawning crisis in our nation's finances. That the public debt problem and ongoing budget deficit is the result of outrageous spending on a multitude of things of doubtful utility is reality. Congress seems to think it has no restraint on its power, regardless of who is running the place. Since the 1960s they have spent us into financial ruin. The root of the problem is runaway spending, without a doubt.
However, and I say this wearing my realist hat, there is a zero percent chance that my libertarian idealism in fiscal matters will ever manifest itself in legislation in the current climate. Congress won't ever repeal the income tax, won't eliminate the nanny state, won't abolish the IRS and won't institute a flat tax. Without cutting spending and without increasing revenue, the nation will be bankrupt within a decade. In fact, interest on the debt alone is currently north of 20% of Federal revenue and will be greater than all Federal revenue within a few years if the trend continues. That means if we cut spending to ZERO on everything...defense, government operations, entitlements...everything, then we'd still not have enough revenue to cover the interest on what we owe.
Tell me how that is sustainable. Clearly, it isn't.
So, given that fiscal irresponsibility on the part of politicians got us here, it seems to make sense that we need to invest some other body with powers to help resolve this issue. Yes I am aware that I just made the same case that was made in Rome when Caesar was vested with dictatorial powers. It is also the same case that Napoleon and Hitler made. I'm going to follow it up with another bit of rationale that has been repeatedly used in history to justify all manner of terrible things: desperate times call for desperate measures.
In our case, however, unlike the Roman Republic we still have strong checks and balances between our branches of government. It is extremely unlikely that sufficient power could be gathered into a single place to totally rend the Republic asunder and replace it with something undemocratic. Of course, I could be wrong.
But I have faith in the people of this country. To wit, over the past few months, faced with growing absolutism and rule by fiat in Washington, the people of varying party affiliation rose up and dealt the ruling party a series of electoral blows that ended its ability to ram through its agenda without popular support. Frankly if it came right down to it, and I've mentioned this before, there is always the likelihood of armed insurrection to prevent descent into dictatorship or corrupt plutocracy. I honestly believe that would happen. It happened before in this country and it could certainly happen again.
And so this morning the Senate will vote on whether to form an independent, bipartisan commission to tackle the fiscal crisis. This panel will be composed of various private sector luminaries and former politicians. It will study spending and income at the Federal level and recommend changes with the goal of setting the nation on sounder financial footing. The far left opposes this because they fear the panel will recommend cutting entitlements. The far right opposes this because they see it as a veiled attempt to raise taxes with the cover of bipartisan support. Frankly, both are probably right and to be honest both things have to happen. Taxes must go up and entitlements must be cut.
We cannot grow our way to fiscal solvency at this point. We're so deep in the shit that even 10% annual GDP growth wouldn't pull us out. Yes taxes should be low across the board in normal times. Yes lower taxes increase Federal revenue receipts in normal times. Yes in normal times a great nation such as ours must have safeguards to help those who for whatever reason cannot help themselves. Yes in normal times there is room for a fiscally strong Republic that has world class social programs for the poor and weak. However, these are not normal times. We cannot afford to act as if they are.
We will not get out of debt to our Chinese masters and we will not remain at the top of the global order if we do not address this problem now. It has been estimated that we have 10 years to get our act together before it is beyond all hope. We cannot simply cut taxes to the bone and grow our way out. Reagan did that but at the cost of adding trillions to the debt. Barry O has tried the Keynesian way of spending our way out and it hasn't worked but it has nearly doubled the debt. The reality is that our social programs must be drastically cut and our taxes must go dramatically up.
The first order of business is to cauterize the financial hemorrhaging by ensuring that more money is coming in than is going out. This means ending the bailouts, stopping new entitlement legislation (i.e. Obamacare), instituting an across the board spending freeze, and...get ready...bringing the legions home. Defense spending has to take a hit. Wind down Iraq and get our guys out of that graveyard of empires called Afghanistan. Turn it over to NATO or the reformed Taliban or whomever. I don't care. We can't afford it anymore. Yes it will expose us to risk. Yes it will haunt us in 20 years. All true. But right now we are facing the collapse of our entire Republic and frankly that is a bit more pressing.
Secondly, get the Debt Commission into action. They need to act quickly and get us a report pronto. They must recommend tax increases across the board and major cuts to entitlements. Then they have to follow up with sets of binding recommendations that have to be taken in a yes/no, up/down series of votes in the Congress. Nobody will be happy, but they have to be bold and do the right thing.
Third, a balanced budget Constitutional Amendment and a line-item veto Constitutional Amendment must be taken up with haste. We must enshrine fiscal discipline into the fabric of our system of government and our way of life. The Bill of Rights is meaningless if those natural rights cannot be guaranteed by a solvent, functional government.
I'm not an economist. I'm sure the geniuses like Bernanke and Krugman have all sorts of smoke and mirrors trickery that in theory would make the problem go away. I simply know that we are on an unsustainable path of insane spending and illogical, complex taxation that will ruin us.
Put that in your State of the Union and smoke it.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Conservative, Constitution, Debt, Deficit, Finance, Liberals, Libertarian, Politics, Spending, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2530.\\ NY Times in Absolute Denial
Not that this is a shocking or entirely unheard of thing, but the New York Times seems hell bent on protecting the soothing bubble that encloses them in their fictional world. To wit, today's editorial is a verbal dose of head burying.
My favorite bit:
"Mr. Obama has done many important things on the environment, and in foreign affairs, and in preventing the nation's banking system from collapsing in the face of a financial crisis he inherited."
Really? I mean, REALLY NYT??
What are the many important things he's done on the environment? Participate in foisting the ongoing fiction of the climate models on the American people? Threaten to destroy the nation's economy by running industry out of business via taxes and caps? Failing utterly to add anything meaningful to the dialogue at Copenhagen? What exactly has he done except issue diktats of dubious legality via the EPA? Diktats that will undoubtedly be wrapped in Constitutional legal issues for years, I might add. I'm still waiting for the seas to stop rising and the planet to start healing...
Where are all of these foreign policy achievements Mr. Obama is allegedly responsible for? Surely you don't mean the Nobel Peace Prize, that universal joke laughed at by everyone on the planet outside of Scandinavia. Perhaps Iran? Iran where we have made no progress and indeed have regressed over Mr. Obama's tenure? Perhaps you mean North Korea...um, no. Cuba? Or how about our disapproval of Honduran democratic elections and support for the thug dictator the Hondurans threw out? Or how about Mr. Obama's total failure to produce anything positive with China? Seriously, what are these wonderful foreign policy miracles he hath wrought?
But the cake has to be your assertion, NYT, that OBAMA saved the financial system. Aside from historical fiction, it is ideologically incongruous for a liberal paper claiming a leftist President properly saved the banks. A simple Googling of the topic (which seems utterly beyond your editorial research efforts when it doesn't align with your agenda), reveals that the crisis was borne of government interference in the market (specifically the housing market) and the solutions for it were devised and executed in 2008 under George W. Bush. The final piece of the response to the crisis, the 'porkulus' bill of spring 2009, is indeed attributed to Mr. Obama. And this package of spending has been widely ridiculed as a pork-laden equivalent of throwing money into the air and hoping it lands someplace helpful. It didn't create jobs, it didn't help people stay in their homes, it didn't increase business spending, it didn't produce any significant positive benefit of any sort. It failed. In fact, Mr. Obama's only response to the financial crisis has been to nationalize the automotive industry, meddle with private business practices such as how much they pay their employees, nationalize and endlessly back Fannie and Freddie and in the process take over ultimate responsibility for most mortgages in the US, attempt to nationalize the banking industry by forcing solvent banks to take government loans and government diktats, attempt to force employees in the private sector to join labor unions, attempt to nationalize the health insurance industry, attempt to nationalize the student loan industry and yet continue to push the very subprimes types of mortgages that were the primary cause of the meltdown. In effect, Mr. Obama's response to the financial crisis has been to prevent another crisis by eliminating the market altogether and simply creating a socialist system by executive fiat.
There. Now that that's all out, I'll simply close by saying the NYT is out of touch, in an echo-chamber bubble, in denial and has ideological myopia of a colossal degree.
TAGGED AS: Economy, George W Bush, New York Times, Obama
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PERMANENT LINK2525.\\ The Health Bill is a Massive Tax
"The so-called "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" in fact will make access to health insurance more expensive and less useful, and will also render the care provided by insurance less effective, more risky, and more expensive by taxing the production of new capital goods. The taxation approach taken by Senate Democrats is a purely foolish method of funding regulations that are themselves horrible."
Thanks Ludwig von Mises.
Left unsaid: It is a method for funding regulations that establish government control of your health. I've seen this movie before, it was called Logan's Run.
TAGGED AS: Autocracy, Dystopia, Economy, Government, Health Care, Insurance, Logan's Run, Tax
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PERMANENT LINK2524.\\ WSJ: Google Gets On the Right Side of History
Great article today in WSJ on Google's recent throwing down of the gauntlet in China.
What I find most refreshing about the piece is that it concisely lays out the ideological bankruptcy of the regime and elites that seek to profit from the oppression and murder of the Chinese people. Anyone doing business in China, anyone who bows to the wishes of the autocrats, has blood on their hands. Until Tuesday, that included Google.
Of course, China being autocratic and involved in epic levels of industrial espionage is nothing new. But finally, finally, the Google Incident has pushed this more into the limelight. More coverage here, here, here, and some less thought of implications are discussed here (will Google stand firm with censorship in France and Italy too?)
More on the staggering size and scope of Chinese espionage here, here, here, here, here, here, and this site here run by an excellent blogger who focuses on this topic.
And I've reserved the scariest spying reports for last: here, here, here, here, and finally the chiller here.
They won't have to beat our military. It'll be like the Cylon war. All of our systems will suddenly stop working and we'll be blind and dark. Be afraid.
TAGGED AS: America, China, Cyberwar, Google, Hacking, National Security, Spying
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PERMANENT LINK2522.\\ China on the March as West Continues Collapse
The bad news keeps rolling in here, here and here.
The question is, will we get our groove back and climb out of this ditch? Or is western liberal democracy destined to be permanently overcome by oriental autocracy?
****UPDATE:
Even more... read this and this and this and this
TAGGED AS: America, China, Decline and Fall, Democracy, Oligarchy
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PERMANENT LINK2521.\\ Health Care Nullification and Interposition
"That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them."
We should all think a little more like Madison. Full article here
TAGGED AS: Autocracy, Constitution, Federal Government, James Madison, Nullification, Tenth Amendment
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PERMANENT LINK2520.\\ I'm Loathe to Say I'm Right...
But, well, I am. China is the antagonist for the century. We've had nonsensical policy toward them for the past 20 years. Read this and this and this and this and this and this. Among others.
TAGGED AS: America, China, War
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PERMANENT LINK2517.\\ An Unprovoked and Dastardly Attack
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
TAGGED AS: FDR, Infamy, Pearl Harbor
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PERMANENT LINK2516.\\ The Welfare State and Military Power
No one has put the issue before us in such succinct terms in recent memory. This article in the Wall Street Journal today (page A24) should be a clarion call.
Instead of fretting over the massive hoax of AGW, we should instead be worrying about disappearing altogether as a power. Instead of unconstitutionally creating new 'rights' out of thin air, we should be figuring out how to reduce spending, make the government smaller, eliminate entitlements that we cannot afford and increase the power of our economic base. These things don't happen by nationalizing the auto industry, the financial industry, the health insurance industry and raising taxes to astronomical levels to pay for it all. This will serve to destroy the foundation of our economy (small business), remove any risk/reward proposition (destroying entrepreneurial spirit in America), and necessitate the severe curtailment of liberty in this nation.
This is why I'm convinced more than ever before that the people in power must be stopped, their fanatic socialist ideology wiped from the national table and the center-right principles that have served us so well since 1776 be restored to their rightful place. To continue on this path is national suicide.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Conservative, Federal Government, Finance, Liberals, Military, Obama, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2509.\\ Economics of Failure
Excellent article in the Journal today. I encourage you to read it. Leave out all the pro-Reagan stuff and take the article on the merit of its central argument: that you do not promote long term, broad based growth by spending so far into debt that you can't get out.
