The Market for Defiance
The most pressing need of the conservative side right now is the need to restore its confidence. It is in a psychological state of rout, which the dictionary defines as “a disorderly retreat or flight following a defeat.” That has to be turned around because the administration is moving forward quickly to press its advantage. Stealth taxes are now being imposed even on Yale (you would have thought they’d earned a waiver), and layoffs are expected in industries which deferred the news until after the election.
Turning the psychological rout around also presents small business opportunities, besides being a necessary preparation for the counterattack that will have to be mounted soonest when the impact of the real economic consequences of 2012 bite.
One possibility is the sale of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other novelty items which boldly proclaim that one voted against Obama. The bigger the letters, the better. The other is a standardized “signature” design of an item which can be manufactured by home craft expressing the same thing.
This at a time when there have been a plethora of articles suggesting that conservatives turn themselves into the Mod Squad and become “hip” in order to attract the voters of the future. This is wrong. An opportunity is being missed to market and brand ideas that have what I’ll call the “Defiance Quality.”
Defiance has a particular cachet at a time like this. It boasts that you’ve got nothing left to lose. The bolder the defiance, the better. This can take the form of the same t-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming your proud membership in your religion or political affiliation. Declare who you are.
Again, it would be best if there were a “signature” design around which individuals could riff their personalized designs. History is replete with examples that show how defiance and proud membership can be one and the same thing. Some instances are quite recent:
The British had instituted numerous ordinances to restrict Jewish activity at our most holy place. We were forbidden to pray out loud, or to read from the Torah (we heard the Torah reading at synagogues in the Jewish Quarter). Most important, we were forbidden to sound the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. British policemen stationed at the Kotel strictly enforced these rules. On the High Holidays the police commander himself stood there to ensure that we should not sound the single blast that ends the fast.
On Yom Kippur 1930 I was praying at the Kotel. During the afternoon intermission between the prayers, I overheard people whispering and asking each other: “Where will we go to hear the Shofar? It’s impossible to blow here. Look, they have as many policemen here as people praying …”
Hearing these whisperings, I thought to myself: “How can we miss out on sounding this important Shofar call that proclaims G-d’s sovereignty and echoes the Redemption of Israel?”
I approached Rabbi Yitzchak Horenstein, who served as the Rabbi of our makeshift “congregation,” and said to him: “Please give me a Shofar.”
“What for?”
“I’ll blow it.”
“Sh-h! Sh-h! What are you talking about? Don’t you see the police all over?”
“I’ll blow it, anyway.”
He was arrested. But for the next 18 years:
… until the Arab conquest of the Old City in 1948, the Shofar was sounded at the Kotel every Yom Kippur, despite the inevitable arrests. The British understood the important significance of this Shofar blast. They knew that it would eventually blow away their reign from our land, even as the walls of Jericho crumbled before Joshua’s Shofar.
I like the idea, but unfortunately, like the jihadists they are, they will not only spoof you, they will key your car, slash your tires, vandalize your home, and likely confront you with violence if you are seen on the street being a “racist”.
I know, I know – forwards, not backwards … but I just can’t get it out of my head: What did Stephanie Cutter mean when she said on Monday afternoon:
“We’ve already banked a pretty big portion of our vote.” …
(see Richard’s post: 11/5/12 4:23pm)
it wasn’t just an echo chamber – all the people on the right who got it totally wrong – it was virtually EVERYbody – I scanned MSM publications in the last 3 weeks of October and they were positively funereal – e.g. “New York” mag feature “After Nov 6″ — for every single contributor it was a totally foregone conclusion: Obama would lose (“The Once and Future Clintons” ha ha) …
it’s like only a few insiders – like Ms Cutter, “knew” how it would turn out… in any case, it was an astonishing statement to make 12+ hours before the polls opened (I know about the whole early voting thing) – you’ve “banked” a “big portion” of your vote – how?!
I find it totally spooky … … OK, sorry – I’ll try to get back on topic
How about a rendering of Obama with donkey ears (not such a stretch) and an elongated nose saying “Welcome to Pleasure Island”
http://tinyurl.com/245qfkl
A Pinocccio for the 21st Century!
So Subotai is right then civil war.
“He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing”
I am the kind of person that had I been alive when FDR outlawed gold via OE, I would have taken mine out to the middle of some deep body of water tossed it over and said “come find it yourself asshole”.
This is war. Treat it so. Bumper stickers won’t do it. We need to make .gov’s job as hard as possible. That means refusing things like the census. Don’t. Fly. At. All. Don’t socialize or do any business with commies. You are going to have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to be willing to destroy your own wealth to keep it of their hands. Do jury duty but always, always vote to acquit. Apply for every benefit. Go on disability if you can. Stop buying stuff. Above all harden your heart against the commie enemy because you may have to shoot them in the face one day.
Get revenge any way you can. Miegs burying his son in Mrs. Lee’s rose garden time.
Great idea and a helpful post. Thank you.
I think the Gadsden flag will work well.
W: The Market for Defiance
Interesting concept, except it only works in a reasonably civilized society.
If you are in Philly where they outright manufactured Obama win in PA, those BP dudes with billyclubs don’t just do it for shows.
I see it as a Cold Civil War. The first time I heard that term I thought it was over the top; now I just hope it stays Cold. Meantime I think I will start studying the Cold War. Maybe we can win this one more effectively.
Well you have to be willing to fight for freedom. See if their billyclub trumps your AR-15.
I have read this site since 2003. I posted for the first time just recently. I’m not hiding my views anymore.
sic semper tyrannis
T-shirts and logos are a good idea. I may pursue that; I have an idea for a design I have considered producing.
But there is one very important thing we must do:
MAKE THINGS WORSE.
As Long Time says in his No.4, Stop Buying Stuff.
And ignore the Feral Govt as much as possible.
And do not support businesses that favor the Left. As someone else said, the UAW has gotten its last nickel out of my pocket, directly. You don’t have to Buy Foreign, Buy Southern, Buy Non-Union. Toyota has more plants in N America than does GM. Hyundai and BMW have plants in states that do not require union membership, such as SC. If you fly, ask to get on a 787 built in the SC plant rather than the one in Washington.
Some of this is occurring. I mentioned the small businessman in Florida who just laid off the 5 people who had Obama stickers on their cars, as a way to avoid Obamacare requirements. I heard of a doctor today who says he is quitting because of Obama’s election and there are many other doctors who say they will as well.
This will be very hard. Traditional American Conservatives are by their very nature optimistic, industrious, and problem solving people. I recall one caller to Rush Limbaugh some time back who said that he would have no choice but to pay higher taxes, regardless, because of his normal industrious impulses; we need to resist that.
We don’t have to Get Revenge. We just have to refuse to make the rope the Left will use to hang us.
2. regretleft: “it wasn’t just an echo chamber – all the people on the right who got it totally wrong – it was virtually EVERYbody –”
Precisely. I am shocked and baffled by this phenomenon. Can’t make sense of it. I had thought that a win by Romney was unlikely but took some comfort in thinking I was probably wrong because so many pundits and experts across the political spectrum were anticipating a GOP victory. I was dumbstruck by Cutter’s statement. What on earth, I wondered, does it mean? There was something sinister about it at the time that is troubling me today.
Gadsen, Arizona and Israeli flags. Decals in car winduws. I voted Nobama.
Defiance is still not a positive message.
* Energy independence
* Obamacare without the taxes and coercion
* Immigration reform that everyone has wanted since 1980: seal the border but license about 90% of the current illegals as visitors and yes THEN amnesty, and continue to make it pretty easy for new Hispanics to come in as workers.
* CRACK DOWN ON THE BANKSTERS – reinstate Glass-Steagall for starters, outlaw CDS without (large) reserves, require all loan originators to own all risk – they can try to lay it off to third parties, but they must remain the prime locus of all responsibility.
* The US stands with Israel, and the rest of the world can FOAD if they don’t like it. Plus anywhere we engage we are going to change our ROE to reduce risk to our troops and recognize the collective responsibility of our foes, we will bulldoze villages who cause us trouble with or without moving or warning the residents first, depending on the details. (which does not preclude us from also withdrawing from Afghanistan on the current schedule, or faster … hey, anybody remember Afghanistan?)
I would also add some neo-protectionist proposal to bring back a million or so manufacturing jobs from China. I mean seriously, imagine if Romney had said this and put some details into it, instead of (do you even know what he did say?) waving his hands a bit about currency manipulation? What did Joe Voter understand about China as a currency manipulator?
Accentuate the positive.
And, once you do that your mud throwing against opponents is much more effective!
my thoughts from the “ahead” thread. Probably more applicable here:
Romney’s loss signifies that the approach of doing the right thing in our society is a losing proposition at this point. This isn’t a civil engagement between groups that disagree, it is a political war and one that the Republicans have tried to play by Marquess of Queensberry Rules while the other side treats it like a street fight.
If we want to win in 2014, if we want to win in 2016, we need to treat this like the street fight it is. If the other side tells a lie, we dig up bigger dirt on them or tell a bigger lie. If the press (included in the other side) refuses to report on something or is particularly vindictive (Chris Matthews..for instance) we dig up whatever dirt on their lives we can find and make it public. The punch back twice as hard was a nice idea, but we need to punch back and punch below the belt.
There are people who spend a lot of time modeling and running prisoner’s dilemma systems. The ones that seem to work all do variations of “tit for tat” .. if the other side does it, you do it until they stop. We are so far behind at this point that we need to do a helluva lot of tat until we are even.
I still think that there are 4 things that we need to make clear to voters that they get an advantage from the republican party – Spending, Military/foreign policy, libertarian pragmatism and social concerns. All of those work together and are necessary for our country and all of them are likely to explode under a second term Obama administration. The key is to make the message clear for libertarians and social conservatives that by working within a states rights view of the country they can each get a lot of what they want (being left alone for the most part or at least able to influence local concerns).. otherwise they can get pretty much nothing. Of course, without spending and a working economy nobody gets anything.
But no rational arguments work in the current framework. we aren’t debating an honest opposition. Until we implement tit for tat on a massive and really heartless way, we have no hope of having anything other than a street fight.
@ 2 & 10
I would be the last person to sign up as an apologist for Stephanie Cutter, but I don’t read anything nefarious in that particular remark of hers. There were numerous news reports before election day describing percentages in states that had early voting … the Dems had IIRC a higher percenrage of their own turning out than did the GOP (thanks to bus-ins, unions, etc).
At the time of the reportage it was speculated that this early GOTV effort could hurt the Dems should election day arrive only for them to find they had expended their voter ammo & thus have fewer ppl to rustle up & out to the polls, in the event of massive GOP turnout & swing voters breaking big for Romney on 11/6.
This is not to discount the possibility of fraud along other avenues … just an observation that this particular comment by Cutter does seem to refer to something that was on the record in the news at the time.
You might recall the story about the Boeing Charleston facility (now Boeing South Carolina), their main union and NLRB. Here are some facts of which most are probably unaware or have forgotten.
When Boeing decided to spread the development risk of the 787 to equity partners, two of the partners built the Charleston facility. Now IAM, the main Boeing union, (they have many, many unions to deal with) said build your planes anywhere you want. We will unionize that plant and they did. But it seems that most of the employees didn’t get to vote on the contract because most were hired after that. They apparently didn’t like it too much either that the elitist union in Everett treated them like country bumpkins from the provinces. Then as part of the get well plan, Boeing decided to simplify the 787 supply chain and bought out the two struggling partners (to ditch their management really). Boeing expected to re-sign the same contract but the employees took the opportunity to decertify the union instead.
The get well plan also had Boeing starting a second 787 line. Boeing wanted to put it right next door to the first line. Boeing wanted the union to guarantee no strikes for 10 years so 787 could get well. That is three 45-90 day work stoppages based on history. The local left of center (but family owned) paper begged the union to do whatever it took to keep the line in Washington. They begged governor empty suit show some leadership. Nada. Boeing abruptly ended the discussions and announced the second line would be at the now to be expanded SC facility. They also announced every part of that plane would be dual sourced to non-union shops. The union will not be able to stop 787 production in SC.
When the NLRB did their dirty work, Boeing basically said “see you in court” and pressed on. The war ended when Boeing announced the new 737 would stay in Washington, something they wanted anyway.
Great idea.
One tool that pro-Israel folks have used to counter boycotters is to couter with a Buycott. I have done this personally with people who have tried to promote anti-Israel boycotts online. Every time I found one I purchased something from Israel (the wines are getting very good) or donated to an Israeli cause online and told them about it. I reminded them that each time they posted they would be contributing to the Israeli economy. That usually shut them up. Groups have been organized to go in and purchase products where BDSrs are protesting.
Another thing which has been organized is a counter propoganda effort (hasbara). This helps educate college students and online posters to counter anti-Israel propoganda.
Perhaps there are some similar efforts that could be made for Republicans such as happened with Chick-fil-A this past year. Lists of companies and products to support could be made for example.
Wretchard, I would suggest that if fraud was the driver, this is a failed state. No more can be said, brace for impact.
If this was simply a messaging problem, and turnout was due to negative ads, that is a testable hypothesis. John McCain was savaged almost identically, and with more funding against him than this time (adjusted for inflation). He managed to get significantly more votes. I do not know about demoralization in the voter base, I think that it is a possibility we are in PTSD/compassion fatigue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue Individuals face this and can generate bursts of breakout energy (ref 2010 midterms) but taking down a bureocracy is a whole different ball game.
Everyone I work with probably voted both elections, but I live in a bubble of my choosing. As a slight optimist, I think most systems self-correct and humans eventually notice patterns that are damaging.
There is a fair amount of purist Constitution worship on the right. I think it is misguided. The Constitution was a Beta release, intended to have patches (amendments) as undiscovered issues arose. The patches we clearly must have are a balanced budget and an end to the Fed in present form. I have a signed copy of Alan Greenspan’s book next to me as I write this, so this involves some change of my paradigm. The human brain cannot determine the right course of action in a highly complex system and paralysis ensues.
There is a subset of people who will play possum in a SHTF scenario and others who will trample the weak to escape. In my worldview, the job of true religion is to encourage a third way: drag the stunned out of harm’s way and get them up and firing. Many of our colleagues are face down waiting for the horror to stop, but it will not stop unless they are engaged. The b!tch of it is the medics will have the highest casualties, always do…
They say David Blaine’s Vertigo stunt was inspired by Romans who were protesting about things. It didn’t save Rome though – probably just spooked everyone to see creepy guys standing there.
That’s just what the Incas did to the Spanish when they tried stealing their gold. Except it wasn’t a body of water but a much vaster abyss in the sky (believe it or not).
With regard to, uh, information activities and potential ways to exercise one’s creative skills and profit off of them (or not to charge for the sake of spreading the meme), has anyone ever noticed the similarities between Boris Karloff’s portrayal in “the Mummy” and our esteemed Dear Leader? There could be some possibilities there….
The GOP pushed the Tea Party out of the spot light. Romney ran as a sortof Republican. And Romney lost.
There were two seminal ideas that became movements during Obozo’s 1st term: (1) The Tea Party and (2) Ron Paul. The GOP shunned both and consequently voters reelected the village idiot.
The message counts. So get the message out. Obozo is very vunerable because his policies are just flat bad. Get the message out.
Nobody pays me for my political predictions, but this centerist, spineless, wishy-washy GOP currently in power has got to go.
How bout junking the Republican Party.
This morning Speaker Boehner is already floating the idea of new taxes in exchange for some puny, much agonized over and much ballyhooed but never realized spending cuts.
You cannot fight the collectivization of America with leaders like he and McConnell. We need to put them out to pasture permanently- right now. And we need a new Party to do that. The control of the GOP is in the hands of the cowardly effeminate elite, and will be nearly impossible to pry loose.
One the main reasons the Republicans lost Tuesday was that for at least the last fifteen years they have failed to prepare the battlespace of ideas. Many at BC decry our educational system, but much of the blame for the ignorance of the electorate must fall on the Republican leadership.
Time and again, there have been countless teaching moments on the law, the Constitution, the economy and foreign policy where instead of articulating the right thing to do and educating the public, the GOP has only cowered and ran away to hide behind some fuzzy capitulation. At every major crossroads where a principled stand was called for, they cowardly retreated and ceded another battleground. Now there are few battlegrounds left to defend, and the war for this country is close to being lost.
The biggest weapon left in our arsenal is the debt ceiling. We cannot give it up, unless major changes are made- junking Obamacare, major spending cuts – including major cuts to the entitlements, government salaries and number of staff, and a wholesale review of our regulatory system. Plus Holder needs to be put in jail for a long time. If we can’t get what we want – tell Obama to live within the means of revenue generated for our government and no more.
Sadly, the Institutional Pubs are not even thinking along those lines. Even talking about such drastic action throws them into a tizzy. That’s why it’s time to get rid of them.
I plan on letting a number of charitable organizations to which I regularly donate know that they will no longer be getting any contributions. Since the public has spoken and decided that we should be a Euro-socialist style country, then I will act as they do and plan on charity being provided by the state. I will suggest that they beseech Obama for funds to make up for the loss from me and hopefully others. If you aren’t aware, a number of large disease-oriented charities were stealthy backers of Obamacare and thus liberal fascism. Among these groups are the American Cancer Society, National MS, American Heart Association and United Way; Cystic Fibrosis was one of the “no position” good guys. In general, the “non-profit” industry is heavily Left, be careful where you spend your time and money.
And to Wretchard and others, what more specifics can be provided on the vote fraud issue? Was Florida basically stolen? I recall a story told by the WSJ’s John Fund about how tens of thousands of Bush punch card votes were destroyed during the 2000 election. Remember those “hanging” and “dimpled” chads? The were produced by being at the bottom of a stack into which a nail had been “punched” on the Gore line. Sort through the ballots, find “straight Republican” voted cards, put them in a big stack, drive the nail through the Gore window and voila, you have just disqualified a big pile of Bush votes. Fund also mentioned that Philadelphia was the vote fraud capital of the U.S..
21. Unsk
How bout junking the Republican Party.
This morning Speaker Boehner is already floating the idea of new taxes in exchange for some puny, much agonized over and much ballyhooed but never realized spending cuts.
And he is also offering raise the debt ceiling. The spineless puke is going to help Obozo sink America for good.
The Mindless Media (redundant) has been harping about the “fiscal cliff” like it is a bad thing. Unfortunately the same really stupid people who reelected the village idiot will be convinced that the “fiscal cliff” must be avoided, instead of embraced.
Greece here we come.
0bama welcomes all the unemployment news, its music to his ears, the more unemployed the bigger his base gets, the bigger his base gets the sooner he can grab even more wealth, 0bama will be looking to do a Hugo Chavez template… Like I said months ago, 0bama would pull a close win, then 0bama so screws the country they (the 50+% on the government pay out) will beg 0bama to become the history making first three term president, after that its President for life!
Public defiance can only work in a society where free speech is protected – a society where no one fears for their life, limb, family or property after speaking their mind. If you fear to speak in defiance of State authority – then you do not live in a free country – you live in an authoritarian or totalitarian country. I believe many if not most Americans fear to speak out against their federal government, and if so, then we are no longer a free country. The fear of God has been replaced by fear of Caesar.
WANTED: GOP STRONG HORSE / LEADERS
FOR SALE: SPINELESS GOP CONGRESS (who follow Obama who leads from behind…)
PS: GOD help us!
I bought a Direct To Garment printer earlier in the year. It allows you to print one-offs which is perfect for ideas seeking perfection.
After Wretchards’ suggestion the first thing I thought of was emulating another popular martyr of his time, how ’bout Mitt Romney with a Che’ beret characture. I printed up a 100 or so black t-shirts with a picture of Reagan and Cross Bones. Liberals hate Reagan and most conservatives thought it was insulting to Reagan. Blowhards all. The rest didn’t know who it was. I also did versions with Poe, Mona Lisa, Obama, and Einstein. My homage to pirates.I sold 1 on eBay. I lost my ass.
Boehner, geez. Is he really going to sell us out? Will he then cave on immigration?
Rout? I wouldn’t go so far as to call that. Setback, yes. Rout, no. Obama’s win wasn’t decisive like Reagan’s was in 1980. We retained control of the House. We gained another Governor’s manison bringing to total to 30. Picked up seats in the statehouses. What is in order is for our side to start following one of the Left’s mantras: “Think Nationally, act locally.” The our efforts need to be start taking back nation block by block, precinct by precinct, city by city, county by county, state by state. Get control of the pieces and then you control the whole. The same process needs to be done to the GOP; reforming from within from the bottom up. The Tea Party has already started on this process. It will take time, courage and patience. “Courage, Merry, courage for our friends.”
Thanks #14 for de-spooking Cutter’s nonchalance about “banking” a “big portion” of votes the day before the polls open – still, I’m not sure I’m completely convinced (Richard posted Nov 4 – In the Offing – re: Republican confidence on the Ohio absentee/early voting) but I’m in over my head here, not being the complete political junkie… so – Forward it is! … and we have, at the edges, recommendations to (a) sell tee shirts and (b) start shooting … some in the middle seem a little more robust …. I definitely like #22 – reassess – as individuals – our philanthropy –
we have been told for years how “mean” and “stingy” Americans are – but the reality is, once again, totally different. Americans have long, far surpassed the oh-so-civilized Euros on a wide range of philanthropic indicia – monetary contributions, volunteerism, etc (the same pattern goes, as you might expect, for red vs blue state) …
but I agree with #22 – NO MORE – at least keep it all very local – you “belong” to the government? well, fine – go ask them!
