Whether it is journalists caught on tape “discussing ways in which they could potentially embarass the Senate campaign of Republican Joe Miller” or Rep. Keith Ellison challenging an anti-voter fraud organization and getting counter-challenged himself, the political gloves on every side are coming off. People are acting like they don’t care if they make enemies, as if the last lap or the last round of the bout has come. Maybe it has. The Guardian described the stakes, describing Obama at a poorly attended rally warning the “gains” of the last two years were in jeopardy.
Thousands of empty seats at Barack Obama’s last campaign rally of the midterm elections today highlighted the decline in his popularity and the potential meltdown facing the Democrats at the polls on Tuesday. …
Speaking in Cleveland at the end of a whirlwind four-state tour , Obama said it was an important election. “We have the chance to set the direction of this country for many years to come,” he said. He warned that the Republicans could roll back all the progress of the last two years if they won big.
Janet Daley, writing from Britain, warns her readers to “prepare for a new American revolution.” That declaration may be premature because the revolutionaries are still in the process of getting their objectives straight and casting around for the means to take back the political parties. The revolution will not take place on election day, but it may begin there. Seizing Congress will not by itself solve the problem. However, the sheer ferocity of the campaign suggests that all sides see it as a Rubicon, which once crossed means that more is to follow. Perhaps nobody sees 2010 as an end, only as the beginning of a very fundamental struggle.
The proximate cause of the conflict, even though he is ultimately not its basic antecedent, is the president. The Washington Post calls Barack Obama the divider-in-chief. He didn’t create the fence; he simply made it impossible to straddle it. The president has made it necessary to choose political sides. In a way, Barack Obama has done more than any recent president to cast the issues starkly.
With the country beset by economic and other problems, it is incendiary that the president is not offering a higher vision for the nation but has instead chosen a strategy of rank division. This is an attempt to distract from the perceived failures of his administration. On issue after issue this administration has acted in ways that are weakening the office of the president.
One possible reason for the unparalleled degree of conflict is that the old truce is over. The old “go along to get along” idea has vanished. It its place is a zero sum game, with “friends” and “enemies.” Washington is now simply not big enough for two contradictory ideas, neither of which can abide the other. Charles Krauthammer quoted the president:
In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who “sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.’”
So if the president loses Congress, how will he make good on his threat to punish those who took it from him or let it happen? That avenging “we” isn’t going to be the now-Republican Congress. It will be the federal bureaucracy led by the executive branch. As Krauthammer notes, “over the next two years, the real action will be not in Congress but in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency.” That will be the main card for 2011, and what a humdinger it will be. If a conservative Congress attempts to cut back on the agencies, the giant bureaucracy will be fighting for its life. In that capacity it will be formidable. In zero-sum game against the president and the agencies, Congress may be the political underdog without allies.
Where will it find them? The only plausible allies that Congress can line up behind it are the states. The states are the other separate power in the federal structure. Their stake in the outcome is as great as anyone else’s. At some point in an all-in political conflict, especially when money and authority is concerned, the several states are likely to play a part in proceedings. It is unlikely they will watch completely passively from the sidelines. With Washington in a meltdown and a divided capital struggling in unparalleled acrimony, there’s a possibility the states will be drawn in, perhaps through Interstate Compacts, or simply through political persuasion. What will they do about ObamaCare, financial reform, and carbon emissions?
What may occur after the Tea Party breaks over the capital is not that the wave will dissipate, but that the impetus will return to to the states and spread downwards from there. If 2010 was the year of the battle for Congress, 2011 may well be the year of the struggle for the grassroots. Act I is about to end. The curtain will soon rise on the second.
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The Washington Post calls Barack Obama the divider-in-chief.
Wow. WaPo says that? Good on them. I look forward to more flying pigs, with lipstick. Well, it’s just an oped. OK, even so.
But it’s only Alinsky 101. Polarize, polarize, polarize.
And it’s Hillary who first put that on display in the modern age, 1994, health care. Excess polarization has been the name of the game since then. Obama maybe moves it forward a little because he seems so personally clueless that he is even doing this. But the entire Democratic party has been moving that way since 2001, when they swore to deny George Bush any real cooperation or any legislative initiatives at all.
Two points:
The only plausible allies that Congress can line up behind it are the States.
1) Very recently, perhaps as recently as last year, the amount of federal money that the states as an aggregate are spending to run their governments exceeds the amount the states have gathered within their respective borders. This does not bode well for the states’ abiltiy and willingnes to resist federal intrusion.
2) Interstate Compacts will be viewed as being tantamount to secession by many who favor statism. I have personally witnessed humanities “scholars” expressing alarm by claiming that 10th amendment-related actions and statements by some governors amount to threats of secession. These notions are hysterical nonsense, and these scholars are virtual frauds if this is their interpretation of American history and governance; it is however, an indication of how far down the road towards despotism we’ve travelled when this mindset exists.
The Washington Post calls Barack Obama the divider-in-chief.
Pat Cadell says that in an opinion piece in the Wapo. Still, Cadell is not a Tea partier.
It was the Post itself, however, that had urged the then brand-new President to focus on the economy directly instead of healthcare and Cap & Trade.
The CBS/Joe Miller thing reminds us again that the MSM is a danger to our democracy. They’re the guys who got Obama elected. After conservatives regain control, the worst of the MSM needs to be subpoenaed by congressional committees and made to testify about election manipulation, fraudulent news reporting and misconduct during the Iraq War. The MSM is a threat to national security and requires a thorough cleansing.
Almost all of the problems we face are problems of scale.
The “healthcare crisis” cannot be solved at a national scale. In fact, the root cause of the “healthcare crisis” is the ambition to create a national solution. But the solution to long OODA loops is not to make the loop longer, more turgid, and more confusing. The solution is to reduce size of the loop. This means reducing the scale of the problem.
That is what an interstate compact for healthcare can do. It can basically carve out healthcare policy, and say that the Federal government is out, and the states are in. Henceforth, in those states that sign onto the compact, Medicare taxes will not be collected by the Federal government. If states want to collect such a tax, they can. Or not. And Medicaid funds that currently flow only with strings attached will be converted into a block grant that will phase out over time, along with the taxes collected to support them.
It will then be up to individual states to decide how to regulate healthcare. And they’ll all do it differently. Which is the right approach. States will be able to pool risk if they so choose, or not. They will be in control.
So, instead of 1 overarching “solution,” we’ll get 20, 30, or maybe even 50 different approaches. This won’t be good for big corporate healthcare providers or national insurance companies, who’d rather negotiate directly with Federal regulators, but it will decrease the likelihood of a systemic failure (that likelihood is approaching 100% right now). I will be sharing more information on a healthcare IC under development in the coming weeks.
The key to overcoming scale is the development of leverage. Small groups with a lot of leverage can move much bigger groups. The Tea Parties can create leverage in state legislative primaries, and then leverage the states to pull power back from Congress.
The leverage in state primaries is due to the fact that the margin of victory is 2-4% of voters, and the Tea Parties are 10-15% of the voters. So if Tea Parties decide to organize and vote in a primary, they can win by themselves. It is an unstoppable strategy – the only way to stop it is for the parties to become more attractive, and that ain’t gonna happen. It is also a strategy that was impossible to implement 2 years ago; there were no Tea Parties at that time.
The leverage at the federal level comes from state elected officials desiring more power and influence, and the ability of interstate compacts to deliver on that desire. Interests vs. interests. Formal authority and power vs. formal authority and power. It’s the only way to create systemic change, which is what is needed.
It’s a really, really cheesy, over-long, homemade video, but I tried to put this all together into a YouTube posted here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSib8MfaQLQ
Be gentle with your criticisms, fair readers, as I build buildings for a living; I’m not a filmmaker.
Anyway, make sure to vote Tuesday. It will start us on a path of renewal and restoration.
L3
oh yes, about the states … we have a sheriff out here in Los Angeles who is against our California state Prop 19 that would legalize marijuana, who says he (the county jurisdiction) will continue to enforce the *federal* law because of the principle of supremacy. I doubt the sheriff could even find federal court, and might end up himself in jail if he tried to keep his word – if the proposition passed, which at last count seemed doubtful. I presume his position is due to large amounts of drug cartel money in his pockets, but there it is.
What is also manifest (and somewhat on topic for the thread) are the unbelievable campaign ads for all the propositions. Everyone seems to be entirely free to make up stuff. The actual issues are not engaged. It is bizarre. It is a brave, new, and brainless world.
Would you buy it for a quarter?
/catchphrase from famous scifi dystopia story, “the marching morons”
L3: Almost all of the problems we face are problems of scale.
Yes, I was going to say something along those lines, too.
Giant pots of money corrupt, even at the state and local levels. And in our rich society, there are giant pots of money everywhere. Look at the fiasco of this tiny municipality of Bell, where some fat turd of a “city manager” paid himself $1.5m. They are taking him down now, and I presume effectively under a dozen statutes. Poor bastid didn’t do a thousandth of what hundreds of Citicorp execs did, but they are filthy rich members of the club, and he is not. Anyway, the problems of scale, can start at a surprisingly small magnitude, but the big ones, the federal ones, that come with a printing press, are of such magnitude, such strange attractors, such black holes of corruption, that … well, I have no conclusion to offer.
“It its place is a zero sum game, with ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’.”
And thus it has always been. In the Pentagon I learned that the 3 little words that make the world go around from the DC perspective are “Make It Hurt.”
This phrase is usually used in the context of responding to a proposed budget cut with the worst thing that could happen. But it works in other ways as well. I can recall an explanation to a staffer for Sen Stevens that we could not take DoD money and use it to build the Univ of AK a new solarium, because it was explicitly against the law. The staffer responded “Well maybe then we can’t upgrade anything.” The message was that if the Air Force wanted to not “upgrade” the university’s facilities then maybe we would not get any money to upgrade anything else, the law be dammed.
The problem is, the Tea Parties have to play this game too. We have to figure out how to “Make It Hurt.” That includes places like AK and Delaware when they refuse to elect the chosen candidates. It’s not pretty; war never is.
L3
If Cheesy, it was like my grandma’s mac and cheese. Rich and satisfying in a fattening sort of way.