Read it. And think about it when you hear about the tens of trillions of dollars that 'reform' is going to cost us.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Economy, Finance, GDP, Health Care, Ronald Reagan, Spending
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PERMANENT LINK2507.\\ State Suicide
I don't have to say anything at all about this article...but I will anyway. This is exactly what will happen to the entire nation if we continue down the socialist path we seem hell bent on taking. Actually, what's happening on the Federal level is far worse than anything that happened in California. So I suspect the results will be much, much worse. Possibly catastrophic. Maybe apocalyptic.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, California, Disaster, Disgust, Economy, Finance, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2506.\\ Easy Fix For Economic Collapse
It is simple. More Obamanomics. More Government. More socialism. More spreading the wealth around a bit. All you have to do, silly Mayors, is raise taxes to cover the budget deficit.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Finance, Socialism, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2504.\\ House of Meddling
Stossel is right again. Unfortunately, no one in the Congress is listening anymore, not to him, not to the people. I suppose it is within their right to do what they think they should do, regardless of the mob. And thankfully it is the right of the mob to throw their asses out for any reason whatsoever.
Here comes 2010...
TAGGED AS: Congress, Health Care, John Stossel, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2503.\\ California Writ Large
The meltdown of the world's 7th largest economy has long roots and was long coming. California's model of socialism is the path America as a whole has decided to take. For the nation it will end the same way it is ending for California, total disaster and risk of complete dissolution. Like so many social engineering experiments before it, when human nature is written out of the equation any utopian scheme will collapse.
TAGGED AS: California, Capitalism, Socialism, Taxes, Utopia
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PERMANENT LINK2502.\\ Worse Than Taxes: The Spending
John Stossel has it right again. In an opinion piece today, he fingers the real culprit of creeping Statism in America.
The rallying bit:
"The politicians' spending schemes represent presumptuous interference in our lives. They are an assault on our autonomy."
Yes sir. Hoist the flag of protest
Many of these things have a amplifying effect. The spending, together with the taxing, together with the Orwellian paternalism of our new government, together with the systematic remaking of America into some minor European socialist utopia, will all add up to outright rejection by the people of this entire philosophy. Attempts to control the population like Obamacare, the nationalization of the transportation system, the ongoing disaster that is Government Motors, the transformation of terrorist enemy combatants into the equivalent of US Citizens, Climatofacism, thought crime laws, gun bans, religion bans, bans on free speech, the soda tax, the fat tax, the marriage tax, the death tax, the success tax, the tax tax; all of these will add up to an actual rebellion, I predict. States will simply refuse to implement these totalitarian diktats under the 10th Amendment. That is, if the citizens don't get there first.
TAGGED AS: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Climate Change, Congress, Constitution, Fascism, Freedom, Health Care, Liberty, Orwellian, Socialism, Taxes, Totalitarianism
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PERMANENT LINK2501.\\ Total Shit and Getting Worse
The Obama Economy at work. The only solution, is of course, total socialism, astronomic taxes, unending entitlements and nationalization of every industry. Replace the Individual with Unionized collectivization and all will function as it should in the enlightened thinker's model of economics.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Socialism, Unemployment
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PERMANENT LINK2500.\\ Holding Holder Accountable
My Alma Mater finally joins the ranks of the right thinking. The Dean Emeritus of the BU School of Law penned an article in which he points out the inherent danger of allowing KSM to be tried as if he were a common criminal.
Put one more up on the board under 'Lesson Not Learned' for the Obama Administration.
The most chilling part of the discussion, which I hadn't even considered (stressed and obsessed as I was with the granting of US Constitutional Rights to an unlawful combatant and a terrorist while I, a legal immigrant, sit without the same Rights), is the notion that 9/11 was in part successful because of the intelligence al-Qaeda obtained from the trial of the 1993 WTC Bomber in regular court. Doesn't this just seem to set up the obvious question of whether or not we're helping some other group plan another attack against us by lifting our kimono?
****UPDATE
And Thomas Sowell weighs in with his usual thoughtful take on the situation.
TAGGED AS: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Boston University, Eric Holder, KSM, Law, New York, Terrorists, Thomas Sowell
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PERMANENT LINK2499.\\ Even China Doesn't Believe It
When the world's finest purveyors of lies, propaganda, misdirection and outright fraud don't believe the snake oil you're peddling will work, then you've got a major, major problem.
What is more frustrating and depressing is that we're not even having the discussion of whether we SHOULD be doing this kind of health care reform at all. We're simply arguing over minute details about how MUCH we should mortgage, piss away, dump in the toilet. The debate in America isn't about our decline, but how fast we want it to happen.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, China, Debt, Deficit, Health Care
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PERMANENT LINK2498.\\ The Coming Collapse of China
I've long held the belief, based on my studies at college, that China would one day collapse of its own weight. The forces at work in that part of the world for the past 3000 years aren't likely to change overnight, nor have they changed since the Communists took power 60 years ago. Even more unchanging is human nature. This collapse, brought on by loosening central power, is no different in its dynamics than any other time in China's history when similarly authoritarian control was loosened just enough for the entire thing to come unwound. Add to this loosening of CCP power an immense uptick in the materialism and driven self-interest of the various regions of China and you have the ingredients for a massive splintering of the nation into a modern version of Warring States.
A recent article by Gordon Chang in Forbes detailed how the Chinese Miracle may in fact be totally fraudulent (you should read Gordon if you are remotely interested in the future of Asia). An article in the Politico today backs that up. As does the movements of various hedge fund managers and investors including the one who correctly identified the phoniness of Enron. Now granted, figuring out a company is cooking the books is different than figuring out a secretive nation is cooking the books. But the point is that not all is as it appears to be in the Middle Kingdom.
Which brings me back to my own, long held, prediction. If China collapses or begins to, the leaders will try anything to remain in power. This includes whipping up nationalism by manufacturing a war with America over Taiwan or the South China Sea or imported chicken.
In any event, if China collapses they will stop financing our debt. This will hurt us. If China collapses and tries to take it out on America, this will hurt us. Either way we should prepare for a rough go of it where China is concerned.
Of course, our only concern as a nation at the moment is whether someone is going to give us health care for free, not the imminent collapse of the international order.
TAGGED AS: America, Asia, Capitalism, CCP, China, Communism, Economy, Finance, Forbes, Gordon Chang, Politico, Totalitarianism, War
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PERMANENT LINK2496.\\ Making the Constitution Support a Power Grab
There hasn't been too much talk of whether or not the Congress has any power at all to require individuals to purchase goods or services. I mean, I know I've talked about it but nobody else seems to care.
Except a few Senators like Orrin Hatch. Now sometimes he's a bit flaky, sometimes way to right wing, sometimes not. On this topic, I totally agree with his view on the limits of Federal power.
Unfortunately nobody will care about this issue until someone brings a lawsuit to the Supreme Court about the topic.
Best bit:
"If buying fuel-efficient cars is so important for the economy, Congress could just require people to buy them. Why does Congress need complicated bailouts when it could simply order people to deposit their paychecks in certain banks, invest in certain companies or purchase certain products?"
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Health Care, Orrin Hatch, Senate, Supreme Court
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PERMANENT LINK2494.\\ For All Our Sakes
Let's hope the pronouncements of the Greatest Deliberative Body in the World are reflective of the general mood of the Senate.
If any final legislation resembled the House bill, it would mean the end of western liberal democracy, the end of American supremacy and the end of the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen.
I don't typically invoke God to help deal with the legislative process, but... God help us.
TAGGED AS: Democracy, Health Care, Liberty, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2491.\\ Three Reasons to Reject Obamacare
As a rule, I don't believe insurance is the right model to pay for health care. I don't use auto insurance to pay for my gas each week, why should I expect to have health insurance pay for drugs I decide to take? Insurance implies a financial hedge against catastrophic events for which the expense is so high that I cannot pay it and therefore I need to spread that expense amongst other policy holders. It isn't a thing I use for routine events.
That being said, I don't believe in the direction the entire health care debate is taking. It should be about reducing the cost of procedures and making those costs transparent to me, the consumer, so that I can decide where to allocate my funds. I'm purchasing a good and/or a service. I deserve to know why it costs $25k for my wife to have a baby. Instead the true cost is hidden in premiums and deductibles and bureaucracy and regulation. If consumers knew the costs to them of various services provided by doctors, competition and Adam Smith's invisible hand would come to the fore and the system would self-regulate.
There's a shitload more to say on that topic and more explanation as to why treating the entire industry the same as any other goods/services industry makes sense. But I digress. While I may have dozens of reasons for rejecting Obamacare, the National Review gives you just three. Frankly they are the only three you need. What are the reasons? The reason you should reject Obamacare is that it doesn't meet any of Obama's own stated requirements. Pretty simple.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Congress, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2490.\\ Jobless rate tops 10 pct. for first time since '83 - Yahoo! Finance
Oh yeah. The porkulus...er...stimulus really seems to be working well. I mean, why would anyone believe the AP or the Labor Department over the White House? That just downright un-American. I'll have to report you if you believe that unemployment is at 10.2% and/or that it has anything to do with Obama. This is clearly still Bush's fault.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Finance, Propaganda, Socialism, Taxes, Unemployment
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PERMANENT LINK2486.\\ As If There Were Any Doubt...
David Harsanyi deconstructs the 2000 page omnibus health bill in an article from the Denver Post last week.
I just don't understand how something with a $1.2 Trillion price tag will reduce our deficit. I also fail to see how half a million words outlining new regulations, taxes, fees, mandates, penalties and bureaucracy could possibly make health care faster, cheaper and better (hell I'd settle for any one of those three).
Best bit:
As you flip through the pages of the House bill, you will notice the word "regulation" appears 181 times. "Tax" is there 214 times. "Fees," 103 times. As we all know, nothing says "affordability" like higher taxes and fees. The word "shall" - as in "must" or "required to" - appears over 3,000 times.
God help us. Although I suppose in the near future I'll be required to say "Government help us".
TAGGED AS: David Harsanyi, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Orwellian, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2481.\\ The Conservative Thinker
You might be tempted to think the title is an oxymoron. Sometimes it is. But I've become ever more enamored with Thomas Sowell's thinking and writing and I believe he's the new voice of the reasonable intellectual who happens to be right of center.
Go read these two articles on the dismantling of America (Part One and Part Two). Taken together they are alarming yet offer a reasonable critique (free of foaming at the mouth) and a high level prescription for appropriate change.
I wonder what it is like for him to be who he is and have his opinions at Stanford?
TAGGED AS: America, Conservative, Constitution, Freedom, Liberals, Liberty, Thomas Sowell, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2479.\\ I Don't Know Whether to Applaud Her or Not
Peggy Noonan is typically spot on with her analysis. And normally I cheer and applaud out loud when I read her material. She was one of the genius minds behind Reagan's optimistic message. Her latest column, however, is so pessimistic that I have a hard time believing she's right. Or rather, I suppose I don't want to believe that she is.
Is it possible that American decline could be the result of loss of faith in her institutions to such an extent that effective government becomes untenable? What happens then? Do we become a Confederation of States loosely aligned? Does politics become local again? Were the Athenians actually correct and Republics on a continental scale are impossible to sustain?
TAGGED AS: Democracy, Peggy Noonan, Pessimism, Politics, Republic
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PERMANENT LINK2478.\\ Miscalculations on Health Care
There is a thoughtful analysis by Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic on what impact the House Democrats' bill would have on the Health Care industry. I can't say I agree with him. I happen to increasingly believe that the leftists in this country don't give a damn about the people. They are motivated by some utopian dream of manipulating the entire society and remaking it according to intellectual theory dreamed up in a bubble. It is a dangerous ideological crusade they are on and it is little different in its use of philosophy than Jihad, little different in its tactics than Mao's Cultural Revolution and destined to be little different in its results than Lenin's experiments. Theory and practice in the realm of social engineering rarely collide. The inevitable endgame is Orwellian.