Unsk@21: Amen. We have weapons. The Constitution gave us Samson options. Obama’s gonna wreck the country anyway.
We still own the House, and we’ve got to get the Republicans to flat-out refuse to raise the debt ceiling. No deals, no negotiations. Stop funding Obama’s take-over.
Republicans are afraid that they won’t get re-elected if they shut down the government. We must make them understand that unless they do shut it down, they won’t get past their own primary.
If that doesn’t work, then the next option is mass tax resistance. After all, the people on our side pay almost all of the taxes.
Wretchard, you, and this brilliant body of commenters, have been an inspiration to me for years. This Club is light in the darkness. But really — t-shirts?
Wretchard,
You mentioned t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc.
After voting for Romney/Ryan on Tuesday, it occured to me that if we lose the election, I would now consider the Libertarian Party in local/state elections in the future(start at the grassroots).
After reading your above column,I am thinking of buying some LP stuff(T-shirts)
mostly, and giving them away at festivals/gatherings here in my area of Florida. I’ll tell them it’s free and if anyone questions it, tell them that it was free, sort of like Obamaphones or foodstamps but without the hassle of govt bureacracy.
Re. # 21. Unsk
“How bout junking the Republican Party….”
You cannot junk them without junking Dems at the same time. They are Dem’s subsidiary pretending to be in opposition.
Question: Why they agree to sequestration in the first place?
Answer: to be able to pretend later they have no choice.
More on the Romney loss:
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Rural-Whites-Didn-t-Show-Up#comments
Gee, who would have thunk that a Wall Street Insider/ Country Club RINO Northeastern Liberal who never campaigned on farm issues even though there was a really destructive Obama WAR ON FARMS, would have trouble getting the rural vote?
Another data point for the cowardly Romney campaign.
The red states can’t fight the blue states fairly and win. Red states can’t fight the big city machine. There is simply too many of them.
When “politicians” like Brian Banks gets elected with 68% of the vote, there is nothing that I can do in SC that can counteract that.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57546652-504083/brian-banks-eight-time-ex-con-elected-by-detroiters-to-mich-state-assembly-report-says/
Banks was one of two candidates with unusual pasts elected in Michigan on Tuesday. Reindeer farmer Kerry Bentivolio, who once said in a deposition he wasn’t always sure if he was himself or Santa Claus and whose brother described him as “mentally unbalanced,” won a House seat in the state’s 11th district.
However, I’m beginning to formulate a plan…
Train
buy weapons
read and educate myself
pay as little federal and state tax as possible.
Barter or trade
pay in cash
train
start learning to live off the grid
Learn to grow crops
Support conservatives – we need to come up with a symbol that lets us know who to trust and where to buy from
This is truely only the beginning of a long cold war for the heart of America. Whatever happens next is going to be very interesting so I better prepare now.
Buy guns…and ammunition…lots of each. the big run on g&a after the 08 election kept them mostly at bay for the last 4 years. We can make sure that messing with gun rights remains politically radioactive. An NRA sticker on the car is a nice touch, too.
As for spending cuts, insist that they be cuts in the real world sense of that word. Not a slight slowdown of the rate of increase of the rate of increase of the rate of increase of the rate of increase of the rate of increase of spending.
This isn’t complicated. Politics is a competition between ideologies. Right now the lefty collectivists are winning the contest hands down. The conservative, limited government, fiscal probity, individual freedom, economic freedom team simply can’t compete. Competition hurts only when you lose. Compete successfully or die.
The solution is for conservatives to figure out why they are a bunch of political losers and how they can become competitive without becoming lefty lite. Here are four suggestions:
- Learn how to articulate conservative principles and the basics of capitalism in a way that is 21st century, not a repeat of 1950′s rhetoric or 18th century rhetoric. The fundamental truths of the Constitution can and must be articulated using modern language.
- Replace the Republican party, either from within or by creating a new 21st century party of conservatism, political and economic freedom.
- Start to reclaim and assert States Rights but in 21st century, not 18th century language.
- Conservatives have to accept the idea of the separation of Church and State because half the time they sound like advocates of a union of Church and State.
The present Republican Party doesn’t understand the principle of economic freedom, has a crony view of Capitalism and supports big government. It is stuck back in the 1950′s. They must forswear ideological cronyism as well as crony capitalism. They need to embrace the radical and frightening idea of ideological free competition. Man up and compete; or die.
Re # 36. WadeH
“Buy guns…and ammunition…lots of each. the big run on g&a after the 08 election kept them mostly at bay for the last 4 years. We can make sure that messing with gun rights remains politically radioactive. An NRA sticker on the car is a nice touch, too.”
And be aware that they will go after 2-d any moment now.
re: Capn Rusty
There are a few people here who are far better qualified to comment on this, but I will take a stab at it.
The place that we are in now has been the result of a fringe slowly and patiently weaving their Gramscian memes into the background of our social fabric over the past 40 years or so. Thirty years ago, the only place that I would see these posters was in SF or the East Bay. 20 years ago, only in the worst neighborhoods in the abandoned downtown business district of my home town. 10 years ago, I started seeing the damned Che flags and shirts, mostly on campuses. Today, you will find the stupid little stickers on stop signs and mailboxes all around the neighborhood.
It is comparable to the slow erosion of manners and quality of public discourse, and just as intentional. The tactic helped over the long run to condition people to accept the slow erosion of our public and civil institutions, to the point where I am sure that more than one little drug-addled thug showed up to the polls on Tuesday wearing a Che shirt. However, for better or worse, they now represent the institutions. Their edifice is doomed to rot under its own weight but not without crushing a lot of people in its collapse. We can no longer prevent its construction or stall its completion. The only thing that we can do now is undermine their own edifice, hasten its fall, and minimize the impact of its collapse. This may take decades, but it starts with a slow, consistent, subliminal meme that is always in the background. So, yeah, T-shirts and bumper stickers, for starters.
Patton once said that fixed fortifications were monuments to human stupidity. So are ideas and institutions that are built upon demonstrable fallacies, with historic patterns of tragic failure that occur without exception. Prepare the ground now, wait for the inevitable tipping point, and then hit it as hard as possible with the truth and keep hitting until the whole rotten thing is down. As I said in a previous post: Political Ju-Jitsu. Among the truths: A Creator who has made self-evident trtuths from with all rights flow. A right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A government that protects and fairly regulates but is not used as an irresistable tool of social engineering. An environment where an individual is free to succeed, but also free to fail. Out of many, one. Patton had tanks. Right now, we have T-shirts.
Demographics as political destiny
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/demographics-as-political-destiny/2012/11/07/f8faf206-291f-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_blog.html
How do we rebuild a nation with sound core values embraced by all without pandering…
31 @Capn Rusty
Consider that the completely unserious message of Big Bird, binders, birth control, and lady parts was likely enough to give Obama the win. Either we change our strategy or do nothing. As much as I would like to just hunker down in the bunker, I would still like to resolve this as peacefully as possible, so I’m not opposed to the idea.
32 @Mockingbird
I describe myself as a libertarian (as opposed to a Libertarian), but I’ve just about had it with the LP and outfits such as Reason Magazine. While I personally don’t care much if someone wants to smoke a bowl at home or get married to their same-sex partner, all I saw from the large-L Libertarians on election night was big celebrations about pot legalization and gay marriage. The country is circling the toilet bowl, but woohoo, weed and the gheys!
It shows that they are fundamentally unserious and some of the criticism that I’ve seen conservatives level at Libertarians has truth to it. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t support LP, I’d rather see you do that than support the GOP any further. But I just can’t bring myself to associate with them any more at this time. I guess the pot thing is great if all you want to do is dull your senses to the effed up state of the country.
38 @stevesmith
Big +1 from me.
—
Wretchard, my last post seems to be hung up in moderation, probably because of a large number of external links. Would appreciate it if you would approve it, or I think I can scavenge the text and repost it if necessary.
I will spend my 4th and last with this reminder from some famous guy.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
If your response to this is go buy guns and ammo, you are already behind the power curve. The American people have acquired something like 10 million small arms, the vast majority semi-auto, and billions of rounds of ammo under Sir Golfs-a-lot reign, I’d say good luck with that with that infringing part.
+
Before the AWB, AR-15s were rather rare and people I knew that had them had only a couple of magazines. The AR-15 is now one of the most popular rifles in America and a lot of those owners have dozens of magazines. Brownells sells them in packs of ten.
We do not have ‘free and fair’ elections. The whole process is a sham. No one knows how big the margin of fraud is. NO ONE. With semi-accurate polling all you have to do is extrapolate the early voting numbers and you can always produce enough fake votes on voting day to win. There is almost zero repercussions for committing voter fraud and its notoriously hard to prosecute. Even when there is a open and shut case(black panthers) the commies in power don’t prosecute. For the 2nd time the 0bama campaign drew untold amounts of foreign illegal campaign contributions with ZERO consequences. The system is broken, the republic is dead.
Rebranding or destroying the Republican Party will not work either, nor will a 3rd party. Whatever takes the place of the GOP will be demonized just the same as the current opposition. Reports of the demise of the MSM have been greatly exaggerated – they are as effective as ever. The Tea Party are extremist religious zealots. Romney wants to take away your lady parts. Benghazi was just a misunderstanding. 0bama single handedly killed bin laden and saved everyone from the hurricane. Fast and Furious never happened – and if it did it was a leftover Bush operation. I can go on FOREVER.
The country is gone unless you can fix the electoral process, the MSM and stop academia from churning out thousands of progressives every year.
I don’t see how any of that is possible, which leaves only one option: 2nd Amendment.
Unless I’m missing something.
Here’s a teeshirt idea that I didn’t act on in time for the Brown/Warren senate race in MA (full disclosure: I lived in MA at one time, but escaped to the United States in 1987 – NH). I’m sure somebody reading these posts could do it, and I’d buy one: Take Grant Woods painting “American Gothic” and photoshop Putin’s face on the man and Obumble’s on the woman (not Woods’ context, but she’s his bitch!). My original idea was granny Warren for the woman and Barry for the man – two peas in a pod! Print it as is or adapt for a better vision, the idea is gratis – copyright it and send me one.
fonman
A few related yet random thoughts, then to mention to potentially useful tools. (Reposting without links to try to get out of moderation hell. Sorry, you’ll have to search the names if you are interested in topics.)
First, while I have quite a bit of admiration for the Tea Party, I think the brand is a bit tarnished (not really through their own fault, victim of an intense Enemedia smear campaign). My $0.02 to them would be to try to get inside the MSM OODA loop, re-brand, de-centralize if they are affiliated w/ one of the national “Tea Party™” orgs that are nothing more than GOP vehicles to co-opt them, then start culture jamming as Richard suggests. I think that also means moving beyond the Gadsden flag.
4 @Long-time-lurker
Jumping on the Cloward-Piven bandwagon to make it crash faster may be a worthwhile idea. But I don’t think the messaging idea is without merit. Like it or not, it’s the coin of the realm.
And if Cloward-Piven is coming, whether we hasten it or not, it is imperative that we be ready to beat the progs to the endgame. The whole point of that strategy is not really the collapse, it’s to seize control and reshape everything in the wake of the collapse. We must plan on how we will block the progs and substitute a restoration.
—
I’m not the person to go to for iconography ideas, but I recommend a few resources for the potential entrepreneur with a shoestring budget.
If you are doing graphic design for a bumper sticker, t-shirt, poster, etc., you can use Inkscape to do a lot of the basic stuff that Illustrator will do. At least most of everything that an amateur hack like me would need.
If you need to do 2D CAD, I can recommend QCAD as a capable substitute for AutoCAD. Again, it won’t compete with AutoCAD in advanced features, but if you need basic 2D drawings, it works quite well.
I don’t know if 3D printing had advanced to the point where it’s economical to use for production work, but I have heard of a few popup retail locations using 3D printers to make customized tchotchkes. I haven’t used a 3D printer yet as it’s just not in my budget, but I follow the news about them and I know they are rapidly progressing.
As far as 3D CAD software goes, I know of a few such as Sketchup, Tinkercad, FreeCAD, and OpenSCAD, but I’m sure there’s others to investigate.
You can purchase your own 3D printer (MakerBot, Solidoodle, Ultimaker, many others) or you can send design files out for manufacture (123D, Ponoko, etc.).
Speaking of Ponoko, it’s not just for 3D printing. They can also do other kinds of fabrication, such as laser cutting and CNC, on a variety of media. Not the cheapest route, but pretty neat stuff and an easy way for any old Joe Schmoe to get started.
2 thoughts:
Nietzche: anything ready to fall deserves to be pushed.
and Ghandi was a pussy.
My take on defeating the Donks is not to try to convince people of the rightness of the Republicans, but run a false flag operation. Put a little seed money into a far left movement espousing every far left line such as gay rights, slave reparations, free pot, and forced unionization of all business. then solicit funds to build upon the seed money. Now run a national candidate to suck away Dem votes. If you could get five percent of the Dem votes you would have a runaway Republican victory.
Now thats Evil.
Relying on politicians, GOP and otherwise, to restore the Republic is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In other words, it’s nuts.
We are engaged in a civilizational war and so far we’ve lost the first 1000 battles. By every indication the culture is sinking deeper into the crapper, and nothing is going to change until that trend is reversed. Culture determines politics.
The Reconquista took a few hundred years and was fought by small groups in small battles on many different fronts. Nobody on either side even knew there was a Reconquista going on until nearly the very end when the Spanish Catholics finally started cooperating on a large scale.
I think that only faith communities can have the staying power for the long war. It’s so much easier to just submit to the popular culture and “go along” when there is no metaphysical foundation to lean on.
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that the Catholic Church, as poorly guided, hypocritical and feckless its American leadership is, is the only civilizational kernel that can pull this off. And it won’t be by preaching but by understanding and sharing the truths of human nature in Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, the beauty of reality in a Caravaggio or a Bernini, the majesty in Handel and Bach. Everything that makes being human wonderful and unique.
First time poster on this site, long time lurker. Thanks for opening this forum Wretchard, it was exactly what I was thinking after Tuesday night. We need to focus our efforts on stripping away our business and money from the Statists and their supporters. Here are some of my ideas:
1) Establish and promote a common symbol. Have all the major right wing websites like PJMedia fly it on their masthead. Website links to a description of the initiative. The Gadsden Flag works, as it’s similar to the Peace Symbol or the Gay Rights Flag in that it immediately identifies a belief system. It is the epitome of AMERICAN DEFIANCE. Only transact with business that fly the Gadsden Flag. Leftists would never fly it because of its Tea Party association so its the perfect self identifier.
2) For us Blue State residents and small business who don’t want to be harrassed by our friendly neighbors, go underground. Carry in our wallets a Gadsden flag card to show on trading. Have a catch phrase ready, “Dont Tread on Me” replied with “Live Free or Die.” When we exchange emails we can end them with “DTOM” – “LFOD”.
3) Does anyone know of a barter website we can use? If not I’m thinking of setting one up myself. It could be a simple site like CraigsList or one with a map with flags showing what goods/services local DTOM folks are looking to barter. Would have come in very handy during Sandy… Just send a little text message that you need a tree removed or an electrician or even “D” batteries. Barter with only ourselves, let the Free Stuff Army starve.
4) Once we settle on the Gadsden Flag and this grows, any business that doesn’t fly the flag is ripe for competition. Think Big! Amazon, Google, Facebook, you name it. They get their revenues through OUR eyeballs and most have been crony capitalist supporters of the administration. If there is a complementary product and has the Gadsden Flag I am using that instead. Even True Blue states had +/- 40% of their population vote Republican so there is a big enough market anywhere for this.
5) Set up promotions, 1% of all purchases go to the NRA or to Tea Party candidates. Support the ecosystem. This is how the left does it. Lets get to work.
Next week the House will be holding hearings on Benghazi. Even MSM correspondents (Lara Logan) are upset by rape! But Romney dropped that issue, expecting the press to lead? They lead from behind too.
The Inspectors General are circling the Interior Department regarding the illegal drilling moratorium. Fast & Furious is due for a refresh.
Obama hid this stuff until after this election. But it will be four more years until the next one. He cannot kick the can that far. He does not have the range.
As to slogans…”Ali-Bama and His 40 Thieves”
I like some of the ideas I see here. Here’s a few more. I call them “shared sacrifices”. After all, if my living standard may go down because of Tuesday’s vote, I feel perfectly justified in having some parasites share my pain.
1) Take advantage of every single stupid tax credit possible. I particularly like the ones for putting in energy efficient appliances and upgrades.
I’m in the Sunbelt, and will be looking into installing a solar water heater. Why not? Oblah-blah wants power costs to skyrocket. Not sure yet how they are gonna tax sunlight, but may as well put a dent in both my utility bill (and the taxes on it, too, don’t forget about that), not to mention a dent in the amount I’m paying for income taxes.
It will be such a shame if they have to take cold showers while I’m running my dishwasher, washing machine, AND taking a bubble bath. But someone should make the sacrifice, right?
2) Get an Earth Box, maybe a few chickens if your town still allows it. Seeds are still pretty cheap. Worst that could happen is you get something to eat and save a bit on your food bill.
It will be tragic that the local municipality may have to do without some sales tax revenue if enough people do this, of course. But…..shared sacrifices must be made. (And you are being *SO GOOD* by being a locavore, natch!)
3) The local libertarians I know are generally pretty handy. Some of the conservatives are, too. One person is good at making preserves, another soap, and another does some great handyman work. Barter as much as possible. Even if you can’t make anything worth crap, you can still watch kids, maybe tutor and help out with other errands, right?
And if you do it right, gee…..nothing that can be taxed. Such a bummer for the tax collectors! Damn.
4) Take advantage of each other’s freebies and membership bennies, especially if they are with companies that give to Dems.
Here’s an example. Regrettably, in my area, the best prices for most staples are at a local warehouse club that gives to progressive causes. Nothing says that three or four of us can’t all go shop together on one person’s membership, now, is there?
Such a bummer that they will be missing out on some annual membership fees if you do that, and maybe the listed member will get some goodies they wouldn’t otherwise get due to their “increased volume”. It’s a shared sacrifice, though.
I’m sure there are other ways to starve the beast. If you have one, please share.
looking back: … it’s starting:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20121108_Vote_was_astronomical_for_Obama_in_some_Philadelphia_wards.html
looking forward: – I say (#47) let’s go forward without Nietzsche – that syphilitic madman — you provide close to a direct quote – one that I think has a kind of special place in the FN opus – — in all my reading in (secondary) holocaust literature, I have found just one instance in which a Nazi official appealed to Nietzsche to justify a specific anti-Semitic policy – and he used that precise quote – … the context, I think, being something like denying kindergarten spaces to children of mixed Jewish Aryan marriages.. the Nazi’s being famously big thinkers…
obviously, I don’t mean to say you are affirming that application, even implicitly by offering the thought … it’s just one of the things I regret – too much Nietzsche — don’t waste your time! spend it with Emerson, instead.
Here’s an example of someone combining a 3D printer with a mobile food cart to provide 3D printed confectioneries. Vending food might still be too high-profile for the BC manifesto, considering all of the local regulations, but it’s at least a decent seed idea. The spectacle of the 3D printer cranking out a custom design, live for the customer might be enough to offset the extra cost for such an item.
http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/11/07/3d-food-printing/
47 @Tom Servo
I always liked the scene in Fight Club where the narrator said, of any historical figure, he would fight Gandhi.
53 @regretleft
>99% vote for Obama in 13 Philly wards? That doesn’t sound like a banana republic at all!
Big highway billboards to go up in 2014, if not next year:
STILL BUSH’s FAULT?
And of course this message should be a bumper sticker.
Re. # 48. Evil Cheese
“My take on defeating the Donks is not to try to convince people of the rightness of the Republicans, but run a false flag operation. Put a little seed money into a far left movement espousing every far left line such as gay rights, slave reparations, free pot, and forced unionization of all business. then solicit funds to build upon the seed money. Now run a national candidate to suck away Dem votes. If you could get five percent of the Dem votes you would have a runaway Republican victory.”
It has been done wildly successfully by the former SU before, during and after the WWII. Probably they did not aimed at top, although FDR was fond of Stalin for some reasons (some geopolitical some not) as well as Clinton was fond of Chinese, and Obama is fond of MB.
To pick up on some of the ideas expressed above (eg dla @ 20, Unsk @ 21) — we need to remember the first part of the OODA loop: OBSERVE. Let’s Observe the current situation.
Democrat voters are what they are. Their misconceptions are probably genetic. Some of them are nice people, except they can no more pass up a Dem candidate on a ballot than an alcoholic can pass an open bar door. Thus they leave themselves open to being manipulated by neo-Stalinists.