#5, Leo, you have put a lot of thought into a realistic, non violent strategy to take power from Washington, and bring it to the state level. If my analysis of the Tea Party is that there is a new and energized cohort of citizens who are willing to go the whole mile to change your country back to its root ideals, then I hope your video becomes part of the strategic thinking post Nov 3.
Also, Wretchard’s analysis must be kept in mind: people do not like to give up power, and the laws/regulations built up over the past decades are the basis of the huge sclerotic bureaucracy weighing down America.
Both Lee Harris and Angelo Codevilla have defined the present American “ruling class.” That ruling class is powerful and without shame. But then, remember that the American Constitution is a strong and vital document. Leo has described a legal method to break the elite’s power.
The battle of the Bureaucracy
Let me give you TWO examples from the nuclear world.
First, there is a federal law saying that Dept of Energy will design a nuclear waste repository and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will evaluate the application. When ready, the NRC will approve it and the DoE will build it.
Obama’s appointee at DoE withdrew the application and the new Chairman of the NRC, former Reid aide, canceled the review.
Congress passed a law saying DoE and NRC SHALL proceed with the application and construction but the bureaucrats are refusing.
Example 2
Loan guarantees for new nuke plants. Congress passed a law and appropriated moneys but Office of Management and Budget interprets the rule such that no one would think of taking their deal. One leading application (Constellation in Maryland) just said F*CK it and withdrew leaving their partner, the French government, holding the bag.
Yes, Obama and the statists will be using the bureaucracy as their Hammer of Thor in this battle. Some of the judgeship are going along with Obama too.
Watch for Texas to go it alone without the federal bureaucracy. Those people have courage!
BTW, Leo’s idea of interstate compacts. According to the Constitution, those have to be approved by Congress. That’s a potential roadblock.
The lack of money means it is the last chance for both the states and the federal government to settle issues long deferred or face a decline in the absolute size of the pie. So something is going to happen, the crisis is going to force that. Things have come to the point where the status quo cannot continue as it was. The only question is what the possible resolutions are.
When the new Congress and perhaps the new Senate takes office they are going to be looking across the political equivalent of the Western Front: everything gridlocked with entrenchments and wire. They can’t do anything by themselves. Somewhere, somehow the Congress if it is to act, it has to find a breakthrough force to break the stalemate.
The alternative is to simply apply the gridlock and watch things go into a downward energy spiral. There’s an outside chance that could happen; creativity and economic activity can unleash itself when everybody ignores the government. But that is dangerous. What is required is a government that legitimately stops getting in the way in an orderly manner. No major political force has openly advanced a strategy for achieving this yet. My guess is that this is what 2011 will be about.
Here is the liberal Politico quoting democratic consultants today.
…………………..
Grim Dems await huge House losses
By ALEX ISENSTADT | 10/31/10 4:53 PM EDT Updated: 10/31/10 5:45 PM EDT
Still, among those in the Democratic consulting class, there’s a gloomy acknowledgment that many of the incumbents the DCCC has spent millions of dollars to protect won’t be coming back to Congress.
“Everybody that is tied will lose, and everyone that is ahead by a few points will lose because of the GOP wave,” said one party media consultant who is involved in a wide array of House races. “There are going to be some surprises.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44448.html#ixzz13yliz5kR
The states may very well come into prominence soon. The eyes of Texas are upon you, indeed.
But Congress has one other power that comes into play. Faced with unlawful actions (or failure to comply) by the bureaucracy, and an Executive unwilling to enforce the law, then impeachment becomes the order of the day. It’s darn near impossible to make impeachment stick, but if it comes down to it, that’ll be the only weapon in Congress’ quiver.
Act I is about to end. The curtain will soon rise on the second.
And one reason for optimistism is Obama’s behaviour over the last month. I always knew he was an arrogant narcissist, but I never thought he was so tone deaf and clueless he’d make independents and even his friends start hating him.
If Republicans pass a bill to repeal ObamaCare, I’m confident Obama will veto it in a manner so smug and heavy-handed he’ll make even more Americans hate him than do now. The Republicans and Tea Party will properly frame it as the people against an obstructionist and authoritarian White House. The narrative works because it’s true. It’s going to be fun.
some frank rich:
nyt link
First, Obamacare will not be repealed by the next Congress. Even if the House tries to do so there will be a filibuster in the Senate by the Dems.
Second, as many have indicated, there will be dozens of executive orders and departmental regulations to carry out the left’s agenda.
Third, the greatest loss of recent years is that precedents and procedures that were respected for decades have been demolished or disregarded. There may have been similar dirty deals in the 19th century but for over 60 years there were certain practices that kept a level of comity and civility. They are no more.
Fourth, it remains to be seen what the staying power of the tea party and their allies will be. And we shall see whether, absent dramatic improvements over the next twelve to eighteen months, the pendulum will swing wildly back to the left.
No repeal of Obamacare, no impeachment, perhaps the brakes will be applied to further spending, perhaps the Bush tax cuts will be prolonged for a few more years, but there will be more stalemate than real reversal of the damage done.
And what if we are attacked? Or if there is a successful terrorist attack? Toward whom will the public turn then? Traditionally they turn to the President.
Four dimensional chess. Time and tide wait for no man.
while our friend Karzai whins
Afghanistan complains about Russians in drug raid http://yhoo.it/dhhwZj
pas moyen d’être Maître chez soi !
“But it’s only Alinsky 101. Polarize, polarize, polarize.”
I agree but polarize works both ways and I don’t think the nation is polarized enough. When push comes to shove I believe the tax payers will end up in control. Why? The tax payers have jobs, money, education and guns. How can uneducated, chronic drub or booze users, welfare people compete in that fight? OK poor , uneducated, lazy people are you offended?? Do some thing about it, get some education,get a job and compete. Then maybe someone will care about what you “feel”.
More polarization works for me so go for it Lefties, go for it!
Remember the books are being “cooked” as we type. Rush says not to worry because the “wave” is too big to change the results.
I’m not so sure that many close elections will be corrupted.
I need a hug.
I hate pretty strongly, but hard as I try I can’t hate these people as much as they hate me. I am humbled by their hate. It is an awesome, overwhelming and unstoppable force. And how can I respond to their lies? When everything they say is a lie, when we live in a society built on lies?
As bad as it is I’m sure it is only going to get worse.
Don’t forget, several states are facing financial implosion within the next decade. If a Republican congress declines to bail them out, it may force reality to be imposed sooner rather than later. Then the whole rotten facade comes falling down, maybe soon enough to avert a national catastrophe.
“Events, dear boy. Events!”, to quote a onetime British Prime Minister commenting on what will drive the future.
As tommy @ 22 points out, there are many factors in play which are external to politics, even though many of them had their roots in politics. There is no painless solution to the Social Security Ponzi scheme. There is no painless solution to a nuclear-armed Iran. No Business-As-Usual solution to peak oil, or peak rare earth metals either. There is no painless way to force China to continue to bail out a profligate US establishment. And no painless way to pay back prior borrowing.
We are in a situation analorous to Europe in 1914. No-one can predict what will be the shot that induces world-changing chaos. But the shot will come. When it does, the Establishment Political Class is going to be outclassed.
The best we can hope for is a military which defends the Constitution, and not the President or Congress or the bureaucracy. Dear Lord, send us another Washington. Please!
I don’t want to be defeatist, but we are past the point at which a pleasant ballot-box/reasoned debate is going to resolve things.
11 Whitehall I remember watching a news clip on the fireworks production in DC for this past 4th of July, and that there were six different local and federal agencies that had to approve of their plan. For fireworks.
Wretchard,
You seem to be in a nice spot to watch – outside the maelstrom.
I’m living the dream – right here in “Enron by the Sea”.
But, the conflagration may grow soon!!!
Welcome to our very own ’4th Turning’…
The last one started with economic and political upheaval – and ended with a war.
This one starts with a war and ends with economic and political upheaval.
Ten more years baby, ten more years!!!
Whitehall @ 11,
According to the Constitution, those have to be approved by Congress. That’s a potential roadblock.
Actually, that’s a feature, not a bug.
One of our biggest problems is finding a way to force Congress’ hand. They control the entire game at this point. How do you get a bill introduced? How do you get it through committee? How do you get it through rules, calendar, etc.? How do you get a record vote?
The only way is by garnering the support of leadership, and then buying off sufficient numbers of marginal backbenchers. It is a thoroughly corrupt system controlled by long-term insiders. By leaders who have power. They will not give it up voluntarily. They need to have it from their caucus room untimely ripp’d.
The IC process is driven by the states. The states get the call the question.
Congress is then in a no-win situation. If Congress fails to ratify the healthcare IC, they will face a political firestorm the likes of which they’ve never faced in 2012. There will be thousands of state legislators clamoring to run against IC opponents in primaries, with Tea Parties there to swing the balance. If Congress ratifies, they forgo their power to regulate healthcare, and devolve that power back to the states.
This fight is, at its core, a political fight. We cannot go as supplicants to Congress, or the courts, and beg them to do what will. We must go as their sovereign masters, which we are, and demand that they return power to the states or face a well-organized, experienced opponent in their 2012 primary, thereby bringing their political career to a sorry end.
The great news is that the Tea Party movement has emerged out of nowhere to provide the means to do this. The key is to educate Tea Partiers to vote in primary elections, both D and R. Rather than pursue a third party, which will fail, they can take over both parties at the state level, and harness the states to break the Ruling Elite at the federal level.
This fight must be won at the ballot box.
Must. Can. Will.
Cheers,
L3
fm @ 19: I agree but polarize works both ways and I don’t think the nation is polarized enough. When push comes to shove I believe the tax payers will end up in control.
Yes but it’s not really a win on either side when push comes to shove.
Me, I’m not exactly the prince of peace, either, but it’s one of the best things about our civilization that we do have such an idea, and it’s such a different one than in certain other cultures if ya know what I mean.
um, uh, apropos of nothing, here’s something, Miss USA Rima Fakih body surfs in the cadet section during the first half of an NCAA college football game between Virginia Military Institute and Army in West Point, N.Y., Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010.
res ipsa loquitur
“…settle issues long deferred or face a decline in the absolute size of the pie.”