Read it for yourself here.
TAGGED AS: America, Democrats, Dictatorship, Health Care, Jihad, Lenin, Mao, Orwellian, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2477.\\ Mandated Shopping
Congress cannot legislate the purchase of goods or services. It cannot force the people to buy a particular product. It cannot force the people to buy anything. This includes health insurance. In fact, the very notion of Congress forcing everyone in the nation to purchase a service is unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
"But aren't we already forced to purchase auto insurance policies?" you ask. Well of course, but that is different on two levels. First off, it is a State government, the first sovereign power under our form of government that is legislating this requirement. The Constitution specifically allocates the necessary powers to States to make and enforce such laws. Secondly, and obviously, the law only applies to people who choose to purchase a vehicle. Since owning a car is not a right (as of this writing at least - who knows, that could change any day now), there is minimal infringement upon individual liberty. It is also a key role of State government to protect our individual freedoms (including our property) from the unlawful or harmful activities of others.
If Congress is allowed to force every one of us to buy health policy, why stop there? Why not legislate that everyone must purchase an automobile from a US automaker? Or why not simply legislate directly which goods and services we are required to purchase each week and from whom we are to purchase it? Naturally to ensure 'competition' the Government itself will soon be producing goods and services and subsidizing them. And why stop there? Why not simply legislate the private sector away completely? Surely it is unfair to someone someplace that I can buy something that they cannot. We should all be forced to buy exactly the same things in the approved quantities from the approved vendors...
It is absurd, of course. Yet this is the logical extension of the argument being used to foist subpar services on us at higher prices. It is un-American, unconstitutional and represents the worst of social engineering.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Health Care, Liberty, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2475.\\ Pelosi Denies Public Access to Public Space for Public Plan Announcement
Only those who don't dissent are permitted to enjoy an America rationed out by those who know best. You're not on that list.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Elitist, Fascism, Health Care, Nancy Pelosi
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PERMANENT LINK2474.\\ The Byzantine Doctrine
This is the read of the day. I've always thought Gibbons simplified the decline of the Romans. This simplistic view is similar to the oft repeated claims of American decline. I think this view is much more nuanced and offers a glimpse of one possible future for the Republic.
TAGGED AS: America, Byzantine, Decline and Fall, Empire, Rome, Strategy, Weekly Standard
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PERMANENT LINK2473.\\ Gipper, Where Are Your Heirs?
The video speaks for itself. I'll leave it to you to draw comparisons between 1964 and today.
TAGGED AS: Barry Goldwater, Conservative, Constitution, Democracy, Finance, Freedom, Liberals, Liberty, Ronald Reagan, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2472.\\ The Smartest Man in America
Every time I read Thomas Sowell I have an increasing admiration and appreciation for his intellect. He's a philosopher in an era of sophists. He's an excellent writer and his knowledge of how the economy really works makes Friedman look like Herbert Hoover.
His latest column, entitled Magic Numbers in Politics, is a devastating critique of the current vogue of political theory that markets are evil and the root cause of the financial crisis was insufficient Statism.
Aside from being a Capitalism 101 lesson that every politician should read, it is a repudiation of the notion that the market caused the financial crisis and that the solution is Barny Frank running your life.
The best bit:
If everything is connected to everything else in a market economy, then it makes no sense to have laws and policies that declare some given goal to be a "good thing," without regard to the repercussions, which spread out in all directions, like waves that spread across a pond when you drop a rock in the water.
Amen. Now, how do we fix it?
TAGGED AS: Capitalism, Communism, Economy, Philosophy, Thomas Friedman, Thomas Sowell
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PERMANENT LINK2471.\\ One Author, Totally Deluded
I am slowly shaking off the rage that has prevented me from writing anything about this story so far this morning. I don't even know where to begin. First go read this morning's op-ed in the Boston Globe.
Where to start. First off, the entire premise of the article is that Americans are ignorant. Every single one of us is stupid and deluded with the exception of the few enlightened ones who know so much more than we do that they deserve to rule in a paternalistic style, taking care of us from womb to grave. They just don't want us to worry our pretty little heads about things we couldn't possibly understand (like the health care bill, for example, which Congress won't let us read before they ram it through the legislature). In reality they're much more cynical. They just don't want our petty natures and preferences for things like self-determination and liberty to get in the way of their well-thought out grand intellectual exercises in social re-engineering. You know, sort of like fascists believed.
From the beginning of this article I had my hackles up. I don't like people taking the piss out of this country. But I agree with the first paragraph of the text. There is pandering by politicians to the public about how great everything is all the time. But the part that turned me totally hostile and made me flew into a rage was the sentence "The fact of the matter is that whenever anything really significant has been accomplished by our government, it is precisely because it was better than the American people."
There is nothing about any government or any State that makes it better than the people by whose consent it governs and in whose interest it serves. Government is not a thing that grants nobility of action, purity of character or goodness of intention. It is a temporary social contract that exists to provide impartial equity in human interactions. It is a framework within which a society of people functions. It is not an end unto itself, it is simply an means to an end. It cannot be "better" than the public because it is made up of the public. It cannot be noble because it is nothing more than a framework of rules. It cannot be pure or good or evil for that matter because it is not a person or a sentient entity, it s a legal construct that can evaporate as soon as the will that brought it into being dissipates.
Government is not a person or a philosophy or a social experiment. It doesn't exist to advance any agenda other than that which the people have deigned to adopt. In short, therefore, it is not, has not and will never be better than the people who allow it to continue.
Offered up as some sort of proof to the contrary is FDR's goading America into WWII and wasn't the government so much more enlightened and noble than the moronic mob who opposed US entry into war.
This, of course, is ridiculous. Taking Roosevelt's leadership, principles and strategic thinking and transmuting it into some sort of beneficent action of an enlightened "Government" is nonsense. FDR was elected because people believed in his ability to lead. They trusted him when he laid the groundwork for support of the Allies. It wasn't an American Government, so much better than Americans, that got us into war. We entered the war because we were attacked by Japan and because we trusted our chosen leader to guide us in that war. The same goes for LBJ and his Great Society and for Obama's Nationalized Health Care. People elected these leaders because they believed in their principles, their agenda and their ability to lead (although in Obama's case it may simply have been Oprah's endorsement, who can say).
Now I may completely disagree with FDR, LBJ and Obama. That doesn't make them 'better' than me or somehow more enlightened than me because they have one vision and I have another. It simply means their vision is the one that counts because they were elected. Of course, their vision could be totally wrong. In that case, they are no more stupid than I nor more ignorant and I am no more better. I'm simply right and they are wrong. And since history is written or at least kindest to the victors, in 50 years I have no doubt that whatever happens over the course of Obama's (hopefully short) tenure will be viewed as 'right' and 'better' than whatever else would have happened but didn't.
In short, it is stupid to ascribe supernatural 'better' powers to events which happened over those which didn't. If Washington had been captured and hung and we were all British, we'd have a short lesson in our grade schools about the aborted rebellion that thank God was put down by the King. And this boob writing in the Boston Globe would be gushing at how much better the King was than the population which wanted to separate from Britain. Imagine if the King didn't have the courage to stand up to those who wanted a revolution! This is the same argument as the author seems to believe is a proper guiding principle.
I'm all for humility when dealing with people that cannot possibly compare in any metric of national greatness or who are our friends. But when it comes to despots, thugs, criminal and rogue regimes and belligerent potential enemies, then it is Go America time and we should be as pro-USA as possible. It is incumbent upon everyone in this nation to be as proud as possible and to lord it over any potential enemy. We know our faults, but just like a family we don't have to air dirty laundry and weaknesses for our enemies to pick apart and potentially exploit. We should be as boastful as possible. And so should our leaders. Because if neither we nor they believe that this is the greatest place on earth, the grandest experiment in history, the literal shining city on the hill, then we are totally at the mercy of our enemies' psychological manipulations. Just ask the USSR how things went when they actually began to believe they were the Evil Empire.
The author asks, by what standard is one nation greater than any other nation? He then proceeds to detail failings of our system in comparison to others. He's right. There isn't any one standard. It is a comprehensive standard that takes into account financial power, knowledge, scientific contribution, military capability, cultural impact, geography, morality, guiding principles of government, the legal system, technical prowess, businesses, literature, ecology, social mobility, national flexibility and capacity for change, material resources, historical impact, international esteem, immigration numbers, inventions and overall quality of life. By THAT standard there is no doubt who is number one. But if you still have a lingering question as to who is the best or by which standard we should judge such a superlative, then simply ask anyone in the world today: "What country is the most important in the world?" Nobody is going to say Sweden just because they have higher home ownership and greater wealth distribution. I defy you to find a person on the planet since Teddy Roosevelt sent the Fleet round the world who would claim the United States of America is something other than the most important single nation on the planet.
The author holds up healthcare as a reason why we are not the greatest country on earth. He claims we are the only industrialized nation without a national health care system. He clearly doesn't know his own government. Medicare and Medicaid are both national health care plans available to any and all Americans who need them.
But that point aside, the next argument is that immigration patterns demonstrate that every country in the world is just as good the next one. Yes Mexicans come to the US but Turks go to Germany and Indians go to Great Britain and Arabs go to France. So there you have it, every nation has people who want to go to it and therefore the USA cannot claim it is better because people are immigrating. Balls. Everyone from every nation comes to the United States. The Japanese don't immigrate to Germany. The Chinese don't immigrate to Italy. Tajiks don't flock in huge numbers to Brazil. The fact is that everybody in the world comes the United States. This is an immigrant nation and that regenerative power is the source of our great strength. We get the best, the most industrious, those with the greatest hunger and thirst for opportunity. They come to our shores in droves, by the shipload. They attend our schools and take that BETTER KNOWLEDGE back to whatever shithole they came from in an effort to improve their nations. And at the end of the day, anyone can become an American. A guy from Senegal can't move to Tokyo and become Japanese. A single mother from Mexico can't sneak across the border into Germany and become German. Anyone can come into this country and become part of it. They add their distinctive ability, experience and knowledge to the whole and THAT makes us the greatest nation on earth thank you very much.
The author continues his everyone-wins-a-prize train of thought. And I have to quote it here because it is just such rubbish:
"The point of all this isn't that America doesn't have a lot to be proud of. It does. The point is that just about every country has a lot to be proud of, and America has no more right to assume it is the greatest nation in the world than does France, Switzerland, China, or Russia."
Really? The United States isn't greater than Switzerland? That is ridiculous and ultimately beside the point. Any nation can say whatever it wants about its own national greatness. The proof is in the historical record and will be written by the greatest nation no matter what the others say or do. I'm claiming that this greatest nation is the US. If the Swiss want to believe they're the greatest then fine, let them do so. I would apply my comprehensive metric described above to blast that nonsense out of the water, but whatever. I would ask my future generations when they read the history of the 20th and 21st Centuries, which was the greatest of the great powers? They won't say Switzerland.
I had thought the most ludicrous argument was past at this point. But no. The author has more for me to tear to pieces. He claims:
"None of this would make much difference if the self-congratulation was just harmless bragging. But there are consequences. A country that believes it is the greatest in the world is also less likely to be constrained by that world. One could argue that the Iraq war was a direct result of a sense of national infallibility. So was our willingness to torture, our reluctance to admit our mistakes in Afghanistan, our culpability in the global recession, and our foot-dragging on global warming. Such a nation is also less likely to introspect or to strive for true greatness because it believes its greatness has already arrived."
Egad! It isn't harmless bragging for starters, it is legitimate belief. And a great nation has no obligation to be 'constrained by the world'. Can you imagine? We're suddenly in the business of constraining nations and subjecting them to the diktats of a bureaucracy someplace in Geneva. No nation should be constrained by the world. Nations constrain other nations. Nations coerce and force and lead and encourage other nations. Nations are the primary actors in global affairs. "The World" doesn't exist and even if it did, no entity has authority to constrain the United States. The United States is governed by one document that supersedes any and all laws. It is illegitimate the US Government that seeks to submit the United States to be constrained by the world. That is a US Government that has abrogated its duty, exceeded its authority and must be dismantled and replaced by one that adheres to the Constitution.