The real target has to be the Contingent Voter — the guys who gave Reagan a huge victory and left Romney twisting in the wind. Leftists & Government Media ignore the Contingent Voter because they refuse to acknowledge people who are not committed to Big Intrusive Government. Unfortunately, Institutional Republicans ape the BIG types and ignore the Contingent Voters too.
No Democrat will ever win against the combination of Republicans and Contingent Voters. And Contingents seem to want smaller government which does fewer things much better. The way for Republicans to win is to align themselves with the Contingents.
With all due respect to our host, this analysis suggests the way forward does not involve selling merchandise. It involves a version of L3′s approach of intervening earlier in the election cycle.
Join the local Republican Party and start clearing house — show trials of RINOs, expulsions, party member selection processes which ensure loyalty to the goal of smaller, less-intrusive government. Then move on to the State & National levels. Remake the Republican Party from the inside into an entity committed to the goals of the Contingent Voters.
1. Wear black arm bands every day for 3 to 6 months.
2. Wrap black bands around yard trees or around porch posts.
3. Make a solid black flag and fly it every day for several months.
4. Wear shirts, sweats, caps that have nothing but a big “USA” on them.
5. Wear ball caps with some branch of the armed forces insignia on them often.
6. Wear some combination of red/white/blue as often as possible.
7. Wear a flag pin on everything you put on.
8. Encourage, via personal network/internet, bartering your skills in trade for someone’s else’s skills to get things done = no paperwork/no taxes/no records.
9. Lastly, consider making an empty chair a permanent yard ornament.
Tarnsman has the right idea, as did Leo Linbeck III, the fight is most effective at the local level. I mentioned sovereign state’s rights on a previous thread but left the thread before I could refute a detraction about its effectiveness due to federal taxation. In my view, states that are self-supporting should take a Constitutional stand on taxation. They should inform Washington they will nolonger be sending tax money for anything that is not explicitly ennumerated under the Constitution and then only a per-citizen share, by population,not tax status.(IOW not paying the share of non-taxpayers in other states)
The ultimate OODA-loop is hiding in plain sight- State sovereignty, Individual liberty and private property (the most important being the wages earned by individual labor) The last revolutionaries understood these concepts far better than we do and used them more effectively. Voter fraud should be addressed at the local level, removing any possibilty of fraud.
It is time for a third party to replace the Republican party. I like the ConstitutionalParty, let the left try and disparage the term ‘Constitution.’ Any attempt to do so would backfire IMHO. The next concept is a tough one to swallow but stick with me. STOP pandering to the religious constituency. I have nothing against religion but there is a reason why our Cpnstitution places religion below government, namely it is hard to define in term of values. Beliefs run across a broad spectrum and are more devisive than inclusive. I have a highly intelligent sister who is both a Christian and pro-choice, ideas I find at odds with each other. There will be those on this blog who will try to ‘school’ me about what is right and true- don’t bother. It doesn’t matter to me and is exactly the problem- degrees of religious belief are only important to the individual and cannot define a party without causing rifts. Key on the Constitutionalissues and let the religious voters decide which party works best for them. Case in point, same sex marriage. Marriage is not addressed in the Constitution so MUST fall upon the states. It does not impact me, as a heterosexual, whether two men or women want to marry. It is a contract at heart so noone should be able to approve or disapprove of the contract except the governing body. Consequently,many conservative homosexuals (yes, there are some) might identify with the party if not subjected to sermons which would fall on deaf ears.
Sorry so long but some ideas can’t be encompessed in sound bites.
There’s been talk on this site about resistance in the form of spending less, and taking every tax break you qualify for–survival being the first requirement for resistance. Maybe hastening the government’s and our own economic downfall, which is counterintuitive. At any rate that could include using social services you qualify for. But then I wonder whether the principal of self-reliance is undermined by taking advantage of services for my family’s benefit that the rest of my neighbors pay for. Tax breaks versus social services may be a distinction without a difference, but on a personal level, resentment, self-loathing and impotent dependence might result. “I’ll just try crack once”. But hell, I’m not perfect in that regard.
Resistance: I think having kids is great on a number of fronts. I offer it here as good, if blunt news. First, demography is destiny. And the tax deduction is super while it lasts. More importantly, God calls it good. For the younger crowd, have a bunch. It’s the real joy in life once you pass through the fire. You no longer get to be the center of the universe, which can be a minor adjustment. Chesterton said something along the lines that the holy family took the natural order of man, woman, then child, and turned it upside down. It is in the family that you learn that love might be something more than a feeling, seeing as we are constantly tamping down screaming, screaming ourselves, giving orders, taking orders?, grabbing, taking seats someone was just sitting in, arguing, putting down, ganging up on others. A three year old can come up with ‘I hate you daddy’ and even better, ‘I don’t need you daddy’. (Powerful metaphor–turning from the Father). When you have a large family you can’t help but acknowledge that we are needful creatures, that we have unlimited desires in an undeniably limited world. Then there’s the outside world. You have to accept that the deep suffering you have endured will be visited upon your most beloved. They call it a vale of tears for a reason. You have to accept vulnerability. And go for it anyway. Some define bringing a child into such a world as selfish. Better to remain the center of your world. A Catholic school principal at the end of her tenure advised, if you are only going to have one or two ‘precious’ children, my advice is to go ahead and become a priest instead.
My fifteen seater van (ahem) has some great bumper stickers:
The Catholic Church: resisting oppressive goverment since 33 A.D.
A government that will rob Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul
Come to the dark side, we have cookies
Yes, I know where they come from
A person is a person no matter how small
The sun causes global warming
My carbon footprint is bigger than yours
What a shame that bitter irony has no nutritional value
52.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot
‘Capitalism’ bumper sticker made to mirror the ‘Coexist’ bumper sticker with suitable images
I thought of the following bumper stickers:
Slavery: if you don’t like it, don’t own one (fixed your argument for you)
Fresh Air–Taking more than our fair share
I’ve been considering taking a lower profile, removing the bumper stickers, and riding out the storm under cover. We’ve had notes left on our car informing us we are causing the destruction of the planet, been confronted in parking lots asking for clarification. Plenty of nasty comments from our betters.
Tomorrow when I go to town I will be changing banks. The bank I’m presently with gave 200k to the Obama campaign. I’m not rich and don’t have a lot of money there, less than five thousand, but fifty similar people doing the same would equal their campaign contribution.
u @ 34: More on the Romney loss:
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/Rural-Whites-Didn-t-Show-Up#comments
If this turns out to be the case, then Mitt Romney will get a place in history alongside his father, as innocent victims of their own incompetence.
Rush had a caller today, some very earnest sounding guy, who stayed home and didn’t vote for Romney because he wasn’t conservative enough. Rush shouted at him some.
Two observations. If these represented just the last ten percent of the Republicans, they could simply have been missed by pollsters taking random samples. And the MSM would never have thought to ask them!
But in NO case should the Republican party or the Romney campaign have missed them. And maybe some part of it was Mormonism, although several late reports say this was not the case more generally.
I’ll wait for some further research, I mean there are always a few cranks in any group, no doubt Obama lost a few votes for being too conservative, Roseanne Barr pulled something like 49k votes nationwide, and the Greens 400k.
Dworkin Barimen -
Have been using AutoCAD since 1986. Recently started working for someone who did not have it but IT recommended downloading a free program called DraftSight from Dassau who makes Catia and SolidWorks 3D software. It is pretty good actually. I am an old command line hack so I am happilly keyboarding away at it doing schematics and diagrams and other 2d stuff. Can’t beat the price.
A 3D printer is best used for printing models and keyfobs. If not having having a keyfob is the problem, a 3D printer is the solution. I have seen it used as a confection printer. That has a lot of possibilities. Cake boss watch out.
Evil Cheese@ 48:
I think that you just won the “Upturned Dagger” award for this thread (the universal symbol for unconventional warfare). Good stuff.
Cool resolve….
Distracted myself from one of the most important facts, the power in our government (when applied and limited with a spine- are you listening Beohner) is in the representatives, Congress. Win those and the president is irrelevent. We will pay a heavy price for allowing Obama to appoint Supreme Court Justices. If the Republicans could have captured the Senate there would be little to fear.
How about a simple url…
Stupid.___.gov
Fill in the blank….Then stick on every thing (or institution) with an 0bama or dem party logo.
Then personally defund and undermine every supporting pillar of the left.
As many of us in business are now predisposed to know first hand, there are very few profit centers that can survive a 48.whatever% reduction in revenues.
Sink the Titanic.
63 @Annoy Mouse
Doh! I knew I was missing something! I have heard of it and heard good things about it but haven’t personally tried it. Thanks so much for the reminder, I need to give it a whirl.
I’m not a draftsman by trade, but I did really enjoy my drafting classes in HS (back before my school had PCs for CAD) and had to take one term of AutoCAD for my chosen degree at college. I like keyboarding in CAD as well, at least for the first pass. You generally have to enter very specific coordinates, so no sense in clicking the mouse, going to the keyboard to enter coords, back to the mouse, etc.
Also forgot to mention GIMP image editing software as a replacement for Photoshop for when you have to work on bitmaps.
65 @SpeakEasy
Except that Congress (including the GOP controlled House) had abdicated much of its authority to the Executive. How do you fix that problem?
I think this is my 4th, so I’m done.
I have long advocated a consumer union of sorts. It is the opposite of a boycott. It is doing business with those whom you share common beliefs. It is voting with your wallet. It is upholding those who use good governance and are politically secular.
I will not knowingly do business with:
General Electric
ABC/CBS/NBC/MSNBC or Disney if they own any of them.
Anything affiliated with George Soros.
Hollywood celebrities.
Oh and the list goes on and on…
Imagine a Google where you can flag statist @$$holes.
ps
PPS
Random
Just had a thought…. Progressivism is the rejection of Christianity.
I doubt if Romney lost Iowa via vote fraud.
If you lose Iowa . . . .
I don’t think products will bring change, unless they are part of a larger change.
Maybe Alinsky-inspired tactics might succeed. Romney didn’t use them, and the GOP didn’t use them, except against Newt. Breitbart understood. He identified and heightened the inner contradictions of liberalism/socialism.
Demoralization is good?
Alinsky writes: “There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoyevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. . . . If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.”[3]
RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.
RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
L3 has provided excellent ideas regarding state compacts. But they need to be operationalized and used as leverage against centralization. All Romney needed to say about Romneycare was that it was a state thing, and states are an incubator for innovation. But he never said that, at least as far as I know. Which made a lot of people suspicious that he liked the idea of a national plan.
Annoy Mouse (68) A consumer union… That is what I was trying to say in post 50. But I don’t agree with doing business with the politically secular. Not that I’m such a partisan, but only because too often the secular I buy from turns democrat sooner or later. Starbucks, Apple Computer, etc…
As an example, name me any big time actor or actress that wore their politics on their sleeve before they became famous. The ones that do it early flame out quick. The ones that are smart and private about it reveal their inner goblins only after they got my hard earned $$.
60. erico
Where can I get the bumper sticker “The Catholic Church: resisting oppressive goverment since 33 A.D.” That’s brilliant!
Congrats on your successes at procreation! You, sir, are awesome!
Not exactly BC nor PC … but still an Alinsky outlook:
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.ca/2012/11/take-picture-real-alinsky-and-fall-of.html
SF
Richard, have you seen Bill Whittle’s election night video? It’s an impassioned piece about creating parallel structures in which the real America can flourish. He’s encouraging us not to despair, and that’s especially moving because you can see that he’s fighting the same anger and grief we all feel.
It’s very long but worth the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s02SypCcYIc
Another perspective on the same issue?
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/where_does_your_nation_rank_on.html
While the US still reigns as the world’s greatest economy on the simple measure of GDP, we all know the story: like many western countries, the US has seen its economy deteriorate. But more surprisingly, our Index reveals that the US has also dropped in the sub-indices focused on Governance, Personal Freedom, and Entrepreneurship & Opportunity. Of these, the latter saw the worst decline, as the US fell eight places in the Entrepreneurship & Opportunity sub-index since 2009. For the self-styled Land of Opportunity, the decline in one specific measure since last year should be a real cause for worry: Fewer US citizens now believe that hard work will get them ahead in life.
D.Barimen: You replace the quishy conservatives with staunch conservatives. My main point is to focus your constituency on the concepts of conservative ideology. Romney allowed some of his support to be eroded by secondary issues- this cannot happen if you fall back on the Constitution. Case in point: the battle over ‘woman parts;’ The fear that Romney would overturn Roe V. Wade. He should have said that presidents do not write legislation so I couldn’t overturn it even if I wanted to do it. He should have said that presidents are not dictators, that all legislation must be derived from you the people through your state representatives. It both gives reassurance in their own reps but also in the belief that he is not ‘extreme.’ It would also be a good opportunity to point out that 73% of the country did not want Obamacare but the current president bypassed the constitutional process to impose it, effectively, by decree. Missed opportunities were the hallmark of this loss.
SBW, You can find the bumper sticker here: http://www.cafepress.com/+catholic+bumper-stickers
My wife probably got a daily deal coupon for the site and ordered in bulk, resulting in our many stickers. We don’t buy anything without a coupon. I can now accept that. My wife reveals the weekly grocery receipt with an average of 70% off and she expects high praise. I now heartily approve. For all you who pay full price, sorry, you’re subsidizing us.
Here’s a great one for those with kids who know: When mommy has to get off the couch, that’s when you know shit just got real.
The Bitter Truth Pill: this is about the best turn-out mystery explanation I’ve read yet; http://www.redstate.com/2012/11/07/about-tuesdays-loss-if-the-archangel-michael-were-on-the-ballot-beelzebub-would-still-have-won/
e @ 60: The Catholic Church: resisting oppressive goverment since 33 A.D.
Yeah, y’know, you can get some serious argument about that, you need a list?
“Improving” economic outlook helped Obama win:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/158567/improving-national-outlook-key-obama-victory-2012.aspx
So says Gallup.
Right.
Now, there is a possibility that the economy will continue to “improve” at its snail pace, and become the “new normal,” where 7% unemploymment will be something to celebrate. With the electorate being beaten down and innumerate, and lacking the ability to remember further back than 5-or-so years, they will “pretend to be happy.” Welcome to the new peasantry.
OTOH: with the regulatory tsunami about to hit, and with companies already laying people off, and Obamacare coming into full glory . . . how many Obama voters will actually feel stupid? I suspect they will blame Republicans, who now fill the role that Jews did in Old Europe when things got really bad or there was a calamity.
To confou8nd and compund matters, a great majority of voters claim to be very concerned about government corruption. So why did Obama get a 2nd term?
Quit the namby-pamby, fight fire with fire (have you noticed? it works); quit the excessive worry about being called a ”racist” because avoiding the word ”Hussein” won’t stop it; launch strong, repeated, blunt attacks against any and all of the opponents weaknesses—O was so full of these it borders on masochism not to take advantage of it; forget the McCainist idea of an ”honorable” campaign—to fail to aggressively and stoutly defend your ideals and principals is one of the most dishonorable things possible.
IOW give up the idea that, when the other guy calls you a phony crook and liar, you should respond with ”America will be great again, let’s get moving, I know he means well but he’s wrong.” Instead: “Why does he go around bowing the kings? How can he defend associating with admitted radical bombers, then lying about it?”
Have you got it, Repubs? You have to fight for what you want; if you come in second you’re the first loser.
Stop watching the ABC networks and thus adding to their ratings.
Finess films especially those with stars who speak against all not on the left.
Stop your subscriptions to any newspapers who haven’t reported the Benghazi murders or have blocked out any and all bad news for Obama. These means most of them.
Read books instead and fair-minded blogs. Pay bridge, monopoly. Go on walks. Take care of your investments. Make new friends who support your views.
Josh,
Don’t want to downplay any corruption, murder, treason (traditores), or injustice the historical Catholic church must own. I’m not that good a historian, but I concede it matters. Especially the details. Some of the early traitors to the faith turned over the scriptures to the authorities, others resisted and were martryed. The church found a way to pass on what what was essential, salvation, and organize itself in such a way that though it remained imperfect on earth, it had and has a heavenly component that is perfect, because it is not dependent upon man. Shall we make a list of every denomination’s sins? Could it be a scandal all around? Catholics have been asked to consider whether there is salvation outside the Church. You might ask whether you think there can be salvation within it, as it understands itself. We should be able to find some common ground. Don’t even want to make logical distinctions and try to convey Church doctrine meaningfully, which you might know already. I’ll just say that sometimes you have to speak the truth in all its objectionableness. Like saying we should welcome large families. I enjoy your posts, they are educated and helpful mostly. Back to work for me, 3 and I’m out.
76. erico
Thanks for the info about the sticker. Gonna buy one forthwith, maybe others too. LOL re the other stuff. Btw, my wife is also an obsessive coupon clipper!
78. Josh
Just let it go, man. Don’t harsh the buzz. M’kay?
Buanadha #13 grrr #33 stevesmith #38
Just as it is naive to accept the Democratic administration at face value, so also the Republican party. By its actions, it is obvious that winning was not the goal. Could it be that the faux struggle between the parties is a circus event for the masses, keeping them from complaining while their republic is siphoned off.
It is not an ideological competition.
Two reasons for low Republican turnout: votes for Romney counted in Obama’s column; Romney is not a conservative. The Tea Party was not nullified, merely unenthusiastic.
Some are now commenting on poor ‘turnout’ in rural America — here and there.
Think for a second. Such areas are massively Republican — and have distinctive zip codes.
The best, most impossible to trace, vote fraud is to skim and shred a calculated percentage of those mailed-in absentee votes. And, these days, who is MORE likely to vote absentee than a farmer out in the sticks? Just the cost of fuel alone is enough to make voting by mail extremely attractive. Driving off to the polls could cost such voters $15 in fuel, round trip. Then, add in the time sacrificed.
Because party affiliation is so strongly linked to zip codes, there is no requirement to even open the ballots. One simply has the good judgment to destroy only a set percentage — something that can be impossible to audit — of the ballots.
There will be absolutely nothing to trace, ever.
The NAZIs murdered millions. At wars end, the actual evidence, though damning, did not fully reveal the fantastic scope of their crimes. In particular, most now living think that the bulk of the killing occurred at Auschwitz. The more knowledgeable know of the other death camps. But, the dominant mechanism of NAZI murder was bullets during Barbarossa.
Other than the paperwork, the NAZIs left no evidence. Their intention was clear. They fully expected to explain away the missing populations as evidence of a poor prior census — if not victims of the Red Army’s advance.
At bottom, their scheme was to leave no trace of the magnitude of their crime.
And so it is with vote fraud. It is performed time and again — even in America.
Who can forget ‘Landslide Johnson’?
Who can forget 1960 — the election that conceived Barry — and Chicago’s First Ward? The perps admitted their crimes — close to their death beds. They stole it “Fair and square.”
So, it’s not as if the opfor had to tune-up for operations, overnight.
——-
Redstate laments about the power of big union contributions to the swing state ‘ground game’ without ever considering their obvious contribution to criminal activity for the benefit of the union. In many, many American jurisdictions, ‘union sanctioned’ crimes are impossible to prosecute — BY STATUTE.
That’s right, crimes committed in the process of ‘organizing’ are — in so many words — legally permitted. De facto, I’m understating their immunity.
The Postal System is UNIONIZED. It would only take a handful of true believers to cause bags of rural zip coded ballots to evaporate. It would be a crime utterly impossible to prosecute: no physical evidence would exist. Should one of the perps decide to break ranks — an extremely unlikely event — their testimony could only reflect direct knowledge of a mote of crime: the few bags destroyed by his crew would not be enough to change the outcome of the election in any event.
In contrast, being a loyal shop steward would ensure that ones future is bright, within the union culture. Absolutely no moral qualms would exist for such players. After all, they’re the good fellas.
sbw @ 84: Just let it go, man. Don’t harsh the buzz. M’kay?
Just reading Michael Grant’s little “Fall of the Roman Empire”, and he’s not so sanguine about the role of the early church, does not make for good bumper stickers.
And I don’t need Catholic priests frisking me at the airport.
Vote Fraud
Several have mentioned this. It is real. It does not have to be massive in our system, and it works. It can be blatant or subtle.
If you remember, the Democrats and the New Black Panther Party took over between 1-2 dozen polling places in Philadelphia, physically threw out Republican election judges, and declared that no Republicans would be allowed in.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/philly-gop-poll-inspectors-being-ousted-for-dems/article/2512714#.UJvuaGdAOSr
They went to court. I have heard that later they got a court order to be returned, but had to wait for a Sheriff’s Department escort; which may or may not have been furnished by the Democrat local government. I have not heard that they were ever allowed back in.
Now we see that the Black precincts in central Philadelphia had a turn out for Obama that Stalin or Saddam Hussein would approve of, 99%+.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20121108_Vote_was_astronomical_for_Obama_in_some_Philadelphia_wards.html
Blatant.
More subtle. Here in Colorado, in El Paso County [most Conservative county in the state] people were going door to door implying that they were from the Election Commission collecting early vote ballots “for delivery”. Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of elderly voters, and every vote destroyed helps the Enemy.
