From this moment on
Jay Cost has a wonderful article at Real Clear Politics arguing that President Obama’s failure to make major policy changes arises not from the fact that “America is ungovernable” but because President Obama “has simply not been up to the job.” Cost believes Obama made two major mistakes, one strategic and the second tactical.
Strategically he has governed from the Left, enacting broad policies which by their sheer comprehensiveness were to prove arid grounds for compromise. “Bipartisanship implies legislators with different world views working together. The larger a bill’s scope, the more likely it favors one worldview over another, and the less likely it will attract bipartisan support.” The result, he says, left no room for 30 to 40 Congressional Democrats who proved unwilling to go along simply because they could not sell their constituencies on a radically new vision.
Obama’s tactical mistake was to delegate the actual operations of policy change to Nancy Pelosi, who acted as his left wing “prime minister.” Pelosi in turn created a cabinet, consisting of liberal committee chairs and their acolyte staffers. This accentuated the process of polarization. With the inept and ham handed Pelosi in charge, the result was a:
policy [that] has consistently been built from the left – thanks in no small part to the very liberal chairs of key committees – with compromises made to win just enough centrist votes to get passage. On the jobs bill, the health care bill, and the cap-and-trade bill, the Democrats won only narrow victories due to mass defections on their own side. Almost all of these defections were from the center. Faced with a choice between losing a moderate or a liberal, the Speaker has consistently chosen to sacrifice the moderate. … America is not ungovernable. Barack Obama has so far failed to govern it.
“America is not ungovernable. Barack Obama has so far failed to govern it.” Cost is 99% right. But his argument misses the crucial 1 percent. The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance. It is as always willing to leave its own Big Tent behind at the decisive moment. The continual calls from the Democrat Left for Obama to “grow a spine” are really coded calls to say that the moment is now; that the President must ”seize the day, seize the hour.” It’s not as Cost imagines, a call to compromise. It’s a call to say that the time for compromise is over. They can drop the mask; they can hoist the Jolly Roger.
Noah Pollak’s description of the split between Amnesty International’s leadership and the head of their gender unit is the same story in a different setting. She was purged for her inability to support Amnesty International’s espousal of an Islamic radical. This too is a case of the vanguard leaving behind its own coalition when the moment seemed ripe. “Meet Gita Sahgal, the head of Amnesty’s gender unit … went public with her disgust after spending two years in a failed effort to separate Amnesty from Begg.” Gita, meet Amnesty International. She wrote explaining her suspension that:
“I believe the campaign [with Begg's organization, "Cageprisoners"] fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”
Saghal was suspended from Amnesty International within a few hours after publicly expressing her dissent.
Saghal closed the letter describing her suspension with a recitation of her revolutionary credentials. It is an eerie passage which echoes structure for structure many of the protestations of innocence by the Old Bolsheviks when they found themselves in the cellars of the Cheka, stuffed there by a leadership that found they had outlived their usefulness. She wrote:
I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.
Why does she think any of this matters? The Left is not about principles. It is about itself. It is about power. Now that President Obama has been politically weakened, look for the mask to come back on. The words of sweet reason, the entreaties to “make a deal,” and feigned affection will now make a surprise reappearance. When the Left cannot rule, it will try to govern. Until the next time.
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There is also the matter of the Left’s definition of ‘bipartisanship,’ which I hope will be on full display if the GOP sends someone smart to hassle the President during his televised health care stunt. They view bipartisanship as conservative compromise to liberal policies. This is my problem with so-called moderate Democrats. What, exactly, is the use of these individuals to moderate voters? Being a step or four closer to California is a selling point? I fail to understand.
THE VAMPIRES OF THE LEFT
They lay in darkness, waiting dusk
They cannot stand the light
They smell of rotting flesh and musk
They hate us of the right
They live by parasitic law
They are the vile undead
They eat the flesh of good men raw
They kill or go unfed
Oh yes they smile when meeting you
They bend but do not break
The only thing that we can do
Is drive a wooden stake
Into their shriveled putrid hearts
And with bare hands dismember
The rotting heads and separate parts
Beginning this November
“When the Left cannot rule, it will try to govern. Until the next time.”
Through efforts such as the proposed “bipartisan” gathering on health care reform, Obama and the Democrats are going to attempt to reassume “La Bella Figura” but no amount of lipstick can freshen up the boorish pig which reared its ugly head in 2009 as long as the opposition holds firm. I hope the Republicans won’t succumb to such phoniness and fall into an obvious trap. They’ve disappointed so many times in recent years though that it wouldn’t surprise me.
Right now increasing numbers of people are seeing through the constant doublespeak which has defined the 2008 Obama campaign and presidency. Being out of work for weeks on end has a funny way of making individuals more aware of the perils which surround them. What the Democrats are banking on is a feckless average American voter with a poor short-term memory who will buy into the “obstructionist” demagoguery they are sure to use against Republicans. Thus the need more than ever for a clearly defined alternative vision for the country’s future and constant vigilance over time, not just through November 2010.
A lot of people lost their way after the Republican Revolution in 1994 and sold their proverbial souls to the political machine in Washington, D.C. Never again.
Saghal sounds like a True Believer. Perhaps this experience will open her eyes.
The problem I see here is that Obama doesn’t know how to govern, for him it’s going to be all or nothing.
Here’s an interesting, if a little frightening, question to ponder. What happens when Zeno’s irresistible force (the will of the people) meets and immovable object (Obama)?
KRB
W
You captured the unalloyed truth with one sentence.
The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance ..
You are indeed a wise man and I truly thank you for all your efforts.
Habu
look for the mask to come back on
Can he do that? His entire life has been built on the simple trick that he, or his coauthor, described in his books. Be clean and articulate and not scary and white people will flock to you. The Con Man thinks that he is virtuous, the Marks are simply begging to be taken. Since Obama is really a one trick pony once the mask on his game is removed he has nothing else to fall back on. I seriously doubt that he can genuinely compromise because that means he would have to acknowledge the moral equality of a negotiating partner. He would have to undertake a genuine commitment and then deliver on it. Has he ever done this in any context? Perhaps he has in his marriage but if so then it seems to be completely seperate from the rest of his life’s treatment of other people.
W
You captured the unalloyed truth in one sentence.
The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance
You are an insightful and wise man.
Habu
Oh, we can have fun all day, naming Obama’s two errors. I mean, just two? Top two? I’m tempted to go with:
* Being an affirmative action baby.
* Not knowing it.
He may be as clean and articulate as Biden ever hoped, and as unready as Hillary warned us. He may be totally earnest and not a secret Muslim Cloward-Piven Bolshevic 37 bowler with feet down below his knees. He clearly does not consider himself one of us, which is why he always says “I” and not “we”. But it boils down to, nobody ever *told* him any of this stuff actually matters, if you want to actually be the president of the United States of America. And apparently, it didn’t matter to be *elected*, so it was almost right!
“America is not ungovernable. Barack Obama has so far failed to govern it.” Cost is 99% right. But his argument misses the crucial 1 percent. The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance.
Oh, foo. Ruling is governing.
This is a good time to raise his interview with Katie Couric last night, where he said he now wants to sit down with Republicans and Democrats and go over health care a line at a time, and IN PUBLIC. Rush went raving today about how this is a TRAP! Even if he backed off a bit when one caller said, “Well, I’d like to talk about healthcare with someone who cares!”. Should we not take Obama at face value, the better to encourage him? With extreme care, of course, just as you must when knowingly walking into a trap, and yet, many a mouse makes off intact with the cheese.
Yes, his trusting Pelosi was wrong, wrong, wrong, because Pelosi is a disease of her own, embodies everything wrong with the Democrats and America, and is in some small part even an affirmative action baby herself – but much prouder of it than I think Obama is of his similar situation.
Urban B. @ 1:
If the GOP had someone smart running the show, it (and we) wouldn’t be in this predicament.
Wretchard is right as usual. This isn’t about compromise, or about governing. It’s about ruling over people who aren’t wild about being ruled.
It’s also about destroying the economy, to make the U.S. an easier mark for totalitarians.
Oops ..but it was worth saying twice!
The thing to realize about the healthcare summit is that it’s not about healthcare. It is about defining the context, setting the expectations and essentially setting the terms of the debate. It’s not substantive. It’s political.
So what should the Republicans do, assuming they could think the problem through in these terms? One option is to play Obama’s game and fight for control of the context. They could say, “this is about cost” or “this is about tort reform”, or “this is about increasing competition”. Then they would shift the terms of reference away from Obama’s gambit, which is essentially to say “here’s my plan to save the American people, what part of it don’t you like?”
The second option, and the more likely one for them to adopt, is to basically concede the main ground to Obama and pick away at the margins, “reach across the aisle” and do “their best” on the assumption that it’s unhealthy to paralyze the governance process; and that politics is the art of the compromise, etc.
The third option is to play a combination of one and two. They need to contest the frame and yet be open to making incremental reform because there are truly problems with the health care system. To play pure politics would rightly be seen as obstructionist. To simply “reach across the aisle” would be tantamount for reaching for the suicide pill. What they have to do is fight the strategic battle (set the terms) and within it fight the tactical battle and get something done. Remember though, that getting something done doesn’t necessarily mean adding more money. The surgeon cures by cutting away.
7. Lifeofthemind:
Since Obama is really a one trick pony once the mask on his game is removed he has nothing else to fall back on. I seriously doubt that he can genuinely compromise because that means he would have to acknowledge the moral equality of a negotiating partner. He would have to undertake a genuine commitment and then deliver on it. Has he ever done this in any context? Perhaps he has in his marriage but if so then it seems to be completely seperate from the rest of his life’s treatment of other people.
1.I genuinely hope he cant, he will be easier to defeat if he continually acts arrogantly and dismissive of the bitter clingers and our desire to keep the country from being torn down to the ground.
2. yes I believe he can in a personal context with his wife, but only becuase he married a klingon warrior who would gut him like a limp wristed fish if he didnt treat her as equal….
I think that women could scare a grizzly bear
I seriously doubt that he can genuinely compromise because that means he would have to acknowledge the moral equality of a negotiating partner.
This is our main problem, LOTM. When the Dems lose control of Congress, or at least the ability to enact his agenda, Obamugabe will still occupy the White House for two more years — angry at the nation that failed to follow him, pondering whether such a nation of ignorant hicks bitterly clinging to their guns and Judeo-Christian hertiage deserves to survive.
At least Nixon had some portraits to talk to.
Since we’re talking strategy here when does Obama, to strengthen his hand, pull a “Wag the Dog?” regarding Iran and their ever increasing nuclear arsenal?
Teresita, I’d be interested in your thoughts on this strategy stuff. Not looking to ambush you or anything but you are a smart woman with many interesting ideas.
Sometimes a man isn’t remembered for whether he wins, but whether he can lose gracefully.
Graceless losers are rarely remembered well.
This is the logical outcome of identity politics.
The endangered species are fighting amongst themselves.
Affirmative Action or helping out select groups at one’s own expense was a Liberal conceit that did not cost too much and made some folks feel morally superior.
It worked ok when we were all getting richer and the monsters had small appetites.
They have grown and we have less money to buy them off.
Whiskey was right.
The SWPL males have fled the Democrats and the females are close behind.
America is essentially ungovernable, because of people like Obama. Much decision making occurs outside of the democratic system, by decrees from the judiciary. The judiciary cannot simply issue a decree on its own; but when it wants to it can signal a lawyer to file a lawsuit requesting the decree, which it then issues in the name of all that is holy and decent. This is how gay marriage went from an exotic idea to a non-negotiable matter of basic human rights; a few people in Massachussetts decided it would be so, and everything after was a public formality. Some very large portion of government spending is legally required by this method.
Republicans are just as enamored of pork as Democrats, as their last term of power showed. Among the good aspects of the current atmosphere of animosity is maybe it cuts down on the horse trading of budget items that makes up much of congressional work.
The Left is a given. Like the poor of the Bible, the true believers will always be with us. Right up to the last trumpet of judgment. So the only thing for it is for the rest of the world to learn to adapt. And the only way to do that is never to let them completely detatch things from reality.
The principle contribution of the Common Man is that he is too unsophisticated to con himself. He’s the guy who keeps coming back to the earth and prevents the great and the good from rising up like a helium balloon and losing itself in the clouds.
There’s always going to be a con. Nuclear winter, the population bomb, Amerika is coming, Global Warming. Tomorrow it will be something else. They’ll be a kernel of truth to it, and then it will be amplified beyond all recognition into a giant, ramshackle grift. They can’t help themselves. It’s up to the rest of humanity to sigh and pick up after them.
The sooner we learn to do it, and to figure out their seductive little self deceptions the better it will be. It’s really like being married to a crazy and beautiful woman and always, always having to figure out what’s real and what ain’t.
mariner @ 10
Good point.
Although I’m reminded of Reagan’s first summit with Gorbachev. I think the GOP has to send in someone (Paul Ryan, for example) to essentially give a history lesson to anyone who might bother watching the farce and lay on thick about the failures of government through history, the effects of rationing in Canada and Europe, and forcefully argue for market solutions and against government control. I don’t even care if they consist of statistical arguments that go over everyone’s head, b/c I think real arguments will wilt the usual hopey changey drivel we’re bound to hear. If they are going to send in the usual congressional leadership to play kissy face with all of them, I’d be terribly disappointed.
The Republicans should say they want to discuss the job killing, economy destroying “cap and trade” bill — and discuss it in the context of the global warming fraud. And then put forward a program to get the economy moving again. Certainly energy development could be an important part of that. They could also offer up a health care bill that could be passed into law in thirty days (it would include tort reform and a national market for insurance).
The Left always focuses on winning the argument, not solving the problem. And the argument they seek to win is always the same: Give us more power (it is for your own good). The Climate Change “scientific distortions” is classic Leftist behavior. After all, if you actually want to design a solution to a problem, you want accurate information. But if your objective is to acquire more power, information is withheld or used or distorted as needed. Expect just such a performance from the White House and most of the media.