The Iraq war was a direct result of the strategic need to dispose of Saddam Hussein and ensure the Iraqi oil supply by creating the conditions for the long term stability and prosperity offered by a free form of government chosen by the people of that nation. That stability and prosperity will reduce the threat of Iraq becoming a reactionary power that disrupts an already unstable part of the world. And yes, our belief that we had the power to create that stable situation was a direct result of our belief in our national greatness and in our nation as a force for good. The author would imply that if we had only been smarter and more humble, we could have lived with total chaos in the middle east in perpetuity. He has a right to believe that, of course, until such chaos leads to the murder of anyone he loves. Then he might wonder why we didn't try to do something, given our great capabilities.
The final thoughts of the author require some analysis. He says that America can't take criticism and that Americans constantly need to be flattered and have their pride attended to. I completely disagree. One major part of our national greatness is our ability to change. Change isn't something that comes from the State or is organized by Presidents. Change is an unseen shift in attitude and beliefs that take place over time in the people that constitute the nation. Nobody forced Americans to recycle (as of yet). And who in the 1940s would have cared much for it? I'm not an environmentalist yet I recycle because I believe it is the right thing to do. Had someone tried to legislate that morality it would certainly have backfired in a person like myself. Lincoln freed the slaves in States not controlled by the Union, yes. But his actions, his enlightened wisdom, didn't create change in attitudes. That change had been brewing for decades and continued to brew for decades to follow. Change flowed UPWARD, not DOWNWARD from the enlightened ones.
Americans don't need flattery. We know our weaknesses and it is a sign of our greatness the degree to which we self-flagellate and wring our hands and agonize over flaws in our national character that a people such as, say, the French, would be aghast at. The Chinese don't sit around talking about how morally corrupt they are. The Russians don't agonize about being a nation of nationalists. The Germans don't sit around and wonder how on earth they got to be so racist. The Cubans don't have thousands of call-in talk radio shows where they debate the pros and cons of teaching evolution in schools. This is a nation in constant flux. Change is constantly flowing in various directions. It isn't all in a uniform march to a better society as progressives and end-of-historites would have you believe. There isn't a logical conclusion to the change ever flowing in a constant direction. But it is more ongoing and churning change than any people anywhere in time or place have ever seen. And that churn wasn't created by Barack Obama's executive order. Change is a feature, a characteristic of America and Americans.
In one final jibe at Americans, he despairs that American Government may be just as good as American people and therefore the end of times is near. I would argue that America's elected officials have always been, and are by design, the same or worse than the people they represent. It is precisely because the politician is a cynic or is a pretentious, self-righteous pretender, that they are elected in the first place. It is their ability to appear that they know what they're doing that encourages us to vote for them. The Constitution recognized this and the founders acknowledged the base morals of humanity and built into the system the ability for self-correction.
We should truly despair when the State becomes the ultimate achievement of mankind. The ultimate expression of our intellect. The basis for reorganizing society along the lines of those who are the 'best'. We should truly despair when the 'best' rule us. Their capabilities coupled with human nature and unchecked ego give rise to dictators and emperors.
TAGGED AS: America, Arrogant, Barack Obama, Boston Globe, Congress, Constitution, Democracy, Hubris, Leftist, Liberals, Liberty, Nation, Principle, State
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PERMANENT LINK2468.\\ Baucus Bill Bull
Read this article and then defend the plan.
My favorite bit:
"Only in government accounting could an additional 29 million people receive new health coverage with a savings of $81 billion. By this congressional logic, America could insure all 6 billion people in the world at a savings of trillions of dollars."
UPDATE:
There's also this analysis which demonstrates the government socially engineering a dependent society where it makes more sense to do nothing than it does to actually work.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Health Care, Liar, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2467.\\ How's That Economic Philosophy Working Out For You?
I guess taxing the shit out of the rich and small businesses and redistributing it all to the poor isn't working out all that well. Obamanomics in action. Coming soon to a State near you.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Obamanomics, Socialism, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2466.\\ There They Go Again...
The radicals and racists were out in force again, foaming at the mouth and wearing wife beaters. If only they'd listen to the enlightened ones who seek to govern us and do what is in our interest.
If only they'd do what's right for the greater good and surrender their entire paychecks to the Philosopher King so he can spread it around properly. If only they weren't so ignorant they'd see how much of a blight on the world they are with their SUVs and their rampant reproduction and their sugary drinks and their carbon footprints and their gluttony. Better that they get state mandated (and funded) vasectomies so that they don't add to the population burden. Also, to avoid being fined, they should embark on state mandated goodwill trips abroad to apologize profusely to America's friends and enemies for how terrible the nation has been since its founding. Don't forget mandated health insurance. Pay up. Don't forget the check for mandated Acorn funding. And don't think you're getting a raise this year since your salary is set according to rates established by Those Who Know Best in Washington. Did you buy your mandated GM automobile yet? Hurry up and submit the dues to the Union you were mandated to join.
Grrrr....
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Fascism, Freedom, Liberty, Socialism, Tea Party, Town Halls
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PERMANENT LINK2461.\\ Finance Committee Democrat: Health Bill is gibberish
Well hell. If one of the guys who WROTE the damn thing won't even bother to support it, why should anyone?
More evidence that this blunderbuss is a solution in search of a problem.
TAGGED AS: Health Care, Nonsense, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2460.\\ Internet Danger
I think that the recent decision to let lapse the ICANN governing agreement is quite possibly the most dangerous thing our nation could possibly do. This is like the British giving up the Royal Navy in the 1920s. The fact is that the Internet is a product of American ingenuity and is our nation's intellectual capital. It is a strategic asset of the Republic. We've given it up to the thugs and dictators (including our future enemy China) and they will not hesitate to use it against us in every conceivable way. They will attack our industries, our infrastructure, our technologies, our universities and use the Internet, as only authoritarian states can, to undermine the existence of the Republic itself.
The world is falling apart, we're encouraging it to do so and remain more interested in Dancing With the Stars and the 2016 Olympics than the 20% effective unemployment and the dramatic fall in the relative power of our nation, our culture and our civilization.
The Visigoths are at the gate and we've just given them the key.
TAGGED AS: America, China, Decline and Fall, Disaster, ICANN, Internet, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2459.\\ China Warning
I've harped on this for years. Ever since studying China in college, I've harbored the notion that there will be war with them. Read this article and think deep about it. It isn't the rambling of an idiot or a warmonger or a neocon. This is hard evidence and solid analysis that we are indeed revisiting history. I would argue it is 1932 all over again.
My children will have to fight the Chinese because of 20 years of weakness and inept leadership when it comes to the China question.
2457.\\ Well Everything's Going Fine...
Unemployment at nearly 10%, the highest in 26 years. Looks like Obamanomics is going swimmingly. Just like Stalin's, Mao's and Castro's state control of the means of production, our leftist economic policies are doomed to failure (as the French, Germans and British have begun to realize).
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Leftist, Obamanomics, Socialism, Unemployment
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PERMANENT LINK2456.\\ The Morality of Health Care
Far be it from me to dispute morality with a professor of ethics, but I would offer up the basic notion that humans don't form governments in order to legislate morality. It does not, can not, has not ever worked when the State takes on the role of father/mother/nanny.
Perhaps his argument that collectivization in support of the weakest among us is indeed the Christian and moral thing to do. And I encourage his efforts to rally the public to voluntarily support that. But don't ever make the mistake of attempting to FORCE morality on the mob and COERCE them into following your ethos by way of legislation.
It will fail and it will fail spectacularly like every other social engineering attempt before it.
TAGGED AS: Christianity, Health Care, Morality, San Francisco Chronicle
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PERMANENT LINK2454.\\ He Lies After All
Look no further than this bit by Jake Tapper of ABC News.
While fact checking the Obama administration, surely a first for ABC News, Jake discovered that holy shit! The President made up a bunch of crap to push his health care agenda. Who's using scare tactics now Barry?
A representative bit:
"But President Obama's description that Beaton's "insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne" is not accurate."
i.e. the President lied.
TAGGED AS: ABC News, Barack Obama, Congress, Health Care, Jake Tapper, Liar, Media
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PERMANENT LINK2453.\\ My Alma-Mater, Intensely Biased
And they want me to give more money. There is a zero percent chance of my supporting my alma-mater so long as they employ ragingly biased staff who are ostensibly educating our children in how to critically think in the world. Critically think, yes, but only from a leftist viewpoint apparently.
Why is there no room for independent, balanced thought in our universities? They've turned into factories for clones, so rigid in their thinking that those that get churned out must be in shock when they enter the real world.
TAGGED AS: Bias, Boston University, Education, Leftist
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PERMANENT LINK2450.\\ Holding Out the Hand of Friendship
"...to everyone except your friends" should be the tagline. Daniel Henninger has a great analysis on Obama's peculiar outreach to thugs and dictators and his total neglect of legitimate friends, infant democracies looking for help and struggling democracy movements in critical parts of the world.
The critical bit:
"In trying to plumb why the U.S. won't promote or protect its own best idea, one starts with Mr. Obama's remarks at the "reset" visit in Moscow: "America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country."
Setting aside that no one is talking about the U.S. literally "imposing" a government in this day and age, what is one to make of a left-of-center American political leader taking such a diffident stance toward democratic movements? The people who live under the sway of the top dog in all the nations that have earned high-level Obama envoys are the world's poor, and one would expect the social-justice left to support them. That may no longer be true on the American or European left."
Good question. Why aren't we out there promoting the best thing about this nation? It is our greatest, original idea and we've thrown it in the dustbin. The world's poor and oppressed, the natural constituency of the liberal left, are thrown to the wolves and left to twist in the wind.
At least George Bush followed rhetoric with action by carpet bombing the African continent with billions in practical assistance to prevent the spread of AIDS and malaria and fund drug cocktails for those who already were living with HIV. Actions. Not just words.
When will America stand up for those that seek to attain our freedoms? When will we follow words of hope and change with action? We gin up these movements with rhetoric and grandiose speeches and then when the people actually rise against their overlords, we sit back and watch as they're mercilessly crushed.
At some point, the stock in Democracy and Freedom will fall so low that no one will bother listening to the words anymore.
TAGGED AS: Africa, Barack Obama, Democracy, Dictatorship, Freedom, Liberty, Rhetoric
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PERMANENT LINK2447.\\ Success No Matter What
John Stossel can be a bit of a prick sometimes. But he's got it bang on with this bit today on RCP.
Best part is his reference to an earlier, quite prescient article he wrote:
Given time, the economy, unless totally crippled by government intervention, will regenerate itself. That's because an economy is not a machine that needs jumpstarting. It is people who have objectives they want to achieve. They will not sit on their hands forever waiting for government to 'fix' things. Instead, they work to overcome obstacles to get what they want. Some banks are struggling, but there are still people who want to lend money and people who want to borrow it. They will find each other without government help
Hear hear. The only thing missing are some hard numbers on the colossal waste of Cash for Clunkers, the various bailouts, the nationalization of GM, etc.
Additionally, I would extend his argument by suggesting that this isn't just the standard WH spin on the economy we always see. No this is worse. This is an actual liberal elitist philosophy, a cynical world view, that says if we lie enough to the morons out there on topics they don't understand, we'll eventually convince them of our words. Provided the lie is big enough and the charisma is strong enough. It extends beyond the economy and into the realm of health care, Iran, international trade, the Unions, taxes, and on and on. It is Obama's governing philosophy and he uses it with everything. Tell them enough times and with the right intonation that everything is great because I'm good looking and charismatic and smarter than you are and you will eventually believe me.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Finance, Jobs, John Stossel
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PERMANENT LINK2446.\\ California Coming Around to Common Sense?
This article in Forbes paints a bleak picture of California's experiment with radically liberal politics. Unemployment in some areas over 20% and a host of other problems have led some to stop and think that perhaps LOWER taxes and LESS government spending might just be the ticket after all.