Very subtle. Every swing state had reports of touch screen voting machines that when you voted Romney, you would have Obama come up. They were all claimed to be “miscalibrated”. If it was a calibration problem, some of the votes would have gone the other way. And it is quite possible, on all computerized voting machines to have the internal register biased for Obama and leave no external sign. Is it done? Ask someone who testified under oath that they wrote the software:
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2012/11/programmer-developed-program-to-rig.html
All it takes is a slight bias, and races are tilted. How can anyone believe that their vote counts, or in fact that any vote counts?
If one side violates the law unpunished [and I am sure is rewarded] and the other side keeps to the law, guess who will always win?
If you are in a high stakes poker game, and you look around and cannot figure out who the “mark” is; it’s you.
That does not mean stop voting. If nothing else, it does not hurt and it maintains a certain cover. But do not expect it to be the only way to restore the Republic, at least not until it is already largely restored.
Punching Back
#13 Buanadha
Preach it.
I will note, purely as an academic curiosity, that frequently the TWANLOC perpetrators of violence, vandalism, and election fraud against Patriots are identified, widely known, and receive protection from the criminal justice system. And nothing happens to them outside that system. Why is that? Does not the lack of any consequences for their actions, encourage and inspire more acting out. You get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize.
There are times when TWANLOC thugs attempt to physically intimidate and attack Patriots when they gather. And they know that the legal system will protect them. The Kenneth Gladney case at the beginning of the TEA Party movement comes to mind. Why did not Patriots meet force with force? Aside from the need to get women and children [or at least the non-combatant women, as some are downright bloody-minded] out of the line of fire; is there not an inherent right of self-defense and to come to the aid of someone under attack by a criminal?
That may result in escalation, but submission is not working so well.
Just know in advance that law enforcement will be one-sided if they get involved.
Symbolism
Memes are important, they are vital. They shape the battle. Public displays of defiance encourage others. It is not the whole battle, but it is important. I am infamous locally for the home made T-shirts I come up with. Being a wordy bugger, and willing to use candor to inhabit the zone between PC and vulgarity, they spark reactions. This started early in the regime when someone came up with the Batman/Joker variant of Obama. Purely because it intrigued me, I made my first T-Shirt, including the caption “Why so Socialist”. I wore it around town, and was constantly being approached with people agreeing with me and thanking me for wearing it. My display validated their feelings. We cannot cede the public square to the enemy, and if they put forth some form of blasphemy law banning such, the mechanisms will be clumsy enough to trigger more resistance. Political Aikido.
It is one of many tactics.
The purchasing inhouse with fellow patriots, dealing in cash, and the buycotts are all part of starving TWANLOC, and reinforcing our own. But that is not all.
For all the worry about offending individuals in the Enemy who may be personally good, or convertible; when things reach this state you are the sum of the choices you have made as far as who you associate with. Functionally, there are no “good” or trustworthy Democrats [and those farther Left]. We have to deal with them as a group JUST AS THEY ROUTINELY LUMP US ALL TOGETHER AS AN ENEMY GROUP. We did not start it, but we have to finish it, punching back harder.
I happen to be wearing a T-Shirt I made months ago, “Boycott Democrat Owned Businesses. Make them as poor as they are making us.” with a graphic. Yeah, it hacks them off. But that is what we have to do.
One quick first order approximation. Check out the members of your local chamber of commerce. This works really well in small towns, where the owner tends to live and vote in the same town where his business is. Get the names of the owners, and compare them with voter rolls. If they are Democrats, and there are alternatives possible in your area; shift your buying. Don’t have to tell him, just reduce his income.
Granted, that pretty much nobody is going to be hiring for a long time; but if you have to hire someone make voter registration part of your background check. And go out of your way to hire those who are fond of the Gadsden Flag. If you own a company and have to downsize, voter registration can be a significant part of your decision matrix if they do not have a critical skill.
If that seems uncivil; a) we ARE in a civil war of varying temperature, and b) how many Republicans/Conservatives work in Academe, the MFM, and Hollywood and why?
Preparations
Even if the Long Night is not descending, it makes a lot of sense. We know, and can see by the emergency layoffs in the last two days, that hard times are in progress and it is going to get hungry out. Literally, in my small town, since Tuesday several businesses are closing because there is now no hope of avoiding Obamacare taxes and penalties. Taxes are going to soar, jobs are going to be scarce, and poverty is coming. Be as ready as you can. My local TEA Party group has long had a regular Preparedness Breakfast where we can share idea on being ready to live when it gets hungry, strange, and dangerous out. It is always far better to have people who understand the problems and can share help with. Do what you can, with what you have, to the best of your ability. It may be a matter of survival for you and your family.
Politics
Be involved, but do not depend on the Institutional Republicans to stand up against the Enemy. They will fold. Boehner has already called for “new revenues” and is flirting with Reid, Pelosi, and Obama. There is now nothing at all we can do to slow or stop what is coming politically. Even if Boehner remembered that he is technically a vertebrate; we have operated without a budget for four years, and Obama ignores the Congress and Courts at will. Further, do not depend on the Courts. They are owned. Obama already owns John Roberts with whatever he used to get him to change his vote on Obamacare, and Obama has not let go of the leash.
Since we cannot slow or stop what is coming, I am hoping [and we all know how little good hope alone is worth, from recent experience] for some more Political Aikido. We know that the hated “evil Bush Tax Cuts (TM)” are going to go. Boehner should [VERY PUBLICLY] introduce a stand alone bill that specifically repeals just those cuts. And when it comes up, have every Republican vote “Present”. It is going to happen. Let it be solely the fault of the Democrats. If more or less half of our country wants to destroy the economy, and this route to do it is a Democrat imperative, lets give it to them good and hard with a Democrat label. And let them all suffer the consequences.
—————-
Yes, I am a self-admitted wordy bugger. Sorry about the length, but this just grew as I was writing it. The Night may be long, dark, and cold. The winds may be against us. But there will be a dawn, and when it does may we meet atop Redoubt #10.
I will close with what #43 Long-time-lurker said, because the temperature may rise.
Honor guards are a good thing.
Subotai Bahadur
87. Josh
Oh, dear. Catholic priests are frisking you at the airport? They let ME pass right on through.
Let me advance an idea I brought up before.
Write your Congresscritters and demand that that least the House pass a bill stating that since the fines associated with Obamacare must by definition be considered as being taxes, that said taxes will be considered as Tax Credits in the calculation of income taxes. I wrote my congressmen and they replied they were going to get the bill repealed. Well, they ain’t. So it is time to torpedo it. And let the Democrat-controlled Senate go on record as “Raising Taxes on the Middle Class” if they will not pass the House initiated bill.
Long Time #15: That sounds like a good summary, based on what I know.
And another factor was that Boeing wanted to build the 787 so that outside suppliers could actually come into the production line and install the subassemblies they built. There was no way the union would allow that, non-Boeing, and probably non-union workers working on “their” line.
Boeing designed the SC plant so that they could do that, providing for “sideways insertion.” So effectively, aside from SC being a right-to-work state, the production plan they developed was inherently incompatible with the Wash State union’s desires.
Also, Boeing’s engineering workforce in Wash State is unionized as well.
Finally some interesting news today. The people on Staten Island have been anxiously awaiting FEMA’s efforts. And today they got a new storm, a noreaster that dumped snow on them. FEMA was nowhere to be seen; due to the bad weather the local office was closed.
sbw @ 89: Oh, dear. Catholic priests are frisking you at the airport? They let ME pass right on through.
As I often lament, why wasn’t I born rich, instead of so good looking?
Weary G did well to remind us of the audience that should be our focus. He quoted from a Facebook source “The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency…”.
The message needs to focus on the issues, not the man. What is it that concerns us about the trajectory of the nation? For example, some questions come to mind regarding how liberty is diminished by progressive policies.
Why should government control what treatment my doctor recommends? Why should families be asked to pay for birth control for singles?
Who should be entitled to free stuff from government? Why is IRS being used as “success police” to redistribute income? Welfare should be a hand-up, not a way of life. Why do we pay single women for having more babies?
Stuff like that! Others have more creative minds than mine, but we need to take a lesson from LL3. His organization targets a specific problem, not the current president.
Put stuff like that on your “T-shirts”. Target the issues, not the figurehead. We are losing the blessing of liberty and that should be our message.
More directly, the trouble with the conservative cause is that we do not sell our message to the middle third of the electorate. We need to explain succinctly how liberty is being diminished, how the consequences of progressive policies will harm the nation. We must prevent the distortion of conservative intentions that is used to deceive the middle third of the nation.
We are not persecuting the poor in favor of the rich. We are supporting the freedom of all to be successful without interference from government.
86. Blert,
I do not believe the hole is opened as wide as you suggest. Where I live and vote in Colorado, it is a simple matter to check and see online exactly when your early/absentee/mail-in ballot was actually received by the County Clerk’s office. If it has not been listed as received by election day, you can still vote in person at your regular polling place. I presume that something similar would be the case everywhere, or would be easy to institute everywhere; especially in rural areas, since farmers, ranchers, oilmen, and other rural-type professionals have to do so much filing at the county level, and are probably on a first-name basis with their County Clerk already.
Thus, I think we should proceed on the assumption that the falloff in the white rural vote is genuine. I have no idea why they didn’t bother to vote, but I’m sure a lot of researchers are digging into that question already. Obviously they just didn’t think anything was a stake for them in this election, and they weren’t enthused enough about Romney, or afraid enough of Obama, to make voting worthwhile. But the question is why, what happened?
I am no supporter of democracy to begin with, so I am not disturbed on an intellectual level either by voter apathy or by allegations of voter fraud. The franchise was a Leftist creation from the start, of a piece with street riots, union thuggery, and the expropriation of the First and Second Estates. Enfranchisement is mobocracy by other means, and only Leftist ghouls really, genuinely care about the vote per se (which is why they’re so effective at operating it). The conservative party, to the extent that it really is conservative, is at a permanent disadvatage for as long as mob preference remains the de facto means of vesting authority. There is, or should be, in every true conservative an inherent distaste for the whole democratic project, and therefore they are never quite comfortable in the arena of party politics, vote-getting, and gerrymandering. I do not vote in order to validate my faith in democracy; I vote only to stop the dingbats from getting their way.
This probably had something to do with rural disengagement from the electoral process. They’re no longer interested in the circus-politics of the urban mob; they’ve effectively seceded from the union in spirit if not in body. I feel the same way, but I still vote against Democrats in the elections to try to salvage what few shreds remain of the culture. But perhaps the rural folks are right. Politics is essentially action, not voting. The true, unadorned essence of political life—its raw form, character, and meaning— is summed up in what men do, and especially what they fight for. Our democracy has died, of that we can be certain. But that means only that henceforth the great political struggles will take place somewhere other than the voting booth, and without the incessant bombardment of the media. It is the dawn of an Iron Age, but we need not fear it for that.
Epignosis @ 92:
Agreed, but if the true intent of the Left is to try to finish us off, we need to throw out the most effective counterpunches possible right now, and that means popping the “figurehead” right in the nose, making the opponent bleed, and buying us time for a prepared attack.
That’s four and I am out.
Cool resolve.
Here are 40 people who seem to be way out in front on this:
http://www.surgerycenterok.com/
- a cash-only medical care facility
“Now we see that the Black precincts in central Philadelphia had a turn out for Obama that Stalin or Saddam Hussein would approve of, 99%+.”
Question: What’s the difference between North Korean elections and elections in Philadelphia?
Answer: North Korean elections are more free, fair, and competitive.
Doesn’t early voting just give them more time to cheat?
Higlander, you must remove his power, which is support of the public. That’s why we need to target the middle third – the swing vote. We will not convert the left third. That’s like trying to get the Pope to turn protestant.
And another “T-shirt”:
Your social security has been spent by people who are $16 trillion in debt.
Who’s going to pay your $213,000 of the national debt?
Whose struggling family planning will pay my college tuition?
Stuff like that!
More data points, this time from Larry Sabato via ACE:
First of all, the figures we have so far… suggest to me that the story of this election is not massive turnout of the Democratic base but exceptionally depressed turnout of a portion of the electorate that, when it votes, tends to vote Republican. Those were after all the two parts of President Obama’s cynical and substance-free campaign strategy: to work the most intensely committed and reliable parts of his base into a frenzy while persuading the least committed and reliable part of the Republican base (white working-class voters) that Mitt Romney didn’t deserve their support so they should just sit it out. Much of the post-election analysis has focused on the sophistication of the former effort—finding every last tiny niche in the patchwork of clamoring interest groups that makes up the Democratic coalition and telling it exactly what it wanted to hear. But the election returns suggest the latter effort—using any low and mendacious tactic required to tell working-class voters (especially white, Midwestern ones) that Mitt Romney was an evil and uncaring plutocrat—was by far the more successful and important. Those voters were not going to support Obama, but they could be kept away from Romney, and evidently they were.
The full crosstabs of exit polls are not available yet (or at least not to me), but the information we do have allows for a fairly clear picture of this. As Sean Trende points out today, the lower turnout in this election was driven almost entirely by lower turnout among such voters. “The increased share of the minority vote as a percent of the total vote is not the result of a large increase in minorities in the numerator,” he notes, “it is a function of many fewer whites in the denominator.”
This is both bad news and good news: It means Republicans are indeed vulnerable to attacks that paint them as plutocrats, but it also means that the demographics of the electorate have not turned decisively against them. The voters that could carry Republicans to victory are there, but far too many of them did not vote this time.
Before and shortly after the election I listened to the pundits saying that the Republicans had to do outreach to the Hispanics as the fastest growing demographic, and ditch their image as the white party.
Wrong in two ways.
Firstly, Hispanics are just as intelligent as anyone else, and will not be fooled by mariachi bands, and t-shirts that say ‘Yo Republicano’. Just look at the African-American loyalty to the Republicans for their civil rights votes during the Johnson presidency. (To be fair, black Americans can respond, “What have you done for me lately?”)
Secondly, the Republicans are the party of the less trendy lower socio-economic whites. If the Republican leadership throws them under the bus, they (I) have no legitimate democratic electoral voice. Boy, that’s going to be good for the peace of the republic. The Republicans have got to keep the white vote for the good of the country, even if they keep losing. If they do not put America first, the Republican party deserves to die.
The good news is that it was a good election for the Republicans. All politics is local. My small town has seven councilors. In 2010 seven Democrats ran unopposed and were elected. In 2012 the disastrous year for the Republicans, there are four Democrats and three Republicans. Three of the elected Democrats ran unopposed. Republicans did not exist in my town two years ago. Rhode Island is majority Catholic and strongly pro-choice, but the Democrats picked a fight with one faction of Catholics. Before Obama, most New England Catholics took it as a matter of faith that the Anti-Christ would be a Republican.
The current Democratic coalition will fracture. If the Republicans want to pick up any pieces, they had better maintain at least a few principles.
Nice thoughts . . . but still inside the box. To create a meme of “rebellion” you have to be a bit more edgy. Take a few more risks. Higher visibility of disgruntlement that erodes the comfort level of the opposition.
1. Look up a list of the top donors to the Democratic party in your county/state. Matter of public record. Buy an advertisement in the local paper thanking them personally for helping support (fill in the black – whatever the latest issue is). Visit them (not enough to get a restraining order)! Feel free to write their phone numbers on bathroom stalls. Get creative about the individuals who supported Obama and make them feel uncomfortable about doing so again. Offer to help sell their stuff on Craigslist.
2. Ditto for the union leaders of the local Education, Nursing, SEIU. On non-partisan positions like judges I usually look to see who the unions are supporting and vote the opposite way.
3. Come up with a creative “tag”. Encourage graffiti artists to spread their joy not on railroad cars or abandoned buildings but union headquarters, cars belonging to individuals in groups 1/2 above, the local welfare / unemployment office, etc. Vandalism is illegal – note that they must not be Vandals (being a Hun is okay though). Heaven forbid anything happen to a wind generator or the company that distributes food stamp cards or a large left leaning university faculty lounge for instance.
4. Not sure how much further to go on an open forum – but George Hayduke has written a variety of books chock full of creative ideas that can be utilized to encourage individuals to reconsider the wisdom of their previous choices. The key is deniability together with minimal repurcussions if detected. One of the reasons conservatives don’t attract the younger crowd is because they insist on playing by the rules. There is a whole range of activities straight out of the Alinksy or Ginsberg playbooks that are “borderline” but stop short of outright violence/crime. It will attract a rougher crowd to the show – but they are there already, just on the other side of the fence.
I think most folks can figure out who will win a fight between one person boxing and second one fighting MMA. The issue isn’t “not playing by the rules” but redefining what are the rules.
Matt 93: “I am no supporter of democracy to begin with, so I am not disturbed on an intellectual level either by voter apathy or by allegations of voter fraud. The franchise was a Leftist creation from the start… There is, or should be, in every true conservative an inherent distaste for the whole democratic project, and therefore they are never quite comfortable in the arena of party politics, vote-getting, and gerrymandering.”
All true. Our Founding Fathers were fearful of a pure democracy; that is why they created our amendable Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.” Thomas Jefferson
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” Benjamin Franklin
“We are a Republican Government, Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy…it has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny…” Alexander Hamilton
Matt 93: “I am no supporter of democracy to begin with, so I am not disturbed on an intellectual level either by voter apathy or by allegations of voter fraud. The franchise was a Leftist creation from the start… There is, or should be, in every true conservative an inherent distaste for the whole democratic project, and therefore they are never quite comfortable in the arena of party politics, vote-getting, and gerrymandering.”
Karl Marx loved democracy because he knew that a powerful central collectivist government (a Marxist Dictatorship) could be built on the ashes of a nation destroyed by democracy. Marx understood that a democracy can be perverted into serfdom and poverty through economic class struggle. No doubt Marx understood it would be much more difficult to subvert a Constitutional Republic – where there might be limits on government collectivization – limits on taxation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7M-7LkvcVw
As George Orwell observed, Marxists are metaphorically the Pigs of Animal Farm – individuals who consider themselves “more equal than others.” The Marxist Pigs are enthralled with the idea of government (themselves) owning the fruit of the laboring “little animals” where all the eggs, apples, corn, etc. is placed into a commune – a communal pot under their exclusive control. The Marxist Pigs control communal property – they are the commune-ists. The Marxist Pigs, after gorging themselves with a lion’s share of communal food, require all the “little animals” to approach their communal pot, tails wagging, in order to receive their leftover rations; and they must lick the hand that feeds them. Pig (Marxist) government encourages the lazy proletariat animals to relax in the barn while the others work in the fields; with this they can set up a perverted form of “democracy.” The Pigs control all the property in the communal pot, so they are in a position to in effect steal property from the laboring animals (“from each according to his abilities”) and give to the lazy (“to each according to his needs”) in return for votes. The lazy animals have unlimited needs, so the laboring animals may be taxed without limit. The Marxist Pigs are the managers of this struggle between the working and lazy classes, and through vote-purchasing (votes purchased with stolen property) establish a self-perpetuating perversion of “democracy” which keeps them in power.
Subversion of a democracy occurs when enough of a population goes over to the so-called proletariat class – the non-disabled government-dependent class with outstretched hands – voting for the Marxist Party which will rob the laboring middle class on their behalf – in return for their votes. Eventually under Marxism the middle class is worn down – exhausted and demoralized by what amounts to slave labor on behalf of the Marxist ruling class and the lazy proletariat class. When the middle class finally succumbs there will be a dramatic fall off in production of food and other goods and services – anarchy ensues – and who “comes to the rescue” but the Marxists themselves. Envision a cruise ship where more and more passengers run over to the left side looking for “free stuff” from government – of course the “free stuff” is the fruit of other men’s labor – the laboring men still slogging it out on the right side. Eventually there will not be enough laborers and entrepreneurs on the right side of the ship to prevent it from capsizing. Voila: Social Justice ends in poverty and a “dictatorship of the proletariat” – code for dictatorship of the Marxist ruling class. Karl Marx termed victory of the Marxist ruling class over the laboring middle class as “winning the battle of democracy.”
The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled government-dependents] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [self-serving Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois [middle class] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.” Karl Marx
“They labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the [non] working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
stock up on food when it is on sale.
war is coming soon.
be nice.
do not make your self noticeable
hide and prepare.
smile on.
As I’m not American, there isn’t a whole lot I can do to help. Even so, I’ll go out and buy a Made-In-America Buck Knife on the weekend. Why a Buck? Well, if you’ve bought one and read the little slip of paper that comes with it, you’ll know why.
Hey, maybe you need a new knife, too.
No. 9 RWE
I like the “no buy” idea. We need a “No Left Buys” list – perhaps items from Blue States or Left affiliated companies not to buy, and maybe suggested replacements. I haven’t bought California wines in years (we have some okay reds in Texas and Chile, not as much a political enemy as our own Left, makes good stuff). I won’t buy GM, although we got my son a Ford recently. But after this election and the fico from the Midwest — I’m staying southern and the next car will be a Toyota, made in my home state of Alabama.
@ Fonman #45:
http://www.zazzle.com/the_new_american_gothic-235974917816796810
Not homemade or underground, but a good prototype. Great idea.
If you listen to the Tibet lobby, then we should all light ourselves ablaze in protest. Their ex-King would condemn it, while slyly winking at you from behind those tinted cult-leader glasses that he wears.