As part of their power grab the Democrats are organizing Washington Centered Cartels in Finance, Manufacturing, Insurance, Health Care and energy production. These cartels will exploit the American people — even the ordinary Americans who are employed by the industries in the Cartels (which will be run for the benefit of the politically connected). Obama’s health care proposals would result in just such a bureaucratic and hyper-regulated boondoggle. Republicans should simply state that they will not aid the Democrats in creating their Cartels, and will seek to dismantle them at the first opportunity.
A commenter elsewhere suggested sending in Paul Ryan to represent the Republicans. The commenter believed Obama wouldn’t be able to keep up with Ryan. I would enjoy seeing Obama and Ryan go head to head, but can’t imagine the usual party leadership giving up their chance in the sun. I also can’t imagine a better way for the Republican leadership to signal to voters that they aren’t playing the usual Washington politics, but instead are here to find a solution.
If BHO knew how to do anything constructive the country would be in deeper trouble. As it is, by surrounding himself with a staff of toadies – instead of bright analysts – he is doomed to continue making the same errors, over and over, while always expecting different results. There’s a word for that, somewhere.
On the other front, since the mask is now off, shouldn’t we more properly call it “Ænmity International”? It’s been spewing hate and malice toward free societies for several decades now, and is no longer even close to offering friendship or neighborliness in support of all of the downtrodden – only some of them, those who are somehow more “deserving”.
Josh @ 9 said:
“Yes, his trusting Pelosi was wrong, wrong, wrong, because Pelosi is a disease of her own, embodies everything wrong with the Democrats and America….”
Rumcrook @ 13 said:
“Since Obama is really a one trick pony once the mask on his game is removed he has nothing else to fall back on.”
This sums up Obama’s dilemma very nicely. Obama knows that he’s a one trick pony (he’s an empty suit only capable at reading the teleprompter). Obama must rely on Pelosi to pursue a legislative agenda. Unfortunately for Obama, Pelosi has no business being Speaker of the House. Pelosi is almost as incompetent as Obama. Perhaps if Obama was a skilled politician, he might have insisted that Pelosi be replaced as Speaker of the House. Also, if Obama had greater skill, then given that we’re in a serious depression/recession, he would have pursued a jobs oriented political agenda rather than waste his political capital on his stupid health care and global warming agendas. Fortunately for the nation, Obama **IS** incompetent. His four years will pass and the damage he causes will be minimal.
Related to this thread, isn’t it interesting that Jay Cost of “Real Clear Politics” more or less has Obama and Pelosi figured out. Arguably “Real Clear Politics” is the best website on the Internet for political information and very effectively does what the “New York Times”, “Washington Post”, CBS, NBC and “Time” magazine once did decades ago. If one bothers to read the “New York Times” or “Newsweek” or the “Economist” or listen to NPR, it becomes clear that these bastions of the MSM still believe that Obama is the messiah. They have no clue that Obama is almost irrelevant and whoever is going to replace Obama in 2012 is the person to watch.
wretchard @ 12: The thing to realize about the healthcare summit is that it’s not about healthcare. It is about defining the context, setting the expectations and essentially setting the terms of the debate. It’s not substantive. It’s political.
Isn’t that excessively cynical?
Can it not be forced or finessed or otherwise fit into being about just what it looks to be about? Cannot things ever be just what they seem? My own philosophy is, they are seldom anything else, which is your point – but turned around.
The democrats’ program never seemed to be about health care, it was about a hodge-podge at best, and being embedded in a toxic process (by the toxic democratic leaders (spit) in the senate and house), it lost any chance of being anything but an exercise in process.
If the republicans and the right have any great metaphysical claim to virtue it should be as realists. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and get ‘r done. That doesn’t always call for ringing rhetoric, it is judged on another scale entirely: results.
#2 Walt
Excellent.
This is not mine by any means. I found it last year at American Digest. But although it was meant in reference to our foreign enemies,it seems to fit with yours and in dealing with our domestic enemies.
ONLY BY FIRE IS FASCISM FINISHED
Year upon year in this world’s dark woods,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
The tangles and bundles of dead brush increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
The ash that descends in the clearest of skies?
The leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With a fire that hollows their bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their gods decree war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in the stone.
No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The hate that is burned in the bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
Subotai Bahadur
Habu: Since we’re talking strategy here when does Obama, to strengthen his hand, pull a “Wag the Dog?” regarding Iran and their ever increasing nuclear arsenal?
Remember when you thought Obama was going to do something spectacular with the Haiti situation, and I opined that he would ignore it as much as possible becaue he had neither the foresight nor the courage nor the experience for him to realize that there was an opportunity there?
Obama will ALWAYS surrender when faced with an aggressive opponent. He has never in his life done anything else. The Iranians are correct to think that he will do his best Neville Chamberlain imitation with them – that’s exactly what he will do. Oh, and maybe a stern letter writing campaign. But Obama has *never* in his life faced up to a serious challenge. Hillary? McCain? Don’t make me laugh. He gave a few speeches and depended on his support staff. He still thinks that’s all it takes to come out ahead.
He will surrender and destroy his and his party’s legacy forever, because that is all that he has in him. There is nothing else.
The belief that Obama was anything but a sad, incredibly overrated fraud will prove to be something that all of us shake our heads over for the rest of our lives.
Leftism is a cult. They seek not to govern, they don’t even seek to rule.
They seek to convert.
“I am not an ideologue” is actually a true statement. An ideologue follows an ideology and adheres to it.
A cultist follows a charismatic leader, wherever he goes and whatever he says.
In the former, an ideology consumes the leaders as well as the followers. The blind leading the blind.
In the latter, the leader can make the followers drink kool-aid in Jonestown, burn themselves to a crisp in Waco or wait for a spaceship in San Diego. (or sacrifice their political careers, by ignoring the strong sentiment of their constituents)
Ideologues adhere to a message, cultists adhere to a messiah.
BOTH, adhere to the notion that they must dominate the landscape…by any means necessary. Even if it means a slow death in circulation, readership, viewership.
The question becomes…what happens when there is a marriage between a radical ideology, and a cult leader?
A battle line drawn where the ideologues believe that the message outranks the messiah. And the messiah believes there is no message, unless he delivers it. Ordinary conversion methodologies don’t work. You can’t brainwash the brain dead.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
The Congressional Republicans have sent the President a letter saying that any summit must be predicated on going back to first principles and resetting the bill to scratch, so it can be rediscussed from the ground up. But they note that Sebelius has already dismissed that option. And they want the Democrat skeptics included too. Plus they want language that nobody will be forced to pay for insurance he doesn’t want. Otherwise, no soap.
It looks like they did the Option 1. They’re fighting for the frame. This means that the Republicans have detected and countered the President’s strategy. They’re not walking into it. This has the potential to block any movement on health care “reform”. More importantly, it indicates that the Republicans have calculated that if Obama doesn’t move forward, he loses. This is the downside of any double-down or “all or nothing” strategy. It’s binary. No win means Obama loses.
If the Republicans can pull it off the President will smash himself on the rocks of his ambition. And if he pulls back, the Republicans will have proven themselves a power again; nothing succeeds like success and nobody likes a loser.
Yes, the Jay Cost essay was very good.
So has Obama made two, no wait, three major mistakes? Or is it four? Four major mistakes. Is it a bug, or a feature?
Does it really matter? We’re stuck with this guy until Jan 2013, and yes, he can do incalculable damage in that period, even if somehow the Republicans gain a majority in the House in 2010. The Federal budget will be structurally increased in hiring many more employees that will be difficult to fire. We’ll be stuck with either major deficits or big tax increases. Probably both. Stagflation as far as the eye can see.
We, the electorate, are the ones who have made a major mistake.
And it’s always political warfare. Again, the Democrats and their hidden intellectual leaders have defined the argument as a Marxist dialectical excercise. I frankly don’t think that most elected Democrats are that smart or diabolical to actually think this up on their own, but they are trapped in the cage match with the Republicans by the confines and invisible crypto-Marxist leadership in their own party.
As long as this remains the frame, the only thing the Republicans get to do is pick out the color and and lining of their coffins.
Negotiating demands by the Republicans before going into this meeting:
1. Demand that the comprehensive Health Care bill be shelved indefinently.
2. Be willing to only discuss simple line items that can be clearly explained and voted up or down by the House and Senate.
Simplyfying COBRA, with some stipend or loan from the Fed Gov might be a start.
Cap tort awards in defined circumstances.
Talk about building more Medical Schools to reduce the shortage of doctors (drive down price).
3. Demand a discussion about a limitation of debt as a percentage of GDP. There are lots of straightforward logical arguments that can be easily illustrated as to why this is a good idea, and why ignoring this and not limiting spending is self-destructive.
All you need to know about the Left can be learned by the lessons Emma Goldman learned when she was deported to the USSR. They aren’t about rights, they are about power.
Those who fail to study history…….
Note that in essence this means that Obama is a Leftist Democratic Senator who does not understand how Leftist Democrats in Congress operate.
And if he does not understand that does he understand anything?
Indeed, is he even capable of understanding anything?
The piece written so far on how decisions are made and implemented in the Obama Administration – I rate this as a definite “must read” piece.
“Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.”
“Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.”
“To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b6b4700a-10fb-11df-9a9e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
a puffington host writer says about it: “But this Luce piece is unavoidably, accurately hard-hitting, and while many of the nation’s top news anchors and editors are sending emails back and forth (I have been sent three such emails in confidence) on what a spot-on piece Luce wrought on the administration, they fear that the “four horsepersons of the Obama White House” will shut down and cut off access to those who give the essay ‘legs.’ ”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/core-chicago-team-sinking_b_452664.html
wws,
he will do his best Neville Chamberlain imitation
Once again I must speak up for Neville Chamberlain. He was wrong but he was not a coward. The sins of Obama are not those of naivete and sincerity but those of malice and avarice.
Paul Ryan may be a good one to go one on one with Obama but I have a hankering to see Fred Thompson do it. My expectation is that after a half hour the public would be looking at BHO and seeing a kid in short pants. Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich would be reduced to inventing quotes where Thompson calls him “Boy.”
wretchard,
the President will smash himself on the rocks of his ambition
He does not rise to the level of Greek Tragedy but in his own mind and that of his acolytes he may. That will make him more dangerous as he starts to play his downfall as a theatrical event and not a policy procedure. In Hollywood they are probably already writing script treatments.
The continual calls from the Democrat Left for Obama to “grow a spine” are really coded calls to say that the moment is now; that the President must “seize the day, seize the hour.”
Minor quibble: The Left continuously accuses the Right of preaching “hate” through the use of “code words” and “dog whistles.” They are, of course, not attempting to accurately interpret what we mean — they are instead appropriating our words and insisting that their “interpretation” is the true meaning, whether we like it or not. It’s yet another example of their overwhelming desire to control other people and deny them their autonomy of thought.
(There is, of course, good reason for you to interpret “grow a spine” as “GUN IT ALREADY”; I’m just urging caution when attributing coded language to someone.)
They could say, “this is about cost” or “this is about tort reform”, or “this is about increasing competition”.
Or they could say “this is about the government wanting to gain ever-increasing control over the minutae of your life. Once the government controls your health care, we all become junkies to the government’s pusher.”
It’s the Mark Steyn argument, and harsh though it is, it has the rare value of being absolutely accurate. It also means that Obama has to either defend the government’s increased power or to deny that his plans increase the government’s power.
Unfortunately, the GOP is both too thick to realize what is at stake and too corrupt to care.
“Leftism is a cult. They seek not to govern, they don’t even seek to rule.
They seek to convert.”
No, they seek to crush. They don’t care if you don’t believe, so long as you do not challenge them. Look at the Proposition 8 “self-denunciation” sessions, or their McCarthyite accusations of “racism”.
For myself – as a serious Tea Partier, as well as being a military veteran, a college graduate, a blogger and small-c conservative and mildly religious – I have been indirectly insulted beyond all believing, in comment threads at venues of media outlets old and new that I previously thought of as fairly moderate, or at least across the moderate spectrum. Traitor, racist, stupid, fanatical, fascist – the litany of insult goes on and on and on. I am not any of those things, and whereas I can endure very easily those terms being cast by social retards who post on comment threads – I do not provide an exception for those offered by MSM media darlings and Hollywood celebutards. No. There are those whose opinions have been posted, published and widely circulated, whom I will never give credence, or money- via subscription, or royalties to – ever again. Not ever. Full stop.
Another thing about the Left is that they want to win easily. They think it their right.
41 Republicans in the Senate coupled with a large majority of Democrats in the House do not give the Republicans any real power. Unless the Democrats don’t want to sit through fillibuster and break it.
Look at the USSR. How many hard fights did they get into after WWII? And even WWII was hardly their choice. They did not even invade Poland until they had the Nazis on their side. They wanted to win by proxy and default. Even Afghanistan was no supposed to be that hard, but a combination of U.S. support for the Mujadeen and their own poor tactics made it that way.
In contrast the U.S. approach to the Cold War was the exact opposite, as best described by the Admiral in the film “The Bridges of Toko Ri.” Stop them everywhere, beat them at everything, from the depths of the ocean to the seas of the Moon. We not only fought them but we quite deliberately always did it The Hard Way.
“It’s really like being married to a crazy and beautiful woman and always, always having to figure out what’s real and what ain’t.”
Not really. There are some advantages to beautiful women, even if they are crazy.
GOP has usually tried to be a party that is willing to govern and try to do good governance so thier impulse is to help. This is a trap.
Now Obama , Reid and Pelosi pissed off Olympia Snow . Do you think they will not PO the GOP on this summit.
Palin just gave a speech seen on 4 cable channels and CSPAN that openly mocked Obama. She skewered him with ridicule.
Obama has a thin skin and reacts badly to ridicule. So do you think he will take the right tactic with the GOP with his arrogance. On this I feel confident that he will screw it up and the GOP will refuse to play ball.
I had to smile and shake my head when I read Ms. Saghal’s plight:
“…Saghal was suspended from Amnesty International within a few hours after publicly expressing her dissent.
Saghal closed the letter describing her suspension with a recitation of her revolutionary credentials. It is an eerie passage which echoes structure for structure many of the protestations of innocence by the Old Bolsheviks when they found themselves in the cellars of the Cheka, stuffed there by a leadership that found they had outlived their usefulness….”