What is interesting is that the state has often served as a bellweather for economic and social philosophy for much of the rest of the country. If they pull it back from the brink and turn it around using a pro-business, conservative approach, I wonder if the nation will follow?
TAGGED AS: California, Economy, Environazis, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2445.\\ Is Ron Paul Insane?
Watch this. I happen to think he IS insane, but that doesn't negate the fact that he is totally correct on this topic.
As much as it pains me to say so, he is right, so is Rick Perry, so is the Tenth Amendment and so are the 7 States that have reaffirmed state sovereignty and so is Arizona which will soon vote to nullify Federal mandates such as nationalized healthcare.
And as much as it angers me and pains me to admit, there is an increasing likelihood that it will come to a breach in the not too distant future.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
TAGGED AS: 10th Amendment, Freedom, Government, Liberty, Politics, Revolution, Ron Paul
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PERMANENT LINK2444.\\ Depends on What Your Definition of 'We' Is
Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times is bang on in one key area and it is a notion previously put to paper by Pat Buchanan on his blog. That notion is the dissolution of the nation. There is no 'we' anymore and with interest diverging so dramatically there is a real danger of the entire project coming apart.
I normally don't agree with Friedman's pontifications as they are routinely patronizing, naive, ultra elitist and smack of big brother. But in this opinion piece, he is absolutely right (for the wrong reasons). He believes that a result of all this ill will and rot at the center of American politics will be the assassination of Obama. Unfortunately he falls into the trap he himself is describing when he attributes all these problems to the right wing extremists who are out to hurt his President. The President and his party are as much to blame, if not more so, for the current state of politics as the opposition. Their left-wing policies are outside the mainstream of centrist America and that is causing an absolute fury that they cannot see or comprehend (Friedman himself is in this category. He cannot fathom that the rage in America might be justified and directed at radically left leaning policies of establishing a nanny state).
I personally agree with Gore Vidal in this stunning interview from the London Times; Obama is a danger to Republic. Whether that danger is more from Barry being inept and inexperienced and naive or from an electorate that is hugely ignorant yet massively influential via technology (blogging, twitter, netroots, et al). Either way, American politics have gone off the rail and the future of the Republic is at great risk. There is a real danger of this becoming yet another point in World history where the closet dictators among us may rise to seize the reigns. Vidal's point: it may require dictatorship to simply hold the thing together.
I don't want a President assassinated. No matter how awful he may be. No matter that he may be destroying the very nation he promised to defend. But there is something powerful in Jefferson's exhortation to take up arms against tyranny. Even more to the point, there is an absolute civic requirement to throw off the shackles of an imposed system. We are less free today than we were under King George III. If the Stamp Act required us to take up arms then what on Earth would our historical revolutionaries say about taxing people for drinking soda, forcibly vaccinating the population and forcing citizens to pay for health care or go to jail? What would any person who valued individual liberty, any patriot, say about faceless bureaucrats thousands of miles away deciding what your employer should pay you because it is in the "interest" of the "nation" to keep you below a certain income level?
I increasingly suspect that the entire thing is coming off its wheels. The ancient Maya may have had the end of the world pegged correctly.
TAGGED AS: Assassination, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Gore Vidal, New York Times, Pat Buchanan, Politics, Revolution, Thomas Friedman, Times of London
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PERMANENT LINK2441.\\ Promise-Breaker-in-Chief
What the fuck is going on in Washington? Aside from human nature, unrestrained greed, rampant corruption and outright fraud, that is.
Funding that no one has asked for, for projects that the Pentagon does not want. And a President so weak he can't even live up to his own words by lifting a pen to strike down horrific wasteful spending at a time of unprecedented fiscal peril.
What a bunch of crooks we have running the place. Where's Patrick Henry when you need him?
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Congress, Finance, Liar, Military, Pentagon, Revolution, Spending
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PERMANENT LINK2440.\\ Vivre Sarkozy!
Sarkozy takes it to Barry. When the President of France is tougher than you are, you might be a bit of a wuss.
Seriously though. In the dark days of the early 2000's, the French were weak and sniveling annoyances. Now they're leading the freaking charge while we read teleprompters and dream of futures where Americans are controlled from the District of Columbia to live and breathe and think in a manner consistent with the ideology of the ivory tower theorists.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, France, Iran, Nicolas Sarkozy, United Nations, US
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PERMANENT LINK2439.\\ He Ain't No Martin Sheen
Sad but true. Sad in that 48% of the electorate saw clearly what the other 52% didn't. I wonder what the world would be like without the liberal myopia of youth?
Best bit:
"This is the fine mess Barack Obama told us would never happen if Americans would elect him to soothe the fears of the frightened and bank the ambitions of evildoers of the world. Suddenly, the president has to deal with headaches, a thousand town halls, with hundreds of thousands of angry bigots, racists and Nazis of hysterical liberal imagination jeering his scheme to take over the health care of the nation, never prepared him for. He's got headaches no speechwriter can cure. "
He's got headaches no speechwriter can cure. I love that line.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, China, Europe, Iran, Russia, US, Washington Times, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2438.\\ Stimula-tastic!
Nice. So let me understand this, 4 million have LOST their jobs since March but the Federal government has GROWN by 25,000?. And you want them to choose and administer your health care? Fuck me.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Government, USA Today
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PERMANENT LINK2437.\\ America is Post-WW1 Britain
Shiver. "Australia is already linking its fortunes to China through commodity ties."
TAGGED AS: China, Dollar, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2436.\\ Speak Softly and Tip Toe Around Your Enemies
What bothers me the most about this article is that it makes plain our weakness and a deliberate choice to remain weak. The proposal to shrink the Navy's carrier force in the face of current and emerging competitors who may resort to asymmetrical warfare may make sense in light of budget constraints. However, our current force projection doctrine centered as it is around carrier strike groups, must be REPLACED with something else. You don't simply pick up the ball and say, well I guess I can't compete anymore so I'm going home. The doctrine could change to smaller, stealthier, carriers, better defended carriers, space-based carriers, rock-solid missile defense systems, or a move away from carrier doctrine entirely.
Canceling the F22, canceling the Army's future combat systems program, canceling the space program, canceling missile defense; these make us look weak and vulnerable. The surest way to invite a rising competitor to do battle is give them every indication that you're old and tired and weak. This was a central theme in Germany's bid to compete with Britain in the late 1800's and early 1900s. That ended in disaster for both.
TAGGED AS: Aircraft Carriers, China, F22, Military, Missile Defense, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2434.\\ Big Brother Chu to the Rescue
Aside from the sheer self-righteous assertion that everybody except for a few lunatics in the sticks agree totally with climato-nazis, does it bother no one but me that this story is a page directly out of Orwell's novel?
I mean, the government has to teach us because we clearly don't know what is good for us?
I don't trust government, I don't admire government, I don't need government to run my life for me. I don't need regulations on everything including the appropriate way to piss in the morning. Pave the roads, field the army and keep the Islamic fanatics away from my children. Anything else you do is something I don't need and frankly don't very much care for.
TAGGED AS: Environazis, EPA, Government, Liberty, Steven Chu
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PERMANENT LINK2433.\\ Disarming the Responsible
In a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece, Bret Stephens lays out why America is doomed. Not just America but all western peace loving nations.
I would differ in my long term predictions, however. Appeasement and weakness in the West historically invites war and turmoil. And so it will again. A nation or group of nations will attempt to exploit our perceived or actual weakness. The war will be long and brutal and ultimately we will prevail. We'll undergo decades of self-flagellation for ever having been so gullible and naive. I'm a historian. Mark my words that it will happen.
The best bit:
"In 1943, Walter Lippmann observed that the disarmament movement had been 'tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament.' That ought to have been the final word on the subject."
TAGGED AS: America, Appeasement, Barack Obama, Economy, Wall Street Journal
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PERMANENT LINK2430.\\ Throughout this campaign...er...effort
I love this exchange. Since most people probably didn't see it (cause no one watches George's show), I invite you now. My favorite part is where Obama forgets he's President and thinks he's still on the campaign trail.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Health Care, Liar
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PERMANENT LINK2429.\\ Andrew Breitbart is my new best friend
...and he's a superhero to boot.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Liberals, NEA
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PERMANENT LINK2428.\\ ACORN on the Offense
Thank you Publius.
Read the CEO's bio at Politico after watching this video.
TAGGED AS: ACORN, Democrats
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PERMANENT LINK2424.\\ Pelosi Spouts Off (Again)
Apparently, opposing the left-wing agenda in this nation is now tantamount to assassination! According to Nancy Pelosi, if you dare speak out, that is the same thing as killing people.
I wonder if the Parliament had a similar view in 1775? Certainly the acts of opposition at that time were more severe than Joe Wilson verbally pointing out the obvious. I mean, they tarred and feathered government agents, boiling them in tar until they died.
Although she is totally ignorant of it, she is the modern day Lord North to many, many people in this country. There are parts of this country literally on the verge of armed rebellion and invoking Harvey Milk is like a three day waiting period for a serial killer. Totally irrelevant, misses the point and only further enrages.
TAGGED AS: Nancy Pelosi, Revolution
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PERMANENT LINK2421.\\ Homeland Schmomeland
I'm increasingly of the opinion that these jokers don't have a fucking clue what they're doing.
Am I wrong?
TAGGED AS: Congress, Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano
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PERMANENT LINK2420.\\ She Said it Best
Apparently, Nancy Pelosi is not at all focused on corruption in her own wing of the political spectrum while in the meantime she's demanding investigations into the previous Administration's alleged corruption.
HYPOCRITE.
But she said it best: I'm Clueless
TAGGED AS: Congress, Corruption, Nancy Pelosi
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PERMANENT LINK2417.\\ China on the March
The news is full of stories today on how the Chinese are eating our lunch while we sit around and fiddle with out entitlement programs.
Don't expect the current bunch of neophytes and weaklings to do a damn thing about it so long as they believe health care, wealth redistribution and government guarantees are all inherent human rights.
This is alarming and has been warned of for at least 15 years.
2416.\\ Obama the Weak
In a bold act of appeasement and surrender to our enemies, Obama has scrapped the missile defense shield.
Quite apart from being reckless and feckless and exposing us to nuclear threats, it also hangs our allies out to dry. Poland the Czechs will put this backstab on par with the last time they were bent over and fucked in the ass by the West, 1938 and 39.
We've just lost Eastern Europe to the orbit of the Russian Empire. Nicely done Barry. Anything else you'd liked to surrender? Let's do it now and get it over with.
Lot's of news on this here, here, here and here.
What is most distressing is the apparent assumption by the boobs in DC that by sacrificing the security of the American and European peoples, they'll get Russia to cooperate on a range of issues (Iran). A first year undergrad in European History knows better than this and is clearly more fit to run our foreign policy.
TAGGED AS: Appeasement, Barack Obama, Missile Defense, NATO, Poland, Russia
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PERMANENT LINK2414.\\ Seems Like It's Going Well...
If you needed further proof that the current class of clowns has no idea what it is doing, read this story.
Obama's economic philosophy, borne of ivory tower theories and with a heavy dose of idealistic communal flower power, will end up God-Damning America just as his supporters desire.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, The Telegraph
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PERMANENT LINK2410.\\ So Basically He Did Lie
Facts are terrible things when they contradict the illusion you are trying to construct.
To wit, the President's assertions in his health care speech last week were false.
I believe that makes him a non-truth teller. Or, as some may say, a LIAR.
Best part (talking about Barry's claims that Alabama was an egregious example of how the evil insurance companies are killing Americans):
"In fact, the Birmingham News reported immediately following the speech that the state's largest health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, has about a 75% market share. A representative of the company indicated that its "profit" averaged only 0.6% of premiums the past decade, and that its administrative expense ratio is 7% of premiums, the fourth lowest among 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans nationwide.