Here’s a song :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I
Josh #10 is right. It’s not enough to be against something. The right needs a vision and that vision needs to be communicated clearly.
Unfortunately, the messages of the right requires a higher level of thought than the messages of the left. Many of the mass of voters only heard the message from the left that “Romney only cares about rich people.” How do you explain to the masses such unintuitive economic concepts as “some people becoming richer doesn’t require others to become poorer”?
Looking at the exit poll data, I’d say a big job for conservatives at a local or state level is encouraging and ensuring affordable family formation- and also family cohesion. Mom and Dad with some kids to look out for- and each other to rely on- improves conservative chances.
110 Alison,
“no poor dude ever gave me a job”
“Lower taxes: you could spend your own money better than some guy who doesn’t know anything about you. “
Once Upon a Time a Great Man faced with terrible times inspired his people:
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. A line from Sir Winston Churchill’s WWII speech on becoming prime minister of the UK in 1940.
Origin
This famous quotation comes from Sir Winston Churchill’s speech on 13th May 1940 to the UK’s House of Commons. He had recently taken over from Neville Chamberlain as the British Prime Minister. The speech was intended to be stirring and uplifting call to arms. Churchill was aware of the public hopes that he could change the direction of the war – much in the way that ailing sports clubs hope to change their fortunes by appointing a new manager – and he wanted to make best use of that tide of feeling. He was also well aware of the difficulties ahead and, not wanting to raise false hope, he entered notes of caution and warning.
He had used the I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat line to his Cabinet colleagues earlier the same day. Part of his speech was:
“I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”
The line is often said to have given rise to another phrase, which over time has become more integrated into the language – blood, sweat and tears. That phrase predates Churchill though and had been used several times during the 19th century with allusion to the trials and tribulations of Jesus Christ; for example, this poem, called Christ in the Garden, reprinted in The Huron Reflector in 1845:
So deep was his sorrow, so fervent his prayers,
That down o’er his bosom rolled blood, sweat and tears;
I wept to behold him and asked him his name;
He answered, ’tis Jesus, from heaven I came.
There’s no suggestion that in using blood, toil, tears and sweat Churchill took his lead from this piece of doggerel. He may well though have been conscious of the allusion to Christian symbolism in his speech.
This Country is also facing very tough times and the man in charge has promised his people : bail outs, QE, hand outs and redistribution…hope and change….And the people were content. It’s a New World or is it Orwell’s World…
Texas always has always come up with great names for lost causes that win in the end. One such was “the runaway scrape”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_Scrape
Detail and contemporary eyewitness accounts here:
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/mustergon.htm
BTW, the classic Americans do have a vision. The problem has been that too many people (including a number of well-intentioned people in this thread) are trying to sell us a different one – and we will not be bought.
Tessy, I’ve always heard that the blood, sweat, and tears phrase was paraphrased from the Bible – in Luke 22:44, Jesus praying in Gethsemane: “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
53. regretleft
looking back: … it’s starting:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20121108_Vote_was_astronomical_for_Obama_in_some_Philadelphia_wards.html
………………
What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/what-luck-obama-won-dozens-of-cleveland.html
/////////////////
For anyone with a subscription to the wall st journal — there is a demographic map here which shows 2008 results and 2012 results. If you compare them you might be able to understand better where the 2 million vote shrinkage came in the republican vote. the key question is did all of the 2 million vote shrinkage come in democrat controlled counties.
Please indulge a fifth post. I was not as clear as meant to be as I am not as eloquent as our host.
1) There is no more voting. The stupid party will never win again. Face it. Boehner must be made to understand he is the last Republican speaker. Vote fraud is now built into the system.
2) There must be an immediate loss of economic support for these people. Don’t just stop buying from commie stores, all stores. No Thanksgiving and no Christmas until these bastards are gone. Make this Black Friday the worst retail day in history. Beans, bullets, Band-Aids and essentials only and not on Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever the hell it’s called. Throw the sabot at every chance.
3) They are utterly lawless. There is no moral or civil obligation to follow their laws. Own a business? Got commies on the payroll? Fire em! Get a $100 traffic ticket? Destroy a road sign in revenge. We have to bankrupt state and local government everywhere. These people need to be made to understand that they will never be getting their pensions. Investigate government officials. It is amazing how many of these jokers have lied on their resumes. Destroy their careers anyway possible.
4) Don’t believe government figures on anything including vote totals, who voted or anything else. These people lie about everything. If they say day is light and night is dark, get confirmation.
5) Make sure they understand when lawful government is returned that this crowd is getting their very own Nuremberg Trials and that includes the Ministry of Lies and Propaganda and 1st Commie Lawfare Corps. We have hanged assholes like these before.
6) That asshole Bill Ayers supposedly said that they would have to kill 25 million Americans to implement communism. Get your head around the fact he was talking about you.
Above all this is not a conservative vs. liberal issue. It is rule of law or a gunfight to the death.
Ok I concede the symbolism. Righteous anger is not enough. Here are my choices.
Symbol: the First Navy Jack (historic, not traditional, i.e. no snake). It’s simple easy to produce even by hand and the commies took our True Blue away and left us with commie red. So embrace the Insignia Red. Also most of them won’t have clue what it is about. Where they might sneer at the Gadsden Flag they will probably be puzzled by the Jack.
Motto: We will have fair and legal elections or kill those preventing it.
Tina,
Correct. I copied the text from this link:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/blood-toil-tears-and-sweat.html
Only the last paragraph is mine.
Unsk @ 99: “Those voters were not going to support Obama, but they could be kept away from Romney, and evidently they were.”
Indeed! The record over several election cycles is clear — there is a large group of Contingent Voters who never vote for the Democrat candidate but may come out to vote for a small-government Republican; otherwise they stay home.
What is hard to fathom is the failure of Mr. Romney to attract Contingent Voters while clearly having more success than the other guy in attracting crowds of supporters — the ‘enthusiasm gap’ we all heard so much about before votes were cast. Maybe Mr. Romney got committed Republicans to come out, since they recognized the danger posed by Soetero, but failed to attract the Contingent Voters because he never forcefully laid out a plan to shrink government?
Bottom line, let’s not give the Democrat machine credit for what was probably an own goal by the Stupid Party.
Vote fraud? I have no doubt it happened, but the prima facie evidence against it is that Obama got 10 million fewer votes than he did in 2008. If they could get as many votes as they did last time by fraud, they would have. Don’t try to console yourself by saying they cheated their way in. They cheated, I have no doubt, but we got fewer votes. Period.
For my 3 million Republican friends who voted for Mccain in 2008 but did not show up to vote for Romney:
If you didn’t vote for him because you think Mormons are not “real” Christians, Mitt Romney is a better Christian than you will ever be, by the example of his life. Period.
If you say Romney wasn’t libertarian enough for you, I hope Obama’s inevitable attempt to take liberty doesn’t miss you.
If you say Romney was a rich guy you can’t identify with because you mine coal or grow crops or raise cattle, or deliver propane, or lay pipe for an oil drilling concern, I hope you enjoy your layoffs. I hear unemployment goes for at least 99 weeks.
If you say Romney wasn’t conservative enough, well, good luck with BHO.
If you say Romney wasn’t metrosexual enough, or not sympathetic to women or gays, see how misogynistic BHO is when he no longer needs your money or votes.
If you say Romney isn’t good on guns, I hope you enjoy your bolt action .22 that will be kept at the local police department to be checked out for approved activities.
There is more, but that is enough.
Vejadu 101 and others:
Sorry I’m so late. I like icon/creative tag idea to encourage mutual support and bolster camaraderie among individualists conservatives tend to be.
The Gadsden flag is good but needs an upgrade in design.
Remember the Dollar sign imprint on the cigarettes used by the heroes in Atlas Shrugged? Let’s use the dollar sign to self identify. Simple, clean, universal and Ayn Rand provides the rationale for it’s usefulness as a symbol.
My apologies if I am exceeding the Famous Four post limit, but these are trying times.
Ideas such as not buying from Lefties are fine, but are we being creative enough?
The Democrat machine is a creaking mass of internal contradictions. Unionized auto workers, and Californicated metrosexuals who would rather walk than drive an American car made by those Union workers. Tree-hugging Gaia worshippers, and alternate energy freaks who want to cover Mother Earth with giant subsidized bird-whackers. Illegal aliens, and snobbish academics who exploit those aliens as below-minimum wage toilet cleaners. The divisions within that amorphous group of Democrat voters are immense.
Surely we should be able to come up with ways to exploit those irreconcilable differences between the opposing camps within the Democrat coalition? Weaken the opposition by getting them to fight amongst themselves — doesn’t sound like it should be too hard to put burrs under a number of their saddles.
28. SBW (aka Roughcoat)
Man, you’re worrying about immigration? He is already working votes in the UN to do away with the Second Amendment.
Focus first.
This board has long been a place that celebrates heroes and recounts their tales. It can also be a place that recounts the deeds of scum.
In a government office not far from here in Washington, DC, we have the following drama. The other day a “worker” returned from a four hour lunch, sporting a big bag of movie popcorn and a movie soda. The week before, the same man went missing the entire day, and when pressed, claimed that he spent the whole day in negotiations with a certain contractor. That contractor, having been a personal friend of one the government managers, was known to have been in vacation in Thailand, however.
Efforts are underway to have this lunchtime moviegoer fired, and they have been for a while. The federal employees union is contesting it tooth and nail, and they have already put black marks down on the reputations of the fed up government managers who have been forced to suffer this guy. That mark will follow them. They were clearly instructed by the union that all workers will be given positive evaluations this year. All.
There’s more, a lot more. You don’t come to blows getting a government worker fired overnight. And this guy is an entrenched GS-13 who’s been around for years, continually getting kicked up the pay grade (that’s easier than firing him). He’s costing you over $90,000 per year. And his retirement plan is, shall we say, sweetness.
And all of this is ho-hum usual business in the town of Washington, DC. There’s nothing unusual about it at all. It is simply part of the drive-by scenery. That’s business, here.
Ain’t it grand?
Kinuachdrach, if the Pubbies are smart, they’ll have about a dozen guys who think like you do on their staff and already busy getting ready for the next campaign. I’m still in shock that Obama pulled it out…I honestly thought that enough people have seen what he’s done and failed to do…It sucks to be so wrong.
If you’re going to mount a heavy pro-Catholic tee-shirt, and you get shot down by Josh (a friendly), then adjust your head.
Go full on pro-Catholic, unapologetically. Or full on pro-Jewish. Or whatever. You will not succeed if you waver at the first question in this, tho. Answer it, own it, push onward.
Yes, the Catholic Church has been a central adversary of oppressive regimes for quite a long time. You think otherwise? Check that out at your local “UNIVERSITY”.
Many of the things already posted make sense, like the apathy of 2008 McCain voters (who could have put Romney over the top), the weaknesses of Romney himself, and the looming “compromises” which will come.
With regard to the last point, I think that it would be a long-term problem to be too obstructionist. Then all of the failures that will happen in coming years can be excused and blamed on the GOP. Better that Obama gets much of the economic policy that he wants. Of course it will ruin the country, but that might induce a pendulum swing back that could put a restorative regime in the WH with a like-minded congress that could make major changes and slice off chunks of the leviathan.
But for individuals, yes – go John Galt. Hunker down and prepare. Rather than risk your capital creating wealth and jobs, put your money into real estate and other tangible assets, including precious metals like Canadian silver, South African gold, and Smith and Wesson steel. Get out of the stock market – inflation linked bonds (along with those items previously mentioned) is where I am parking my money. I plan to cut back as much a possible my spending, especially on anything that I think might have a hint of leftist odor to it. As poster RWE put it “..the UAW has gotten its last nickel out of my pocket..” I am also reducing my tax exposure as much as possible by ramping up my tax-defered 403b to the max (401k was already there). If I had the ready assets I’d do a Roth conversion of at least part of the IRA to keep it out of the hands of the government forever, but you can’t do everything and I had already moved on a property in an area where the inventory has dwindled and prices are starting to rise – that soaked up my cash. And speaking of property, only buy in Red states, or Red areas of purple states. I have already talked to friends with small businesses who intend to lay people off. I do not have a small business, so I can’t do that, but I can still do my bit to reduce the economic growth that comes from my activity and instead position myself for the coming inflationary spurt.
The funny thing is that many of those useful idiots who voted for Obama will be the worst hit by the inflation, the cruelest tax. Those who OWN something REAL are the ones who make out like a bandit. I wouldn’t want to be a renter in coming years when the price hikes come. Instead, I will look forward to seeing my mortgages eroded to nothing by inflation while we screw China in the bargain, all powered by a massive destruction of the wealth of leftists who won’t know what hit them.
“In the carboniferous epoch
we were promised perpetual peace.
They swore if we gave up our weapons
that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed they sold us,
and delivered us, bound, to our foe.
And the gods of the copybook headings said,
‘Stick to the devil you know.’”
– Rudyard Kipling
57. Kinuachdrach – Join the local Republican Party and start clearing house — show trials of RINOs, expulsions, party member selection processes which ensure loyalty to the goal of smaller, less-intrusive government. Then move on to the State & National levels. Remake the Republican Party from the inside into an entity committed to the goals of the Contingent Voters.
I believe the RINOs began jumping ship during the Primaries and swam to Independence. Any left after this are extremely well paid or faking it. So essentially you’ll be aligning the goals of the Evangelicals, Paulians, and Corporatists.
While it may not result in winning an election, you’d definitely be in the running for a Nobel Prize.
Ride Amtrak. Don’t fly. It is fun and the government loses a fortune on every passenger. I believe we have reached a tipping point in this country and it it is time to make Cloward–Piven work for us. Try not paying your taxes and you will wind up in jail. On the other hand mail a box of rocks book rate and the post office goes broke faster. Be creative. Overburden the system. Hold a conversation with that homeless guy begging at the intersection and keep it going when the light turns green but don’t give him any money. Make the system break. Stop being nice.
Name and shame. More usefully identifiable than the legions of the clueless who voted for Obama are the operatives who enable fraud. They think that they are anonymous. If the election board members who deliberately withheld military ballots in say Pennsylvania were named then that would begin to pull the legs out from under The Machine. Identify 100 key operatives. Note that I advocate nothing illegal. A few hundred episodes of “Your money is no good here so get out” would work wonders.
(This article has lots of links to source demographics. Get to them by clicking here
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/07/looking-at-the-national-exit-poll/
)
Looking at the national exit poll
posted at 7:21 pm on November 7, 2012 by Allahpundit
I know you’re polled out, but with all the navel-gazing today about demographics and the future of the GOP, I figured people might want a link to the numbers behind last night’s disaster. Here’s CNN’s version, Fox News’s version, and WaPo’s version, which breaks the trend lines down by arrows. (Mouse over for the numbers.) Noteworthy: The sample does apparently include respondents from all 50 states. There was some question about that after news broke last month that the exit pollster would exclude voters in 19 states, but WaPo reported at the time that that was only true of individual state-level exits. The master poll at the national level would incorporate people from everywhere, so it should be a decent yardstick for comparison against 2008.
One question I’m seeing in the comments is, “Did evangelicals turn out for Romney”? Yep, looks that way. Turnout among Protestants generally dropped slightly from 2008 (54% to 53%) but Romney’s share of the vote increased from 54% to 57%. Among white evangelicals specifically, turnout was steady at 26% of the electorate from four years ago and Romney took 78% of the vote compared to just 74% for McCain. If you’d rather slice the data by how often people go to church, the number who attend at least weekly rose from 39% in 2008 to 42% this time. McCain won 55% of that group. Romney won 59%. He improved on McCain’s numbers among Jewish voters too, from 21% of the vote in 2008 to 30% this time (or maybe more), the highest take for a Republican since 1988. If there’s any religious group that underperformed for him, it’s Catholics. He did improve on McCain’s numbers — from 45% to 48% — but O still won a majority despite the abortion-rights jamboree at the convention and the contraception mandate. Catholic turnout was down two points this time, however.
Rush: GOP Lost Because It Didn’t Turn Out Base
http://www.newsmax.com ^ | November 8, 2012 | Michelle Lopata
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/limbaugh-election-base-hispanics/2012/11/08/id/463379?s=al&promo_code=10A4D-1
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2012 6:15:30 PM by NKP_Vet
Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh says that the real reason the GOP lost the presidential election is that “the Republican Party didn’t turn out its base” — not demographic issues involving black or Hispanic growth.
“The Democrats think Republicans have a demography problem” and “all they want to do is win votes with old white guys,” Limbaugh said. But “the Republican Party has . . . far more elected Hispanics than the Democrats have.”
Limbaugh noted that all of the prominent Hispanic speakers at the Republican National Convention shared a similar “up-from-nothing story” with convention attendees and the country.
Limbaugh also said that they or their families came from nothing and that sacrifice and hard work brought them their success in their professions.
“Why doesn’t that count?” Limbaugh asked. Because “the hard work story is not resonating with Obama voters.”
“We don’t have a demography problem but the Republican Party today is convinced that they do,” said Limbaugh.
“If the Republicans who didn’t vote had voted, Mitt Romney would have won the popular vote by 180,000 [votes].”
“[Republicans] didn’t lose because of demographics; 3 million of their voters stayed home.”
Jan Crawford /
CBS News/ November 8, 2012, 3:34 PM
Adviser: Romney “shellshocked” by loss
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57547239/adviser-romney-shellshocked-by-loss/
The Election and the Right [Good Analysis With The Stats We Have Now]
National Review ^ | 11/8/12 | Yuval Levin
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2012 5:14:19 PM by SoFloFreeper
As we seem to be well into the “if only they had done what I would have done” stage of post-election analysis, I’m happy to admit that I believe that if the Romney campaign had offered a more coherent agenda and case regarding our economic predicament and positioned it within a broader argument about the nature of American life they could well have had far more success…
First of all, the figures we have so far (even acknowledging that the exit polls were incomplete and imperfect, and that there are still some votes here and there to be tallied) suggest to me that the story of this election is not massive turnout of the Democratic base but exceptionally depressed turnout of a portion of the electorate that, when it votes, tends to vote Republican.
Recriminations drive me crazy. Fact is those who care about the American project lost. I’m not going to blame Mitt Romney for that, he did what he could do. He came up short. I salute him for his effort with regrets that it came up short. He’s a decent man at heart from all that I’ve heard, and he would have been a better president than what we have now. But his bid is done for now and probably forever.
It isn’t cool to rub it in his face and to play armchair general telling him everything he should have known with post-facto knowledge. That’s kinda silly.
The Romney chapter is closed. Goodbye, Mitt. We’re all worse off that you didn’t win.
Real Clear Politics
The Case of the Missing White Voters
By Sean Trende – November 8, 2012
But most importantly, the 2012 elections actually weren’t about a demographic explosion with non-white voters. Instead, they were about a large group of white voters not showing up.
http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_case_of_the_missing_white_voters_116106-full.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2956951/posts
Florida Election Stolen (2004 story details computer vote fraud)
2004 | Christopher Bollyn
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2012 8:37:37 AM by Josephat
Updated December 21, 2004
Florida Election Stolen
Computer Programmer Reveals Scheme to Steal 2000 Vote
By Christopher Bollyn
TITUSVILLE, Florida—While the mainstream media has focused on a sensational murder trial in California and the political crisis that followed the flawed elections in Ukraine, it has ignored a huge domestic story about the computer programmer who has come forward and explained how he had written computer code to steal elections in Florida.
An affidavit signed by the programmer, Clinton Curtis, in Prince George’s County, Md., on Dec. 6, 2004, names the individuals involved in a computer vote fraud scheme that he worked with in “the early fall of 2000” as “lead programmer” for a company called Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), based in Oviedo, Fla.
The 4-page Curtis document contains 15 points that he swears are both true and correct.
“I declare under penalty of perjury,” Curtis signed on the affidavit, “that the above is true and correct.”
By the fall of 2000 Curtis had worked as a programmer for two years with YEI, a listed “small, minority, woman-owned business” that does extensive business with NASA and Florida. The CEO of YEI is a Chinese immigrant named Mrs. Li Woan Yang.
On its web site, YEI says it has 250 employees working at its Oviedo headquarters, the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Patrick Air Force Base and Tallahassee, Fla.
According to published company documents, the contact person for YEI is Mike Cohen, Yang’s “executive secretary.” Cohen, named by Curtis as being one of the three key persons at YEI involved in creating the program in 2000, has not answered telephone calls.
Beside Cohen, two other employees of YEI met with Curtis “in late September or October of 2000” to determine if he could write a program to steal votes on computer voting systems. They were Mrs. Yang and Tom Feeney, “corporate counsel and lobbyist” for Yang Enterprises. At the time, Feeney, a Republican, was also a member of the Florida legislature.
A month later, Feeney became speaker of Florida’s House. Feeney was instrumental in the controversial 2002 reapportionment and redistricting in Florida that became known as “the speaker’s fix.” Feeney had been Jeb Bush’s running mate in Bush’s 1994 attempt to win the Florida governor’s mansion.
As a result of population growth, in 2002, Florida obtained two more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and one of them, the 24th district, went to Tom Feeney of Oviedo.