Years ago, I read the riveting and frightening Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (publ. 1940). The story is exactly as described above by Wretchard. Why have not these intellectually superior liberals read this book (and others)? It is ever the story of their demise. It happens over and over. A pick-axe to the brain here, a bullet in the back of the head there, and on and on. These people aren’t the elite; they’re cattle lined up waiting for the electric prod. How sad.
Obama can not negotiate with the Republicans as equals, he has never shown that level of maturity. He’s like the Hun, either at your feet or your throat.
Will Pat Robertson see 20″ more snow as a sign that God is angry at Washington DC?
“Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.”
A quote from the Republican response. That phrase should become a talking point. I think the Republicans have realized that the best way to win poker is to call bluffs. Good for them. As a Canuck, who wishes your republic all the best, I think this is the best news I have heard in a long time. The Republicans are starting to grow cojones!
As for fillibusters, they are now procedural so to invoke cloture or any other means to pass bills such as the Health Care Bill or whatever it is, would come at a high political price. Those Senators and Congressmen who are not already retiring realize this.
Obama=Nero.
Obama starts another war:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100208/pl_afp/uscanadaenvironmentfishing
Folks, a lot of Obama’s behavior is easily explained by Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Our sensation that the sky is a different color in his world, his inability to see other people as having any kind of legitimate existence separate from his, his insatiable craving for glory, his inability to admit fault in any degree (narcissists are NEVER to blame), the exaggerated self-reference (“I” “I” “I”), his use of oratory not as a way to communicate the truth but only to manipulate, and the way the fictionalized self of his imagination clashes with the real world — all are dead giveaways for NPD.
As I wrote in the comments here:
“The Oministration is all theater, starring fictional characters in their own fictional world, with no one more fictional than Obama himself.
“The Far Left lives in a fictional universe of their own imagining…, so when they step off the screen — like the character in The Purple Rose of Cairo — they become confused and upset that the real world doesn’t work the same way as their fictional one.
“What? This money is no good? I can’t just drive off in the car?
“Of course, the quintessential fictionalized person who can’t cope in the real world is Don Quijote. The romanticized reading — a noble soul who is thwarted by a cyincal world — is not what Cervantes intended. Cervantes wanted to make great fun of the novelas de caballerías, of their excesses and unrealism and downright silliness.
“So he had the good caballero read so many of those silly novels that his brain dried out and he lost his judgment, as evidenced by his inability to see that windmills are not monsters, a herd of sheep is not an advancing army, and a chain gang of dangerous prisoners is not a bunch of captives needing release from their oppressors.
“When he does release the prisoners, they go about the countryside wreaking havoc, and the utterly clueless Quijote cannot be brought to realize the harm he has done, so enmeshed in his fictional world is he.
“Not even repeated beatings from people upset by the damage that Quijote does can bring him to his senses. He just gets weirder and weirder as he digs ever deeper into his beloved fiction.”
Will Pat Robertson see 20″ more snow as a sign that God is angry at Washington DC?
It’s no sign: hell has actually frozen over.
I read the Huffington Post’s essay about Luce’s article with great interest principally because it indirectly describes the mental atmosphere within the outer circle — including the constraints under which working journalists must operate. Referring to Luce’s article Clemons says:
A lot of people have been beating up on the MSM, but to some extent these guys have been living in fear. They deserve some sympathy. In this job market what does an ex-journalist do if he loses access? “You’ll never work in this town again!” No book, no articles. Just the prospect of living in your car. And this is the power the Chicago crew have over them, which they are apparently not shy about exercising.
But if the Windy City boys have overplayed their hand then I think we’ll see a lot more enterprise on the part of the MSM. The article suggests there’s a whole lot more discontent and disillusionment there than is evident at first glance. And once the dam breaks, well it’s a long way back to Chicago.
Wretchard:
I wasn’t originally impressed by their letter. (It seemed a bit whiny to me.) However, you may be right that fighting this on the structure rather than on the substance is the way to go. If so, GOP congressional leadership has proven more shrewd in one letter than they have in… um… my lifetime?
I must correct myself… The fight they are picking may be more about substance that it first appears. The essential argument is ‘start over.’ If Obama decides to start over, he can actually come out a big winner, but that would be governing, and the opportunity to rule would be lost. So I guess the President must decide how serious, or silly, he really is. (I’m voting, and hoping, for silly.)
“The Left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule given the chance.”
And I say, let them.
“The continual calls from the Democrat Left for Obama to “grow a spine” are really coded calls to say that the moment is now; that the President must “seize the day, seize the hour.”
It increasingly strikes me that these calls might also be the desperate wails of the true believers who are beginning to suspect (and I think rightly so)that Obama does not have one.
Also, in reply to Urban B: He cannot start over, and the Republicans know it. The clock is running out on this legislative session, especially in an election year. There is far too much else to do and as long as Congress keeps talking about healthcare their popularity numbers keep dropping. The left leaning house will never agree to anything the Republicans want, anways, so this is just a way to run out the clock until the November election.
But if Obama turns them down now, he looks like a fool for having proposed it.
Barry needs to peel of an (R) or two to pass the health care/corruption/patronage legislation. See how quick you can cut to the chase if you really want to.
Ms. Saghal might be asked how long it took her to figure this out.
More to the point, why so long.
What did she have to avoid looking at to continue as long as she did?
How many (R)’s would Obama have to get, in order to be legit?
Answer: about 30%, which of course needs to exceed the number of dems that he loses at the same time.
Enjoyed the reference to “hoisting the jolly Roger” in Heilein’s Time Enough For Love.
Walt – see Song Parodies -> Perfect Model of an Extremist Left Wing Democrat
http://www.amiright.com/parody/70s/gilbertsullivanpiratesofpenzance0.shtml
Why does she think any of this matters? The Left is not about principles. It is about itself. It is about power.
Exactly. It’s remarkable how many people, even on the right, fail to understand this.
This is a good time to raise his interview with Katie Couric last night, where he said he now wants to sit down with Republicans and Democrats and go over health care a line at a time, and IN PUBLIC.
I would much rather they go over the Constitution line by line, and IN PUBLIC.
Better still, a Constitution POP QUIZ!!! For TOTUS and all the Congress. Anyone who flunks … buh-bye.
But I’m silly that way.
Subotai Bahadur,
Thanks for quoting my poem, but I assure you that I did not mean it to be only directed at our foreign enemies but at all enemies foreign or domestic.
A lot of people have been beating up on the MSM, but to some extent these guys have been living in fear. They deserve some sympathy.
Sympathy? Were they obligated to Not Report On Obama’s Chicago-Way Politics before the election?
Did they not fall head-over-heels in love with Obama like shrieking teenage girls at a Beatles concert?
There may be a few journalists who have had to watch their step, lest they be fired (just as conservatives at the university have to keep their heads down), but this “regime” is exactly what most of them wanted.
They made their beds; let them lie in them, even if that bed ends up being a refrigerator box over a heat grate.
If, as everyone expects, this meeting goes nowhere BO, Nancy and Harry will go ahead with “reconciliation” in the belief people will like nationalized health enough to will shut their mouths so the rest of the agenda, including repealing DADT, can be pushed through.
you may be right that fighting this on the structure rather than on the substance is the way to go.
No, the GOP always picks at “structure.” And procedure, and facts and figures and all that dry stuff, while the Left talks in terms of morality. “What, you want these horrible executives to stuff their wallets while people die?”
Yeah, it’s demagoguery, but it needs to be shot down by an even more moral argument, which is that too much goverment control is immoral by itself.
Of course, too many elephants have tried to “do good” using the levers of power (and its pockets), so it’s hard to push that line.
But they should.
Because it’s true.
w@34: “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.”
Eerily reminiscent of the Nixon administration.
But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
OT
This is going to hurt.
Top Canadian Military Official Charged With Murder.
He’s an Air Force Colonel.
H/T Drudge
Ah, wretchard, they do not have a lot of necessary skills that the far right in the US does. Veterans. Gun culture. Hunting culture. Pickup trucks. The CMP. They may try figuratively to hoist it but as a real and practical matter they would get killed – literally. Too many miss that. For almost two years now that 8-10 BILLION rounds a year of ammo manufacturing capacity have gone somewhere and it ain’t completely gov’t warehouses.
Except RagnarD, the Left controls the Military.
Obama has one more card left to play, should he care to play it. It is a card that at least in part, Lincoln and Wilson played. Suspension of at least parts of the Constitution, in name of a crisis (Wilson had less cause than Lincoln did in suspending it), and rule by Presidential Decree and executive authority.
Obama at any time can declare a national emergency, suspend various parts of the Constitution, and rule by decree. It has been done before, by at least two Presidents. It would find considerable support by most of the Media, Hollywood, and senior military commanders, as well as Pelosi and Reid. Kennedy might be cowed, which would be enough to produce a 5-4 Supreme Court majority in favor of it.
There is not much margin to prevent this. Of course it would be a disaster, and would only provoke (a long-term successful) revolt that would in turn produce a Cromwell, a Napoleon, or a Charlemagne. A person of that sort, ruling as “dictator” for the majority not minority. At best a Lee Kwan Yew.
However that card lies there on the table, beckoning Obama to play it. I don’t doubt he yearns to pick it up. It takes considerable strength of character to resist that card. Lincoln perhaps by necessity picked it up, Wilson played it when it was unlikely to have been needed.
The “Green Police” Audi commercial is probably Obama’s dream, along with a PC Police and so on. Audi plays to that sort of person.
WALT! You magnificent so-and-so! You’ve outdone yourself!
I sent that-there poem to EVERbody.
65 RagnarD
“For almost two years now that 8-10 BILLION rounds a year of ammo manufacturing capacity have gone somewhere and it ain’t completely gov’t warehouses.”
Also worth a mention. The tons of powder, casings and primers that go out the door to the general public each month.
They ain’t making firecrackers.
Papa Ray
Kinda on topic.
AP, Seats at a premium on planes, trains out of DC.
This could be cinema ready. Can you just see streams of Congresscritters with Bags-O-Swag scrambling to get on a train? Ideally one has a refrigerator that bursts open. It could be like the Masque of the Red Death with all the doomed aristocrats dancing faster as the end approaches.
I’m a little late to the thread, just back from a town commissioner’s meeting.
Many comments about the inability of those on the left to govern, but oh, man, can they ever get elected!
So to summarize these observations and to paraphrase much of what our host has written, I offer this: The truth is seldom as exciting as un-truths.
“Saghal closed the letter describing her suspension with a recitation of her revolutionary credentials…..()
….Why does she think any of this matters? The Left is not about principles. It is about itself. It is about power…”
In a way, her continuing belief that it matters is a demonstration of that power in one of its more vexing manifestations.
Hannah Ahrendt wrote about the same phenomenon among Nazis and Communists who’d run afoul of their movements and found themselves on the outside looking in. She believed that such assertions of ideological purity despite expulsion and betrayal could only be explained by a fanatical identification with the movement on the part of those individuals. She considered it one of the most disturbing aspects of totalitarianism because it suggested a kind of selflessness on the part of its followers that made them impervious to reason, even to the point of colluding in their own destruction so long as their status as true believers remained intact.
Actually I believe the true believers on the Left are not so many – though they do have a lot of power at the moment. But in the long run their lack of moderation will likely be their downfall. That’s how I read the writing on the wall anyway
Look, this is a high stakes poker game and Obama is bluffing. The Republicans should call his bluff.
I suggest that the Republicans should announce that they will talk, on CSPAN, with the President about Health Care providing:
1) The President must reveal all the details of his plan to the public sufficiently far in advance of the discussions that the details can be publically analyzed and digested. The plan must be HIS – not Nancy’s or Harry’s. If those two want to play, they must also similarly reveal the intimate details of their plans.
2) Of course, the Republicans must likewise be provided with the GOLDEN opportunity to display their plan: Objectives, Solutions, Means of Implementation, What it does for the average citizen.
3) As the Republicans have already said, the process must reset to scratch with the best ideas (from all parties) being incorporated – that is TRUE bipartisanship.
I submit that the President does not have a plan of his own. He will therefore be caught in a trap of his own making and will refuse these conditions. This will give the Republicans the best chance to obliterate the Democrats and, at the same time, look like heroes through their presentation of a sensible Health Care reform plan.
Chet Richards
(Not Chester W. Richards – I’m the other guy.)
Mickey Kaus likes the Luce article too, but he asks some interesting questions about whether its basic thesis is really so persuasive. He’s skeptical about whether other advisers would have produced a different outcome, and more inclined to locate the problem in Obama’s own thinking.
Back in the 1970′s, Will Vinton (of “Claymation” fame, producer of the highly-visible “California Raisins” commercials) made a feature film comprising a selection of Mark Twain stories. The whole thing was tied together by the premise of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher stowing away on a fabulous Dirigible, piloted by Mark Twain hisself…
The highlight was “The Mysterious Stranger,” in which Satan is portrayed as a seeming naif, not really intentionally vicious, just completely devoid of empathy. Physically, the character in Vinton’s depiction is a robed headless body with an animated face- a masque on a Lorgnette (“stick”.)
Like our pResident, there’s nothing behind the mask.
That car is all paint and no fender.
OT comment re LOTM@64
Red Green: Well, I’m not gonna be calling the U.S. Air Force, Harold. What do I say? We’ve got a missile? They take that as a threat, we’re in real trouble.
Harold Green: Well, then, contact the Canadian Air Force.
Red Green: Harold, it’s after six; he’s gone home.
From the Red Green Show.
Reconciliation is not going to work. Not no how, not no way.
They ain’t gonna pass nothin’ through reconciliation.
@46 All those years of “The West Wing” certainly came to fruition with the election of Obama.
I voted for the other guy. Please take care to remember the many of those that did the same before blaming the entire electorate. I sure as hell ain’t taking ANY blame for this assface in the oval office.
eh, we got the party cohesion, now for the party!
Stephanie, don’t forget Lawn Ardor –as odiferous a corpse-flower as The O-est Wing
A small but clarifying point is that the Democrats aren’t attempting healthcare reform or a government takeover of healthcare. They are attempting a *Democrat* takeover of healthcare.