Similarly, a Dec. 31, 2007, report by the Alabama Department of Insurance indicates that the insurer's ratio of medical-claim costs to premiums for the year was 92%, with an administrative expense ratio (including claims settlement expenses) of 7.5%. Its net income, including investment income, was equivalent to 2% of premiums in that year.
In addition to these consumer friendly numbers, a survey in Consumer Reports this month reported that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama ranked second nationally in customer satisfaction among 41 preferred provider organization health plans. The insurer's apparent efficiency may explain its dominance, as opposed to a lack of competition--especially since there are no obvious barriers to entry or expansion in Alabama faced by large national health insurers such as United Healthcare and Aetna. "
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Health Care, Liar, Wall Street Journal
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PERMANENT LINK2409.\\ Poor Canada
And indirectly, poor America. Since our national educational, economic and technological cultures are so closely linked, this spells major trouble.
Even without overt militarism, a nation can defend itself in at least SOME aspect. Not in Canada where they're basically giving it all away for free.
TAGGED AS: Canada, China, Espionage, US
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PERMANENT LINK2408.\\ Another Reason I Love Michael Barone
...he agrees with me (albeit a week later).
Best bit:
"In a democracy, citizens don't always take the advice of their betters, even that of Friedman and the three experts he quotes -- a climateprogress.org blogger, a former Clinton budget official and a 'global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College.'
TAGGED AS: China, Michael Barone, New York Times, Thomas Friedman
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PERMANENT LINK2407.\\ Where Are You James Monroe?
He never would have let this happen.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Hugo Chavez, Monroe Doctrine, Russia, Venezuala
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PERMANENT LINK2406.\\ Peter Ferrara: The Keynesians Were Wrong Again - WSJ.com
A ha! In a giant fuck you to the enlightened thought leaders (including Poobah Krugman himself) The Wall Street Journal presents a view opposite to that of the Keynesians and the other Ivory Tower elitists.
Good read.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Keynes
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PERMANENT LINK2403.\\ 'Public Option' Unlimited But Paid For, Leaving Number-Crunchers Perplexed - Political News - FOXNews.com
As if there were any doubt, now even his own CBO says the math is impossible.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Health Care, Nonsense
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PERMANENT LINK2402.\\ Union Hell
Holy crap. Turns out that one of the bills under consideration to reform health care will force health workers in hospitals and doctor's offices around the country into labor unions.
Sorry, this is the 21st century isn't it? For a moment I thought we were back in the late 1800s.
Forced unionization did wonders for the auto industry in this country. And mining. And manufacturing. And the airlines. In fact, I can't think of a time or place (within living memory) where labor unions actually helped anything at all (besides helping themselves of course, enriching their members).
Not only is it unfair, it is un-American and anti-capitalistic. In the age of instant communication and universal distribution of knowledge, labor unions have long outlived any usefulness they once had. They are now no more than parasites, sucking the soul out of our economic bloodstream.
TAGGED AS: Health Care, Unions, Wall Street Journal
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PERMANENT LINK2401.\\
In a piece penned from Bizarro America, Thomas 'the world is flat' Friedman waxes poetic over the totalitarian state of China and wishes could please have some more wasteful spending in Congress if it means that we can finally impose all that is good and enlightened on the dumb rubes here in America.
Fuck freedom and liberty if it means the electorate (mob) can overrule those intellectuals who are fit to govern them. The unwashed masses shouldn't have a say in their own lives if it means that lifestyle conflicts with the philosophy of the ivory tower.
An American Liberal Democrat advocating totalitarian dictatorship of the enlightened elite. I never thought I'd ever live to see the day.
TAGGED AS: China, Dictatorship, Economy, Leninism, Politics, Thomas Friedman
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PERMANENT LINK2400.\\ Barone Gets it Right (Again)
With his usual direct style, Michael Barone points out the increasing absurdity of the plan(s) to change how health care works in this country.
My favorite part:
"There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.
The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits."
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Health Care, Michael Barone, Washington Examiner
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PERMANENT LINK2397.\\ The Public Option
Seems to be going well in the UK as well as in France.
Yeah. I can't imagine why we don't want our system to emulate theirs.
Let me reiterate. Anything run by the Federal Government is wasteful, inefficient and costly. Oh and typically results in a piss poor product.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Sorry, I'm missing the part that says "Congress shall have the power to create, administer, fund and control Health Care" and I'm also missing the part of the Bill of Rights that lists health care as one of the enumerated rights...
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, France, Health Care, Socialism, UK
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PERMANENT LINK2396.\\ Make Me World of Warcraft Czar
Oh great. We have a new, extra-constitutional government appointee this morning. Apparently Barry saw fit to put a union man in as manufacturing czar. Well. No one better than a union guy to oversee State control of the means of production in this dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marx would be proud.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Communism, Dictatorship, Marxism, Unions
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PERMANENT LINK2394.\\ Paul Krugman and the Advance of Madness
Yes it is old. But I didn't do any web surfing on Friday to spot it. So here it is.
In a quick blog post to (his blog? the NY Times Editorial Page? some random website he maintains? I can't figure it out), the Great American Poobah professes disbelief and surprise at the hate mail his political rants have generated.
On the one hand he calmly expresses a desire to not have people react so vehemently, so filled with blind rage, at writings that they may not have even read. And he cleverly weaves into this thread a charge that anyone who disagrees with Obama and the Liberal agenda in general must be retarded.
So we pair a legitimate observation on the temperature of the political discourse in this country with school yard insults from the 6th grade. Nice. Worthy of a Nobel laureate with his prominence.
I commented. But in case my comment is 'moderated' out of existence as routinely happens at the NYTimes.com website (regardless of how polite I am in disagreeing), I've asked some rhetorical questions (and statements) below that I'd love to ask Paul if I ever met him:
Dear Paul,
Why is it "bizarre" to think that the Obama administration is full of socialists, ideologues, angry leftists and others with a penchant for militant elitism? The news is replete with examples on a weekly, if not daily basis. Need I point them out to you?
Why does the intensity of the discourse strike you as amazing and "bizarre"? It is pretty clear that the nation has been divided for quite some time. Or did you think that when Obama was elected that everyone would see the light, swoon, smoke the bong and go into a haze of total agreement?
You were not "questioning Bush's bona fides" during the previous administration, Mr. Krugman. You have called him a liar, a war profiteer, an idiot, an elitist, an ideologue. a fundamentalist, denigrated his religious bent, suggested he inherited the White House and myriad other distateful things
Your articles on innocuous subjects like health care, economics and macro modeling provoke such 'incoherent rage' because they are political and you mean them to be political. And when you invoke your Nobel Prize to make points about politics you appear, and indeed are, elitist. And when those points are decidedly leftist in nature, paint everything on the right as a product of mental deficiency, and fawn over anything on the left, then you will provoke the kind of rage you see in your inbox. Seems pretty straight forward to me and I imagine in reality you truly understand it. Which leads me to my next point
Why are you so mock sincere with your statements? Feigning ignorance on subjects you should clearly have mastery over is the lowest form of intellectual discourse.
Need I point out that if Obama had come in proposing an agenda identical to the last administration, then you would not be supporting him and indeed be writing articles mocking his intelligence? It is totally irrelevant to point out something with is impossible. Why the false, straw man argument? It is beneath you.
Why do you invoke mental acuity to explain why the right doesn't see the absolute, perfect correctness beaming forth from the light of knowledge you've hoisted high?
In fact, involvement in politics is beneath you. Put your brain to work and solve our problems. Stay off the editorial and opinion pages where you simply diminish yourself, your ideas and liberalism in general.
Here's what my comment said:
"Why must there be something 'wrong' with people's mental faculties out there Paul? Is it possible, just possible, that the unwashed masses are right and you are wrong? Why this disdain for the mob when it rejects the light of liberal enlightenment you've bestowed on it?
You're a smart guy. Drop the emotion. Reassess. Quit calling people retarded because they think you're full of crap."
Lastly, does a minor blog post from a week ago warrant this rant? In and of itself, no. But I get pretty worked up at these elitists spewing about how dumb everyone else is and not getting challenged.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Elitist, Leftist, New York Times, Nonsense, Paul Krugman, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2393.\\ LA Times and Editorializing the Absurd
If you can get through today's editorial in the LA Times without laughing then you've bested me. The naivete of the entire position is stunning and even more so from an alleged news organization.
The notion that any regime in Iran just wants to sit down and talk with us is absurd. The Iranian interest is not in making things smoother with the United States. If they do that and thaw the relations, the regime will topple under a groundswell of public pressure. The only way they cling to power is to paint the 'other' as an evil, interfering hegemon bent on the destruction of the Iranian people, culture and Islamic religion. If relations were to thaw, the nuclear program would come under international scrutiny which is not in the mullahs' interest.
Heeding Iran's call for talks at this juncture is no different than acquiescing to HItler's request for conference in 1938 in Munich. That went so well that surely we should give it another go. After all, talking to thugs and dictators has always worked out.
TAGGED AS: Iran, LA Times, Nonsense, Nuclear Weapons
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PERMANENT LINK2392.\\ Van Jones is a Lunatic
Just watch the video...
This guy is our leader's pick for high office? Questioning his judgment at this point. What's next, Reverend Wright for Racial Reconciliation Czar?
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Democrats, Racist
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PERMANENT LINK2390.\\ Things Could Be Worse...
You could be one of these people.
Yeah I'm sure going 100 grand into debt for a college degree is totally worth it. Or not.
Shouldn't a degree be free for everyone? Paid for by the rich? Guaranteed even to terrorists in Gitmo?
Or should it be something that you earn and value and leverage and pay for with your own sweat?
Frankly I think a degree and 4 years of college was a complete waste of time and money for me. But hey. I'm not Noble Prize winning economist. Sorry, wrong post.
2389.\\ Rebuttal of Krugman
Turns out, I don't have to write one. Cause it's already been practiced in reality in the State of Michigan where it has failed dramatically.
Bravo Keynes! Hurrah Krugman!
TAGGED AS: Economy, Keynes, Michigan, Paul Krugman
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PERMANENT LINK2388.\\ How Did Krugman Get It So Wrong?
In a must read article of the day, Paul Krugman, self-anointed Economic Grand Pubah of the Republic, exhaustively analyzes the current fiscal crisis and what happened at a macro level of economic theory and philosophy to get us here.
It is a great article that lays out the opposing camps of economic theorists and their general belief systems. He then proceeds to draw the total opposite conclusion from his data than I did. Now granted, I'm not a 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science, but it seems to me that a simple return to pure Keynesian theory would simply lead us down the path of rehashing the past 60 years of US economic development. My argument is that the 21st Century is a different time and place with totally different challenges than the 20th Century. Keynesian economics failed during the latter half of the 20th, so why on Earth should it work at all in the 21st? It would make sense in a manufacturing economy based on exports with Unions and farmers and goods being exchanged. It seems hopelessly antiquated when dealing with a service based economy where knowledge is bought and sold.
But hey, what do I know. Read the article anyway, cause it is very very interesting.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Keynes, Paul Krugman, Politics, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2387.\\ Candidate in Chief
Excellent analysis. My favorite bit:
"President Obama seemingly has no clue about what he is doing, and, increasingly, it shows. What will happen when things start to go sour in Afghanistan? Our Commander-in-Chief simply will not be able to blame President Bush. After Obama has effectively destroyed the CIA, what will he do when terrorists strike? War is a nasty business in which lawyers should have little role. Has Obama noticed that Islamic terrorists are now threatening him? Does he understand that these vicious men are still threatening America?"
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, George Bush, Politics, US
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PERMANENT LINK2386.\\ Sentenced to death on the NHS - Telegraph
Yeah. I wonder how this is working out for the Brits? Clearly we need the same thing here. You know, to ensure 'competition' (as if State control somehow miraculously provides MORE competition than the free market containing hundreds of competing companies).
TAGGED AS: Daily Telegraph, Health Care, NHS, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2385.\\ Holder Versus American Patriots
Ralph Peters does his usual job of verbally stripping his opponents of any philosophical legitimacy.