Curtis served as “technology adviser” to Feeney at YEI. After consulting Curtis, “Feeney would advise YEI on how best to procure the contracts for these projects.”
Regarding a fall meeting in 2000 when Feeney asked about developing a program to steal votes, Curtis wrote:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2956951/posts
ELECTRONIC VOTING, REPORTING, AND POSSIBILITY FOR FRAUD
Black Box Voting ^ | July 20, 2012 | Bev Harris
Posted on Thursday, November 08, 2012 7:18:38 AM by God-fear-republican
A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2956915/posts
Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit. …Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software.
Accenture, now based in Dublin Ireland (formerly headquartered in tax-haven Bermuda), claims copyright over the massive electronic voter registration/voter history databases used in several states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas. Accenture purchased its voter registration unit from Election.com, a Saudi-owned company based in the Cayman Islands.
Obama won with 15% real unemployment, gas prices sky high, $6 trillion dollars in new debt, poverty & food stamps at an all time high, crime, murder, drug addiction, and mayhem on the rise, citys in ruin and going bankrupt.
Let us fully implement all of the liberal ideas for the next four years. Yes we will all suffer, but sometimes REAL excruciating pain is …all that people will understand. Let’s stop drilling, close down the coal fired power plants, build those wind farms, Fully implement obamacare, punitively raise taxes, increase regulations, cut off the Keystone pipeline, open the borders, legalize drugs, celebrate Homo marriage and abortion and infanticide.
DO NOT obstruct in any way. The American people have spoken. They WANT high taxes, high energy prices, Obamacare, high unemployment bankruptcy….etc. No matter what, we are in for a real disaster. It has done us no good what so ever to be the party of NO. For the next 2 1/2 to 3 years our conservative politicians need to just stand back and allow the libs to do EXACTLY what they want. REMEMBER what happened in 2010 after the Dems had their way for two years. Give this country EXACTLY what they voted for. Let Obama, & Harry Reid have their way. It is time our entire country learns the lessons of Detroit, Greece, and Spain. This country will beg for mercy in 2016 and beyond.
Vichris @ 139:
I hear ya. You’re espousing the Sweet Meteor of Death (SMOD) philosophy. It says let’s go ahead and give the Left leash to prove themselves wrong. I agree with no doubt that they will.
The problem is time. They might easily extend the exercise longer than we might have the werewithal to withstand it.
What is wrong with simply calling a spade a spade and standing up to the leftists? Saying, “NO!”
I was in the office today saying “No.”, and I went with my mates to throw darts and said to people, “No”, and I went on Facebook and said, “Hell, No. War!”
The SMOD option might merrily well happen, and it jolly well should. Has any sane person looked into public finance ever?
Personally, I welcome it. I’m of the camp which holds that we might as well get it over with and then get on with it. Kicking the can down the road 10 years only means that I’ll be 10 years older dealing with problems I’d rather deal with now. So, screw that.
So, sympathies.
Wretchard, this suggestion is more under the category of Revenue than Marketplace. Beg pardon for the tangential but this is where my brain is running tonight.
What follows is probably crazy … but I thought I’d throw it out there for my fellow BCers, some of the best hard-headed thinkers I know. If the idea is worthless & totally unworkable, you guys’ll be the exact ones to give it the quick shoot-down it deserves.
Premise – Problem
Problem is twofold:
1. Fedgov is too large and spends too much. Fedgov is out of control.
2. Current collection system is nucking futs & insanely unjust. A massive imbalance of power is baked in. To wit, Fedgov gets 82% of its revenue from individual income taxes and payroll taxes. Can you say Bambi vs. Godzilla? The individual taxpayer will always get clobbered when pitted against the power and resources of the current Fedgov. There is no universe in which the Founders would have wanted this to have become the situation of individual American citizens. It is an obscenity. It is tyranny.
The largest govt entity that any individual citizen should ever have to deal with from now on insofar as taxes are concerned is the State govt. States, individually and collectively, are the only entities sufficiently large & powerful enough to rein in the federal govt, which has proven itself incapable and untrustworthy of self-limitation or self-regulation.
A Modest Proposal
Is there some way to position the States between individual citizens and Fedgov in the federal revenue collection process?
I know about the (attempted) Federal Tax Funds Act & that it went over like a lead balloon. (Idea was to have all federal taxes come to the state’s Dept of Revenue first, where funds would be held in escrow until state legislators said yay or nay on the constitutionality of the federal budget, then forward the feds a percentage that is deemed appropriate & constitutionally justified.)
You can probably understand why a Federal Tax Funds Act that starves the D.C. Beast isn’t gonna get passed in D.C.
What I’m talking about is a “Repeal & Replace” campaign. Grassroots campaign, from individual citizens in individual states, using existing Tea Party organizations & communications & building out from there. “Repeal & Replace” … not Obamacare. The 16th Amendment.
Using a method similar to that in which the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) was repealed by the 21st Amendment: namely, the state ratifying convention, which bypasses the state legislature (in all states but New Mexico).
From wiki:
Because they incorporated the convention method of ratification into Article V as an alternate route to considering the pros and cons of a particular amendment, clearly, the framers of the Constitution wanted a means of sometimes bypassing the state legislatures in the ratification process.
To some extent, the convention method of ratification loosely approximates a one-state, one-vote national referendum on a specific proposed Federal constitutional amendment, thus allowing the sentiments of registered voters to be somewhat more directly heard on highly sensitive issues. The theory is that the people of the conventions—which would typically be average citizens—would be less likely to bow to political pressure to accept or reject a given amendment than the state legislators would be.
The change I would make in the process used in the 21st is this:
Instead of having the amendment proposed by Congress (AS IF Harry Reid would ever let this happen), propose instead by a convention of states (a Constitutional Convention – for this amendment and this one alone — called by the legislatures of two-thirds of the states).
Suggested central ideas of 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
Section 1. The sixteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The Congress shall have no power to lay or collect Taxes or Excises from any domestic entity save the individual States.
Section 3. Should this article be ratified, for ten years upon ratification, the Congress shall have the power to lay or collect Taxes or Excises annually from the individual States in an amount no greater than twenty percent of each State’s percentage of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product from the preceding year. After ten years, the annual amount shall be no greater than fifteen percent of each State’s percentage of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product from the preceding year.
Section 4. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Constitutional Convention.
Okay, you can stop laughing now …
Yeah, like I said, I know it’s crazy.
But at this point … maybe it’s go big or go home.
Republicans are at high tide in state governments right now. Maybe this is the time to take advantage of that position.
The Constitution is conservatives’ friend, and progressives’ enemy. It is our weapon, their target.
All but the craziest moonbats and Lenins among us, I believe, know that D.C. is beyond broken, and that at the heart of that brokenness is its unaccountability. And at the heart of its unaccountability is the mother of all conveyor belts that automagically sends trillions of dollars to D.C., year in and year out, regardless. The 16th Amendment is IMO their Ring of Power, and I think it’s high time to hurl that sucker back into the fires of Mount Doom. The insane clown posse in Washington clearly is not worthy of wielding that much power over individual American citizens ever again.
Repealing the 16th and using the States as a liberty shield may be about as close a chance as we’ll get to sending a proton torpedo up the exhaust port of the Death Star.
Sorry for the back-to-back movie references. And the length of this post.
It has been a 23-hour day for me and I’m turning in.
Thanks for your patience. Discuss, dissect, destroy or ignore all of the above, per your preference.
bw
A very, very bad bad day for Obama on Thursday!!!
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED! Got two boosts in federal court in New Orleans.
As Expected,
“Plaintiffs, BP urge judge to approve $7.8 billion spill settlement” http://tinyurl.com/bevvmxw
And…
Contrary to the headline “Judge refuses to throw out charges against former BP engineer”
The story says “A federal judge has refused to throw out one of two obstruction of justice charges an ex-engineer for energy company BP faces after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.” [SNIP]
“Defense lawyers said Thursday that the second of the two charges should be dismissed because it dealt with texts that amounted to innocuous messages among friends, most of them having little or nothing to do with work on the spill that resulted from the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
“It is not a crime, your honor, to delete inconsequential banter between friends and colleagues,” defense lawyer Joan McPhee told U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval.
Duval agreed most of the texts were innocuous but he said some dealt with the spill. He said a jury would have to decide their relevance.
During a three-hour hearing on various defense and prosecution motions, Duval also turned down a defense motion seeking more details from the prosecution on how Mix is alleged to have impeded a grand jury investigation into the spill and response.
The judge declined to rule immediately on a defense motion seeking an array of documents dealing with BP’s measure of the flow from the spewing well and efforts to stop the flow.”
Within that withheld BP data there should be proof Obama, Chu et al deliberately halted BP’s “top kill” operation in May 2010, when it was on the verge of success in stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil continued to flow until July 15, 2010 and even then the governmment talking point was that the well would not be killed until the relief well was finished. The facts are that the blowout preventer was removed from the Macondo 252 well and taken ashore, leaving the well head open to the sea, with no oil being spilled, well before the relief well was finished.
Dolphins died and sea birds got coated in oil as a result of Obama’s willingness to hurt the environment so as to build support to pass Cap and Trade in the Senate. “Never waste a crisis.”
The bumper sticker captures the essence
CHU LIED, DOLPHINS DIED!
Maybe the Obama and Biden electors in the Electoral College will re-consider and vote “present”, Hillary will resign and Boehner will become President!
BTW – Those Obama voters in New York and New Jersey are being reminded daily of the importance of refined petroleum products as they sit in the dark and freeze! Ain’t Karma a BITCH!
Was it the father of the modern Democrat Party, Andrew Jackson, who said, “One man with courage makes a majority”?
Kurt Mix has courage.
Dreams from my father, all else from the taxpayer.
go black market or grey market. Buy off the grid. Offer your service providers: hair cuts, dry cleaners, who ever the opportunity to get cash without taxes for the services. Gut the fed and states– bypass them whenever and where ever you can.
You want to protest Obama in a way that badly hurts big government? Don’t buy anything for Christmas this year. If there’s no tree in your house, no decorations inside or outside your house, then everyone will know where you stand. Christmas sales for many businesses are the difference between a profitable and unprofitable year. Make all of them unprofitable and watch the government tax revenue drop a lot.
You can still go to church and celebrate the religious aspects all you want — that has little direct economic effect and does not increase the government’s tax revenues.
Relatives who send you presents because they have not joined this boycott? Thank them and tell them you will “match” their gift by saying an extra prayer for them — or just explain you cannot afford to reciprocate (the bad economy is an all-purpose excuse). If they don’t send you anything next year, that’s just one way the don’t-buy-Christmas movement spreads.
Liberals have been complaining about the commercialization of Christmas ever since the 1950′s. Lets take them at their word and see what happens to their big-government plans.
Geez, Louise — some seriously extra demented, not of this world “reasoning” appears to be going on all over the right wing nut-o-verse these post election days. I hate to burst your strange bubble (well, maybe “hate” isn’t quite the right word…), but Romney lost because he was lousy, say-anything candidate with nonsensical, math-impaired ideas and plans that bordered on crackpot territory. There was literally not a single reason to choose him over Obama that didn’t depend on misinformation and confusion (don’t bother trying now — I personally already spanked enough of your fellow fools online who tried and then fell-on-face failed.)
Just suck it up: you were/are the bad guys here and your bad guy candidate with the dopey ideas lost. Your thinly disguised voter suppression attempts did not work and neither did your “creative” voter registration methods (good effort, though.) And your ignorance of math, current and past events, and reality in general is not exactly going to help you now, and neither will your growing, reeking pile of uber nutcase conspiracy theories to “explain” what went wrong. Go watch some TV Land and eat your oatmeal.
Re #5 — Yes, well said. Wretchard’s is a fine idea that will help many, especially the elderly and frail who may be empowered. To stand tall with your finger in the air sure beats an overstuffed seat in front of the TV. Hey, you can talk to the empty chair just like Clint did.
Re lots of others and the GOP: Damn right. The best way forward is to leave and head for the cleaner waters of a new party. Put politely, the residue that will cling to the GOP rump ain’t too appealing.
Where’s Paul Ryan? Where’s Sarah Palin? Hoist the pirate flags!
El Jefe #106:
I think one way to do good by doing well, would be to produce a publication that details Who Gives to Who.
Back around the year 2000 I recall reading that Arby’s gives virtually all of its politcial donations to Democrats. Other resturants are more even handed but some favor Republicans.
Similar information should be attainable on every company – “attainable” but not currently easily available. And information on the political positions of celebrities shuld be available as well. Information on who voted for who at the county level is available too.
Want to write a conservative best seller? Write it all down, with both solid, verifiable, boring statisics and interesting insights. Then vote every day with your pocketbook – and with your feet; even if you can’t move to another state you can chose to live in certain county or town. If you want to vacation somewhere do so in a place such as Brevard County, FL, which went 55% for Romney, rather than the Orlando area, which went for Obama.
After being absent for many years I have rediscovered Arbys as a way to provide some variety in fast food choices. I will reconsider that. I want to do that with every buying decision I make.
Back in the 60’s the Left said “The Personal is the Political.” Today they decry “The Politics of Personal Destruction” when that is turned on them; well, let them decry all they want.
RWE and others have a good idea. I want to only support conservatives in purchases. I want that list of who business donated to and if they donated to democrats they should be shunned. The list should be published very prominently.
I also think the conservatively governed states should mass together and call for a Constitutional Article V convention. We need to amend the document.
Nothing left to lose now.
Dagger, you wrote, “The human brain cannot determine the right course of action in a highly complex system and paralysis ensues.”
I disagree. When it comes to right and wrong actions, there are no complex systems, no cause for paralysis. The moral person, the person of principle, thinks about and weighs “the right course of action” prior to the need for action. The moral person does not react, he responds. If a person’s thinking is wishy washy, leaving decisions up to expedience, luck, or coincidence, then the world does seem a web or quagmire, as you say, of complex systems. As someone said, the problem is not one of not having the right answer; the problem is in not asking the right question. People may like it or not; they may deny it, or admit it, but everything in life is a good, bad, or indifferent choice.
I suggest the thin magnetic material for those bumper stickers to prevent your car being keyed. Pull it off every time you park.
I have a very modest sum in a brokerage IRA. I’m going to invest in firearms and ammunition manufacturers. No matter what happens to the dollar, I think these companies should survive OK. Faced with the shredding of the first amendment, we must turn to the second.
Vichris@132: As I posted above, the House could act decisively and soon to re-assert the power of the people, by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. That would have the same effect as your plan, only quicker, by forcing Obama to either destroy the dollar or to cut down the size of government and deny entitlements.
A show of defiance! I know! Let’s sell some edgy t-shirts!
Then, the author reveals his own…well…by comparing the marketing of t-shirts to the sacrifices of men and women who have actually suffered for their belief in freedom and liberty.
You still think it’s a game, folks. You still think it’s about choosing teams and playing by the rules…the very rules that your opponents enforce.
It was never a game. It was always about life and death and about freedom and liberty. It was never about t-shirts, bumper stickers and clever and edgy slogans.
You’re not serious yet, but I fear that by the time you are, it’ll be too late.
If I remember my Old Testament correctly, not only was the Shofar blown on feast days and to announce Jubilee, but Joshua blew it to capture Jericho. A very powerful and positive symbol, indeed.
We do need powerful and positive symbols right now.
I like your idea very much. Simplicity and clarity of design is essential. Last year after reading Chesterton’s Outline of Sanity I wished to steal the concept of the Roman arch as a symbol of the strength of individuals to build enduring community. However, the design was too complex to work well on shirts. Again, simplicity and clarity are essential.
The best thing to do is also the most difficult. Board the Mayflower in our garages and resettle in the red states. There rebuild the America we have lost. Politically cleanse those states of every trace of the enemy. Eventually create a wide swath of the US where the authority of Washington is in name-only. Bone up on the Aeneid beforehand.
All tax is THEFT. And taxes are the funding mechanism of the Left and bigger gov’t.
So for starving the beast, the only, only, only viable means is to withhold tax payments.
It’ll have to come to that, sooner or later. Later means more violent.
The ultimate “going Galt.” Fifty million temporary refusals stops the idiocy pretty fast; because the kapos expect to be paid.
Refusing to raise the debt ceiling is the same thing on a national scale.
lefty trolls evidently think the election is still going on, but then again, maybe it is still going on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/user-comments/callmebc
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/politics/debate-5-things-learned/index.html
Is there a better example of the street fight we are in? This just helps to drive home the message here. the other side treats this as a long term effort to distribute and institutionalize their lies. Partly because we don’t fight back, partly because they know that they have to drill these things into people’s minds lest rational thought creep in.
The morning after the election, I expected to wake up feeling like taking a drive to Massachusetts to kill myself (kidding, kidding). Instead I awoke to a Christmas morning kind of feeling. Day after day this feeling has persisted. I feel as if a weight had been lifted off of me. I have been trying to understand why. Perhaps I secretly wanted Obama to win, but I didn’t, but maybe I did. I don’t think so. I have alway had a bit of a rebellious spirit. Perhaps my feeling of lightness comes from knowing I am now countercultural again. How are the leftists to sell themselves as the victims anymore? It is their turn now to play the role of schoolmarmy assholes. How is SNL or the Daily Show going to sel their shows anymore? Hey look at us, we are a propaganda arm of the government, the department of humiliation of dissenters. Hey you, peon in flyover country, you better not get out of line.
“Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc”
Goin’ with an Insty-meme.
Just made myself the bumper sticker on CafePress…
If the states don’t fix it now while a majority is in conservative hands, we’re finished as a country of free individuals. Send the statue of liberty back to France, stop guarding the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, put another cushion on the rocking chair and wait for the newly-hired IRS agent to show up. God help the USA !!!
Symbolism is important, but I’m afraid the situation calls for far more drastic measures if you want to win the war. I haven’t met but a handful of people who voted for Mitt Romney with the fortitude to do it either. We all like our cushy lives.
Frankly, we are a nation of imbeciles. We traded cash and candy for character and competence.
Until those who recognize the Left, the liberals, the progessives, the Democrats are not just politically opposed to you but hate everything you stand for, and would as soon see you dead if they could divvy up your “stuff”, then we will be blustering four years from now with 45% of the vote, then 43% of the vote after that, then…
When we get to the point when many finally recognize to fix the system will come personal risk, are willing to entirely crash the world of the Marxists, the liberals, the progressives – look me up.
Because I’m willing to lose my 401k and the three car garage if it means saving my children and their children.
But I’m through trying to reason with the majority of imbeciles that run this country and plan a different battle strategy within the rules of the system, because the system is corrupt and rigged and is the problem.
Apologies for being way over the post limit here, but some of us are discussing how most usefully to break the rules.
Bogie Wheel @ 141 made a useful suggestion about limiting FedGov to taxing the States. One way of doing this would be for taxpayers (easiest for self-employed) to send their estimated Federal taxes to their State. If one or two people did this, they would face jail time; if millions did this, FedGov would have a problem.
Neo-communist RED states (such as California) would suddenly find themselves sitting on a big wad of money in escrow for FedGov. (They are Democrats, you know they will cash the checks and spend the money). Now many of the States would have skin in the game, realizing that they could solve their own budget woes with the taxes their citizens pay to FedGov.
Key thing would be to organize this tax protest around an issue which splits the fractured Democrat coalition. Maybe something along the lines of getting FedGov to stop subsidizing environmental disasters like “green” energy? There are likely also a number of foreign policy disasters lurking in the near future which could serve as hooks to hang this tax strike.
Our forefathers risked their lives for independence. Shouldn’t we be prepared to risk some jail time?
I don’t think this was the problem, though I say that without looking at the data. The Chick-Fil-A vote was out, as evidenced by red states staying that way red or got even a little redder.
I’m an Evangelical and I have not met an Evangelical that even mentioned the Mormon issue. We certainly recognize the moral from immoral. We were as fired up as I’ve seen and this was my ninth Presidential election. Evangelicals are about as close to a voting bloc as the Republican Party gets.
Could be wrong, but I think the problem lies elsewhere.
The first thing to do is to stay true to principles, “speak truth to power” and loudly explain the reasons and offer alternative solutions to the inevitable turmoil that is going to occur.
The second thing to do is to begin infiltrating the echo chambers that are the left’s media outlets. Force them to explain their reasoning other than in sound bites.
I think this is sort of odd. Evangelicals have been doing small signs for years- have you seen those little two-line fishes on car-bumpers? or on yellow-page ads? some places put a cross on their business sign, or in the window. It’s been going on forever, at least in the South.
There’s a yellow-pages guide distributed here that is all Christian-owned businesses. It looks like a regular phone-book. It has big, fancy ads. My husband uses it when he goes shopping.
or, the owner will name his company some name from the Bible. It usually sounds
exotic and Eastern, so no one knows to ask. Bezalel Construction, Bezalel Plumbing.
So, it’s not unknown at all. You just want a political version of this.
And, second, so what I think just happened is that Charles Murray’s work just came alive and affected an election? There’s the 39% that is married, college- educated, stable, and the 43% unmarried, unstable. And the 43% forced the 39% to subsidize their failures?