They could say, “this is about cost” or “this is about tort reform”, or “this is about increasing competition”.
They might say, “This is about buying votes with other people’s money. Not just in Congress, but creating an entitlement that that requires Democrat majorities to maintain.”
With the Left is always about power, nothing else. Governing is a process whereby a leader uses persuasion and conciliation to achieve consensus and cooperation. Ruling is a process whereby a leader enforces his sovereign will through threat, intimidation and displays of violence.
This is one reason why the Left cannot govern. A second is that the Left defines itself and its policies as opposition to legitimate authority. It is thoroughly reactionary.
There are more than two, I’m sure.
I think the unmentioned factor, the conspicuous omission, in all this is the “We the People” part, which media types will always do, because they want to pretend this is all a one way street, and we just consume all this as in the one way street of television consumption.
The palpable thing that happened is that the politicos inside the beltway have felt the hot breath of “we the people”, and they have shown us back that they are vulnerable, human, weak, and perhaps scared and shaking in their boots, you know, the way it’s supposed to be.
Which means the system is working, as it should be. As mentioned earlier, the republicans cannot afford to be, (as #3 Harold describes it) as being lured “by phoniness into an obvious trap”.
Not without demonstrating to us that by “working together on bi-partisan solutions” that perhaps this is an inside (the beltway) job, and their (previous) opposition is as phony as the dems offer is. They feel the heat too, at this point.
Dems never compromise, they always try to guilt our side into doing so. To make us complicit in their nationalist schemes. But the dymanic has changed to where the voice of the people is not some distant squeal across some great chasm that they, in their private jets, can cross and not fear to hear from again, once they get safely inside the beltway bubble again.
the republicans cannot give an inch. you cannot compromise with 2000 pgs of government annexing of a private industry. It must be scrapped and begun on the only terms that matter, tort reform, and interstate competition that offers all insurance companies (there are 1400 of them) to compete in every state in the union.
wretchard @ 30: Precisely. Healthcare reform is a huge and complex undertaking because it is different for each state. There are separate laws, rules and regs for each. This is a huge multi-year project that MUST engage large groups across the nation. Cranking out some “Reform” from Congress in one year is just gloss.
I was waiting for someone to make the proper argument and it looks like the nation may have gotten there …… finally.
Josh @ 9:
Mmm, maybe BUT governing is not necessarily ruling. And this is not a nation where any conceivable majority wishes to be “ruled”. Hence the TEA parties. And a reminder, TEA is Taxed Enough Already. Nothing else. Making it a sodomite pejorative is reprehensible and deserves proper reaction (read – beating).
wnmc @ 44 said: “Obama=Nero” No. Caligula
dicentra @ 62:
“All that dry stuff…” is what governing a free nation is about. It is not grand sweeping gestures as The Zero and The New Left seem to think, it is that hard day-to-day work of crafting sensible policies that the nation can agree with. What has happened is that the electorate has forgotten that and The Left wishes to rule as elitist Grand Poobah’s.
whiskey @ 66:
Nope, they do not, most assuredly. The military is peopled by mostly conservative types. I do agree with a lot of what you say, most times, but not this time.
Papa Ray – That is true. I hear primers are getting a little easier to find but brass is still at a premium. And all of it that does come to market gets gobbled up in short order. The funny part is that the affordable .223REM (5.56x45mm NATO) for those “Evil Black Rifles” is made in Russia. Just good old varmint shooting FMJ expendable stuff is made by the former enemy. What a hoot!
The American people aren’t all that smart and they aren’t all that interested either most the time, but once you get their attention and they actually bear down and concentrate on the problem at hand for a couple of minutes and make a decision it is political suicide to buck them. This health care bill is a done deal. It is as done as this mornings coffee that has been sitting on the burner all day.
The people thought about it and decided it sucks. If Massachusetts won’t buy it no one will. Obama is flogging a dead horse here and it is political suicide. All anyone wants to know is how are you going to get the economy going, create jobs, and get the deficit down… oh yeah and we don’t want no stinking carpet kissing camel jockeys blowing stuff up. We don’t care if you try him or just chain him up to a pickup truck and drag him for a few miles after waterboarding him, his cousin, his cousine;s mothers pet cat and three random totally innocent Islamic “moderates”. Just do it in a hurry. Do it quietly. Do it out of sight and don’t tell us about it – or anyone else for that matter.
Kill or enemies and keep the economy humming. It is as simple as that and he has about another three months to convince the country he is up to the job or he is going to have to double the guard at the White House gate.
The debt is unsustainable. We have lost 3 or 4 million jobs in the last year. The stock market is about to take another dive. Iran is developing a bomb. China’s economy is a house of cards. The Indians and illegals are taking all our jobs and depressing wages, and “it is Bush’s fault” doesn’t cut it any more. We fired that guy and hired Mr Hopey Changey to fix things and all they are doing is getting worse. On top of everything else we are up to our eyeballs in snow.
To 84. RagnarD
While I tend to agree the military is going to side with the centrist/rightwing vs obama/leftists…. I would also wagers its going to split around 60-40. On the plus side most of the combat arms will be on the 60% side and most of the paper pushers on the 40%. However to count on units such as the NJ national guard or other states that often have some pretty leftwing basis as their recruiting poor is not likely.
While I believe that at the moment if a dictator tried to seize control of the US that the US ppl could fight them off… I have come to see more and more that almost daily this ability is fleeting. In as short as 10 ten year that split could go the other way depending on events.
Its way I look at current event and almost wonder if better to give obama everything he wants so he does what all leftists in history have always done when they reach that level of power…. while obama may fail we could elect another 3-4 bush/mccain/clintons and then in 20 years have another obama show up… and easily get everything he wants.
As anyone who saw the film “Diary of Anna Frank” it was …
THE GREEN POLICE that came to take away the Jews to Sobibor.
I’m all wrote out on the Beach Head Thread, but I think what the GOP ought to do at this summit is walk in and say “The voters are tired of hearing fairy tales about how Washington D.C. is going to ‘fix’ the problem. It’s time to talk about how Washington D.C. is going to stop causing the problem.” Then lay into the cost and accessibility problems in light of medicare payments, lack of tort reform, distorted tax policy, artificial boundaries for insurance companies, etc. Pin the problems on existing government policy, and then every time Obama talks about a new program, say “That’s just more of the same thing that’s gotten us into this mess. Look, stop digging already, the hole’s deep enough.”
Of course the odds are against it, no graft in doing that. Perhaps they’ll surprise me. I’d like that.
robotech master/89
No. I know what you are thinking. Let people experience socialism so they get thoroughly disgusted with it for a century, after 10 years of obamunism.
But it is not that simple. The rule may last for quite a while. It would take 20 years to deplete the resources, money and turn one generation 50% anti-marxist. It may take another 20 years to turn 70% of all population anti-marxist. And another 15-20 years for complete breakdown and overcoming inertia. So you may be looking at 60 years.
But you can’t look at it as an isolated element. You need to look at the world context. The country would be weakening along the path and ripe for a takeover. By some even a bigger assh0le, or a bunch of them. If that group is islam based, then 500 years of dark ages are ahead.
It has to be done differently. We have to start taking back the parts of the system affected by indoctrination industry (education especially), that would preclude another obamao in 20 years. Easier said than done, but has to be figured out, said, written and so done.
I have another worry. I know, it is damn f00ked up right now and may be more so as I outlined along that trajectory.
But an entirely different ball game is coming up and fast. Time control tech is already here. It will not take long and it will be ready for a prime time. It is not as complicated as one would think, and though the physics are not entirely worked out, the stuff works. Beside US, some progress made in Japan, China, Russia and India. India is ahead at this time. I think there may be a lab somewhere in Europe, too, but at an earlier stage of development. The main issue is the underlying ethics. Moral compass. It is being developed, but as an afterthought. And there are temptations, there will be.
The idea of paradoxes is a reflection of our inability to deal with this stuff nature, its logic that differs from our understanding how things work. But there are no paradoxes. Only resets. No forking into parallel realities, the loops always emerge into mainline.
There are some people that claim there has been a reset. In 1998. It is a feeling that something is not right, but the nature of it is elusive. Some people experience strange physical effects. The specific expression of these is individual, it varies. But it is about 0.5-1% of population that are sensitive to this stuff, the rest does not have a clue, just a fleeting deja vu on occasion, if anything.
The reset likely originated from the next 10 years. Since there has been only one so far, the effect is not that severe, at least I hope so, if that was really the case. There did not seem to have been any more so far. Just mild ripples generated when a TC device is initiated somewhere, no interferences/manipulations, just observations. But that does not mean the potential for misuse is not there. It is not out of the realm of possibilities to have a nice global time war.
Imagine someone of a VHEMT bent getting a hold of the tech in some way.
Yeah, watta fun.
Obama is unqualified to be president.
Obama’s left wing policies are destroying the economy and the nation’s standing in the world and undermining our security against jihadi terrorists. He is irrevocably committed to them.
Obama’s left wing policies are unpopular.
Obama’s personality flaws render him incapable of recognizing his mistakes and changing course to save his presidency.
Conclusion: Obama’s presidency is doomed to failure and the United States will be damaged in the process.
If a credible Republican leader emerges, they can again be the majority party.
I think what the GOP ought to do at this summit is walk in and say “The voters are tired of hearing fairy tales about how Washington D.C. is going to ‘fix’ the problem. It’s time to talk about how Washington D.C. is going to stop causing the problem.
To do that, the GOP would need to forget, at least “for an hour,” that Obama is black. Then they could engage him verbally as they would any other trial lawyer.
But this is Barry’s element — remember he stood up in front of classes of bright Chicago Law students and engaged them in verbal wordplay. When he said, “I’m having fun” at that GOP retreat, he meant it. It took him back to his days of dealing with starry-eyed students, worshipful at the feet of the first black Harvard Law Review editor. And Con Law, like “Hope and Change,” is the vaguest area, subject to sweeping generalizations, a place where the Cornell Wests and Barack Obamas of the world can summon the demons, guilt, and sins of America’s past, for personal profit.
The GOP needs to keep the cameras out of the room.
wretchard @ Feb 8, 2010 – 4:21 pm:
The left has spent over a hundred years denying reality, and while that may make them appear crazy, living with them has offered no rewards approaching that of living with a beautiful woman. It has been far more like living under the spell of the sea hag.
In Back to the Drawing Board, Democratic fantasies face the bracing slap of reality. Matt Welch explains how he thinks that the problem has been that this is the first time since the ’70′s that progressive ideas have had to face the test of reality.
I agree with Whiskey, if they can’t get their agenda pushed through the way they want it, thus guaranteeing long term power, then they will get the US into a war to achieve the same end.
“The thing to realize about the healthcare summit is that it’s not about healthcare.”
No, it’s about control. In fact, the whole ‘healthcare’ issue is about nothing other than power. There’s a clear analogy between the Dems and date-rapists: what about ‘no’ do they not understand?
Very late to this thread, but…
I predict that at the “health care summit”, The One will demonstrate the same mindset evident in his launch of NOAA’s new “Climate Information Project”, designed to “educate” the American people about the “reality” of Global Warming. Said launch occurring in the middle of what even The One refers to as “Snowmageddon” in D.C.
His gut instinct, whenever reality conflicts with his narcissistic dream world, is to “double down his bet”- to dig in his heels, call out the leg-breakers, and tell everyone else, “You WILL believe, and do things my way, or else.” The NOAA announcement was Him saying, “I believe in AGW and the measures I intend to force upon you to combat it. Now I am going to force you to believe, too.”
At the “health care summit”, I expect him to deliver an ultimatum; Do It My Way Or Else.
When he is told “no”, I further expect him to explode in a Nixonian display of self-righteous fury- much as his mentor, Jimmy Carter, is also noted for. And then to try to “punish” anyone and everyone he sees as “The Enemy”. (Defined by The One as “Anyone who dares to have an opinion different from my own.”)
Obama is not “merely” a “one-trick pony”. He’s a narcissist with a monomania about power and control.
Rational behaviors, like compromise or even changing his goals in the light of reality, are not part of that psychopathology. Don’t expect to see either one from this Administration; you will be disappointed.
clear ether
eon
Given the events of the last few weeks I think I know which part 0bama plays in “Biggus Dickus” Life of Brian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc&feature=player_embedded
If you saw the superbowl commercial for the diesel powered car you know where the Left would take us. Jackbooted thugs inforcing recycling, etc. They can put their ideas where the sun never shines.
eon/97
He is not an autocrator. Yet.
He may try tantrums, but without some sort of manufactured crisis of a substantial magnitude, his goose is cooked, though slowly. With a crisis, his goose may be cooked quickly, in any case.
I think you guys need not worry about an Obamunist triumph: I think 2010 is going to see Obamunism shellacked and the whole population mugged by reality in a very irreversible way. Obama was, after all, sent here to fail. The opportunity cannot be wasted and will not be left to an uncertain second term. At least in my opinion.
I’m wondering what our reaction will be after 2010. If we own the congress, which I’m starting to think is almost an inevitability, when the media has lost all interest in their God/Star, when he can’t fill a high school gymnasium….
Are we going to forget the attempts to politically, culturally, and economically murder us? Will we forget or will use this as an opportunity to make political liberalism into that which is either divorced from anti-american leftism or effectively extinct?
I want you guys to think about this:those things that hampered the right in the 70′s and 80′s, mainly racism personified by David Duke- are extinct now on the right. It is unthinkable at this point that forum attendees on forums such as this or the DC, or big Govt, would tolerate racist comments. We just dont put up with that!
But think about ultra liberals now. Noam Chomsky, Zizek, Badiou, and all other apologists and rationalizers for the greatest crimes in history are their intellectual heroes.
I was thinking that in this post that I was going to say that we need to be magnanimous when we win. I think we need to be humble, but I’ve effectively reminded myself why we can’t let up after we win;we have to push leftist thought out of the political spectrum of this country entirely.
We need to make those hateful sentiments and ideologies of the far left in this country as unacceptable as racism is in our society.
93 Charles R Williams
“Obama’s personality flaws render him incapable of recognizing his mistakes and changing course to save his presidency.