But a sizeable number of the Left, including Obama in his own voice, are focused not on the size of the pie but on “fairness.”
Grabbing a larger share to settle some mythological scores and making sure that “from each according to his ability” is a priority trumps even “to each according to his need.”
They have demonstrated repeatedly that they care far less about the size of the pie than they do about what is taken from the segment of the population that has been determined to be politically incorrect.
Josh @ 7,
Anyway, the problems of scale, can start at a surprisingly small magnitude
Indeed. And we forget just how much we have grown.
In 1776, the population of the United States (13 colonies) was about 2.4 million.
In 1776, the population of the state of New York was less than 200,000.
In 1776, the population of New York City was less than 25,000 (probably quite a bit less, as the Revolutionary War drove many out of the city).
The “tiny municipality of Bell” has a population of 38,000. In other words, it is 50% bigger than NYC at the time of the American Revolution.
Economies of scale are well-understood. Diseconomies, not so much, largely because large scale enterprises often garner the support of the political sector to protect them against their diseconomies.
I don’t know where the lines cross for the Federal Government. I only know that we passed that point a long, long time ago.
Cheers,
L3
Josh@29
I understand what you are saying,but I don’t think we can afford to hold hands and sing folk songs with the people that want a free ride or thos politicians what want to give people a free ride.
I can’t believe there are political hacks and you can include John McCain in this group that think that 10 or so million illegal aliens is :” to many to deport”. Remember Regan agreed to and amnesty while he was President wi9th the provision that the problem be solved after amnesty and you see how out honest and upright politicians kept that promise. All, and I mean all politicians should fear the rath of the voters every time the lie or fail to keep a campaign promise. None of those bastards should get a pension after 6 years, they should just get Soc. Security and a 401k like the rest of us peasants.
Sorry, rant over.
If the GOP gains control of Congress or at least the House of Representatives, and the White House does attempt to legislate around them through a combination of executive and beaurocratic dicktats (with a healthy dose of judicial activism thrown in), then the White House might find itself increasingly on the losing end of popular favor. The current Congress has already sorely tested it. No small part of the current attitude towards the Congress is quite well deserved at the hands of what we’ve seen this past couple of years. They voted not only for bills they hadn’t even read, in one case they voted a bill they hadn’t even finished writing. They witheld bills from public release until after the votes. They had a long string of late-night Sunday sessions hoping to ram through this unpopular legislation when nobody was looking. Their Obamacare bill is a spending bill including new taxes, and the one we got originated in the Senate – this violates terms of the US Constitution. They were within a hair of forcing such an important bill through via an budget reconciliation measure — even though they did not then and currently do now have a federal budget for the year. They merely “deemed” that one they had written had passed — i.e., they not only have voted to pass bills they haven’t read, they not only have voted to pass bills they haven’t finished writing, they also have _passed bills they haven’t even written *without a vote*_.
It’s amazing that any incumbent of this Congress remains politically viable at all. These Democrats have very established a narrative of freewheeling action in defiance of both the will of the people and of Constitutional principle. That the man with 32 czars (note this more than imperial Russia had in total) would continue to thwart the will of the people as expressed by her directly elected representatives, that he would seek to superimpose his own will above it, are going to be hard positions to sell.
Edit: They merely “deemed” the one they had NOT written had passed
“We have the chance to set the direction of this country for many years to come,” he said.
Stanley Kurtz (in his new book) declared that Obama is a stealth-socialist playing exactly this kind of game.
First, Obamacare will not be repealed by the next Congress. Even if the House tries to do so there will be a filibuster in the Senate by the Dems.
Make them (the Senate Democrats) filibuster and hang it around their necks like a rotting albatross.
The House can cut off the money stream to bloated Leftist state capitals: Albany and Sacramento, being at the top of the list.
The power of the Professional Left is their symbiosis with the MSM and Spendists.
Krugman is their high shaman.
The House must also cut off the money teat for Academic Socialism. We have entire departments pitching Marxism — ruining thousands of young minds.
Zero out their Federal Grants for ‘Research.’ We don’t need another deconstruction of the free market.
The House can use its investigative powers to rake over the coals the dingbats that the Resident has shunted into the EPA.
The House can hold hearings on AGW and debunk it.
The House must become its own bully pulpit. Now that we have all of this modern band with — it should be used.
Essential legislation can be loaded with riders that clip the Left without drawing enough blood to sustain filibusters — nor vetoes.
The Salami can be cut from the other end, you know.
Forgotten Man: it’s not the poor uneducated welfare queens we need to worry about. The biggest welfare queens reside on Wall Street. Their bailout dwarfs any transfer payments to the underclass. We have a real problem in both an underclass and an overclass sucking the life out of the people who work in productive jobs.
The overclass, through its fraudulent financial shenanigans, has impoverished this country while enriching themselves. Wholescale fraud in both the origination and securitization of mortgages doesn’t get them jail time. It gets them the Fed and the government bailing them out, covering up for their fraud, and allowing them to continue their nefarious activities.
They will not be easy to beat.
Some of the signs featured at the Rally this weekend proclaimed ‘Team Sanity’. Like the Twilight boosters they se themselves as members of a team, a tribe and separate from other Americans.
They will not be easy to beat. The big time feeders at the trough make sure their policies are twinned to the subsistence handouts. Joined at the hip. Linkage. How to turn off the faucet? Well one way is to unlink the poor guys from them and bring it to a subsidiary level.
Dismantling the monster state means replacing it with something much smaller, but nearer to the ground.
Its pretty clear we are in for massive deadlock over the next two years … the basic game will be the blame game … who takes the blame, Republicans or Obama?
The real battles will be over (1) the budget & a continuing resolution (CR) when the two sides can’t agree on a budget; (2) over increasing the debt limit, so we don’t default.
As Wretchard points out, Obama will move a lot of the battle to the executive branch; and congress is mostly powerless if they are unwilling to shutdown the government, or parts of the government.
I agree the interstate compacts is a possible breakthrough — the biggest question to my mind, the unresolved strategy question, is how do you take this idea from something discussed from time to time on the Belmont Club … to something that actually happens.
How does the meme spread, so congress people start looking to it as a solution from the horrible upcoming deadlock?
“Congress passed a law saying DoE and NRC SHALL proceed with the application and construction but the bureaucrats are refusing.”
When you want to do in a bureaucracy you re-organise.
That is what Bush did to the CIA after they screwed him on the NSE and said Iran had no nuclear weapons program.
The CIA is no longer a stand alone bureaucracy. They got put into Homeland Security and now they are a block on someone else’s O-chart. No more black, unlimited budget. No more direct access to the ear of POTUS. That is the bureaucratic version of death,
So Congress has the power to make DoE and NRC part of Interior. All of a sudden, the DOE and NRC have to go beg for funding from another bureaucrat. Throw in DoT also.
Bureaucracies that give Congress problems suffer. Make it hurt. I don’t think you can defund by more then 10% per year, but Congress can re-organise to their hearts content.
Congress can also impeach. If the Obomination is protected by what is left of the Senate, go after his Cabinet. Impeach enough cabinet members and even the Obominations will figure it out.
Remember an impeachable offence is what ever Congress says it is. Wearing a blue tie on casual Friday? Impeach him.
Want indictments on the crooks on Wall Street? Impeach the Sec of the Treasury, and the director of the SEC. Throw in Justice and you will get the attention of EVERY bureaucrat in DC and make Main street happy. MSM too, since Congressional hearing on those that caused unemplyment to ballon to 10% will get very high ratings.
That is important because the MSM is bleeding red ink and they backed the wrong horse. No bail-out for them. So they will have to try and re-gain an audience. A LOT of talking heads will be job hunting as more outlets copy FOX, which is about the only major that is turning a profit.
With Cabinet officers dying like flies and CEO’s going on extended vacations, the White House will know that they either bail or go down in flames. I think they bail out. Does the Democratic party really want to enter the 2012 cycle in the middle of an impeachment trial? If they take a serious arse whoppin Tues, they won’t. Biden will be a good President, or at least a better one then we got now. Joe will know what can be done and what can’t. He doesn’t confuse compromise with surrender.
Krugman is their high shaman.
Not very high at that. heh
“Its pretty clear we are in for massive deadlock over the next two years”
That’s assuming nothing else happens in the world beyond the Washington Beltway. That the dollar does not tank, spreading chaos around the world. That the Chinese don’t decide now is the time to reclaim Taiwan. That the Russians don’t decide to take the rest of Georgia. That the EU does not implode. That Af-Pak stays safely on the back pages. That Iran does not do what it has clearly said it intends to do. That Mexico does not descend into drug-fueled chaos, with millions fleeing to the US border.
Political deadlock only works in a static world. This world is creaking and groaning like a termite-infested shack in a hurricane. Events, dear boy.
Knowing The Sum of All Fears, I Am Legend Deep Impacts The Vertical Limit; a Titanic Night to Remember.
Without Warning, The Perfect Storm, Unstoppable, Bats The High and the Mighty Snakes On a Plane Falling From the Sky, Crash Landing On the Beach, the Final Destination: The Lost World.
JUDGEMENT DAY: THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Hey, do I smell popcorn?!
42. Stoicheion
Oddly, one of the lines of attack on Jaczko, NRC Chairman, is that the NRC BUDGET has money for the Yucca Mountain review.
Congress told them to process the application and Congress gave (appropriated) them money to get the job done.
Jaczko is the one time aide to Rep. Markey (D-MA), a long time anti-nuclear demagogue and most recently, aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). With that background, one just knew he was the inside destructor.
He’s getting hit pretty hard by Republicans and even the past NRC chairman. He is being investigated by the NRC Inspector General for being “out of process.” He’ll be made an example of, as Glenn Reynolds recommends.
George Strait sings of how he misses his woman in a roundabout way. That’s how I feel about Nancy and Steny and Barney and the whole lot of race baiters and treasury looters. I will miss them in a roundabout way.