I like that he's framed the attack on American security not as a policy decision but as an ideological purge of the third world type. It is an interesting, but very subtle twist on this argument that resonates with me because I firmly believe that he's absolutely correct.
Dangerous times, my friends. Stay thirsty.
**** UPDATE:
Reading some of the comments. Didn't realize Eric Holder worked for Janet Reno and was involved in Ruby Ridge and Waco. Makes total sense that he'd seek to undermine our Liberty.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, CIA, Eric Holder, George Bush, New York Post, Ralph Peters, Terrorists
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PERMANENT LINK2384.\\ Bending Over (Backwards)
Go ahead and read this, now. Completely agree with the article. In fact, I suggest we launch an investigation into World War II abuses committed by American GIs against Nazis. Might make sense in the bizarro world we live in today.
Point to remember for the rest of the day:
"So many 'rights' have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you."
Amen brother.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Britain, CIA, National Security, Scotland, Terrorists
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PERMANENT LINK2380.\\ Poor Panetta
After reading this article, I'm more convinced than ever that Barry & Co have no clue what they're doing.
I should temper that somewhat. I prefer to say instead that I am wavering between believing they're totally clueless and believing that they're utterly un-American and have a deliberate plan to destroy this country for some bizarre reason. For me, only either extreme can sufficiently explain the ongoing assault on the defense and intelligence capabilities of this nation.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, CIA, Eric Holder, Intelligence, Leon Panetta
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PERMANENT LINK2378.\\ Holy Friggin Crap.
Drudge is screaming this headline.
Obama wants to control the Internet now and decide which machines should and should not be connected. Furthermore, it allows the President, not a Congressional panel or a group within NSA or some other agency, but the President to direct the seizure of private networks (corporate or otherwise) at will. Perfect way to squash dissent. Just ask the Chinese and the Iranians.
This should raise the hackles of every single person in the country. I don't care what political stripes you have. This is censorship pure and simple using the need for "cybersecurity" as a cover to eliminate opposition to state takeover of our personal lives.
I've said it before. This is what produces revolutions.
TAGGED AS: Censorship, Congress, Freedom, Internet, Liberty, Obama, Privacy, Revolution
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PERMANENT LINK2377.\\ Dear Eugene Robinson: WTF?
What constitutes 'moral clarity' for Mr. Robinson? Seems like to him morality is embodied by murdering a young woman, lifelong alcoholism, misogyny and ruthless self-absorption.
Well to me, that is the definition of immorality. So I suggest the article be renamed "Ted Kennedy: An Eternal Prince of Darkness"
Glad we have such objective journalists hard at work in our nation.
TAGGED AS: Eugene Robinson, Leftist, Ted Kennedy
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PERMANENT LINK2376.\\ How is this Right in Any Way?
TAGGED AS: Bias, FoxNews, Guns, Health Care, Leftist, MSNBC, Obama, Racist
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PERMANENT LINK2375.\\ ABC Joins NBC As Official White House News Organ
As if having the head of General Electric/NBC appointed to the board of the Federal Reserve wasn't sufficient conflict of interest, now ABC is declaring officially that it is in the tank for Barry.
ABC has refused to air any ads critical of Obama's effort to nationalize healthcare. This is the channel that broadcast its 'news' from within the White House. As Dick Morris puts it:
"It's the ultimate act of chutzpah because ABC is the network that turned itself over completely to Obama for a daylong propaganda fest about health care reform. For them to be pious and say they will not accept advertising on health care shuts their viewers out from any possible understanding of both sides of this issue."
Read the full story here.
Sad. But totally believable. And it explains why shows like Lou Dobbs and O'Reilly are increasing their viewership so dramatically. In fact, O'Reilly has beat CBS broadcast news several times. That's gotta be a record to have a non-emergency cable news hour beat out the same hour of news on a national broadcast channel. The message seems to be loud and clear to me (apparently not to ABC, NBC or CBS): people aren't buying the distorted leftist bullshit you're serving. They see you as groveling sycophants willing to dispense with principles, morals and integrity in order to service the Liberal Messiah you believe is the second coming of JFK.
Fewer pay attention to you with each passing day....
TAGGED AS: ABC, CBS, Health Care, Media, NBC, White House
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PERMANENT LINK2371.\\ You're the Imposter!
LOL. And here I thought that the Democratic Party was opposed to forcing people to show their ID's for any reason (i.e. for voting).
TAGGED AS: Congress, Democrats, Health Care, Town Halls
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PERMANENT LINK2368.\\ Arrogant Egalitarians
Have always felt that those in power who decided that they were smarter than everyone else sought to impose their view of the world on those of us who were too dumb to take care of ourselves. And, as Thomas Sowell points out, there is significant egalitarian arrogance in power today.
My favorite part:
(Obama) may think of (limiting our freedom) in terms of promoting "social justice" or making better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care or housing or many other things. Throughout history, egalitarians have been among the most arrogant people.
And imagine there was a time when Liberals promoted Liberty.
TAGGED AS: Arrogant, Barack Obama, Elitist, Liberals, Liberty, Media
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PERMANENT LINK2365.\\ Rule Britannia...
I've never thought that our healthcare system is perfect here, or even particularly stellar. But by God anything produced by the private sector in terms of healthcare has got to be better than letting Joe Bureaucrat run things. The people that bring you the IRS want to dictate your medical treatment? No thanks.
Pundits frequently make hash of the fact that socialized medicine in countries with national health systems is crap. I'd hasten to point out that we have a national health system in the United States and it is called Medicare/Medicaid. I know people who use Medicare. My entire family works in the health sector. Nobody who uses Medicare would prefer Medicare over a comprehensive plan like many of us enjoy. In fact, I can't think of many services that the Federal Government manages and offers to its citizens that is superior to an equivalent private sector offering. Not even NASA seems to work that well anymore when compared to private companies like Bigelow, SpaceX or Rotary. Hell even the CIA has to bring in Blackwater in order to get some quality work done.
If you were ever a believer in the ability of the Federal Government to manage itself wisely, a few Google searches on the deficit and pork-stuffed appropriations bills ought to cure you of that. But in the event that you believe a Federal Government, which cannot even manage EXISTING national health programs well and provide quality care, ought to be granted executive authority over your well being, then allow me to disabuse you of that notion by providing this excellent overview of the effectiveness of the NHS in the motherland. Where I come from we call it crimes against humanity and while not on the order of Hitler's 20 million, Stalin's 60 million or Mao's 70 million, providing "cruel" healthcare for 1/60th of your citizens in an enlightened Liberal Democracy is criminal in my book. I wonder if the International Criminal Court should bring charges? Nah they're probably too busy trying to prosecute US government officials for doing their jobs.
TAGGED AS: Big Government, Bureaucracy, Crimes Against Humanity, Government, Health Care, Telegraph, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2362.\\ Step 1: Read Your Constitution
I laughed and laughed. I'm glad she doesn't represent me.
Congresswoman Shea-Porter is an Idiot
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution
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PERMANENT LINK2361.\\ On Death Panels
For any that missed my meme on Facebook that apparently led to a number of 'friends' deleting me.
"The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance." - Barack Obama, April 14, 2009.
No thanks. I don't want a bureau giving me guidance on making decisions about death and dying. I don't care if they are super educated doctors and government advisers acting in the best interest of the rest of society. No. The only "independent group" I need in order to make those kinds of decisions are in my family.
Political channels, panels and "the country" have no right to make medical decisions on my behalf. Nor should they advise, propose, guide or even have any knowledge whatsoever of my medical conditions, treatments, complaints or visits. They do not need to know what meds I'm taking or what my diet consists of or how much I weigh or if my ass itches. My information does not need to go into a gigantic database with cool analytics that allows a group of politicos to decide that I'm in the 80% Obama mentioned above and categorize me or anyone I care about as an end-of-lifer.
He can take his independent groups, his death panels, and go to hell. This is the material from which revolutions spring.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Death Panels, Health Care, Liberals
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PERMANENT LINK2360.\\ Talk of Death Panels
The reason talk of it won't go away is because it is in the damn language of the bills in Congress. Since it is IN THE BILL it can't creditably be called a "myth" can it?
TAGGED AS: Congress, Death Panels, Health Care, Liberals
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PERMANENT LINK2359.\\ Reaganism is Dead... Says The Great Poobah
He also refers to himself as the great "unabashed defender of the welfare state". I don't even know how to comment on that. Krugman The Great speaks
I will say that in no way can the economic success of the 1980s and 1990s be delinked from Reaganomics and I happen to believe that an unregulated market was not the primary reason for our current problems. But whatever. I don't have a Nobel prize in economics.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Liberals, New York Times, Paul Krugman, Reagan
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PERMANENT LINK2355.\\ Calling Leni Riefenstahl
Are you freaking kidding me? I feel like the lone Wiemar Democrat in January 1933 screaming "WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!?!" Where is the media criticism? Where are the intellectuals on this blatant group-think mindlessness?
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Children, Communism, Creepy, Liberals, Politics, Self-Righteousness, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2353.\\ To My Congressman
Since your online comment submission application is generating error 500's and has an obvious database failure (perhaps it is full of angry comments?), I'm sending my comments to you via my blog.
Dear Mr. Inglis,
I am so enraged by your first vote on the bailout, Congressman, that you've managed to flip me from a supporter to someone who will actively speak out AGAINST you in the next election to prevent you from screwing me and my fellow constituents even further.
You've voted to destroy this country and every one of its founding principles. You've put your political self-interest ahead of the need of the people. You've managed to allow liberalism, dare I say socialism, to substitute its odious philosophy for market capitalism.
You should be ashamed.
You should be alarmed at the pork that this new bill is full of. You should be scrambling to prevent the outright embarrassment you will incur if you vote for this earmarked boondoggle that we cannot afford. It will saddle my children with debt to the Chinese for the rest of their lives and I won't ever let you or my fellow constituents forget it.
And tell the House to get new IT staff to fix that piece of shit website you have.
TAGGED AS: Bob Inglis, Congress, Economy, GOP, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2352.\\ Maxine Waters is a Liar
She's on America's Newsroom right this minute claiming that people were 'tricked' into signing mortgages. She's also asserting that nobody understands what is in a contract such as a mortgage and so you can't blame people for the housing crisis. Somehow it is because of deregulation, she claims, not Barney Frank and ACORN pushing subprime loans and encouraging people to put zero down that we've had a housing bubble. Deregulation caused a bubble? I think she means that manipulating the housing markets from a Congressional committee caused the bubble. The principle of the market has been working just fine for several hundred years, thank you very much.
She's a liar, a fraud and she has terrible hair. She clearly fits in with her district. But more importantly, this is just one more piece of evidence that she's off her rocker. See this gem from over the summer.
TAGGED AS: Capitalism, Congress, Economy, Liar, Liberals, Maxine Waters, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2351.\\ All in all you're just another brick in the wall
Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!
http://news.ionlinephilippines.com/2008/10/singing-obama-kids-video/
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Children, Communism, Creepy, Liberals, Politics, Self-Righteousness, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2350.\\ John McCain, Hypocrite
I'm seething with rage this morning. The guy I was hoping would come to town and throw out the spenders and ax the special interests has gone down without a fight, and he's not even in office yet!
How can a man spend his entire career fighting lobbyists, special interest groups and pork barrel spending and vote for this bailout bill? How can he rail against earmarks and express such passion about cutting wasteful spending only to go ahead and accept this Christmas tree festooned with waste, earmarks and special interest goodies to the tune of over a trillion dollars?
How can he accept this? How? I was thrilled last week when he suspended his campaign. I thought here is the man of action I'd like to see running the show. He flew to Washington and instead of standing up for what was right, he stood up and was counted for what was easiest. After he flew into town and got the read on the situation, he should have come out in front of the public and denounced this horrific attempt to manipulate the markets and extend bureaucratic control over capitalism as the pile of socialist shit it is. Furthermore, he should have said, there is nothing that could make me vote for this bill in its current form. No goodies, no trinkets, no added features, no extra earmarks, no nothing that would make me, John McCain, vote for something that is so at odds with my political philosophy, my record and my core beliefs.