97 eon
” Obama is not “merely” a “one-trick pony”. He’s a narcissist with a monomania about power and control.
Rational behaviors, like compromise or even changing his goals in the light of reality, are not part of that psychopathology. Don’t expect to see either one from this Administration; you will be disappointed.”
I would like everyone to read and watch this and then think to themselves and consider what eon & Charles wrote….and then ask:
What kind of person would do and say this?
Obama’s Coffin/ T-Shirt Moment
There is a big problem here and it is Obama. We are not only fighting a closet communist but a narcissist that is near the breaking point.
Look at his four horsemen that guide his every thought and day and then tell me of the dangers that are to come.
How many weeks/months until all reason is lost?
Papa Ray
My contribution to the beautiful woman thread.
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong
Okay Ledger, since you brought up that skit in “Life of Brian”, did you see this story out of the middle east last week?
http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/260720
The Saudi’s officially rejected the new Pakistani ambassador and requested a new one. Their objection had nothing at all to do with the man, but with his name, Akbar Zeb.
Akbar Zeb translates into Arabic as Biggus Dickus.
I think somebody in the White House has made the assessment that they don’t have the strength to win a coup and do a Bolshevik type takeover.
We aren’t at the critical point yet. That will be in October 2010. If it looks like the polls are showing the Democrats getting wiped out, then the “it’s now or never” factor becomes important.
The simple fact is that the USA is a conservative country. If the 4th world wishes to replace ballots with bullets, they will lose. So if they see them selves losing either way, no telling what they will do.
While war sucks and civil wars are the suckyist, there are worse things. On a positive note, hanging ACORN and ACLU members does have a certain entertainment value.
103 baal
“I was thinking that in this post that I was going to say that we need to be magnanimous when we win. I think we need to be humble, but I’ve effectively reminded myself why we can’t let up after we win;we have to push leftist thought out of the political spectrum of this country entirely.
We need to make those hateful sentiments and ideologies of the far left in this country as unacceptable as racism is in our society.”
Papa Ray
“Wretchard is right as usual. This isn’t about compromise, or about governing. It’s about ruling over people who aren’t wild about being ruled.”
National Security Advisor Jones in discussing Obama’s relationship with other leaders used not leaders but “as other rulers”.
I remember thinking at the time if Jones thought of Obama as the Ruler of the USA, or whether the use of Ruler had something to do with his military background.
OH MY…this is good. Read it:
Why are liberals so condescending?
Papa Ray
O/T with permission requested.
Just for future reference George Washington’s Farewell Address did not include the phrase No foreign entanglements
I have read here many times Washington cited as the source of those comments. He was not.
It was Thomas Jefferson who used the phrase.
It is not in Washingtons Address.
Please consult presidential historian Joesph Ellis and the address’s themselves for proof should you have any doubt.
……The sooner we learn to do it, and to figure out their seductive little self deceptions the better it will be. It’s really like being married to a crazy and beautiful woman and always, always having to figure out what’s real and what ain’t.
I think you nailed it. So many posts, so little time
We all need to take Paulette’s example and do the same thing in our neighborhoods. This is the way that we can defeat the democrats and their agenda. From the ground up. Starting with your local elections, through the federal elections.
It takes your time and effort, there ARE no short cuts, no slacking off….Just do it!!
Democrats, Meet Your Biggest Nightmare
And also your money. We have to pay to get our message out. We must overwhelm the airways with our words and beliefs. We must buy signs and the hundreds of other expenses to win.
We must save our Republic one way or the other, and the other is something no one wants to happen.
Papa Ray
110. Papa Ray
Why are liberals so condescending?
Knowingly or not they have adopted Jeremy
Benthams, the father of modern liberalism, (as defined in his day)(1748-1832) dictum of “the greatest good for the greatest number of people” with the philosophy of Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804 – September 13, 1872) a German philosopher and anthropologist. His thought was influential in the development of Marxist dialectic and Marx “scientific “ approach to history which they consider the far superior approach.
They then attemted to adopted Felix Dzerzhinsky methods of enforcement ie. Port Huron Statement, SDS, Black panthers, and a whole host of less but equally draconian factions to “enforce their will”. Then they germanated and grew political correctness to throttle free and open debate. We see that manifestation today in the SIEU and obamas recruitment of youth into a Praetorian Guard obedient to him.
That’s my take on it.
If this November is a repeat of 1946 (though I’d prefer a repeat of 1894, the all-time Shock and Awe rout at the ballot box)and the Democrats lose both the House and Senate I too wonder if Obambi is up to facing a very hostile Congress, as well as a media having to distance itself from the image of them carrying his water. Will he crack and become Captain Queeg, muttering in the White House halls about strawberries? Going to be interesting.
And it will be a hostile Congress. The newly arrived Republicans will have won office promising to oppose his efforts and undo the damage. They will be in no mood to compromise. The surviving Democrats will be bitter than Obambi led them over a cliff and looking for payback. The question becomes what will be the course of the veteran Republicans (who are as alarmed by the Tea Party movement and rise of Sarah Palin as the Democrats). Their course of action will be greatly influenced by what happens in the primaries. If John McCain falls or barely survives his challenge I think that they too will join the newly elected Republicans in a no compromise, no quarter stance and aggresively push forward a reform agenda. If they are smart the Republicans will send President Andrew Johnson, er Obama, reform bill after reform bill that he will have to either sign or veto. And then who becomes the party of No?
Lest anyone forget:
The 1894 rout occurred as a consequence of the 1893-94 hard times…
The USG ran into a gold crisis/trading lock-up and the President had to run to Wall Street and pay 6% on bonds to restore the ‘vault.’
@92 twobyfour
Moral compass as an afterthought – now that’s postmodern man in a nutshell! As for the technology, speaking as someone who experiences “fleeting deja-vu” quite a lot, it’s fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way. Have you got a link to more information, or a book to recommend?
PR@108 & Baal@103,
Since I’ve been observing this situation for the last 40+ years, and becoming increasingly angry and alarmed and taxed every year, I’ve been trying to advocate that we re-instate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It’s not like US isn’t at war, so it’s important that we get on War-footing for lots of reasons.
If we don’t seriously prosecute the perps as soon as possible, all this effort is wasted.
We might start by matching the defeated Congress-critters’ voting records with all their contributions and publishing the matrix online. Let the citizens point out the fraud -graft – corruption – theft involved. Enlist the “army” of Davids. Permit the pols to defend themselves.
If we are successful, we’ll take over the House with newbies, who’re not yet corrupted by special interests. They need to be the New Sheriffs in Town. If we can’t force our newly-elected reps to agressively police their own, we’ve accomplished nothing and wasted a lot of W’s bandwidth.
A Tea Party plank to rapidly “clean house” in WDC is a winner with everybody except the crooks. Staffers will be anxious to spill the goods, or be considered to be complicit. Absent such measures, we’ll never untangle the crimial enterprise we’ve enabled the political class to become.
Consequences.
Another plank: No legislation may be passed unless all members are present, and by casting a Yea or Nea, they attest under oath that they’ve read the proposed legislation, and sought expert advice on the economic ramifications, and polled their constituents.
Voila! 25 page bills, minus thousands of pages of payoffs. Just thinking green!
When the Left cannot rule, it will try to govern. Until the next time.
Anyone approaching B+arack’s paeans to including opposition ideas for “healthcare” or anything else under the sun should tread extremely warily. His gesture reeks of Stealth Inclusion, one that is merely symbolic as opposed to meaningful and well-intentioned.
Rather than a parliamentary system with La Pelosi serving as B+arack’s prime minister, perhaps the ultimate goal is a new Feudalism, with this crowd of marginally corrupt, socialism-loving élitists calling all the shots for our daily lives, having declared themselves new lords and overseers of We The Bitter Clingers.
No longer We The People
Trust them as far as you can throw them.
And Amnesty Int’l has been ideologically bent for as long as I can remember.
“I’ve been trying to advocate that we re-instate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.”
Here’s the problem with that idea – if that Committee existed today, it would be owned by Pelosi and it would be busy rounding up YOU and ME and anyone else who dares to criticize Obama. To Obama, of course, “l’état, c’est moi.”
Never create anything in government that you wouldn’t survive if your enemies get ahold of it. This is a central mistake in the left’s plans – they always think they’ll be in power forever and that everything will work out the way they want it to if they can only accumulate enough power.
Don’t let yourself make the same mistake.
There seems to be an emerging consensus that we may be able to wake up from the nightmare of the past two years without the requirement of a national crack-up. If this turns out to be the case, then our host will deserve congratulations for his judicious treatment of the notion that the left represents the kind of virulent threat to us that many have feared. The sky has yet to fall, and he’s been good about checking it for cracks all along while never pulling the alarm.
So I’m intrigued by the question of what it will it mean if we get out of this more or less intact and what will it imply needs then to be done?
First, we can be supremely grateful that the maliciousness of the administration and those who sent it is surpassed only by their incompetence and self-delusion. Along the same lines, we should remind ourselves that learning from mistakes and acquiring competency as the game wears on is not out of the question, so we need to keep the peddle to the metal through next November and beyond.
But what seems likely to be more important in the long run is the need to become more acquainted with what within the rest of us that put us in this position in the first place. Just like the U.S. itself has been dealing with an enemy within, so the guardians of Americanism have an internal pathology that has eroded our diligence, our self-confidence, and our psychosocial immune system.
The sources of our vulnerabilities have been touched on a lot here, and there’s much more to learn and understand about them. But one thing we know for sure is that we have been guilty of that most egregious of sins, self-complacency.
There are lots of excuses for this, maybe our vast wealth above all and our historical capacity to overcome all manner of adversity. The key going forward, again assuming the avoidance of a crack-up, will be avoiding a return to such self-aggrandizing, self-congratulating, and self-centered ways.
The narcissism of Obama gets thrown around a lot here, with good justification, but it pays to be aware that a narcissistic leader requires the topsoil of a narcissistic population in which to grow.
So, I suppose this sounds really preachy, but it just occurs to me to raise the issue that we have done this to ourselves. And by that I mean the “we” that constitute the good guys in our scenario. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” as the other Walt put it.
If we’re really going to move forward after hopefully dodging this bullet, it will not really be about eradicating the bad guys so much as fixing what caused the problem in the first place. Otherwise, we’ll be like an alcoholic who gets through the 28 day program, is clean and sober, but doesn’t continue with AA.
The work then will be even harder than that which needs to be done now. Take Whiskey’s thesis. We’re going to have to transcend (not eliminate, because that’s a long way off) the tribal and class divisions for real if we’re to move forward. We won’t be able to go on dealing with them in the largely cosmetic and ultimately self-defeating way we’ve addressed them over the last half century.
And I think Peter (?) was right the other day, that to get to the other side of this bridge we will have to strengthen the local networks and systems that form the foundation for real cultural capital. We’ll have to resist the continuing temptation to rely so much on the ultimately dehumanizing systems and processes that promise relief but separate us from one another and promote self and social alienation.
What’s coming, it seems to me, will either be an awakening or . . . well, I don’t want to bother to think about the alternatives.
wws,
No mistaking here. I believe it’s an unavoidable risk. I’m not so optimistic as to think “rooting out – exterminating” Leftism will not require draconian measures…approaching those we know the Left will employ whenever and wherever we’re not successful.
Slavery always appears so permanent.
“We (Democrats) won, you (Republicans) lost!” That is real bipartisanship government by the Democrats. Secret meetings crafting laws, no colaboration with the “loyal opposition”. “I’ll listen and include all good ideas”, says the president. Objective scrutiny is by the American citizens not this president. The public is spitting on all Obama convoluted bills. The message was passed on in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. The Democrats are ignoring the message from the people, sooooooooo they will have to learn the hard way in November 2010. The propogandized “Party of No” is truly the party of Hell-NO, to any and all Statist-Progressive-SanFrancisco-Democrat bills designed to hurt our country. No dog and pony Obama show for the Health destruction program. Let the Democrat pukes go down in flame with the Pelosi-Reid-Obamanation Health destruction plan. Small business wants no part of the Obama “porkulus-stimulus” statist plan.
At the “health care summit”, I expect him to deliver an ultimatum; Do It My Way Or Else.
He’s ready for a karaoke gig in a Mindanao bar.
Papa Ray, #110
Continuing the theme of liberal condescension, Charles Krauthammer…
The Great Peasant Revolt of 2010
“Well, (Democrats) understand it (MA vote) through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.
Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded.”
(In my view, the remaining shards of constitutional process are frustrating the crap out of our new cadre of would be overseers (a President using his SOTU to criticize a free speech decision of the SCOTUS should tell you a lot). B+ and friends can hardly say it aloud, but apparently find the Constitution and its structures to be outdated relative to their new & enlightened ideas of the role of all-pervasive government in our lives. Intellectually, however, not a single one of them could hold a candle to the founders, individuals who took all care to craft a document that would inhibit & curtail the excesses and anti-freedom impulses they’d observed in the functioning of European institutions )
@110 Papa Ray
Why are liberals so condescending?
Years ago I read an interview with Golda Meier (you can find it in Oriana Fallaci’s book “Interview with History”) where Mrs. Meier talked about the way her view of Socialism had changed over the years. She said that when she was young she had believed that all Socialists were good people and vice versa. Experience taught her otherwise.
I think that’s a very telling observation and it explains a lot about the Left’s hold on the minds of its rank and file. People who are drawn to the Left in America today are worlds away from the exploited workers and starving peasants of Marxist hagiography. They are comfortable and educated and they don’t really want to change the status quo that guarantees their comfort. But they feel slightly guilt-ridden about it and they want to appear concerned. At the same time they don’t actually want to make any of the sacrifices that a genuine practical concern for the welfare of others demands. They are basically apolitical and don’t want to be bothered and that is exactly what makes Leftism so attractive. It makes emotional appeals to adolescent utopianism (doesn’t everyone want peace? human rights? clean water? an end to all the hunger and suffering in the world? How could any good human being object to these goals??) which works its most powerful magic on the young and inexperienced. The result is two-fold. It allows people to flatter themselves as being part of a living revolutionary tradition and offers the further consolation of doing God’s work without having to submit to the demands of a higher power. It satisfies the conscience (actually a romantic illusion of a conscience, but then self-delusion is a big and necessary element in the whole thing!) and gratifies the ego all at the same time.