Around about the midnight hour Tuesday night
The Dems will find themselves the losers in the fight
We’ll win the House
A big de-louse
Yes I will miss them in a roundabout way
Around about the time that Nancy quits the stage
And good Tea Party people rise to turn the page
I’ll sit and smile
And all the while
I’ll miss them so in such a roundabout way
Around about the time the race guys pay the price
For causing hate and hatred now that would be nice
And Barney dear
She won’t be here
Yes I will miss them in a roundabout way
“Make it hurt.” That so works for me. Congress should, as blert #37 and stoicheion #42 have said, just bust the game of the bureaucracies. Congress should understand where its power center is: the votes of a very angry people who just overturned all the expectations and threw out the Dems. Congress should use that power and just start a careful patient program of engineering to dismantle the positions that Obama and his team have spent 2 years, and the Democratic Congress has spent 4 years, and the Democrats in general have spent decades, trying to embed. Congress should declare permanent unforgiving war on the programs that are killing the country, Obamacare being only the most obvious. Congress should appoint committees and vote on articles of impeachment, every week if need be, to get this underway. As others have said, the bureaucrats will begin to notice. Remember: bureaucracies are like ant-hills. They have layers of structure and redundancy; within their area of competence they will be surprisingly hard to eradicate or contain; but taken one by one, the ants are quite vulnerable. Once a named individual is plucked from the table of organization and required to appear with counsel to answer the (long) list of questions that the Congressional committee has posed, the word will indeed get out. The prospect of running a high six-figure legal bill merely to explain why your actions were within the legal protection will begin to concentrate a lot of minds quite wonderfully. And I don’t think the new Congress should feel much compunction about applying this kind of pressure. This is war to the utmost.
Walat #47: “and Barney dear/She won’t be here…” Go to your room!
Seriously, though, you continue to amaze with your fluent wit. How do you do it? Just sit there listening to great Broadway show tunes and C&W/classic lyrics all day, getting those rhythms and rhymes in the blood? Wonderful to see; and please keep it up.
The only way for a country as large and diverse as the United States to stay united is through true federalism. I personally don’t want to live in San Francisco nor Salt Lake City but I know some folks do and I say bully for them and I am glad San Francisco can be San Francisco and Salt Lake City can be Salt Lake City. Unfortunately the Left can only see one path to Paradise – for everyone and so federalism is anathema to them.
If Obama thinks he can ally with the one institution in America despised more than congress i.e the bureaucracy to cram his agenda down the throats of the people then God help us all. Either the Tenth Amendment means something or we have a unitary government and we might as well put Gessler’s hat on a pole. The courts and federal judges seem to think, probably in deference to their own inflated opinion of their authority and based on their interpretations of the commerce clause that we do in fact have a unitary state.
Obama might find that seizing power is easier than keeping it. There is a lot of flyover country out there. You can write all the regulations you want but how are you going to enforce them. Besides what is in it for the bureaucracy? Presidents come and Presidents go but congress is forever and jealous of its own power, especially the power of the purse which is the power the career bureaucrat most fears.
I see a lot of vetos ahead and not a few over-rides in the next two years followed by a final ride back home wherever that might be for The Won.
Scott Rasmussen has a new post on the Wall Street Journal opinion page:
“A Vote against Dems, Not for the GOP”
“The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power. . . . More precisely, it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that’s lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.
Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish. . . .
Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703708404575586063725870380.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
A battle between the entrenched Administrative state and Congress may seem unequal, but that is because Congress has partnered with the crime. Congress holds the purse. What it does not hold is the courage and vision to use it, but they may learn when the new Tea Parties citizen-voter holds the whip to them.
Cowboy @ 33 said:
“If the GOP gains control of Congress or at least the House of Representatives, and the White House does attempt to legislate around them through a combination of executive and beaurocratic dicktats (with a healthy dose of judicial activism thrown in), then the White House might find itself increasingly on the losing end of popular favor.”
I’m hoping Obama attempts this. If the Republicans win the Senate then they can present Obama with the immediate repeal of Obamacare. Naturally, Obama would veto this. Then the Republicans can attempt piecemeal repeal of the most egregious parts of Obamacare. Again, Obama will veto those attempts. Then the Republicans even if they controlled only the House can defund Obamacare. This would cause significant collateral damage but Obama would own all of the damage because he vetoed repeal. Through this process Obama could end up becoming the most hated president in American history. Obama’s only hope is to triangulate with the Republicans much like Bill Clinton did. However Clinton was a much more sophisticated politician than Obama. Obama really has no business being President and this will become crystal clear to just about everyone in the US except Obama himself and the hard-left.
The first thing the pubbies will do is cut spending back to 2008 levels. Nor do I think that Obama will put up much resistance to this as he is on record as saying that in 2011 his number one priority will be toward moving toward a balanced budget.
……………
Paul Ryan preps for budget battle
Ryan stands to be the most important player in what may be the most consequential budget debate since the government shutdown of 1995. He is perhaps the only Republican in Congress who seems able to negotiate with both John Boehner and Barack Obama, but he still has to prove that his legendary budget expertise can be translated into real action if he’s granted the power of the Budget Committee gavel.
Ryan still thinks he can steer a middle course between the Obama administration on the left and congressional Republicans on the right, including a conservative freshman class that could be a few dozen strong. If Ryan can’t bridge those gaps, all the fiery rhetoric of this campaign season over deficits and spending will go up in smoke on the House floor.
“I believe that we can move the debate in the next few years, including on Social Security,” Ryan promises. “In the next two years, maybe we can get some procedural reforms and a cap on discretionary spending.” Some of those changes may be proposed by Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission, which includes Ryan and is scheduled to report on Dec. 1.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44404.html#ixzz140cVe1fS
This is on point: from the City Journal.
“A Pension in Every Pot”
Already strong in New York, the Working Families Party looks to go national.
29 October 2010
The Working Families Party, representing just 40,878 registered voters in a state of 19 million residents, is becoming the most influential power broker in New York politics. Its mission is to drive the Democratic Party further to the left, strengthen the grip that public-sector unions have on local elected officials, and institutionalize the power of taxpayer-subsidized special interests in the Empire State.
The expansion of the party—-founded in 1998, in an attempt to replace the Clinton-era Democratic Party’s centrism with an agenda that the WFP’s executive director, Dan Cantor, forthrightly calls “Social Democracy 101”—-has potentially national implications.
Curiously, the WFP’s chief influence isn’t in New York’s general election; rather, it’s in the low-turnout, closed Democratic primaries that determine the vast majority of officeholders in New York City. Taking advantage of the fact that in New York, political parties may endorse other parties’ candidates, the WFP offers its endorsement to labor-friendly Democratic candidates.
The endorsement acts as a signifier for liberal and labor-union Democrats, helping the endorsed candidate stand out in the often crowded primary field. So to win the WFP’s backing is to have an inside track on winning the primary and then the general election. In what the WFP calls the “progressive landslide” of 2009, an astounding 30 of the 34 candidates whom it backed in New York City’s Democratic primary won—-including successful challengers to four incumbent city council members. The party has made inroads into the state legislature and congressional delegation, too, helping flip seats from Republican to Democrat.
Securing the WFP nomination comes with important perks. Perhaps chief among them is a formidable ground game, courtesy of the party’s political-consulting arm, Data and Field Services (DFS), created in 2007. DFS works only for candidates whom the WFP endorses. . . .
The stakes reach far beyond New York. Fledgling Working Families Parties have been established in seven other states—-California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont. With public-sector unions increasing their domination of statewide Democratic Parties, there is talk of forming a nationwide WFP coalition in time for the 2012 presidential election. Given that state budgets are stretched past the breaking point because of out-of-control pension benefits and labor costs, the WFP’s growth has serious implications for the country’s fiscal future.
–John P. Avlon is senior political columnist for The Daily Beast.
More on their tactics here: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1029ja.html
This actually (apart from their illegal shite) is tactical/strategic a model the TEA party could emulate.
The first conflict post-election will come swiftly, and furiously.
Remember, there IS NO 2011 budget. Whether the lame-duck session picks this up or the next Congress, there will be trench warfare with the Democrats attempting to do exactly what they did in 1996 when the GOP House “shutdown government” (a lie, of course – nothing much was shutdown). The Dem’s will force the GOP to spend even more than Obama and the Democrat controlled congress did, or shut down government. Either way, they win by painting the GOP as “truely frightening radicals” who would starve Grandma by denying her Social Security, and deny the troops at war their needs as well.
There is no doubt, no doubt at all that the radical leftists are already planning this next move.
I think that state solutions are the only way out. States that implement cost effective programs (like Texas) will reap the reward of economic growth. States that implement Obama socialism (such as California and other “deep blue” states will fail their citizens. State compacts, state reclamation of sovereignty (and tax revenue) is the only way to differentiate between what “works” and what “doesn’t work”.
Old Salt
John Kass, the Chicago Tribune’s Lead Columnist (second page oped)a conservative wrote today that the job of the democrats will be to clean up the mess left by Obama.
On Tuesday, it will be Obama’s fellow Dems left holding the scooper
As true representatives of the struggling middle class, the wealthy liberal guests prepared for a sumptuous feast: Delicate lobster risotto, handsomely marbled and tender beef, and various cheeses and wines. The dessert was undisclosed, but surely there was fluffy chocolate souffle, or was it tiramisu?
Just then, Obama gave notice that he couldn’t stay for dinner, and had to cut out early. But before he split for Washington, he offered up a verbal appetizer.
“I’ve got to get home because Michelle is on the road,” the president explained. “So I’ve got to be home to tuck in the girls and walk the dog. And scoop the poop.”
Yes, scoop the poop.
Is that what many Democrats in Congress are calling it, with Tuesday on their minds?
“Ryan still thinks he can steer a middle course between the Obama administration on the left and congressional Republicans on the right,”
“Steer a middle course”, Ah yes, the old socialist lite capitulation move. Wunderful. And I thought Paul Ryan was going to lead us in a new direction. Guess not. Same o Same o.
If Ryan tries this, he will rip the Pubs apart.