What would Mr. Reagan think of you now John? You've become a big government stooge supporting a bill that gives away the future of my children and entrusts it to Chinese financiers and Islamic oil producers.
In the end, you've surrendered your principles when the time came to stand up for them. You've sold us down the river John. And what saddens me the most about it is that, while 73 of your colleagues (and it looks now like a majority of the House) also sold us down the river, you were the one guy that I thought could turn us around. So this black mark counts doubly, triply against you. You've ceded the moral high ground and condemned this country to 8 years of liberalism run amok. You've hastened the end of the American era by allowing the Democrats to ride their way to power in all branches of government. Their insidious policies will bring about the final death knell of this once great country.
This is on you, John. You and every other alleged fiscal conservative in the GOP. You and your buddy Lindsay have brought on catastrophe.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Conservative, Constitution, Economy, GOP, John McCain, Liberals, Lindsay Graham, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2349.\\ Karl Marx: 1, Adam Smith: 0
The Senate has passed Bailout v2.0 (aka Crap Sandwich 2.0) by a vote of 74 to 25.
Are there really only 25 market believers in the US Senate? God help us all if this is true. I'd almost rather believe that the 74 voted Yay in order to devour the billions worth of pork crapola that they've stuffed in this donkey.
I'm sorry to say that my own state apparently has only 1 Senator who places his faith in Adam Smith and not in the greedy, grubby, grabby hand of the United States Government. Well, you say, it must be Mr. McCain's good friend and fellow pork buster Lindsay Graham. Well, says I, you'd be dead wrong. Senator Graham has voted in favor of this steaming pile of shit. It was the junior Senator of the great State of South Carolina, Jim DeMint, who courageously stood up and threw down the bullshit card. I know Jim DeMint. I don't think the man voted against this because his office was inundated with outraged constituents. I honestly think he voted his principles. What a strange, absent concept in today's Congress!
So as this vote represents a victory for Marx, so too it reveals those in our nation's government who firmly believe in the foundational principles of this country as laid down by the founders and will stand up to prove it. Crises have a funny way of bringing forth those principled few and sending the unscrupulous masses scurrying for cover. It's like turning a light on in a grimy kitchen and watching the bugs run.
Weasled out. Beware, Mr. McCain
Stood up and was counted
Nod to Michele for the craptastic references.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Economy, Jim DeMint, Lindsay Graham, Politics, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2348.\\ W.W.A.H.D. ?
The notion that bureaucrats should be involved in manipulating the free market is noxious. That being said, the prospect of economic panic, credit drying up, a domino effect of failing institutions and the rest of the world gloating at our problems compels me to support an effort to extend financial protection at taxpayer expense.
We've done this type of thing before, of course: the Savings & Loan collapse of the late 80s, the collapse of Chrysler in the late 70s, the Home Owner's Loan Corp of the 30s and 40s, the JP Morgan rescue of the 1907, the panics in the 1870s, 1841, 1819 and 1809. Of course, the granddaddy of all rescues was the original one in 1792 engineered by arguably my favorite founder, Mr. Hamilton. You can go read about it if you like.
But would Mr. Hamilton be happy by the current approach? Having studied the man in some detail, I suspect not. Hamilton supported public debt and strong central government in the furtherance of American economic power. He wanted to supplement and complement the principles of Adam Smith, not restrain them or legislate them. He would not have recognized the concept of restrained, third-way market capitalism that seems to be creeping around the globe.
The notion that the Federal government should be involved in the economy was a given to him, as it is to us today. But that involvement was not to function as an economic entity somehow superior to the invisible hand, regulating, restricting, governing it. The role of the Federal government, he would say, is to enable the American worker to start a business, sell his wares, sell his services, produce his product. To the extent that a bailout enables positive economic activities and doesn't restrict the economy through microscopic regulatory control, then it is a good thing. If the Fed presumes to know better how to govern the economy than Capitalism itself, then a bailout is a bad thing.
So where do we sit? To be honest, I don't know. Injecting liquidity into the system in order to prop up otherwise failing institutions seems to be a bad use of taxpayer money. It substitutes the judgment of bureaucrats and legislators (campaigning for re-election) for the judgment of the market. That should scare anyone who has ever seen government judgment in action (i.e. the DMV, FEMA, the IRS). Should we trust the people with a 10% approval rating to legislate a $14 trillion economy? I suspect not. Alexander Hamilton, I can assure you, would be aghast.
At the end of the day, what would Hamilton do? I believe he would look at companies that are failing because of the risk they incurred and suggest that they be allowed to fail and not nationalized or otherwise artificially propped up. He would view Government Sponsored Entities such as Fannie and Freddie with disdain and recoil at the notion that trillions of dollars worth of housing was being exposed to high risk because everyone was overconfident in the unlimited support and blank check guarantee from the Federal Government (aka the American Taxpayer). The government should not be loaning money to credit risks and acting as a mortgage lender and backer, he would say. The government should act as an enabler to allow people to own houses they can afford and not guarantee mortgages to those who cannot.
The very concept of risk-reward, the foundation of capitalism, is threatened with the bill currently being tossed about on Capitol Hill. Restricting market capitalism at this juncture would not be something Mr. Hamilton would favor. It didn't work in 1932 and it won't work now. The solution is to unleash the market forces, not further legislate them.
TAGGED AS: Alexander Hamilton, Capitalism, Congress, Economy, Politics, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2347.\\ Another Year, Another Kid, Another Anniversary
Yes, #3 is due in little over a month. Exciting to have another child; my first daughter. Born in the year of the first female Vice President? Who knows. What I do know is that I have the urge again to write on a regular basis. My children and the urge to write both seem to come at the same time of the year, the months around the 11th of September.
1777 wasn't a good year for America. Washington was in full-blown retreat, lurching his way across New Jersey and Pennsylvania desperately trying to find food for his army. Things were so bad that the soldiers, mostly naked (literally naked), were roasting their dead comrades' boots and eating the leather soles. Inflation at that time makes today's Zimbabwe look like a model of economic success. Yet the country pulled through. Things weren't terribly good, but perseverance and an indomitable spirit got those hardy people through some very dark times.
1861 was another year that wasn't great for America. My own state of South Carolina had rebelled, declared independence, bombarded Fort Sumter and the rest of the south followed it into war. Let me, for a moment, attest to the character of the southerners (of which I will likely never truly be a part). They are a tough bunch full of stubbornness, determination and grit. If anyone could defeat Lincoln's North, it was the people who gave birth to Lee, Bragg, Polk, Johnston, Hood, Beauregard and Forrest. But by cleaving a great people in two over an issue that should have (and could have) been resolved in 1783, the conflict that would ensue was an ordeal that America recovered from only after a century, appropriate legislation and anyone alive at the time had passed. It was the bravery and determination of people like Andrew Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson that put to rest the schism and finally healed the nation.
1941 was a year that came to be infamous. It was not a good year for America. The Japanese had destroyed US Naval power in the Pacific and the British alone held the line against a terrible darkness. Western Civilization itself, and all of its 2500 year history, was at risk of slipping into a deep abyss. Let there be no mistake about how bleak things looked in 1941. There was a resignation in these States to Germany ruling Europe. There was a real, powerful (magnitudes more powerful than today) anti-war lobby that sought to keep America isolated and insulated from the world. The Japanese changed that on December 7th at 7:48 am. The result was a rallied America that had never been as unified and an awakened giant the likes of which the world had never before seen in the history of mankind. In a improbable turnabout, just 4 years later the United States was more engaged and involved in the world and more relatively powerful than any nation in history.
2001 was not a good year for America. Politics had torn the people asunder the previous year. Charges of a poisonous and ridiculous nature were hurled about between countrymen. There was nothing short of internal war. Had the politicians and ideologies been represented by individual States as they had been in the 19th Century, civil war might have resulted. The economy had had a bubble burst in the first months of 2000 and had yet to bottom out. Jobs were being lost left and right and GDP was threatening to enter negative territory for the first time in a generation. And yet things only got worse. In a short, brutish and nasty flash, an act of terrorism took more American lives in a single day than at any point in the nation's history save for the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and the Battle of Antietam. It was a stunning attack on the world's only indispensable nation, the only MegaPower, a nation that had never been attacked on its own soil in such a brutal and cowardly manner. Yet the nation and its people circled the wagons and pulled together. The people's leader, a man who came to power promising to keep America out of foreign adventures, summoned an improbable inner strength and vowed to focus on nothing but her defense. And to that end, he succeeded for the duration of his tenure.
I know I'll never forget that day. I doubt anyone alive in this country at that time will forget. It is etched in our collective memory in a way that few events are. It is a sad anniversary when it comes around. It reminds me of our mortality and the vulnerability of our people and our nation. I can only hope that my soon-to-be three children will never have to face a day like that. My oldest was 5 at the time and I doubt he recalls it. I envy him. If there was ever a harbinger of the new world order, it was al Qaeda. George Bush the Father spoke in 1991 of a new world order with a thousand points of light coming into being following the defeat of communism. It was not to be, sadly. The real indication that we lived in a new era was when cowards murdered 3000 Americans on a clear, crisp fall day in September 2001.
It makes me tear up to this very moment.
However, I have every faith in the spirit of my adopted country that we will pull through. And as we pull through, we bring with us the beacon of light that represents the sum history of the Greeks, Romans, Franks and Britons. If Western Civilization is doomed to fall prey to the darkness of radical ideologies (be it tyranny, racism, sexism, totalitarianism or religious extremism), it won't be on America's watch.
Tomorrow morning at 9am, I will board a plane with my eldest son and travel to New York. Ostensibly the trip is about experiencing Yankee Stadium before it is torn down. But it is also, and more importantly, about experiencing Ground Zero and the 9/11 Tributes at the Yankees game that I hope will leave an indelible mark on him. The greatest gift I feel I can give my children is knowledge and experience of the history I have witnessed.
And so I celebrate another year of writing and another child while I also remember the events of 7 years ago today.
Never Forget.
2344.\\ Stunned and Disgusted
It is a dark day for America. I'm not a liberal democrat by any definition. But I have to confess that I find Obama's candidacy exciting and different. I'm disgusted that the clinton machine has steamrolled him in New Hampshire. Everything about the clintons oozes phoniness and greasy self-absorbed self-righteousness. There is nothing at all about their character that balances the complete lack of moral guidance and complete lack of personal integrity. I find them to be the embodiment of everything that is wrong with American politics.
In stark contrast is Barack Obama. He is inspiring. He is someone I like watching. I don't agree with a thing he says, but I find him to be such a phenom and harbinger of difference that I cannot for the life of me understand why ANYONE would wish to travel back in time to 1992 and relive the depressing self-absorption and obsessive me-generation of the clintonian years.
The crying fit did it, I'm told. And yet no matter how many times I watch that performance, I can't figure out how any self-respecting American can observe clinton in all her fakeness complain that life for her is hard and actually believe she is genuine. Nothing about the clintons is genuine. Any of the advisers that have spoken candidly about the clintons note as a primary character trait their complete lack of honesty and that every single word and action is political in nature. Everything she does is engineered to play on emotion or place a doubt or raise a hope. She is the definition of fake. I hate her with such a passion that I would become a citizen and vote for Obama if I thought it would mean that no one named clinton would ever occupy the White House again.
Shock. Disgust.
How can machine politics so decisively overcome and defeat such a wave of hope and optimism? I don't think I'll ever understand people who support the clintons. People who think of the 1990s as the halcyon days. I just don't understand people who think of the clinton years with nostalgia. It doesn't make any sense at all to me.
They just won't go away.
I fear for the Republic when a hillary clinton can defeat a Barack Obama.
Now we have to suffer through her irrepressible 'comeback kid' nonsense where she talks about how she's a real person who has a heart and deeply wants to make a difference and how she has 35 years of experience and blah blah blah. God help us all.
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TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Clintonian, Democrats, Disgust, Hillary Clinton, Phony, Politics, Self-Righteousness
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