To get back to Mrs. Meier’s observation, this view of the Left as inseparable from the moral quality of goodness is what ropes people in at the start and many, if not most, simply don’t think about it any further. After that, peer pressure does the rest. Thomas Sowell calls it self-congratulation as social policy.
maineman @ 121: There seems to be an emerging consensus that we may be able to wake up from the nightmare of the past two years without the requirement of a national crack-up.
I don’t know about “consensus”. The financial meltdown was arrested, for only an immediate expenditure of $3,000,000,000,000. But an arrest is not a conviction, the perp may walk and offend again and cost another $3t or $6t or $15t, and what then? Not to mention the empty suit in the White House who thinks we *should* add another $1t/year just for the fun of it.
Or perhaps you mean, the democratic super-majority may be broken before we are all marching around singing the praises of the glorious leader before dropping dead of malnutrition and lack of medical care. May be, but there are still many problems remaining, including an unprecedented polarization and no prospects at all of that changing for the better.
I’m glad for the respite, and know that much of life is just stumbling through, but I really don’t grok that consensus thing.
Thomas Sowell calls it self-congratulation as social policy.
Understand today’s liberal animal, his “ornamental sympathies” and his (vapid) heart on the sleeve “religion of human kindness”, and you understand a lot about the community organizer mentality.
The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness
Recently, I read that 47% of Americans are “ok” with socialism. We’re going lazy and dead here.
Then there are the progressives who are an an even deadlier form of the liberal animal in that they’re not content with mere self-righteous, smarmy “caring” and all that, but want nothing less than the complete destruction of your autonomy & your personal liberty.
“The left doesn’t want to govern, it wants to rule.”
Someone should write a book. They could call it “Animal Farm” or maybe “1984″.
INGSOC, baby, INGSOC!!
“There seems to be an emerging consensus that we may be able to wake up from the nightmare of the past two years without the requirement of a national crack-up.”
We may not have the big crack-up (I’m still not so sure we can avoid it) but even in the best case we’re going to have at least 10 years of subpar growth and high unemployment. Once interest rates start going back up (and that should happen by the end of the year) any economic recovery we get going is going to be squashed. I expect near constant recession with a 4 quarters of growth sprinkled hear and there lasting until 2020, at least.
Our debt is too high for there to be any other outcome.
It’s a shame that the GOP doesn’t adhere to its “principles” any more than the Left.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/09/stimulus-foes-see-value-in-seeking-cash/
“More than a dozen Republican lawmakers, while denouncing the stimulus to the media and their constituents, privately sent letters to just one of the federal government’s many agencies seeking stimulus money for home-state pork projects.”
What I meant to be saying was that prospects look better for not having a hot civil war in the streets, which is even now not out of the question.
What I was also getting at, though, is that the financial expansion and technological advances of the past 25 years seems not to have made us better human beings and, in fact, have arguably made us worse. From that perspective, sub-par growth, to focus on that example, would be good thing if it reverses — as shared adversity often does — the social alienation and egocentricity that have increasingly characterized us culturally.
121 maineman
“But what seems likely to be more important in the long run is the need to become more acquainted with what within the rest of us that put us in this position in the first place. Just like the U.S. itself has been dealing with an enemy within, so the guardians of Americanism have an internal pathology that has eroded our diligence, our self-confidence, and our psychosocial immune system.”
Excellent comment and reasoning, much clearer than what I wrote earlier here and elsewhere:
Papa Ray
120. wws:
“I’ve been trying to advocate that we re-instate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.”
You and a whole bunch of us would love to see it. Although not affiliated with the HUAC formally Sen. McCarthy was right in his assault on communists within US administrations and Hollywood. That is why to this day the close knit kin of the Hollywood elite hate the Republicans. McCarthy was simply too aggressive and in-your-face for the common citizen and Hollywood in particular (he made Edward R Morrow a hero when Morrow challenged him..ugh) which harbored a large faction of fellow travelers.. The release of the Venona Papers proved him correct in fact.
That we need a serious investigation (although I’m skeptical of anyone who would head it) into the infiltration of our government by factions inimical to our Constitution is a given……weed ‘em out , hang ‘em , and then give ‘em a fair trail. …. and the states are crawling with all manner of foreign and domestic saboteurs to our freedoms ALL the way up to the top of the political food chain in DC.
As an aside were you aware that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator during the war?
http://tinyurl.com/yh7bu2l
George Soros has always been the type of guy who went above and beyond. For example, this exchange between Soros and Steve Kroft happened on “60 Minutes”:
Kroft: “And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.”
Soros: “Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.”
Kroft: “In what way?”
Soros: “That one should think ahead. One should understand that—and anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a—a very personal threat of evil.”
Kroft: “My understanding is that you went … went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.”
Soros: “Yes, that’s right. Yes.”
One can can understand Soros posing as a Christian To save himself, but he went above and beyond, became a collaborator and helped the Nazi’s steal from his doomed brethren. There, he claimed, is where he made his character. Soros took his learning and became convicted Insider trader, a guy who made 10 billion dollar off the British people through currency speculation, terrorist supporter and Israel hater.
After the last election George Soros, met with a group of Mega-rich liberals to ensure that they get to control the country after the 2008 Elections. What they ended up doing is giving $100 Million dollars to key liberal organizations in major battle ground states(see Obama’s Liberal Shock Troops ). Here’s the scary part–it worked.
Last Year George Soros funded the creation of “J Street” described as a “left wing alternative” to AIPAC. In actuality it is a group which like Soros, embraces the terrorist point of view and at times acts as a propagandist for Hamas’ actions.
Their propaganda has become so blatant that even Rabbi Yoffie of the Reform Movement, a regular Israel critic has bashed the group.
The lobbying group, he writes in the liberal newspaper The Forward, “could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants, who have launched more than 5,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in the past three years, and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south.”
Now this admitted Nazi collaborator, and convicted insider trader is setting his “tentacles” on the Department of Defense:
http://tinyurl.com/ccl9w7
Marymcl, it’s rather new stuff so not much out there yet.
Sort of pop sci overview. Website: http://andersoninstitute.com/
Tech comparison: http://andersoninstitute.com/educational-resources.html
There is supposed to be material gradually posted throughout the next 18 months.
As for the possible reset, deja vu may or may not be an indicator. If the episodes started at that time (1998), the “may” is somewhat more likely.
Some people just register unwarranted “feeling” that something is not right–”things are not supposed to be this way”, without a substantive basis. This is more a statistical phenomenon.
The more physical symptoms may be a perception displacement, only for a fraction of a second–for instance you may be close to a wall, facing it, and you see what is behind it in front of you. Another symptom may be doubled vision with a severe displacement that has no somatic or psychological basis, this may last for quite a while to get gradually back to normal, even weeks. An optometrist would find your eyes in the same state as in your previous visit and CAT scan would not find anything out of the ordinary. Any further events like initialization (not resets) may cause recurrences of a very mild, short term double vision displacement. The distance from the location of a TC event may or may not be a factor.
#47 DiCentra – “Hell has actually frozen over.” Literally laugh-out-lout funny! Busted a gut!
127. marymcl writes:
People who are drawn to the Left in America today are worlds away from the exploited workers and starving peasants of Marxist hagiography. They are comfortable and educated and they don’t really want to change the status quo that guarantees their comfort. But they feel slightly guilt-ridden about it and they want to appear concerned. At the same time they don’t actually want to make any of the sacrifices that a genuine practical concern for the welfare of others demands. They are basically apolitical and don’t want to be bothered and that is exactly what makes Leftism so attractive.
Exactly. For most of the people in the US who espouse leftist views it is merely a fashion statement and nothing more. But that is the problem and a very serious one. They don’t know what the blather they speak works out into when its put into practical reality, or the impact it would have on their lives. After all, its just something you say to be cool and sophisticated. Agitprop works, especially upon the ignorant.
And by ignorant I do not mean stupid or uneducated. We are all ignorant. Wisdom consists of the humility to understand that we are ignorant and the resolve to change it while at the same time understanding that the goal of understanding everything is forever beyond our reach.
How to win the HealthCare summit: Don’t play!
What the Pubbies need to say is simply, “We spent most of last year on this nonsense. No more. The People want us to focus on the economy. Until we’ve taken the right steps to put the economy back on track, we are NOT talking about HealthCare. HealthCare is important, but the economy is even more important… and URGENT!”
The Pubbies need not walk into the trap, or even try to turn it around on the trappers. Simply walk away. “The People have spoken. We Pubs have heard. It’s the economy and the debt, Stupid! We refuse to play your stupid political games.” Such a response would destroy Obama and win the forthcoming elections.
Hancock writes: “It’s a shame that the GOP doesn’t adhere to its ‘principles’ any more than the Left.”
Until Congress decides to get rid of earmarks, Congresscritters will angle for earmarks. It’s like money on the sidewalk.
Congress likes to take money from people in the states and then give it back to the states, with all kinds of strings attached.
Conservatives call for subsidiarity, i.e., keeping decision-making (and money) with the people, ultimately at the level of individual (if you’re libertarian) and/or family (generally those human beings who remember they grew up in families).
But now liberals, always eager to stage a co-optation, especially in the realm of language, are calling for “subsidiarity.” By saying this they mean that people send their money to the government and the government sends it back to the states, which sends it to local government, to the benefit of individuals, who, after all, voted for the state and local elected officials. Presto—subsidiarity!
Anyone notice that there seems to be little reference to Obama actually doing anything regarding Haiti? The NYT regularly and dutifully reports that “The White House says . . . .” in response to the mess du jour.
“…They can drop the mask; they can hoist the Jolly Roger.”
Actually on closer exam, that’s not the Jolly Roger. That’s a picture of Nancy Pelosi with her face painted white and her arms crossed in front of her chest. But it’s hard to tell the difference.
tanssaafl @ 129: Understand today’s liberal animal, his “ornamental sympathies” and his (vapid) heart on the sleeve “religion of human kindness”, and you understand a lot about the community organizer mentality.
It’s all in Atlas Shrugged.
There is nothing new under the sun.
–
In fact, it occurs to me, if I could ask Obambus one question on national teewee, that would be it – has he ever read “Atlas Shrugged”, and if so, what does he think of it, and what character in it does he most identify with?
–
Really, it’s all in Rousseau.
“If this turns out to be the case, then our host will deserve congratulations for his judicious treatment of the notion that the left represents the kind of virulent threat to us that many have feared. The sky has yet to fall, and he’s been good about checking it for cracks all along while never pulling the alarm.”
Hello everybody. I would just like to state that I am not a troll from a nefarious liberal blog. I am just one of those young people who is consistently described by commenters here, coming out of the coma of my post-Nixon era education.
When I read pronouncements such as the one I quoted, I really need to know if things are really this bad, and if they are, why aren’t the “grown-ups” doing everything they can to implement, forgive the terminology, change? All (well most) of the people commenting here are smart, so I wonder what makes them different from the liberal academics they doth protest against? Are the academics frauds who teach children? How are smart people not academic, and vice versa? Where do the non-academic smart people get the knowledge that informs them?
For instance the libs say Palin is not smart because she is academic. Therein I see their lie; she is smart enough to not apply her knowledge academically. Would she not get the mistreatment from the libs and MMS is she were a man? Probably.
I hope people here defend her. I see more than a few commenters say all the republican party needs to succeed is a leader. Isn’t our American Thatcher just that?
“Why have not these intellectually superior liberals read this book (and others)?
Because they are not [intellectually superior]. They just believe they are…and while they have been useful the party apparatus, beginning in 2d grade or thereabouts, has told them they are. Well-cultivated hubris, I think. Keeps them fat, dumb and happy until they are pitched squealing into the pit for the party’s purpose…as with the Amnesty International woman, Useful Idiots.
Stephanie, so you are past 35?
That is about the age when wisdom (not always) is starting to germinate.
Palin… the problem may be that the liberal/MSM attack machine was too successful. Presuming ignorance as a default state of being amongst majority and thus their ability to absorb snake oil and derivates like sponges, Palin may not have the numbers that would carry her through. I dunno. Maybe. Has to be seen.
“Really, it’s all in Rousseau.”
So true.
Of the prize-winning essay that catapulted Rousseau to his first modest step of fame, his Discours on the arts and sciences, the famous critic Jules Lemaitre is said to have remarked that it was “one of the strongest proofs ever provided of human stupidity.”
Walt! #2. – Amazing!!!!!! Love it!!!
No I was born during the Reagan Administration. But from what I gather on the BC, anyone born after Nixon didn’t receive the proper old school education. Considering we never finished the textbook by the time June rolled around, I have to concur that my generation never did not learn a lot about what happened after Kennedy died.
One of my favorite collection for “Academics”.
The following list of phrases and their definitions might help you understand the mysterious language of Academics. These special phrases are also applicable to anyone working on a Ph.D. dissertation or academic paper anywhere!
*
“It has long been known” = I didn’t look up the original reference.
*
“A definite trend is evident” = These data are practically meaningless.
*
“While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to the questions” = An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
*
“Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study” = The other results didn’t make any sense.
*
“Typical results are shown” = This is the prettiest graph.
*
“These results will be in a subsequent report” = I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.
*
“In my experience” = once.
*
“In case after case” = twice.
*
“In a series of cases” = thrice.
*
“It is believed that” = I think.
*
“It is generally believed that” = A couple of others think so, too.
*
“Correct within an order of magnitude” = Wrong.
*
“According to statistical analysis” = Rumor has it.
*
“A statistically oriented projection of the significance of these findings” = A wild guess.
*
“A careful analysis of obtainable data” = Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of pop.
*
“It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs”= I don’t understand it.
*
“After additional study by my colleagues”= They don’t understand it either.
*
“Thanks are due to Joe Blotz for assistance with the experiment and to Cindy Adams for valuable discussions” = Mr. Blotz did the work and Ms. Adams explained to me what it meant.
*
“A highly significant area for exploratory study” = A totally useless topic selected by my committee.
*
“It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field” = I quit.