Mr. Fernandez,
I agree with you. The feeling seems to be that the horses are rounded the far turn and they’re coming down the home stretch. The crowd is yelling. The bets are being squeezed in expectant hands and, though anything’s possible, a nag is a nag. You can tell a horse that’s running out of gas. Same as politics, there aren’t enough vote thieves in Chicago to steal this election. The cheating lying Dems are in for quite a beating.
On November 2, we are likely to witness Democratic pixies receive the beating of a lifetime.
And for good reason.
Since day 1 of his administration, Barack Obama has tried to smother the greatness of America by covering it with the filth of dirty, lying, corrupt, unfair, unacceptable politics.
In the first week of his administration, his slimy attorney general informed us that white males were racist cowards. A few months later, Obama threw more mud. When one of his buddies in Cambridge, Mass. was caught fouling the air with racial hatred and invective at a white policeman, Obama, on national TV, knowing no facts, called a Sergeant Crowley, the arresting officer, dumb as dirt. It wasn’t long before Obama decided to further try to smother the greatness of America by looting our treasury to the tune of 1.75 trillion dollars. And followed this mind numbing act by deciding the world’s best health care system needed ruination. Then, during the State of the Union Address, Obama threw some more dirt on our nation when he decided our Supreme Court needed a helping of some of the most viscous mocking of Supreme Court justices in American history. To add fuel to the fire, he then proceeded to nominate two bigoted, U.S.-Marine-hating buffoons to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Here’s a general question?
Why does one try to smother something? Answer: Because you’re trying to kill it.
Obama was intent on burying the ideals on which this nation was founded. Free enterprise. Self reliance. Ownership rights. The U.S. Constitution. He even started using threats to smother the words that private companies wrote to their customers. If Obama’s lawyers felt letters sent by these private companies put the Obama administration in a bad light, Obama threatened to have their state licenses to do business taken away. In the case of a TV station that ran anti-Obama news, the threat was the same; the revoking of the license. In the case of a cable news station that presented too many opposing points of view, Obama went on TV to inform the public that the corporate entity in question should cease to exist. This unconstitutional action he didn’t apologize for. He went on no apology tour. Rather, Obama plans to try over and over again to libel Fox news. On the other hand, any station that toes the Obama line like CBS, NBC, ABC and most recently, NPR when they fired Juan Williams, Obama sucks up to like a baby boy would lap up mother’s milk.
What it all comes down to is that Obama would prefer to run the United States like a Stalinist regime. The irony is that he’s President of the wrong system of government. Which isn’t the people’s fault. It’s not the fault of the governed. In fact, what Obama has lost by trying to bury our ideals (“bury,” wasn’t that the word the shoe pounding Khrushchev’s used on August 24, 1963 as he attacked the United States belief in freedom?) Let me start over, what Obama has lost by trying to bury our ideals, our belief in free enterprise, private property and our right to our own thoughts is this: Obama has lost our trust. I trust Obama about as far as I can spit.
When a President won’t even admit there are terrorists who want to kill our children, in my mind, he ceases to be a President and becomes only a place holder until the next vote rolls around.
Another Obama move that started opening the eyes of the American people to the real Obama was his world wide apology tour that threw dirt not only on the exceptionalism of America but the exceptional sacrifices our fighting men and women have made to the alter of freedom.
Fact is, in the past month, Obama has demonstrated he doesn’t give a rat’s behind whether or not our front line soldiers get to vote in the Nov. 2 election because they don’t get the ballots in time.
In fact, it’s no secret that Obama would rather that soldiers in harm’s way not vote because 90% of the votes (Obama believes) will be against him and his Democrats. Which isn’t surprising, especially considering the fact that our soldiers, thanks to the internet, know that Obama’s administration explored making soldiers who come home with combat injuries pay for their treatment through private insurance, enabling Obama to create more Stimulus money which always has a way of ending up in Democratic coffers. How’s that for a slap in the face.
If this isn’t disgraceful, I don’t know what is.
The money Obama was planning to save by making seriously wounded soldiers pay for their own treatment stateside would, of course, partly be spent on lawyers defending the 9/11 savages.
This kind of irony makes me nuts.
Obama, why don’t you spend the tax money that tax cheats like Tim Geithner, head of your IRS, owe on something worthwhile. Like seriously wounded soldiers.
Obama, maybe I have another idea for you. Instead of spending money on lawyers defending terrorist savages, why not spend money on new weapons systems to kill terrorist savages?
Something else that fries my bacon.
High court decisions, like warts, have started popping up laying the groundwork for reduced sentences for terrorist murderers. Don’t forget it was Obama’s decision that led to this, deciding to try the 9/11 murderers in civilian rather than military courts. It made sense to no one but the 9/11 legal defense team and team Obama.
I believe Obama not only lacks judgment, but also decency. Straws so to speak that broke the camel’s back, causing average, every day hard working Americans to say, “hey, what a second, Mr. President, what are you trying to do?”
One was letting the voter intimidating Black Panthers go scot free, which is now being investigated on the theory that the justice department decided to let black domestic terrorism run wild. Another was when Obama refused to take a moral stance on building a Victory Mosque at ground zero, the kind of monument that Muslims typically erect at the site of great victories.
What did Jay Leno ask Hugh Grant after his dalliance with the Hollywood hooker? “What were you thinking?”
Americans have been asking the same question of Obama ever since he started this ruination of an administration. For almost two years, Obama’s been either royally screwing things up intentionally or just lacking the judgment and American values to know the difference between right and wrong. For example, pewing for 20 years with a pastor who hates America and laughs at the 9/11 deaths: That’s wrong. It stinks. Obama’s excuse: Oh, I never heard him say anything bad. Oh, gosh. Oh me oh my. Obama, if nobody ever called you a little pixie, let me be the first. A lying little pixie.
I, for one, have run out of patience with this dude who calls me the enemy and says if the vote goes against him on November 2nd, it’s going to be a case of hand to hand combat. Is the boy with the girly golf swing trying to scare lil’ ole’ blond, blue eyed Rachel? Buster, I think it’s about time the Democrats get beaten within an inch of their lives. Just smothered in votes. Of course, Obama, if you want a piece of me, Rachel Peepers, well, you name the time and place. We’ll get it on. Think about that, folks. Would it not be fun watching Obama get the living daylights beaten out of him by a girl?
It has been pointed out by better minds then mine that compromise is another way of saying everybody loses.
Rachel, I see that brown eyed handsome man still has a ways to go with you. Where ya been, white gyrl? Welcome to the Club, first margarita is on me.
Stoicheion,
Nice to see you. I’ve been at PJM periodically, but I’ve been hanging around “Eternity Road”giving them first dips on the Rachel meanderings. At the same time, trying to get Victor Hanson to do a Presidential run, to no avail. Barack’s ready to fold his 2012 Presidential tent So we’ll be going up against the Hill. Rick Perry is a possibility and so is Allen West. But I’m looking for the best boy or girl to make it a runaway 2012 Presidential run. I haven’t discounted Sarah or Michelle and I like the governor of New Jersey. But I need someone who’ll commit wholeheartedly and follow orders, so I can a team together. Once we get in, in 2012 we’re not going to screw things up. So we’ll need people who want to do more than have a nice health policy for the rest of their life. I’ve been trying to get O’Donnell elected from afar. But her TV has sucked big time, yet she still has a chance. The polls so far have been greased for Coons. What a doofus. If you have any ideas for me, I’m still at force630@consolidated.net. Rach
I ain’t buying Rachael no drink; she sounds smarter than me. But I’ll certainly hang with her — it’d be a brain cleanser after watching the 2008 swoon of Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, Ann Althouse, Camille Paglia, etc, etc.
stoicheion,
Forgot like the dimwit I am to name the place, for the drink. Could you meet me at Su Casa on Ontario in Chicago next month? Invite the old PJM bunch and include Roger Simon. Let me know if we can get something set in stone. I like the sound of that. A get together next month at Su Case. I know Umberto very well, the owner. For some reason, as soon as he sees me, he starts me off with a scotch. It doesn’t make sense. But neither does Obama. You have my email. all my best, rachel
Salt Lick,
Make sure Simon gets invited and then we set a solid date. I want CF Bleachers there too. But I have a feeling he’s like Hanson, and lives out west. Get Roger to give us a solid date so he can be at Su Casa. That’ll help expedite things. Colter and Hannity are strictly east coasters. They’re hopeless. Gibson Carothers is in Houston. Jim Courtright is in Chicago. Courtright will be the number two creative guy if we nab some Presidential timber. Texas money could be persuaded to join us if somebody gets Hanson to come to his senses. But he’s too damn comfortable in the southwest. Simon may have some ideas. Without a sold Simon commitment, it could turn into just another drunk. I’ll make sure Courtright is there. My son’s an ACD at an agency in Chicago. He’d be valuable, too. Rachel
#11 ” Example 2
Loan guarantees for new nuke plants. Congress passed a law and appropriated moneys but Office of Management and Budget interprets the rule such that no one would think of taking their deal. One leading application (Constellation in Maryland) just said F*CK it and withdrew leaving their partner, the French government, holding the bag.”
This the reasons banks will not lend to small business. The banks read the govt’s small print and said no way!
MSM, whose bias toward the losing side in this battle, will be an interesting study: to reverse course and save face, all whilst being infested with devoted Obamaneese….
43. Josh
Krugman is their high shaman.
Not very high at that. heh
Hmmmh. Is he for the CA Prop legalizing marijuana?
THAT would explain a lot of his columns and economics ‘logic’….
tom
Save for the 17th Amendment, the States were natural allies of Congress in doing what the people of the States wanted. All the 17th did is to make it easier for the party to reward the Senator at the Federal level rather than the Senator being beholden to the State he nominally represented.
As for the bowels of anything resisting Congress, do the right thing, defund them and to hell with the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Far fewer of those dedicated to resisting Congress will show up for work when there is no paycheck at the end of the month and no electricity in their office than you might think.
@ rachel peepers (#59)
“I trust Obama about as far as I can spit”
And Rachel’s never been known for her spitting.
The ultimate base of power is not the vote in the ballot box. It is what Lincoln phrase as the willingness to give ‘the last full measure of devotion’. It’s 1860 and the clock is running down.
Far fewer of those dedicated to resisting Congress will show up for work when there is no paycheck at the end of the month and no electricity in their office than you might think.