And, Megan McCardle- Romney lost by half a million votes- a microscopic amount. Add in vote fraud. Add in people who hadn’t heard of him. I know there’s that one big photo of the whole family- which is a big “dog whisper” to Mormon families. But the rest of us? To Dems- that looked like a threat- they can out-Kennedy us! There are so many of them! All good-looking! So why not try that? Honestly, there are five young wives with children. Can they all get on Pinterest? Can they all get profiled in magazines? Make the Romneys the Emanuel Goldsteins that get in the Obama& Kennedy heads. Mostly, Kennedy- O doesn’t seem to have coattails.
S.Weasel is going to be producing some cruel Obama likeness T-shirts soon.
I’m going to be wearing my favorite home on the plane–it says “I’m the Wiener” with Obama’s puss as a giant hot dog. I think it captures their dickishness nicely.
The past couple of days have been a real eye-opener for me. Of course I knew we were headed down a very bad road, but I had no idea how far down that road we have already traveled.
One woman said she voted for Obama because Romney was too scary. Seriously?
Anther person said that Obama was a centralist and anyone who disagreed was the extremist.
This morning I was told that if family businesses and local businesses could not survive under Obama they must be bad businesses and deserve to die.
Where do you even begin to change minds when the minds have this view of things?
Where do I go to get my country back?
great idea! here I’ll start you off: “White” it’s the new Black.
All I can think of for marketing the cause is Big Bird performing the Vagina Monologues.
Look, we lost six counties in Ohio and Florida, plus one western state, and I’m not even sure we really lost Florida, because if there was serious voter fraud anywhere, it was in Miami.
Contrary to what you read in the paper, we have obscenely lax voter ID laws in Florida. You can use a “community membership ID” to register to vote, then stay home and order absentee ballots with no need to justify absentee status — handy if you really don’t exist but want to vote anyway. We also have the worst rates of income tax fraud, medicaid/medicare fraud, and other endemic problems grounded in identification fraud.
It’s kind of amazing that airlines accept any form of Florida ID.
So courage and conviction is precisely the course. Maybe when the folks at National Review wear themselves out with their Fifty Shades of Agonizing Over the Latino Vote, they’ll chin up and join in.
McCain and Romney both made campaign stops in Defiance, Ohio, but neither of them spent enough time there to get a handle on the spirit or the demographic. I recommend you familiarize yourself with the territory before you put it on your map.
The part of my Oath of Enlistment where I said ” I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same” is still in effect by my lights. The part that says “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice” expired with my enlistment. This is especially relevant where the President and military officers act against the Constitution.
It’s a good idea. But I wouldn’t try it in a deep blue state.
Some backlash against O and the dems is just a matter of time. The part of the dem opposition that is reasonably grounded in reality—even if most of it is political—is well aware that an all-out machine effort to lie, cheat, and steal the election, along with a smear Romney campaign that is one for the psychology textbooks, has pretty serious blowback potential. Their job now is to mitigate it. But I’m afraid O is just not in to cooperation. He will make small concessions here and there that the worthless MSM will trumpet as Olympian and dem operatives will try to sell with their best smiley face. But it will be far too little and the economic situation will worsen. Despite what O owes the dem party for saving his worthless **s he will show them just how much he truly cares.
There are no links to reply to a comment, so I will say that I agree with
comment #154 Warren Bonesteel above
It seems to me that up until today we have not understood what kind of an enemy we are dealing with.
Many seem to think that it’s all a political game.
It’s not. And soon the consequences of the defeat of Freedom and free market economy will be heavy on us.
Agree with Tex Taylor about evangelicals a faithful GOP vote. So what do the party insiders do? They marginalize and disparage us as the problem why they can’t win elections. What type of coalition could be formed to create a winning third party? I think the GOP of Karl Rove, Dick Morris,etc. is a loser.
The only way forward may be an economic catastrophe that bitch slaps some of these stupid little single girls out of their Obama worship.
Interestingly, as much as his analysis seemed wooden and shallow, old friend Whiskey nailed on the Obama demographic.
Someone else has taken my idea and run with it……….
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1112/ahlert.php3#.UJzwgm_A8TY
Cowboy@ 140… SMOD is correct. Lets look back just a couple of years from 2009 until the 2010 election. The donkeys had free reign and passed Obamacare,stimulus,green policys,….etc. In 2010 the country cried Uncle and a massive amount of tea party candidates were elected. More importantly many more repub Govenors and state houses and senates were filled with republicans. Us conservatives fixed alot of stuff which Obama set about taking credit for. Look what he did in Ohio saying that the auto bailout fixed the economy there, when we all know Governor John Kasish fixed the problems there. Obama grabbed credit for it and was able to pull off a win in Ohio…..We NEED to let them own this. We need to act like the minority party that we are. Vote present. This needs to continue thru the 2012 elections too. Do not obstruct in any way whatsoever.
Capn Rusty@ 153 The problem with YOUR idea is that pubbies will get the blame. WE (conservatives) cannot be the party of NO, The beauty of MY idea is that we get back to the situation of a State like Massachusetts electing a republican to replace a Dead Ted. We need to let our republican leaders know…..DO NOT OBSTRUCT. We don’t need to vote for their agenda…..just vote present. Let them carbon tax the closure of a few coal fired power plants and watch rolling blackouts begin. I’ll guarantee you progressive heads will roll. This country will beg for mercy at the feet of conservatives come 2016.
We heard about 3 million missing McCain voters. It’s actually 1.7 to 1.8 million and will continue to close as more votes are counted.
In the “battleground states” Romney had more votes than McCain in every state except New Hampshire.
The big drop off in votes was on the west coast and New York – 2.5 million.
175. Vichris
I might agree with that idea except I think they would merely rewrite history to show that however bad things became, they were so much better off than ever before. And the scary part, I fear the majority might accept it.
One of Alinsky’s rules is to work within the system. One way to do that is to flood the Congrassholes with letters demanding that all laws passed be the result of true compromise. If 49% (or even 25% or 30%) of the country contacts the members, both Repub and Dimocrat, It will be noticed. If not, and especially if the Rpubs don’t respond correctly, Tag them for defeat using all methods available including the street fight tactics. Start right now identifying and publicizing good new candidates to fill in behind the cowardly. My suggestion for a “target rich environment” for that search is ex-military officers and non-coms that have been in the wars, come back to civilian life, and built successful lives, especially those who have built successful businesses. These people are exceptionally well-trained, have had to function successfully under stressful conditions. They know how to cut the planning to the essentials, identify priorities and execute ruthlessly. Make sure they know, or help them to learn the history of the founding including the rationale for the Declaration and the Bill of Rights and why the government was set up the way it was. (It is amazing to me that, as I talk to people, how little they know of those basics. Gramscian education triumphs, I guess). Hillsdale college free lectures on government are a wonderful resource in this regard.
Here’s a couple of National Issues on the fast track that we can get started on:
1. Recession/Debt limit – It’s a done deal. Taxes will go up. The essential tradeoff for the House should be that Rates don’t go up but that Loopholes (read deductions) be reduced/eliminated. Make the fight around who’s going to gore who’s ox to get a deal. Also, Dodd/Frank is to be repealed and Glass/Steagle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act) reinstated. Dodd/Frank has enshrined the protection of “too big to fail” banks in Federal law(http://www.economist.com/node/21547784). Glass/Steagle would once again separate the commercial banks that most of us deal with from the investment banks which are a high end crap shoot. Finally, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and all other federal banking entities must go private. Another useful trade would be to eliminate the direction to the Fed to manipulate the economy to foster jobs. Perhaps to far to reach in this battle, but the Community Reinvestment Act should also be targeted for repeal (that’s what Obumble’s early career was based on in conjunction with ACORN and the mischief it allowed had a large role in the housing crisis. Because of Obumble’s history, this one would be an especially hard sell I suspect)
2. Immigration “Reform” – Again, that some form of legalization is probably a done deal. But require at the same time an end to the “Anchor Baby” loophole in American jurisprudence as well as the idea that just because you are now allowed in, your relatives to the 10th generation are as well based solely on your status. Increase the penalties on businesses that hire illegals and give them workable tools to stay honest. Get a useful count of illegals. Close the damned gates. Get rid of the criminals (have enforceable/enforced sanctions on countries that won’t repatriate their own scum).
Many of the machine Repubs will resist mightily on fear of losing their status and power when the Dimocrats and the fifth column American press trash them. Make them understand that their choices are limited. If they don’t do it, we have alternatives and street fight tactics are our game.
Here’s a symbol of defiance, spontaneously spreading across the US.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/09/a-post-election-oddity-im-noticing/#more-73971
You could this on bumper stickers, T-shirts, etc.
a @ 176: In the “battleground states” Romney had more votes than McCain in every state except New Hampshire.
Thanks. Assuming that’s true, we still need a theory on why he therefore lost. How about this ORCA fiasco? Just a lot of little things.
The real loss is that Romney wasn’t ahead by 10 points pulling 400 electoral votes, that’s what needs to be discussed. Though with big states California and New York hopeless … but WHY are they hopeless, are they REALLY hopeless?
Questions for Marco Rubio to ponder.
/overposted on an overripe thread
Why we lost has nothing to do with “social issues”.
We lost because when you rob Peter to pay Paul you always have Paul’s vote and there are now more Pauls than Peters in this country it seems.
This also means we have lost the “low information” voter. We have to find a way to communicate to them why it is there interest to vote Republican.
In 6 to 12 months, I expect not just the country, but the planet to undergo a major economic collapse. In 6 to 24 months, Iran will have the bomb and we will have another war in the middle east, quite probably a nuclear one.
Memes are great for spreading around, but I don’t think there is enough time, and certainly no more elections, to turn things around before this happens.
I’m looking for Galt Gulch myself. For many, the upcoming collapse will be the only lesson they need. And a far better one than any bumper sticker.
Don’t tread on me — with a rattlesnake.
That’s already a tried and true defiance against Big Gov’t.
And our movement needs martyrs — those who get their cars keyed, probably because of their anti-Obama, anti-Democrat bumperstickers.
Also, we need to go anti-Democrat, not anti-Obama. He won’t be running again, but some Democrat will. The Lying Democrats. Like Clinton lied, and the other Clinton more recently lied, and Obama lied, and Treasury Secretary lied and cheated on his taxes.
The Lying Democrats.
The secret-Democrat mainstream media, who do not tell the truth.
Beautiful story about the Kotel. I thank you for it.
I like the sentiment but disagree with the process. Mugs, T-Shirts get old and demoralizing plus they assume the other side is playing by decency. They are not. They are organized and not really violent but they are bullying and backed by the political machine. Please read about the NYC Civil War Draft Riots to see what happens when these political machines gets power.
We did not win the Cold War through propaganda. In fact given the media, academia, etc. the Russians did. The Russians lost the Cold War because the Ruble was a piece of junk. The greenback is becoming a piece of junk. We will win this if conservatives find alternate means of economic systems, stick together and let the other!!! side bleed itself out by taxes and stupidity. Just proclaiming that we are working towards this goal will demoralize them. They need us more than we need them.
According to the Sean Trende/ RCP post linked by Charles, McCain got 7 million – whoa 7 million- more white votes than Romney and McCain ran a piss poor campaign by almost all accounts.
Extrapolating from the poor McCain showing you’ve got to figure there are at least 10 million contingent (as Kin calls it) white votes for President out there that the Pubs left on the table.
Time magazine has a long article on Obama’s tech prowess, how they had a poll sample of 1/2% of all Ohio voters and how they knew what themes to push, to whom and when. Compare this with the feckless Romney campaign. As with almost the entire Institutional Republican establishment, the Pub Election consultants don’t want to know what the base and contingent voters want because those voters will tell them what they don’t want to hear.
The Pub Establishment doesn’t want to push themes that will be popular with those contingent voters and the base, doesn’t want to hear from the base and contingent voters and as consequence hasn’t developed the focus group/polling prowess the Dems have .
The Pub establishment would rather mine the vote poor lefty-moderate single women demographic rather than the vote rich contingent/ Pub base demographic. There is a vast cultural divide between the Controlling Party Elite and the base/contingent voters. The base and contingent voters are just plain icky to the Elites Pubs and those Pubs don’t want to have anything to do with the bitter clinging religious base. That is why we lost this election. Pure and simple.
The Dems almost surely cheated on a massive scale, but the key to the loss was the Party Elite’s refusal to woo the base. Unless there is a new conservative party or the Party Elite have a massive attitude adjustment, conservatives won’t be winning any future Presidential elections.
179. MN
I flew mine upside down on Wednesday, then folded it properly and put it away. I won’t be flying it again anytime soon.
Now that we live in the USSA, it’s probably unwise to call too much attention to oneself.
Speaking to a few of the commentors above, I entreat you to stop belittling Wretchard’s idea of T-shirts and bumper stickers as somehow not edgy enough. Remember, this is only Day 2 of the rest of our lives. We’re still trying to figure out where we stand and what to do about it. Our Host has graciously announced his intention to provide us with some ideas, along with a forum to discuss them (both for FREE), and the last thing we need right now is snarky criticism. For my part, I haven’t yet prepared my response to the question of what to do, by I will sure as hell tell you a few things not to do.
1. Do not get “edgy.” Do not destroy the property of others, do not detract from their reputations, do not menace them with your unwanted company. Do not write their phone number on bathroom stalls. Committing little acts of turd-terrorism like this hardly makes you look like a serious adult, much less a leader. Alinskyism works for the Left because they are terrorists at heart who want to sink society down to the level of barbarism, but it will not work for you. This is no way to advance the Kingdom of God. Rather, you must do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. Do not go on a tax strike. Minimize your tax liability, but pay the lawful amount. We must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. The Lord Jesus Christ not only commanded this, he also performed it himself. If you abide in God’s word He will not let you suffer need above your ability to bear it, even if He must send you a stater in a fish’s mouth. But if you do not pay your taxes it will only result in bloodshed and chaos. You will not succeed in starving Caesar’s legions. They will come and take what you have with even greater brutality than before.
3. Do not go John Galt. We all need to work as hard as we can, and produce as much as we can, to help stabilize the fabric of civilized life and to provide for the needs of those in our community. If you have a job, keep it. Make yourself indispensible. Show yourself favorable, that you may be called upon in the seven lean years to save the kingdom. Do not doubt that Pharoah will give you the keys to all he possesses if you know how to get the job done.
4. Do not blame Social Conservatives for electoral defeat. Anybody who thinks it is acceptable to tolerate sodomy, or to trade off protecting the unborn, in return for “electability,” is frankly insane. A population that demands their right to abort their children as the price of their vote does not deserve to get what they want, nor to be ruled by men of conscience. They deserve a ruler who will despoil, rape, enslave, and kill them. They will get one.
okay, here’s a really stupid question: re: rape.
Okay: who gets raped? Rape-rape, or boyfriend and I had a fight rape? Or child seduction?
B/c from what I’m getting out of it- that’s the gotcha question for Republicans: what about rape? And somehow, no abortion is the worst answer to this question.
Okay: Rape was a capital offense through the late 60s. Kinsey said there were no victims, and they got over it quickly, anyway. and that rapists weren’t recidivist. and women secretly liked getting raped, and who knows what else. So rape went, basically, to being a misdemeanor. And then we got the Pill and abortion to hide the evidence of violation.
So: who rapes? Mostly young men from unstable (read single mother) homes. So- they created this problem. What are they going to do about it?
And- who gets raped? Young, vulnerable women likely catch the wrong side of violent rape. So why are the rape crisis centers on campus?
I don’t know how to go about this- but this is a Democrat mess, created by Democrats. They are trying to pin the clean-up on Republicans.
1. Love boycott idea. Start with that stupid pig, Letterman. It would be most helpful to have a list of who and what to boycott – hope somebody has time to make and publish one. If all dissidents refused to pay federal taxes, what would they do..lock ALL of us up?
2. Agree with “street-fighter” comment, also. Read some books on bully-ism and
follow the rules: 1) Adopt a permanent “chip on the shoulder” attitude with constant indignant anger. 2) Launch continuous premptive attacks on anyone perceived to be threatening or challenging. Lie, lie, lie…for some reason, the first one to attack is generally perceived to be “in the right” and telling the truth (go figure). 3) Disrespect threatening people at every
possible opportunity: interrupt speaking, invade personal space, spread lies,
and make fun of. There are no behavior “rules” anymore…we have to learn these new skills.
3. Love the bumper sticker/t-shirt idea, too. Ostensibly, the worst thing anyone can do to a power-crazy egomaniac is to publically make fun of/disrespect him/her. The only folks who merit respect are those who respect others and Obama and Biden have blatently demonstrated that they do not. I cannot even “respect the Office” if the person sitting in it has displayed such alarming bad manners and low class behaviors as have those two. The shocking display of disrespect shown to President Bush in the media set the precedent that ridiculing the President (personally and professionally) is perfectly ok. Let’s roll with this one.
4. New idea: Conservatives combine resources and buy libral media stations or at least acquire controlling stock positions in libral media outlets. The existing libral monopoly has to be broken. Are there enough motivated rich conservatives to fight back…or could someone organize a mass donation project such as every conservative contribute $5 to the cause and put someone
trustworthy like Beck or Huckabee or Trump in charge.
Hi all,
I’ve read Belmont+commenters for years now, but I think I’ve posted but once before. I hope I can help with this.
One theme I’m seeing in the comments is the idea of of belief, keeping in mind the point is to be a marketplace of defiance. And, naturally, not look like imbeciles.
I submit that the Left hates us not for our belief, but our unbelief.
We don’t believe in their ideology. We don’t believe in them. We don’t believe in their promises. We don’t believe in PC thought, or their narrative, or framing, or their self-regard. That’s when you get their classic meltdown in an argument.
Let’s face it. We’re heretics. Unbelievers.
Wretchard has mentioned it many times before, with irony, that we live in an age of faith, faith in some strange things. Our ‘paganism’ are more of uniter than attempting to find a one-size-fits-all set of beliefs among we non-Leftists. I’ll bet we could garner, despite obvious philosophical differences in the commentariat here, a vast similarity of things we don’t believe in, targeting the Left.
I think from an edgy, oh-so-ironic standpoint, we out-Left the Left by declaring ourselves political pagans. Reframe what they are and what we are. Reveal the Left as a stodgy retread of a cartoon-level religion, and we’ll have attacked their style of argument, their posturing, and their image.
Talking to friends last night, the conversation turned to what would definitely happen in the next four years. And the winner was. Somebody’s going to get nuked.
I’m glad I live a long way from a blue area.
It’s late in the thread, and somewhat off topic, but this article by Charles Hugh Smith really hit home for me. We have all been frustrated that even when we elect supposedly conservative republicans we see no real change in Washington. Reagan promised to eliminate the departments of energy and education and reduce the defict. Those departments stayed and the deficit went up. Wash, rinse and repeat for that last 30 years.
The problem is we cannot chip away at and reform a dysfunctional status quo. Smith says it better than I: http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov12/reform-collapse11-12.html
I believe now that the collapse of the status quo is the only way. It needs to go, so we can rebuild from the ground up.
UNSK @ 185
If McCain did in fact garner 7 million more white voters than Romney, then Romney garnered 5.3 million more non-white voters than McCain. The difference between McCain and Romney is down to 1.7 million and closing.
2008
2012
And I’ll repeat… Romney had more votes in each of the “battleground states” than McCain, except New Hampshire.
As an aside let’s spell out the states rather than relegate them to a postal code like NH.
150. Samizdat
RWE and others have a good idea. I want to only support conservatives in purchases. I want that list of who business donated to and if they donated to democrats they should be shunned. The list should be published very prominently.
I will add: If you go to a restaurant, stiff the waiter if he/she even looks like an Obama supporter. Leave them one cent-the dirtiest and most encrusted one you can find-with a note telling them to get the rest from Obama. I’m serious. Spread this around. Childish and petty? Who cares? The left tries, often in vain, to economically punish anyone who isn’t “one of them” all the time. Chick-fil-A was but one of many examples. I say give it back good and hard. For Xmas, shop only at Home Depot. Do not patronize ANY other retail business that has uttered so much as a word in favor of Obamunism. Sears should be a no-go zone, for example. Likewise Target. Do not go to a single movie or buy one on pay-per-view. Do not travel, for any reason, to a voting district that went to Obama. Las Vegas, for one, should be considered off-limits. I could go on , but you get the picture. Obama said to vote for revenge. We should exact ours with our wallets.
Bob
Just missed the last time but fully expect to be around to see the next use.
Four years seems a reasonable number.
I think FEAR, FRAUD & DEMOGRAPHICS cost us the election along with an incompetent and spineless Republican Party.
I thought this prediction about the election was right on!