What is not taught in schools, colleges or even sometimes at home is called “Common Sense”. For a look at same from one of our Founders.
See these quotes from Ben Franklin.
I’ve found in my long life that those with “school smarts” very seldom have any common sense nor the ability to obtain any.
Papa Ray
Stephanie, I never learned anything either and I went to school during the 50s and 60s. Mostly, though, that was my fault. But I will say that nobody paid much attention to history back then.
I come here mostly to learn from those who evidently paid attention when I did not. Other than the fact that my memory is a real problem, learning such exciting things late in life has been a thrill.
Now, as to your questions. The bad news is that, yes, things are really that bad. But the good news is that they always have been. I think you will see as you get older that humanity keeps moving forward against all apparent odds, which should tell you that forward movement is somehow in the cards. The other good news is that we’re much better off now that we know what we’re dealing with than when we were asleep.
What I was trying to get at above is that I think we in the U.S. have lost our way. How that has happened is a long story and, as a psychologist with almost 30 years of experience, I can tell you that, without a doubt, it is all my fault.
Not me all by myself, of course, but the generic me, the Boomer me. When the history of the last 50 years is written it will be titled “Narcissism, thy name is Boomer” or something like that. The short version is that we decided that sex, drugs, and rock and roll represented an avenue to a higher version of humanity. Barack Obama is the fruit of that loom.
Suffice it to say that we were wrong, we have always been wrong, and we will always be wrong, most of us anyway. The big question now is how we, and that unfortunately now includes you, respond to this wake-up call.
I’m extremely optimistic about our long-term prospects, especially given the events of the past month. No one knows how this will play out, though, not even LOTM.
Whiskey Said:
>Obama has one more card left to
>play, should he care to play it. It is a
>card that at least in part, Lincoln
>and Wilson played. Suspension of at
>least parts of the Constitution, in
>name of a crisis (Wilson had less
>cause than Lincoln did in suspending
>it), and rule by Presidential Decree
>and executive authority.
Obama does not have that card to play.
Remember that it was just 10% of the American colonies population that were “Winter Patriots” who saved the American Revolution at Trenton and Concord.
The “Jacksonian fraction” of the American population is larger than that today, please see the Tea Party crowd.
That is why I see the Spanish Civil War in our future.
The Jacksonian fraction will not submit to the Lefties when they hoist their “Jolly Rodger” of ruler ship rather than governance.
And the Jackonians are both the primary recruiting source for our armed forces and the majority of the multiple gun owner civilian population.
This has implications even President Obama, and the PC senior military leaders who might follow him, see very clearly. Even if the Leftist true believers behind Obama cannot.
The problem is that the Lefties will be even more Leftie after the election defeats they have coming in 2010 thru 2014.
None of the Leftie politicians from the surviving Democratic urban majority-minority or Majority government employee congressional districts will remember 2010-2014 defeats in 2026-28 any more than Pelosi and Reid remembered 1994 in 2006-08.
@134 twobyfour
Thanks! BTW I’ve never experienced the kinds of perceptual or visual disorientation you describe – also the deja vu has always been there so I am happily unaffected by this whatever-it-is….still it’s very interesting
Papa Ray, your list brought to mind B+arack’s oft used phrase…
“Let me be perfectly clear…” = Gobbledygook Alert
Or, after East Anglia revelations…
“peer review” = only the guys we like who agree with us get into the scientific journals
Common sense, she ain’t so common anymore.
And yes Josh, there really isn’t much new under the sun, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
May O bless you, and sclew you, EU.
O’le: “Spain might sink the euro”.
…-
“The EU’s Horrible Honeymoon
Last week, Barack Obama snubbed the Europeans by refusing to attend next May’s European Union summit in Madrid. The Europeans are very upset. But that is not the worst of their problems, and neither is the looming bankruptcy of Greece. Analysts fear that Spain might sink the euro, the EU’s common currency, and with the euro also the dreams of greater political integration.
At this point Europe is not even halfway its 100-day political “honeymoon” since the Treaty of Lisbon, which transformed the EU into a state in its own right, came into force. So far the honeymoon has been a nightmare. Since the beginning of the year, the EU’s currency, the euro, is on the brink of collapse; Greece has been placed under EU financial supervision to prevent it from going bankrupt. Now U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will not attend next May’s EU summit in Madrid. It was to have been Obama’s first visit to post-Lisbon Europe – the consecration of the new political order.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/
Trent Telenko/152
None of the Leftie politicians from the surviving Democratic urban majority-minority or Majority government employee congressional districts will remember 2010-2014 defeats in 2026-28 any more than Pelosi and Reid remembered 1994 in 2006-08.
Meaning they forget to learn from history. That’s good, no?
But what we really need is to create some sort of a parallel school system, free of the marxist indoctrination machine. And make conservatism fashionable in some way. Tall order, I know.
Back in the old country (CZ), the anti-marxism became fashionable by default at the beginning of 60′s. If there was no Russian invasion in 1968, that would have been the end of the regime, a few years later, by about 1972. So about 24 years cycle. Because of the invasion, it took 41 years.
One diff. Kids were not so messed up (by “educators”) as it is now. Bare the regime attempts for indoctrination wherever you turn, the school system was still decent, without the liberal excesses and deliberate dumbing down of the present time curriculum. BS like self-esteem emphasis was completely non-existent.
151 maineman
“I come here mostly to learn from those who evidently paid attention when I did not. Other than the fact that my memory is a real problem, learning such exciting things late in life has been a thrill.”
Glad I’m not alone, your quote above fits me well. I didn’t even use a pc for most of my life even when they were available. Even though I worked on large frame systems almost all of my working life.
Come 9/11 I had to know. I had to know why. I almost became a computer zombie learning everything that I could find on the net about Islam, Moslems and their world.
Now we face a greater enemy. One that has been defined, gutted, hung up to discuss here on BC. We have become “experts” on the whys the wherefores and the ramifications of same.
But like you my memory plays tricks with me now and I am not amused. But I am still a damn good shot and can still get around, tho not as fast as before. But the old have their ways and they have their own cunning and the liberal progressive neo-commies had better know that we take no prisoners and give no quarter.
Papa Ray
155 maz2
“Now U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that he will not attend next May’s EU summit in Madrid. It was to have been Obama’s first visit to post-Lisbon Europe – the consecration of the new political order.””
Instead he didn’t even raise his leg to piss on them, he just walked on by with his nose up high. Could not been a sharper knife.
And to think of the reception he received before and after his election.
Regrets…turning into intense dislike.
Papa Ray
I see these health care talks as a smaller trap inside a larger trap.
The Big trap being the USA economy being runoff the road by the time 2012 and the Dem’cats, with the Congress in control of GOP since 2010…..attempting to emprison the GOP with claims of them being responsible for the economic meltdown……
….As big of importance we say no to any form of liberal Health care reform………we must cement the fact that economic problems are fully bought and paid for by the Dem’cats…..
I agree that the health care symposium puts the Republicans at risk – maybe in a no-win situation. Primarily because the Obama’s people will control the dialog. Their script will be to tick off the arguably inefficient aspects of our current system in a way that provokes feelings of envy and resentment. Then when the Republicans protest actual line items in this bloated and inane proposal, they will be painted as obstructionists who are in the pockets of the wealthy and big “whatever”. Free market ideas that surrender existing (or don’t include new) government control will be treated in a patronizing and dismissive manner as Obama insists on staying “on (his) point”
Also, I am amazed at how many people – some who are otherwise logical – believe that health care is something that only government can fix. Beware.
Hello everybody… I am just one of those young people who is consistently described by commenters here, coming out of the coma of my post-Nixon era education.
Hello Stephanie — Back in the early 90′s, just after the USSR fell, I went on a camping trip with a group of guys, including a Russian grad student who’d become a good friend.
That night we got ripped around the campfire and this Russian friend, who was usually closed and secretive, began weeping and told how he’d been raised on lies. Lies that said everyone in USSR was equal economically. Lies that the United States was beggaring its people to keep up with the USSR in the arms race. Lies that the country people in “Deliverance” represented the average American.
Your generation has been brought up by a media and academia and publishing industry dedicated to perpetuating certain lies to support their agenda. Obviously, their hold on channels of information has not been as near absolute in the old USSR, but they’ve succeeded in a certain amount of brainwashing. Limbaugh and Fox and the internet have been a guerilla movement that’s started to turn the tide.
To paraphrase the great Winston Churchill:
The left is always either at your throat or at your feet.
Though they are never truly ever defeated, just marginalized to whatever degree a successful conservative society can marginalize them. Sort of akin to a chronic disease.
B+arack’s call for “bipartisanship” is, in fact, a call for republican surrender. He seems to forget the number of congressional democrats who hear from the people back home that this government’s version of fundamentally transforming America is not their cup of tea.
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
~Thomas Jefferson
The main problem of the Left is unsolvable. This problem lies not only in their totalitarian instincts, but in mere fact that their goals cannnot be achieved by governing, only by despotical rule. This is just as true now as was in the days of Robespierre or Stalin. Old Bolsheviks could maintain an illusion that they are liberators, not enslavers, but Stalin knew better.
#144 Stephanie – What differentiates us crusty codgers here from the liberal elites we disparage so heartily?
– Knowledge of philosophy and history. Real world experience with eyes wide open. Embracing of Judeo-Christian values. Grounding in fundamentals. Economic literacy. Understanding the nature of Man. Most importantly, the traditional American distrust of government. Some or all of the above.
The Liberal elites we so disdain, tend to live in echo chambers. Those espousing a completely different order tend to ignore history and human nature. They are pygmies, because they refuse to stand on the shoulders of giants. Rather than learning from ancient wisdom, like philosophy, religion, and history, they are always starting from scratch. They fall for all the old illusions, draw all the wrong conclusions. They are simply juvenile in their thinking. They don’t even wonder if they might be wrong.
They are children. See their behavior. See how they treat those who disagree with them. Witness the childishness, the name-calling, the savagery of their nature, their immorality. These are playground rules, and high-school clique rules. They lack wisdom, becasue they refuse to learn.
You asked why they don’t implement change? The problem is your understanding of the word “change”. The Left lies. They constantly misuse words. They co-opt words and distort their meanings, thus confusing people. They sold the word “change” as meaning “reform”, which is what people really want. Again and again, Obama campaigned on change, advocating openness, transparency, etc…. People came to understand change as meaning reform, but it meant change. Change was the truth. The rest was all lies.
Look up the word “reform”, and you’ll know I speak the truth. It will all become clear to you.
#151 – Maineman – “I can tell you that, without a doubt, it is all my fault. Not me all by myself, of course, but the generic me, the Boomer me. When the history of the last 50 years is written it will be titled “Narcissism, thy name is Boomer” or something like that.”
This is one thing, no offense to you, MM, that really gripes me. I’m a Boomer, born in the mid-50′s. I spent 27 years plus some on active duty in the Navy, half that time at sea, on ships. Speaking frankly here, “that ain’t narcissism”.
Perhaps those who are awakening can say that, wear sackcloth, cover their head with ashes, etc. Not me. I and many of my fellow Boomers were keeping the Bear and other Terrors at bay, and putting our lives on the line to do it.
OK, off my soapbox.
I remember outstanding Feminist women leading campaigns against female circumcision in the 70′s. Now it is a non-issue. the Left in Britain are in bed with Islam and they are enjoying themselves.
Once again, our courageous allies, the Hmong have been betrayed, this time by Thailand to communist Laos. Thousands of terrified Hmong forced against their will into Laos. G-D help these innocents!
see worldnetdaily: Government silences, deports thousands
Human-rights activists alarmed over Thai move
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=124605
Mike G “I agree that the health care symposium puts the Republicans at risk – maybe in a no-win situation. Primarily because the Obama’s people will control the dialog.”
Well put; I wholeheartedly agree. Nothing is to be gained by this so-called symposium and a lot, including our liberty, could be lost. Just let Burack, Nancy and friends slowly hang themselves on their socialist rope.
S@164: The main problem of the Left is unsolvable.
Quite a few years ago I was curious what came after Gloria and Betty and Germaine and dipped into some of the post-modern academic writing relating to women’s issues.
To make a long story short, I – literally – couldn’t understand any of it – the critique, the objectives, the motivation, or the means.
I disagree with much of what I read on this site (about a third to a half) but I DO agree that the intellectual basis sustaining progressive ideology has stalemated. It can go no further. There is no “post modern” upgrade. What I see is a resurgence in the idea that “It wasn’t done right before.”
So you’re right. It won’t go away. But the corollary, which conservatives are reluctant to address, is the mechanistic absence of a personal connection as an integral component of a conservative platform. That’s a mouthful and I should let the more linguistically limber freshen it up, but the bottom line is that extreme circumstances do happen and relying on the charitable good will of the community is … a stretch.
Compassionate Conservatism didn’t make the grade. What will, I don’t know. But, what must, is a given, in my view, if a conservative ideology is to survive the future opposition of progressive thought. *It* is a weakness that the progressives attack over and over again.
#171 “I DO agree that the intellectual basis sustaining progressive ideology has stalemated. It can go no further.”
Stalemated? No, the progressive ideology is being shown daily to be rotten to the core. It is built on lies and a complete misunderstanding of what William Saroyan would have called the human comedy. And increasing numbers of so-called progressives and liberals are beginning to understand that reality.
“Compassionate Conservatism didn’t make the grade. What will, I don’t know. But, what must, is a given, in my view, if a conservative ideology is to survive the future opposition of progressive thought. *It* is a weakness that the progressives attack over and over again.
Conservatives give much more to donations and taking care of people than do Liberals. Been that way for a while.
If that isn’t the root of compassionate conservatism, I don’t know what is.
Conservatives know “there but for the grace of God go I” – disasters can happen to any of us, and frequently do. And we understand that man is fallible.
Progressives want the govt to take care of it. Conservatives understand individuals must do it if only for the humanity of it, something always lacking even in a good bureaucracy.
Progrossives and their ilk, though presently powerful, are trying to legislate things which most of understand in our bones. Conservatism understands mankind as it really is, and because of that, Conservatives will win out, perhaps not without terrible personal cost…
But.we.will.win.