Katrina. New Orleans. What happens to urban areas, and their influence, when the food, clean water, and electricity doesn’t arrive from fly over country?
Obama didn’t create the fence. He just made it higher and put razor wire on the top. You know, President Obama, the post-partisan President.
“In a roundabout way” we have Obama to thank. (Or God to thank for Obama.)
Remember the Gipper warning, quoting Norman Thomas, that America would adopt socialism bit by bit disguised as liberalism? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iShCXx_xZDQ
Well, thanks to Obama’s crude attempt to cram the entire socialist agenda down our throats in one bite, liberalism’s “road to serfdom” stands revealed for what it is. This has stimulated the tea party as response: essentially the gag reflex of the American body politic (set to hurl demo-chunks).
While another Clinton would have been able to accomplish a more palatable “progressive” poisoning of our traditions of freedom, Obama’s heavy handed tactics have enabled conservative America to rally in a way no one thought possible two years ago.
In the next election cycle, I predict Evan Byah (and other Dems.) will try to out “I’m no Obama” Hillary.
#73 flying squirrel:
Reagan brilliant & timeless; thanks for the link!
Everyone should listen to it.
The lame duck congress and O are going to pass a load of legislation. A steaming pant load that is. Then O and the Senate majority (which is going to remain RAT) are going to pick off old-school Repubs (in the nae of bipartisanship) and load the federal judiciary with Sotomayor/Kagan clones. Acorn and it’s ilk will continue to increase the margin of fraud for the next election, making it harder than ever to eject the ruling class. O will not compromise on the budget and there will be a shut-down. A long one. What remains to be seen is whether or not Americans buy the line the M$M delivers them like the last time.
If they are the real deal Tea Party Republicans will introduce a term limits bill. Though it would almost certainly be defeated the lineup against it, overwhelmingly Democrats and a not inconsiderable number of RINOs, would underline for the folks back home who is on the enemy team.
Another vital bill to introduce would link the limit of the size of the federal budget to a percentage (ideally 15%, no higher than 20%) of the Gross National Product.
The war of the MSM with the American populace will intensify since they think they were so successful with Obama’s coronation in the first place.
Both the media and Obama are going to dig their heels in deeper since they ARE on their heels. And more of prince John Kerry will chastise the unwashed masses, since only he has the ‘intelligence’ to foresee the future of us all.
The ‘race card’ WILL be used with all it’s supporting shame until there are riots that make America look more like the 60′s, than 2010.
And Obama will leave office so proud, but clueless as to why he was such a disaster.
Help! I can’t decide if Mr. Obama sounds more like a National Socialist or his buddy in Venezuela. Which ever it is the “bending of the truth” is becoming more transparent.
Assuming that Obama, as a pathological narcissist, can’t handle losing control – then, what will happen?
I suspect his handlers are sending him on this immediate post election Asian trip as a way of dealing with his first impulse of rage-and-revenge to what he will perceive as a rejection of His Will. So, they are soothing him with a week of red carpet treatment overseas. Then what?
Obama will of course blame the electorate rejection of His Will as due to their bigotry, racism and/or stupidity. How will he deal with Congress? His disdain for Congress has been obvious from the start, with his insistence that they pass bills based on Faith in Him rather than reading, analysis and debate. So, I predict he’ll ignore Congress almost completely and attempt to rule by Executive Fiat.
But, since Pelosi will probably quit and since the Democrats presumably will have lost a great deal of power, then, the individual Democrats in Congress will be free of the Dragon-Lady and will be more able to vote according to their constituents rather than according to Democratic rule. So, Congress will be openly against Obama. His attempt to rule by Executive Fiat will pit him, not merely against the GOP but against Democrats in Congress.
I accept that the States will move to assert their rights, but my hypothesis is that the Democratic Party will itself move to remove Obama from power. He is destroying the Party and they’ll have to get him out.
They’ll try to find him a UN job where he can do what he does..which is those empty pontificating preachings about a virtual world order.
That is, I don’t see the Armageddon that some are predicting here; I’m suggesting that the Democratic Party, to save their own party, will get rid of him.
Old Salt: “The Dem’s will force the GOP to spend even more than Obama and the Democrat controlled congress did, or shut down government. Either way, they win by painting the GOP as “truely frightening radicals” who would starve Grandma by denying her Social Security, and deny the troops at war their needs as well.”
If that’s the way it’s going to be, then the Republicans have to immediately take hostages and shoot a few just to prove that they mean business (figuratively speaking, of course). Whatever is in their power – abolishing a few public service unions, liquidating some departments, messy smelly IRS audits on some designated Democratic fatcats – whatever it is, it has to be swift and brutal. And it must be made clear that the gun is pointed at grandma’s head and the GOP will keep going down the line blasting Democrat targets until the other side lowers its weapons. As the man says, Make. It. Hurt. The worst thing that can happen is to stand there open-mouthed and aghast at the torrent of lies and abuse that will come tumbling down on them, or try to argue against it. The minute I hear a Republican trying to explain himself, stuttering and stammering that “No, no, it’s not our fault, we’re not shutting down the government, it’s not that at all, if you’d just listen…” I’ll know he’s a weak reed that has to be cast aside for someone stronger. It’s time for a Cromwell, not a trembling, apologetic ninny who’ll try to make peace with these animals.
Rumor has it the former NM governor Garry Johnson will be a candidate.
I worked for the state DOH while he was Governor, and appreciated his approach (though there were many state employees loathed him…). Apparently he was the most vetoin’ governor in the country at the time. I’ve been told that he vetoed more legislation than all other governors in the country combined.
He got into politics as a successful small business man through libertarian channels. After he was elected as a libertarian guv the state political parties legislated the state libertarian party out of legal recognition and standing – so he became a republican almost by default.
He’s a real proven fiscal conservative – look closer when he hits the stage. He’s most famous for his legalization arguements, but even his arguments for defunding the drug war are based on a sound cost/benefit analysis, ie what are we getting for our investment?.
He also managed to arrange for the lottery success scholarship, which gives every high school student in NM a tuition free college education (kudos!), and was even able to succesfully keep the legislatures hands off the money! This was a very clever voluntary self tax on people who can’t count, to support those who want to learn how to. The lottery has broad popular support as even non gamblers will occasionally buy a ticket, much like you would buy a raffle ticket from the local soccer team, after all even if you “lose” the fee pays part of some kids tuition.
Anyways, his story is much more interesting than the MSM’s superficial examination would suggest.
I would absolutely love to see Johnson and the NJ gov Christie get paired and promoted to executive federal positions, from which to tag team their way through the beaurocracy. I think these two would not be phased by the beaurocratic barricades. Not one bit.
What is required is a government that legitimately stops getting in the way in an orderly manner. No major political force has openly advanced a strategy for achieving this yet.
Progressivism came about as a response to the industrialization of society and the mass migration of the population from the country to the city. Events outpaced the ability of traditional social support institutions to adapt quickly enough. Political opportunists took advantage of the conditions to create a constituency of the newly dislocated and most often poor urban population.
In 20 words or less, for the last 100 years the Democrat/liberal elites defined themselves and made their living by constantly reinventing an urban underclass willing to trade voting loyalty for government largess.
Taken together, the current focus by the Left on illegal immigrants and environmental issues, and even the appearance of the basically non-aligned Tea Party Movement, mean that the traditional Democrat constituency is disappearing. The overwhelming majority of American citizens now believe they would be better off by not accepting the imposed limitations that come with a government check.
I think that Progressivism as the dominant political philosophy of the American culture has run its course. Other than an appeal to a constant swarm of illegal immigrants the Progressives have run out of a permanent constituency. They are trying to gin up an Hispanic constituency but most people, including myself, do not even know what Hispanic means. If you look at how quickly and easily 2nd generation Mexicans have assimilated into the American Southwest I doubt that play will ever gain any traction of consequence.
The Democrats will do exactly the same thing the Bolsheviks did when they realized that the population was not coming around – they centralized authority, pulled decision making out of reach of the public sphere, and put themselves at the top of the heap. John Kerry exemplifies this brand of thinking like no other.
The Left’s argument is that science, technology, and the functioning of the modern state are too complex and too dangerous to subject them to populist will (now that they’ve lost the population). That we are all better off individually and as a society by leaving those things to the professionals, and their millions upon millions of public union employees.
That is the philosophical battleground of the 21st Century. Obamacare is just the opening salvo. So far, I’m not hearing too much about why decentralization is better.
If the Repubs win Congress, the Dems should filibuster every bill, put one-person holds on legislation, and just say no to all that the Republicans try to do.
After all, that’s what you would /did do.
There is a ‘get out of debt’ guy I’ve heard on late night radio who recommends paying off the smallest debts first while making minimum payments on the larger debts. Watch as a tree guy removes a tree; he removes the smallest limbs first and works his way down to the larger limbs and then finally, the trunk.
Building demolition follows one of two paths; either start at the extremities and work inward or implode the entire building at once. That seems to be the choice our nation faces with a recalcitrant bureaucracy and leadership.
With ObamaCare, we may have the determination and wherewithal to ‘implode’ the entire edifice with a single blow. The rest of the bureaucracy is not so vulnerable. We might wish to employ the leaves, branch and limb strategy to ensure slow, steady progress.
In my naivety, the first steps would appear to be the low cost, high impact arenas such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Only half a billion dollars saved, but the loss of the publically funded communication channels would isolate much of the remaining activist bureaucracy from their support. The National Endowment for the Arts offers a similar opportunity.
As we shed the bureaucracy of its leaves and branches, we’ll slowly reduce its remaining strength and impact, starving the beast of its subsistence. Narrowing the scope of ‘non-profit’ tax benefits comes to mind as does limits on combined legislative bills. If you want a military, we get unicorn parks legislation has to stop.
Yes, all of these actions will arouse the ire of their constituencies, but they’re already making so much noise the increased din will likely go unnoticed.
I think this confrontation has been brewing for sometime. In your excellent article, you say “With the country beset by economic and other problems, it is incendiary that the president is not offering a higher vision for the nation but has instead chosen a strategy of rank division. This is an attempt to distract from the perceived failures of his administration. On issue after issue this administration has acted in ways that are weakening the office of the president.”
The President’s incendiary action do not follow his failures, his radical thrusts have caused them. The liberal segments of our society have been growing more and more strident for some number of years now. Without underestimating their paranoia, and the maniacal beliefs that underlie them, it makes sense that the radical clique in Congress – practically all Democrats – would move as quickly as possible to implement their playbook.
The reaction of the country has on the surface surprised them, but deep inside the believe the country is behaving exactly as the radicals thought they would. The country’s reactions play directly into one radical fantasy – the French Revolutionaries fear of the religious country side. (It is not too much a stretch).
The radicals hoped they could implement their playbook quickly and people would accept it and remain docile. That the people haven’t doesn’t prove the radicals wrong in their own minds. In their minds, the county’s reaction was always a risk. In fact it confirms their beliefs in their own minds.
The radicals have no intention of stopping the fight. They have not taken the gloves off – the radicals never wore gloves.
Deleted
Aaron @ 81 — it might be worth pointing out that Garry Johnson won the Governor’s race in New Mexico because of a civil war in the Democrat Party, which split the Democrat vote between two effectively-Democrat candidates.
Still, Johnson won re-election to a second term on his own merits against a reunited Democrat party. He may have become Governor by accident, but people liked his veto-ing ways.
This is to adress the “the revolutionaries are still in the process of getting their objectives straight” comment from the article.
16 BASIC TENETS OF THE TEA PARTY
(Please email this and forward)
1. The TEA party believes that the Federal government has grown too large.
Huge cuts and even the elimination of whole departments of the federal system is required to bring the behemoth that has become the federal government into line with the vision that was given to us by the framers of the constitution of the United States.
2. The TEA party believes that taxes are too high but would not mind increasing them on a temporary basis if and only if federal spending is reduced drastically.
The increase in taxes would be used to reduce America’s debt only.
3. The TEA party believes that both the Democrats AND the Republicans are to blame for the budget crisis.
The deficit spending must end now. Pork barrel politics and the handout of money to a favored powerful few is going to stop.
4. The TEA party believes that an individual’s rights are not granted by the government.
The government’s place is to protect inalienable rights that every human is born with. The government has no place determining who has rights and who does not.
5. The TEA party is not now, nor has it ever been, racist.
The established media and political powers would like to paint this party with this foul trait in an attempt to dissuade others from joining us. If you believe in the tenants listed here then the TEA party is where you should be and you will be welcomed.
6. The TEA party derives its power from the people and is independent.
The TEA party is not in any way affiliated with Republicans or Democrats. The TEA party derives its power from the people and is independent. The TEA party is feared by the Republican and Democratic parties as well as the established media. This freedom scares the current elite power base; as it should.
7. The TEA party believes in free speech.
The tea party members do not mind being called “tea baggers” and laugh at the name. Free speech is after all a right that is most important to our society. The TEA party believes their best response is the ballot box. See you on Election Day!
8. The TEA party believes in freedom of religion.
This country was and is founded on the basis of freedom to worship as you like. Any attempt to stifle this freedom is repugnant. All religions should be respected with none shown any favor by the government.
9. The TEA party believes that the federal government is over stepping the powers granted to it by the constitution.
The federal government is involved in many practices that belong on the state or local level. The TEA is made up by a wide variety of people who hold that the usual checks and balances that were placed on the federal government by the constitution have been weakened and ignored for too long.
10. The TEA party believes that people should take care of themselves and that local and state level government should assist with necessary welfare where needed.
The TEA party believes that Federal government involvement is appropriate only in larger national issues and local issues should be and are best handled locally.
11. The TEA party believes in the free enterprise capitalist system is the best regulator of the market and creator of jobs.
This is not to say that strong, effective and even handed regulation is not needed to make sure that fraud, corruption or abuse of the system does not take place. The federal government’s regulation of private businesses has become so onerous that its rules need to be revamped and scaled back. Jobs and wealth are created by business, not the government.
12. The TEA party believes that the United States of America is a nation of laws and demands the return of this country to a system of equal justice under the law.
Selective enforcement of the law will not be tolerated. The justice department currently enforces only those laws that the party in power chooses to enforce. This is a disgrace and a gross abuse of power those who have done this should be prosecuted.
13. The TEA party believes in fair trade; not free trade.
Our government has allowed China to manipulate its currency and drain the world’s manufacturing jobs. This is not fair trade. Our government has allowed other countries to pollute and sell their goods are cheaper here where our industry values a clean environment. This is not fair trade. Our government has allowed other countries to use child and slave labor to produce goods. This is not fair trade. Free but unfair trade has drained jobs from the United States.
14. The TEA party name is often portrayed as standing for “Taxed Enough Already”.
That says a lot about the members of this party and what they believe in.
15. The TEA party is for returning to the basic rights and principals that are spelled out in The Constitution of the United States, The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The politicians in our nation’s capital have been without the checks and balances that are required for a government of, for, and by the people.
16. The TEA party supports a constitutional amendment for term limits on both houses of congress. The lobbyist stranglehold on our government must end. Cronyism and the good old boy network must be broken up. Imposing term limits on congress is the best way to do this.
I worked at a federal bureaucracy for 34 years. I will tell you that there are options other than “bureaucratic nuclear war”. The most important thing for bureaucracies and bureacrats is survival and they’ve all been in the game long enough to know that they’ll typically outlive the current political regime, whatever its flavor. Most will obey the most egregious policies with glacial slowness, waiting for the change in political forces. Some will obey with what in the military is called “malicious compliance” (you must tell me exactly what you want done, because I will do exactly what you tell me–no more, no less, and I will do it exactly within all of the myriads of regulations that have been set down over the years).
Of course there are some departments (HHR, Education, etc.) that fight for the ability to follow the socialist dogma. They’re the ones to watch out for. Especially HHR because they are the department that acts as a clearing house for nearly all federal grant-making.
6. Josh. It would seem that Los Angeles County Sheriff Baca’s support of sanctuary status for illegal aliens would reflect, even under the most charitable interpretation, a profound confusion and inconsistency on his part concerning the principle of federal supremacy. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Baca is taking his cue not from federal law at all but rather from choices the federal government has made regarding if and when it chooses to enforce the law. He won’t make a move that doesn’t first consider the federal funding conduit.
Second, you say, “What is also manifest…are the unbelievable campaign ads for all the propositions. Everyone seems to be entirely free to make up stuff. The actual issues are not engaged. It is bizarre. It is a brave, new, and brainless world.” Brave, maybe. Brainless, arguably. But none of it is new. Although deceptive, even patently dishonest, ads for and against the California propositions go back even further, the bell-ringer that stands out in memory is the 1982 Peripheral Canal campaign. The proponents of that era, to their enduring discredit, solemnly proclaimed in their ads that if the voters failed to approve the Peripheral Canal, California could expect the onset of widespread malaria. After nearly thirty years without the Peripheral Canal California is plagued by many things–among them dust bowl agricultural land and the reintroduction of a number of third world diseases such as polio and whooping cough–but malaria is not one of them. So far.
Charles Krauthammer also wrote (following Obama’s divisive appeal to Latinos)…
This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution. Nice.
I think the marxists know exactly what they are doing.
They never thought they had a majority or even close to it. They have taken a calulated risk that they could make a lightening flank attack, carefully disguised by the charlatan Obama. Remember, history proves they are nothing if not patient. It isn’t likely they view the effort as all or nothing. If they fail, they will just go back in the burrows for another 20 years and re-emerge in another guise.
Looking at it from their perspective, survey the battlefield in 2008: the msm overwhelmingly on their side, the intelligensia overwhelmingly on their side, the enemy softened by 7 years of relentless bombardment, the invented myth of an invincible leader who could not be criticized, an entrenched cadre of committed marxists in leadership positions in Congress (of which the public wasn’t really even aware), a fat and happy enemy population ripe to be shocked by a nuclear event like the contrived economic meltdown of 2008. Why wouldn’t they have thought they had a unique opportunity to attack with everything they could muster? Why would they compromise, go slow, be transparent, listen to feedback? From their perspective, it would have been insane.
The only thing that has stopped them has been American genius….and I’m not talking about the will of the people or anything like that. What has stopped them has been the internet, which we all know was invented by Al Gore.
And we would be hundreds of years away from the internet if it wasn’t for the freedom unleased by our Founding Fathers.
I guess I’m behind the times. The Aftermath of the election tomorrow is posted and commented about today, one day too early.
You should keep it in your trousers until the time is right.
What will happen will depend from one single element: have we really and thoroughly understood that the marxist totalitarians want to destroy America ?
If we did, we know that the battle against the totalitarians has to go on without compromises.
And we know that the subversives will try anything they can to keep destroying America’s might.
This is not politics as usual: the marxist subversives need to weaken America because without a strong America the international subversion will succeed. Period.
Weak economy and international chaos are SUCCESSES of this administration, they are what they want to get.
The battle from Wednesday on will be the same that it has been in the last two years: Freedom against marxist subversion.
One result of this set of “looters” is the destruction of trust in our institutions.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is again my example. By and large, this is has been a competent and successful technocracy. I grouse about them for the expense and the hassle they cause me but they remain the “gold standard” for nuclear regulation on the planet. When we deal with them, one almost always understands that they take their mission of nuclear safety seriously. of course they have always been a bureaucracy and prone to the sins of such organizations but still, they minimize that aspect of their job.
Now, thanks to Reid and Obama, they have become tainted from raw political power plays. Trust in the NRC is reduced and we Americans will all have trouble trusting them in the future as impartial arbitators of nuclear safety technology.
If the Republicans take back the House, is anyone really expecting them to do anything but knock the bowl of cereal off the table even further, scream tantrums even louder, and poop their pants even harder than before?
Lots of great words here, but nothing is going to happen unless entities at all levels are willing to cut out something that benefits them. That goes from huge bureaucracies down to the individual. And I question whether said entities are willing to do that yet.
bc takes a few minutes from reading “Thoughts of Chairman Mao” while listening to “Woodstock” to offer more brilliant analysis from his mom’s basement. Go away Comrade, the Obama revolution is over.