OS@172:
Did you read those talking points off the palm of your hand?
Part of the “third to half” of this site that strikes a false note with me is the too pat categorizing that simplifies the human matrix into patterns of thought and behavior far beyond what the miscible boundaries of reality would dictate.
Ask yourself how many of the people in this country who support Social Security and Medicare consider themselves Marxists marching in lock step with the great collectivists of the last century – Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot? This country is a soft-marxist state, like it nor not, for better or worse. Barring radical revolution, the ‘third way’ compromise will be with us forever – or at least a very long time. And I think that’s fine because it sort of works in this country.
The immediate prelude to some form of internal political rehabilitation requires changing of the guard – the current crop is corrupt – more corrupt than usual. Those who prefer to view the process through an ideological prism are free to do so, but incongruity controls any perspective that claims to “understand the nature of mankind” while failing to acknowledge the footprint that his nature leaves on institutions.
…but the bottom line is that extreme circumstances do happen and relying on the charitable good will of the community is … a stretch.
This government was never designed, constituted or equipped to “take care” of its citizens.
The US federal gov’t was created to “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
The most important ideas in setting up the Representative Republic were to insure the integrity and continuance of citizens’ pre-existing, inalienable rights and to defend the country. It was never imagined that the federal government would come to function as some kind of welfare agency, financier or dispenser of medical protocols.
There was no federal income tax. Congress adhered to a very specific list of areas in which it could levy taxes and raise revenue.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
~James Madison
Now, a couple hundred years later, we have Jabba The Hutt, with a huge appetite and all-encompassing maw. Every area into which the federal government has inserted itself beyond its mandate…medicine, finance, education et al….has been an unmitigated disaster.
The over-reaching and over-spending promulgated by today’s progressives is a descent into hell, not to mention fiscal ruination. More ominously, theirs is an intentional assault on individual liberty.
Creating dependencies is an ugly process. Just ask China who currently owns so much US debt that it is beginning to imagine it can direct elements of US foreign policy. The more leverage China gains over our monetary system, the shakier that system is.
That fate awaits the citizen who comes to depend on a government that is in a position to grant and withdraw the citizen’s beneficence, a government that can tell the citizen (as a function of age and predetermined “quality adjusted life years”) what kind of medical procedures he or she is entitled to receive.
Gloria, Betty and Germaine (somewhat angry as they were, like Jane and Bella) look like geniuses relative to the abjectly inane spoutings of some of today’s feminists.
This government was never designed, constituted or equipped to “take care” of its citizens.
While I would quibble with the verbiage of that sentence as a reflection of my own thinking, I understand the conservative message of limited government and do not disagree with it. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. There is no simple or easy path between *here* (where we are) and *there* (where we want to be). This implies developing a plan to either (a) reduce the size and scope of the federal government to some level more consistent with pure conservative principles or (b) clean up the “blend” of Big Government as it currently exists, in response to the will of the people who approve of some nominal level of socialism, which a sizable fraction of the American people do.
My intent was to strip some of the dogmatism from the ideological constructs in order to open a path for including “third way” solutions as part of the solution set. Purists will object, as they have. Good luck getting back into The Garden.
My.Only.Point.
The Left doesn’t want to govern:it wants to usurp, tyrannize,suppress, and opress, to promote its historically catastrophic delusions.Fortunately,they fell victim to their own fantasies,especially the one about Obama being a political genius,instead of an inept,maexoid dweeb,helpless without a teleprompter to parrot.
Libtrads have been victimizes by their belief in affirmative action.The irony is delicious!
The notion of limited government is not a “conservative message” or simply a function of “pure conservative principles”.
It is the foundational principle around which the entire structure of the United States’ federal government is organized.
Pragmatic as you might conceive it to be, some kind of amalgam between what was originally conceived and dedicated and today’s behemoth cannot be anything like the original Constitutional mandate for the formation of these United States.
This President and many of his surrogates and hangers on have voiced their near contempt for that tired old Constitution. Ideally, they would abrogate the “negative” (Obama’s word) individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and replace them with “positive” liberties, where government calls all the shots, dispensing and witholding at will what the citizen can receive.
All major initiatives of this administration, from cap and trade to the healthcare initiatives put forth in both houses, to intrusion into markets and the private sector, to card check, so called “net neutrality”…and more, are done in the spirit of growing the behemoth and shrinking the citizen, a complete abrogation of original intent. When this President uses his SOTU to tell you he’s concerned about impending economic collapse as a function of his policies and programs (I paraphrase
)and will therefore call for reduction of something like $15 billion in spending beginning in 2011, you should fall off your chair, laughing hysterically at the absurdity and the transparency.
As stated above in this piece, Washington DC’s liberal aristocracy (aka “The Left”) wants to rule, not govern. Many on both sides of the aisle (as the cliché goes) have sensed this trend and are balking at the agenda.
The government was created to serve the will of the people, not the other way around.
At the very least, all of us, not just “conservatives”, should see the value in not in granting the behemoth even more unconstitutional and intrusive power and control over individual lives and individual liberties.
d@176: That post is classic. A nutshell example of the raging emotional subtext that powered Bush hatred and drives Obama hatred. I despised the vitriolic attacks on Bush and I am equally appalled at the personal attacks directed against Obama.
t@177: Reconsider who you are lecturing. I have opposed the Obama agends from day 1. I did so then and will continue to follow the dictates of my own thinking.
The Obama administration has not performed well out of the gate. Their agenda was improperly prioritized, the implementation was naive and floundered on the shoals of escalating special-interest corruption that encroached the public awareness at just the wrong time for legislative action, and, this administration will likely be required to address a series of geopolitical developments that will strain the thin fabric of a foreign policy that has languished since, say, Carter. This country has no effective post-modern foreign policy. What little policy guidance exists is compromised by the UN which has been clearly exposed as a thoroughly corrupt organization.
Having said all that I am weary of the incessant drumbeat of Obambi-Obumble-Obooboo. It roars in my ears with the emotional indulgence of an arrested development or an addictive personality disorder.
I actively dislike the developments that have paralyzed Washington. Neither am I pleased to be part of an electorate that allowed it to happen so long as oil was flowing and I was driving my car to work. My response is to clean out Washington and replace them with a new batch of “dirty rotten scoundrels” with a mandate to reduce scope and spending. Easier said than done, but at least, my plan consists of action items that I can personally implement or contribute to in some fashion.
I would ask that the lectures not be directed at me. I get it. But I also see very difficult times if the adopted course of action is constrained by dogmatic adherence to purist solutions. The strength of this country is the tension.
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My response is to clean out Washington and replace them with a new batch of “dirty rotten scoundrels” with a mandate to reduce scope and spending. Easier said than done, but at least, my plan consists of action items that I can personally implement or contribute to in some fashion.
Oh, I had gleaned that you were recommending some sort of realistic “conservative” compromise with the elements of socialism already entrenched within the structure of our federal government, to wit…
This country is a soft-marxist state, like it nor not, for better or worse. Barring radical revolution, the ‘third way’ compromise will be with us forever – or at least a very long time. And I think that’s fine because it sort of works in this country…My intent was to strip some of the dogmatism from the ideological constructs in order to open a path for including “third way” solutions as part of the solution set. Purists will object, as they have. Good luck getting back into The Garden.
I am all on board for cleaning out Washington DC. I’m optimistic at the presence of some in DC (like Scott Brown, Jim DeMint) that speak my mind very directly. It’s rather unusual to feel like that about any Senator or Representative currently feeding within the Beltway.
In your litany of Obamagaffes, you neglected to mention that his notion of “fundamentally transforming America” into a version more suitable to his personal vision of fairness does not in any manner, shape of form sit well with the majority of Americans. You neglected to mention that, since details bore him, his assigned water carriers in Congress (primarily Nancy and Harry) are somewhere between incompetent and brain dead or that the resistance to the Obama-agenda is hardly from conservative ranks alone.
Is it your impression that their biggest errors are ones of technique, that they in the Obama administration just haven’t done “it” well and if they’d done it better, “we” would have bought in ?
What do you mean by “post-modern foreign policy” ? Without elaboration, it has the ring of verbiage intended to impress rather than inform.
Neither am I pleased to be part of an electorate that allowed it to happen so long as oil was flowing and I was driving my car to work.
Educators have been assiduously dumbing down the electorate for a very long time. “The tension” is a healthy sign, and much of the formerly somnambulant electorate is stirring itself.
Your pique is duly noted
Signed,
Not looking for a return to The Garden
What do you mean by “post-modern foreign policy” ? Without elaboration, it has the ring of verbiage intended to impress rather than inform.
“Post modern” was off by a few decades – should have been post-post modern to reflect after the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In your litany of Obamagaffes, you neglected to mention…
Yes I did, along with a term paper full of other relevant topics. Point noted and dismissed as stale rhetoric.
I believe in the potential of the emerging “Tea Party” platform if it remains independent from both political parties, but I see my courtesy during this exchange has been badly misplaced. Take up your projections of insecurity and inadequacy with a good shrink. Or get yourself a nice pit bull.
And duly note my middle finger. It’s not pique. It’s contempt for the condescension. Save it.
#181 GL “And duly note my middle finger. It’s not pique. It’s contempt for the condescension. Save it.”
(laughing) – well, THAT didn’t take long. We see him reverse himself in about ten posts. Nice. Then give the finger to those of us who call him on it. Well done, TS.
The Tea Partiers are amateurs with very little political experience signifying they are unable to go up against established and networked political machines with a vast proportion of the nation’s wealth behind them.
So, perfect is the enemy of the good in this case, and the folks attending the Tea Party rallies will just need to decide whom it is that is closest to their ideals. These ideals appear, to me, to be strict adherence to the Constitution.
There are enough Americans who will simply not compromise the Constitution, who see no reason whatsoever to do so.
A recent poll states that 47% of the American public approves of socialism. Really ? My guess would be that they approve of a couple of social programs and are not actually desirous of a socialist state. I would be astonished if all of that 47% could define socialism or describe life within such a system.It is too bad we can’t learn about governing systems like we do car models and take them for a test drive.There are trade-ins for everything and I doubt that everyone tauting socialism in that poll is aware of all of those either.
precisely so, elliot –that poll is less than worthless –the root word ‘social’ for one thing, is a NICE word –it means, friendly, fun with others, having a get-together, cooperation, and so forth. Spring it on one of Jay Leno’s ”person-in-the-street” people and you have your poll results.
To play echo chamber to Buddy: For too many people, the word socialism implies a cooperative social environment.
The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many follow it into the gates of insanity and death.
Truth of the matter is, socialism can be maintained only by force, ultimately lethal force.
Sometimes getting rid of it requires the same and more of it.
We could have avoided the Civil War if we’d just called slavery ‘socialism’ and talked the elites into being a little less obvious about the ownership of slaves and sharecroppers –”let’s just call ‘em ‘the proletariat’, okay?”
via Vanderleun
—
ht – linearthinker
Tea Partiers have Passion!
…sometimes trumps corruption.
Rubio Rises
Marco Rubio’s Senate campaign is surging. In the past ten days, Rubio, the former Florida House speaker challenging Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP primary, has raised $860,000. He is also building a lead in the polls — Rasmussen’s latest survey gives Rubio a twelve-point edge over Crist. And he’s doing it all without the support of the national party.
“We’re living in an unprecedented time where a large number of people that have never participated in politics are paying attention,” Rubio tells National Review Online. “They realize that we’re going to make some decisions over the next few years that will determine the very identity of our country. Given the environment, I think it has become a lot easier to get people to pay attention and to take action. That’s the great challenge of 2010: Can we take this motivation that exists out there to stand up to the agenda that’s coming out of Washington and turn it into action? Right now that action is contributing to campaigns like mine. We’ve tried to harness that and feel good about what we’ve been able to accomplish so far.”
Rubio says the stakes this year are high and about more than one party beating another. “This election is about more than Republicans versus Democrats or liberals versus conservatives. It is a choice about the very essence of what this country is going to be like. Are we going to continue to be a place of limited government, free enterprise, and personal liberty? Or, are we going to become a country like so many around the world where the government dominates every sector of society?
—
“So is Rubio a man of the tea party? “
I certainly identify with the movement and the energy that exists out there,” he says.
“From the 9/12 movement to people showing up to marches across the country, there is a burst of energy out around America. There are so many different manifestations.
The tea party is by far the most effective and highest profile example of that energy, but it’s just part of something much bigger — people engaging in the process because they disagree with the agenda in Washington and want an alternative.”
Maybe a “post-modern foreign policy” is something like that favored by Obama legal advisor and point man on transnationalism, Harold Koh.
(Eric Holder is likely on board too, as part of his agenda to criminalize individuals in the former administration and/or show the world the grand American legal system by granting citizens’ rights to jihadists who have already begged for martyrdom, at the cost of somewhere between $200 million and a billion, depending on how long the dog and pony show were to drag on)
The transnationalist impulse is basically one to subject the United States to the whims and dictates of the “international community” (the international community, in case you were wondering, is 6 guys at the EU) and to bring the judicial system of the United States under the direction of bodies like the UN’s International Criminal Court at the Hague.
It all fits in nicely with Harold Koh’s (and others surrounding and advising this President) notion of putting big holes in that silly, antiquated, non-post-modern notion of United States’ “sovereignty”.
In a world of enlightened, post-modern foreign policy, will all the asshats in Yemen and Pakistan (many asshats are in Britain, too) abandon their ideas of blowing the crapola out of the United States and other free countries and enslaving any infidels they allow to live ?
Will Hamas and Hezbollah (not to mention their biggest sponsor and enabler, Iran) abandon their mission to wipe Israel off the map ? Will that nasty little fellow Arachnid-jihad turn to peace and love ? Will the lion lie down with the lamb ?
(For the record, indications at this point are that the tea partiers understand the detrimental, ticket splitting effects of creating a 3rd party and will, instead, back Republican candidates.)
tanstaafle,
Yes, and we don’t want no stinkin’ third way either.
No one can top that Constitution.Though some may disagree, that document is pure providence in my estimation.
Rubio is the real deal –catch him speaking sometime –he works from the ‘first things’.