Anybody see this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BJfMPxQuiU
What a freaking motley crew. A few union thugs straight out of the “On the Waterfront” cast, a couple of low level Jersey mafiosos, a couple guys waiting in line at a methadone clinic, a couple of brothers from a neighborhood barber shop in Gary, Indiana. The stark black and white grainy video looks like “In Cold Blood” Anybody inspired to vote by that thing needs a labotomy.
THE DEATHS OF TED KENNEDY AND JOHN MURTHA AND THE COMING DEBACLE OF NEW DEAL LIBERALISM (WITH POSTSCRIPTS ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT BYRD AND THE RETIREMENT OF PATRICK KENNEDY)
Click my name to read this piece on my NUMBER ONE blog at townhall.com
oops lobotomy!
Agree with 97, helodrvr. So many big words, so many Scotch-soaked planning sessions to select banner-bearing politicians to bring true reps to lead the American people. It is all just a little hard to believe in terms of translation to reality. People pursue their personal interests for the most part, and support politically what benefits them specifically (in general). The grandiosity of some of this, combined with the sort of self-election – which seems tied to the ability to write a really good post – is a little sad.
Rachel, that was a virtual Margarita. I’m old and don’t get out much. ‘At all’ would be a better word. Half a Margarita would prolly short out my pacemaker. The salt would send me into cardiac arrest.
I just admired your writing skills from the early days of PJM (I was posting as typos_r_us then) and thought that if you posted here, between Walt, LL3, and a couple of others, Wretcherd would have most of the talent cornered. Sort of the New York Yankees of blogging.
Being a braves fan, I don’t like the Yankees but I do respect them. It’s those sign stealing Phillies I hate.
“With the country beset by economic and other problems, it is incendiary that the president is not offering a higher vision for the nation but has instead chosen a strategy of rank division.”
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles… “The proletariat (lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled poor or lazy, tax-eating, make-work government employee) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie (laboring, tax-paying middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Marxist Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the (non) working class is to raise the proletariat (lazy animals) to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Marxism is economic class struggle between the so-called proletariat class and the middle class – managed by the Marxist Ruling Class so as to make them unnaturally “equal” – forced “economic equality” – “social justice” (code for social injustice) – class struggle managed by a superior class of not-to-be-equalized equalizers. Barak Obama is a “community organizer” of the American proletariat class.
There is an end to Marxist class struggle – that is when the middle class becomes demoralized and exhausted – many in the middle class finally enter the barn with outstretched hands. In the end there are insufficient laborers to support the lazy proletariat and Marxist classes – anarchy ensues (foreseen in advance) – and the Marxist ruling class “comes to the rescue” with a “dictatorship of the proletariat” – code for dictatorship of the Marxist ruling class.
“If the Repubs win Congress, the Dems should filibuster every bill, put one-person holds on legislation, and just say no to all that the Republicans try to do.”
I have no problem with this. After all, taxpayers with a job wouldn’t be too much affected by a government shut-down. The only ones affected would be federal employees, illegal immigrants and welfare queens. And maybe union employees of GM which is now government-controlled.
I would *love* to see government checks for this and that stop rolling in just in time for Christmas.
I was SO HAPPY to hear Rush Limbaugh echo my opinions, of my comment #77, on his show this afternoon.
The Soetero Regime will cause as much turmoil as they possibly can before losing all their power, and being dethroned in D.C. But, We The People will still have the media regime to deal with.
These poor recalcitrant juveniles just hate Checks and Balances.
#13. The TEA party believes in fair trade; not free trade. #88 Weeha
This item is not sourced. Is this your personal opinion, or a statement by one of the regional Tea Party groups?
In either case, and with advanced apologies, this is nuts. “fairness” = indirect path to socialism.
There is no such thing as “fair” in regards to trade. It’s either regulated, unregulated, or something in between.
“Fair” is the word socialists use to justify whatever-the-hell-I-want-to-do.
I would maintain that “trade”, including both goods and the modern mode of “indentured servitude” known as “H1B”, is OVER REGULATED. The only reason China can walk all over the US in regards to trade is that the USA has enabled it through our own tax, tariff, and regulatory policy. Yes, Chinese companies can make a product much cheaper than U.S. companies can. And, yes, resource costs are a major part of the puzzle. However, what you are missing is the “why” of how American productivity which should be the highest in the world by several factors, is degraded by our insane government policies.
The “level playing” ground you seek through this #13 can never be realized by tariff, tax, or embargo. The only way to beat the overseas competition is to be competitive. American isn’t, or isn’t as competitive as we need to be, and our government policies are the primary reason. When “hiring” a resource” in America is cost-competitive to hiring a resource in China – and I’m not talking about wages – then American “added value” good will surpass the Chinese. (We shouldn’t worry as much when low-education-required-labor, raw-commodity and material producing jobs leave America, as much as the middle class jobs. American’s aren’t competing for $5 a day jobs.)
Old Salt
Face the truth men; we’ve had a Marxist counter-revolution in this country. The counter-revolution was led by Marxists in the Democratic Party and was for the most part un-opposed by cowards in the Republican Party.
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them.” Garet Garrett
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/garrett1.html
The only way to defeat our Marxist Federal Government is to amend the American Constitution – to limit Federal Taxation to 10% – that way “We the People” no longer render unto Caesar (Marxist Federal Government) that which belongs to God (and to the people themselves). Such an amendment will never come from Federal Government (the Pigs of Animal Farm) because as Federal taxation now stands they are rolling in our money (as pigs roll in mud). No, the amendment will occur under Article V – State legislatures will have to force the amendment without the consent of Marxist Federal Government – but with the consent of the governed. Majority rule must be re-established – but majority rule under the moral constraints of our Declaration.
“Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them… A nation ceases to be republican…when the will of the majority ceases to be the law… Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.” Thomas Jefferson
If we allow American Marxism to continue the American middle class will no longer be the majority – we will have a despotic Marxist elite (minority rule) looming over a vast irrelevant majority of equalized serfs – the United States will simply become part of the worldwide Borg.
Of course he was wrong about that. Events don’t drive the future, reactions do. That’s what the Strauss-Howe Turnings theory is all about. Same basics events + different attitude among the people => different reaction => different results.
And that’s why the Democrats and the GOP old-guard are struggling so hard – they don’t realize the attitudes have changed, so they are astonished when the same events don’t produce the same results. Throw the media in there too, I guess.
On top of that, the current leadership is filled by people who are not “smart” in any conventional sort of way, but rather simply adept at playing a particular game (and shameless enough to play it aggressively). The Barney Franks and Nancy Pelosis of the world aren’t terribly adaptive, they just know how to work their playbook, and that playbook doesn’t work very well anymore. Because of that, we’re going to see a lot of blunders from people who have been in politics a long, long time.
Hi BC. Just want to say good and God Bless on this election eve. Let’s keep the spirit of Freedom burning bright whatever may come. Don’t forget to vote and let’s hold their feet to the fire. “Never Give Up, Never Surrender”.
107. Storm Rider –
Something very, very bad is afoot. – and for all the reasons you’ve enumerated here. People don’t want to see it, don’t want to believe it, and don’t want to even acknowledge that it exists. What exactly is it that we’re talking about? It’s the rise of those who crave absolute power for no other reason save that of wielding it. It is a drug, an addiction, a geas, an appetite that we can scarcely comprehend. They are monsters, all of them. And virtually no one wants to even admit the possibility their existence, their intentions and the horror that they will without a doubt perpetrate.
They will be quite content to live in a world lit only by fire, ruling from atop a stinking pile of rubble and corpses as long as they think that THEY will be the ones doing so. Millions of us dead. The rest of us in chains. That’s their goal, their vision, their unholy cause.
There will be only one way to stop them.
Act 2 may be quite turbulent.
Consider the GOP wins the House, CA elects Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, and then the House refuses to bail out CA.
Obama will be quite able to say “they are taking away your survival. They are taking away your pensions, they are taking away your services”. His goal is to not just polarize, but to convince the majority that the goodies they receive from the govt are worth their loss of freedom. When the GOP are the bad people undoing healthcare and pensions, they may find this fight was even more painful than they realized. Will they have the nerve to keep it up?
Will the US population continue to reject this outrageous spending when the cuts finally hit them right now, not just their grandchildren’s future? Obviously in CA, the answer has been no no no, and if they elect Jerry Brown, it’s proof that the majority would rather have the handout.
This will get ugly, and that’s the best outcome. The worst is that everyone folds instead of being portrayed as mean.
The only thing to remember in this situation is that power is money.Money is power. The government has no money, it is printing way too much, and within a year or two the effects of that foolishness will become unavoidable.
Someone mentioned the federal transfers to the states. The health care bill moves costs onto the states, and transfers will decrease. It is the easiest way to cut the deficit. So the fed will have less power.
The weather underground killed more of their own than their enemies. Obama is a weak man, unable to recognize his shortcomings. I thought the danger from his presidency would be some foreign nation reacting to his weakness and forcing him to respond. Backed into a corner he would overreact, probably nuking someone. I don’t think that will happen, with the resurgent republicans. The tea leaves augur a tough republican president in two years, so better lie low.
I think he will turn his destructive impulses inward. He will continue as he has done, alienate one by one his constituencies. He has lost the independents. With this election spanking the clinton-obama battle will start again, the left against the more moderate democrats. Any democrat remaining will be in far left districts, and I suspect Obama will be pursued by the far left with far more vigor than the right. He is already almost irrelevant to the right.
I expect that he will be fighting impeachment proceedings brought by the far left senate and remaining house members. Guantanamo, the war on terror, the drone killings, directed assassinations, etc. There will be a real possibility of a third party such as greens or something similar to the canadian NDP form and take a portion of the democrat vote.
The republicans will be on probation from november 3rd onwards. I don’t think many of the new congressmen or senators will put up with being seat warmers. Expect unofficial committees to form if the republican leadership doesn’t remove power from the speaker.
The rules are about to be rewritten. Things that were untouchable will be touched. Sacred cows will be slain. The media is almost irrelevant now. A brave new world.
May we live in interesting times.
Derek