DAVID P. GOLDMAN
The Senate is virtually a lost cause due to Republican errors in Kansas and Indiana. The presidency is a toss-up. The crosswinds are too strong to calculate the vector sum. It is astonishing that Barack Obama, who did a terrible job on the economy and made no friends on any major issue, should have a chance at re-election. He is playing to fear. As Joe Biden put it ever so clearly in the VP debate, “Who do you trust” to keep the welfare coming? The number of Americans receiving some kind of means-tested federal support rose from 20% in 2008 to 32% today. Romney’s message of entrepreneurial revival may not resonate. Most of the entrepreneurs who took a shot during the past fifteen years were carried out in body bags. Venture capital has underperformed the traded indices by a huge margin. Corporate America is cartelized to an extent we have not seen since the 1950s. We are in the middle of an unprecedented retirement wave for which Americans are financially unprepared, after the 40% median per capita wealth decline of 2008-2012. And we have a burgeoning underclass that is white as well as black or Hispanic. Forty percent of all births in 2011 were outside of marriage. We don’t know to what extent Americans feel beaten. If they feel beaten, they will vote their fears and re-elect Obama, and the country’s decline will accelerate. I am hoping and praying for a Romney victory. But it’s beyond my capacity to forecast.
– David P. Goldman joined PJM after nearly 10 years of anonymous essaying at Asia Times Online and two years of editing and writing at First Things.
I love you guys.
I’ve been depressed since Tuesday and finally succumbed to tears this afternoon, feeling overwhelmed, helpless and hopeless. The rage and
bald hatred of Axelrod, Obama, Biden and company and their dirty fighting
and appalling behaviors have literally made me physically ill, not to mention seriously befuddled as my brain gets when it encounters things that violate all laws of reason and credibility.
I just now, however, came across this website and all your wonderful ideas. I am especially fond of all the suggestions regarding 1) imposing meaningful
limitations on the amount of tax revenue available to “them,” 2)the
simultaneous utilization of every possible financial benefit available
from “them,” and 3)the mass market movements via bumper stickers, pins,
t-shirts, etc. I smiled my first smile since Tuesday night.
I also liked Jo’s idea of getting control of one of the media networks..tell
me where to send my $5.
Thank you all and “the force be with us.”
Radio report – Petraeus resigns.
What ever happened to that General and Admiral relieved, just before the election?
–
More news: LA Sheriff is already following the new pattern, announces he cannot hire any more officers or even 911 operators unless the county immediately raises the sales tax 1/2 percent. State just raised it 1/4 percent “for the kids”. County just raised it 1/4 percent to fund new transportation bonds.
Reports of businesses laying people off, starting now.
Coming fast, folks.
obama’s mother had an abortion, then covered up with fake announcements in the newspaper. That’s why obama has no birth certificate.
Sorry to break the 4-post rule, but there hasn’t been a new thread in a while. Did you guys see that Petraeus is stepping down, supposedly because of an extramarital affair? I’m actually not a huge fan of his, but this stinks to high heaven. Add his resignation to Hillary, Chu, Holder, Panetta, and a few other cabinet members I think. This does not feel like a good sign.
Here is a bumper sticker guaranteed to piss off the Progtard that sees it.
http://www.zazzle.com/liberalism_is_legalized_looting_bumper_sticker-128413888495055036
OT but ***BREAKING** Fox Business Tom Sullivan just now reporting that David Petraeus has resigned as head of CIA citing his own extramarital affair in his 37-yr marriage.
So……. I’m wondering…..Was he the victim of a “Honey Trap”???? If so, was his honey an agent of a foreign power or, even more likely, an agent of the Obama Imperial Administration?????
Been thinking about this, and have not gotten through all the posts here, but thank you to all offering ideas on how to thwart the Man, as it were.
One thing that keeps popping into my head is the reason why Jews tend to stress education so much, and tend to be represented in professional areas so much. This very thing I think has been discussed here before, I believe.
They have done so because it is something that they HAD to do to survive. Being subjected to persecution and confiscation over and over again, they realized that the one thing the State could not take from them were their skill and their knowledge, which was easily transportable because it was in you.*
Strange how this ties in with the disaster Prep trends which have been on the uptick in this country for a while, but one thing we can ALL do that will make us more self-sufficient, more marketable for work and trade AND starve the beast is to get back to doing so many things have gotten used to having others do. Mechanics, carpentry, basic medical skills, self-defense, computers, electronics, gardening, cooking, canning, bottling, brewing, distilling, whatever.
We need to sharpen skills we already have, and learn new ones, and put them to use, circumventing the government at all levels as much as possible, particularly in taxation. If I pay a go to fix my car or my deck, I pay him tax which he gives to the government. If I fix it myself, I only pay tax on the materials.
Thinking about it, I think the Vampiric class has realized this for a long while, which is why they put so many rules, regulations and bureaucracy in the way of people trying to do the most basic of things; they don’t get a cut.
BUT, if so many people start doing things of the grid as someone else put it, they will go broke and crazy trying to catch it all.
*The real disturbing thing about this thought, of course, is that this practice was contingent with getting away with your life. It begins to “make sense” that the Nazis went to the Final Solution in their quest to try and destroy the Jews because maybe they realized that no matter what else they took from them, they would eventually prosper wherever they went. In other words, when the State has taken everything else in their attempt to conquer and control you and failed, they will take your life if need be.
**One thought regarding the election and the lack of base turnout for Romney that may have sunk him. If the concept of The Wisdom of Crowds is be believed, perhaps those voters did not like the odds Romney would actually turn things around to the extent needed to truly save the country. Believing it very unlikely considering Romney’s RINO like past and the current culture in Washington that he would actually do anything significant except be in office went the roof caved in, they chose not to poison that well. Knowing full well that any collapse would be blamed on him, and nothing on Obama and the Democrats who held the reins for the 4 years previous, they decided not to make it any easier by putting a Republican in place. It was not so much a “Well, let’s give them exactly what they want and see if they like it!” attitude, but more of a “We are NOT going to take the blame for this. Let’s retain some credible deniability for when we need to pick up the pieces.”
Petraeus resigns – Well, that is interesting. When I first heard that Gen. Petraeus had resigned, I thought it was so that he could testify free and clear in the Nov. 15 hearing behind closed doors. For him to cite an extramarital affair as his reason for resigning implies something else entirely – he could have simply resigned without confessing his affair – so why? He just took away any future effort at pressure or blackmail that maybe brought to bear.
Addendum to #202
FOLLOW THE HONEY!
Some have questioned whether t-shirts etc are much of a weapon. I argue, absolutely. For one thing the Devil cannot stand is to be mocked.
Richard asked about potential easily-recognizable “brands” or “signatures” around which to make some creative, defiant, proud displays (shirts, bumper stickers, yard signs, etc). A good idea just came to mind:
John Galt, especially incorporating quotes / speeches by him. It’s a signal of what tribe you’re in, and it’s probably one that the useful idiots won’t recognize or understand anyway, so you’ll have a little less fear of retribution.
One legal way to cripple collection of taxes is when you are ready to file and owe the government a tax payment, simply write a letter saying you cannot afford to pay the whole thing at this time and will make $25.00 to $50.00 payments per month – you send in a check with it and the IRS writes back an acceptance of payments. The only caveat is any money coming back goes directly to pay down your IRS debt. If we all did it, revenue would necessarily go down.
The ability to say no is the most powerful thing in politics. Petraeus just told the regime no and stepped over the side. Eventually we will find out what they wanted him to agree to. Cheers
Fox just announced that Petraeus will NOT be testifying Nov. 15.
Defiance allows you to “stand out” but organized resistance forces the enemy to stand down.
Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle,
will not first sit down and consider** whether he is strong enough
with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him
with twenty thousand?–Luke 14:31
**consider: Gr. “sumballo” to throw together, hence to discuss, consider, meet with
Where there is no guidance* the people fall,
But in abundance of counselors there is victory.–Proverbs 11:14
For by wise guidance* you will wage war,
And in abundance of counselors there is victory–Proverbs 24:6
*guidance: Heb. “tachbulah” properly steerage (as a management of ropes),
that is, (figuratively) guidance or (by implication) a plan:
Friends, if you fight alone you fall alone, with none to mark your grave.
Instead, I suggest formation of a conference composed of cultural, fiscal and foreign policy conservatives who are fiercely dedicated to Judeo-Christian principles, free markets and an independent republic. This will require some agency of known loyalty to create an exploratory committee.
If we are to be rescued from anarchy, bankruptcy and foreign domination it will be through the agency of free Americans and the grace of G*d.
I am a business owner I will shutter the doors of my business until this Obama Mess was OVER…If everyone did that there would be a very quick end to this ‘fiscal cliff’ BS…and the entitlements too…Families would take care of one another and live together…Maybe even read the bible together…I am a Rebublican but I am not a fool…
re #206: “Richard asked about potential easily-recognizable “brands” or “signatures” around which to make some creative, defiant, proud displays (shirts, bumper stickers, yard signs, etc). A good idea just came to mind:”
Rush sez he’s stirred up the Dems by referring to them as the “Party of Santa Claus.” So how about a caricature of BO as the Grinch, with the fertile minds here supplying appropriate slogans?
t-shirt slogan:
Use Obama logos for the O’s
on the front:
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice …
on the back:
… Don’t look at me! I didn’t vote for him!
Bumper sticker or t-shirt idea: Thanks for the depression, Obama voters. It’s true now, even, since we’re all depressed. It will be true in a few months time when the whole country is depressed.
My 2 cents after reading the posts:
1. publicize lists of left-wing businesses small & large and BOYCOTT (seriously). Some I know of include Hyatt Hotels, Sonic burgers, Progressive Insurance (no kidding), Apple Computer, Hollywood movies, TV networks, major newspapers, Buffett companies, NFL, NBA, colleges & universities, etc. Instead of wasting time/money on useless college and professional sports, organize & prepare.
2. The machinery of voting is completely broken. Too bad W did not try to fix it after the near fiasco in the 2000 election when he had the whole government. It needs to be standardized, and made secure such as the use of fingerprints and no early voting except limited absentee. I am sure that O got in excess of the vote margins in FL, VA, CO and OH by way of illegal votes. Thus the election was almost certainly stolen but of course there is no trail to follow anymore. This is another thing that must be attended to.
3. Romney’s single note “it’s the economy stupid” campaign was fighting an old war (1992) and a monumental blunder. The GOP handlers should be ostrasized.
4. O’s team ran a masterful campaign and as lousy/evil a leader as he is, he’s one hell of a politician. If only we had a leader willing to blast the other side without mercy instead of marshmallows we got earnestly trying to woo democrat (moderate) voters over and over again but unsuccessfully while our own voters stay home in disgust.
5. Does anyone think that O will not try for a third term? If he does what will we do? Anything? After-all the constitution is a dead letter.
6. If you are a city dweller buy a small plot in a rural area that you can repair to in troubled times.
7. Home school. Say no to your old “alma mater” both in contributions & matriculations.
8. Attend conservative churches. Stop going to liberal ones.
9. Join the underground economy as much as possible.
10. Since we are officially a “banana republic” perhaps a military intervention might be a good thing.
Just some necessary ideas.
188. ari – who gets raped? Rape-rape, or boyfriend and I had a fight rape?
They say Lara Logan was raped and re-raped by men who won’t repudiate wife-beating. My advice-
“Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, ’cause they rapin’ everybody out here.”
#186 rickl
I have been flying US colors since the morning of 9/11/01 at my house. When I moved to my current house in March of 2002, one of the very first things I did was put in a full sized flagpole; and I have been flying US colors over the First Navy Jack. Wednesday morning, both went to half staff. Next Wednesday, I will follow your example until they can be flown again in a Constitutional Republic. My flagstaff will not be bare though. I will fly this:
http://www3.villanova.edu/centennial/Js1g_h1.jpg
The Washington Cruisers Flag. Green Pine Tree on a white field with the words AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN. The Tree of Liberty. That is also a symbol to indicate the presence of a Constitutional Patriot. But it does not matter which of all the symbols or abbreviations we use. We will recognize.
Subotai Bahadur
For the little Che stickers:
Make stickers the same size, of Charles Manson, Richard Speck, Jeff Dahmer, Jared Loughner, James Holmes, etc., and line them up in a row on Che’s left and right. Put a “Famous Serial Killers – Collect Them All!” label across top to hammer the point.
T-shirts and bumper stickers aren’t a minor thing. Every time someone sees one, reads it, questions it, it sticks. Like how they sell page hits on the internet.
That being said, here’s a non-comprehensive list of slogans culled from the ideas above, (and some copied), with a few added by me. Feel free to use.
Don’t tax me, bro
Why so socialist?
Socialist much?
Save the Baby Humans
Stamp Out Free Stuff
Dump the U.N.
No Chicago Thugs
Fight Tyranny
Boycott Leftists
Evil Rich Capitalist–Ask me how
Free Nakoula
Capitalism
Civil Disobedience
Stupid.gov
evilleftist.gov
Off the Grid
Barter
Starve the Beast
Dumb is the new normal?
Hungry? Eat your Obamacare.
Don’t Be Stupid
Second Amendment
Nothing Left to Lose
Freedom
Still Bush’s Fault?
Monstrous Tyranny
Anger is not Enough
Clint is Right
Buy Your own Freaking Phone!
Google Ayn Rand
Go Galt/ Gone Galt
Bring it
Defiant
Bitter Clinger
Wanna see my .45?
Come and get me. I dare you.
Ambassador Stevens is unavailable for comment.
Rage against the Beast
Windmills kill Birds. Duh.
Need a warmup? I’m packing heat.
Really Big Lies
Disenfranchised
Speak truth to Power
Political Pagan
picture of american flag flying upside down.
I like the black armband with USA on it. I’ve been wearing a do-rag since Tuesday. If anyone asks, I tell them since I live in a communist country, I wear a babushka.
Here’s another useful “brand” or “signature” meme: Barry Soetoro
Again, it’ll drive certain liberals crazy, it’ll make some say “huh?”, and be another hidden-in-plain-sight markers for conservatives.
—–
@213. El_Heffe
Great idea
One of the best ideas I’ve read so far following our electoral debacle.
I’ve never seen a BC thread as active as this one. Anyhow, suiting action to the word I’m prepared to make my first offering in the market for the defiance.
Sorry for the manifesto-like length Richard, but I figured that at this point others aren’t commenting on this one and I’ve been reading you since ’03, and you owe me haha!
Like many, I’ve spent the last several days digesting thoughts of those much smarter than myself, especially the RFs, Mark Steyns, and Victor Hansons, as well as the brilliant comment sections of their blogs. Regarding RFs clarion call for a market of defiance, it seems that November 6th was the tipping point where enough individuals realized that the intellectual exercise of writing and reading about problems and solutions, solutions where the answers seemed so American, so logical, and bound for eventual acceptance in a just world, simply isn’t adequate. Whatever is done within the confines of the current paradigm can only tinker at the margins and simply slow the rate of descent. It is time for the rubber to more fully meet the road.
No one is free from guilt to the degree that we ignore the obvious and tolerate the status quo. Has a post-Cold War mindset taken root where most realities have been so papered over, or crimes not prosecuted as one bubble is replaced with the next, that there exists a near universal belief that we are somehow immune from historical events or even economic and fiscal realities imposing themselves upon us? Of greater concern, has the clutter of societal complexities and the din of modern life created a populous completely desensitized to any nuance outside of the most basic bread and circuses, while the productive and sobered among us seldom attempt to fathom the choices that would lead to true sacrifice and relinquishing any aspects of our comfortable life-styles? Upon first impact with the iceberg, the reaction is denial. Then, “Yes we may have struck the iceberg, but the genius of those in command, the size and power of the ship relative to the other ships in the ocean, and the fact that I am special because my ticket says First Class(either intellectually or economically) mean that while it may be chaotic, everything is under control and at the end of the day we’ll always have the lifeboats.” How long can a normalcy bias hold until the shock of finding one’s self either alone and adrift in the cold ocean or simply trapped and going down with the ship?
Through whatever combination of lack of education, lies, divisive tactics, and subterfuge, a majority of citizens across the economic and social spectrum seem to believe that mathematics doesn’t impose the ultimate tyranny and that there is such a thing as a FREE Lunch. The path we’re on was set with the New Deal, and everything since has been a battle against basic behavioral science (“what are the consequences and reinforcements I receive for doing something? e.g. If I vote for this person, I am given these benefits/absolved of this responsibility”) and the pure mechanics of an all increasingly all powerful state that can either directly distribute largess and peddle influence, or negate and undermine competition through regulation and cronyism. To use another analogy, it is America being allowed to become a recreational heroin user and someone else always picks up the tab. Eventually the user is destroyed and/or the supplier runs out of product. Sobriety comes once the user hits bottom and the choices become so stark that only then do they have a moment of clarity.
For the Statist, their nemesis isn’t the Republicans or even Conservatives. With only a few exceptions, the organized ‘resistance’ of those espousing small government has measured success against a baseline that was determined by the opposing side. Choosing to play their game and celebrate half measures that ‘limit the growth’ in spending only delays the inevitable outcome, insolvency. Any resulting “compromise” and “bipartisanship” isn’t resistance on the path to normalcy, but simply a barter for a temporary stay from your executioner. The verdict remains the same.
Possible Strategy for success; anything that is a Game Changer- Simple, actionable, contains a sense of mission
1. Articulating the inevitable outcome of the current track AND the eventual solution that will be required in the aftermath so that you not only benefit from the “I told you so,” but have a turnkey, executable alternative in place when the opportunity arrives. We are seeing collapse telegraphed in a manner not since Munich in ’38. This requires, perhaps, a somewhat longer view and acceptance that we have entered the ‘when’ not ‘if’ stage.
2. K.I.S.S.- Simple is the enemy of the establishment. Anything else is job security for elitist and careerists.
3. We are the barbarians at the gate. Our goal and our team isn’t the Republicans, or even Conservatism. For me personally it is my God, my kids, and my Country. We’re not here to preserve a majority in this legislative body or that executive office. We want a system that respects individual freedoms and all the principals upon which the nation was founded so that it may continue to exist for future generations without receiving the ‘benefit’ from those who wish ‘Fundamental Change’, period. If a strategy resulted in enough Democrats arguing for lower taxes or 2nd Amendment Rights, who cares? The first goal of all those in power is the next election and THEIR retention of power, period. We are on the outside.
Possible Tactics for success:
1. Stop insulating the electorate from the consequence of their vote and from the reality that there is a no such thing as a free lunch.The vocal re-distributionist, Prius driving progressive who defiantly won’t remove the Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker eight years later, but then must endure a week without electricity and the prospect of looters, and now clamors for a handgun. The veneer of civilization is what allows this person the luxury of their beliefs, while they seek to deny those freedoms right up until their own Eureka moment. Only when the veneer is stripped away, or the design margin collapses, are they presented with the consequences of their belief systems.
And how quaint the days when this only meant programs to ‘serve’ the underclass. We’ve arrived to the point where any bureaucratic and statist solution is possible via the printing of money, ignoring a company’s ability to remain a going concern if the operational costs are greater than the profits, calling an investment firm a bank and socializing their losses, gutting our manufacturing base in order for a mercantilist nation to finance our absurd deficits, or the preservation of a medical system that allows costs to double roughly every 7 years and the deception that it can be fixed in a way that doesn’t fundamentally change the expectations of care we receive and preserve the status quo. Capitalism is about failure, and consequences, and merit. Not the bastardized cronyism we’ve accepted as trade offs for the notion that welfare and entitlements are okay so long as they are equally distributed.
2. Market Defiance. No movement can coalesce without the slogans, symbols, and unifying actions that provide mutual support for its members. And if they deprive the other side of its intellectual oxygen, all the better. Not going to rehash your words.
Unfortunately, only the second tactic can be fully implemented outside the halls of power. And this requires facing a set of facts. Whether is has been the erosion of civil liberties and the explosion of Executive power, or the death by 1000 cuts that reside within our thousands of page monster called the federal budget, we must acknowledge the complicity of those whom may even be well-meaning politicians but have stood by during this classic case of America as the boiled frog. Therefore, we must first call them out as those with their hands on the burner, the ones who can save the frog presently. But this cannot be done in the same manner as every other ill-fated attempt. Turning the heat from low to simmer only lengthens to cook time. The frog is still toast. To save the frog you have to turn the heat to High and make it save itself.
Possible means in implementing tactics one: Republican Budget
If America wants a Free Lunch, they’re going to love the Buffet. It is time to call the bluff and give them the Full Monty.
Not just a reversion to the psychologically clever sub 40% barrier of the Clinton years, with it’s top rate of 39.5%. The fair share for all those over 250k is 45%, period
Eliminate special tax treatment for Big Oil, Big Hollywood, Big GE/Apple profits held overseas, Big green tech, Big Ethanol, etc.
Income in wages or income from capital sitting in a municipal bond or from the dividend from Berkshire Hathaway shares is income that goes to the citizen and shall all be taxed at the 45% rate, period
Eliminate mortgage, property, and state tax deductions
Federal gasoline taxes necessarily mimicking the more enlightened European rates
Our strength lies in our diversity, and we must ensure that we are continually strengthened by not only granting full amnesty for all existing immigrants from our own hemisphere, but also allow for an additional 500,000 annual arrivals who need not fear living in the shadows(Each paying a $1000 per year as well as for a10 year work Visa as well as appropriate tax rates) from Asia and South Asia with degrees in the sciences, engineering, and finance. In combination with government investments in R&D, it will not only ensure our place in the 21st Century economy, it will also strengthen Social Security and Medicare so that they are there for future generations.
Carbon tax of 10% on all utility bills
75% tax on all attorney fees over 10% of settlements
Once partisan obstructionism is no longer a factor, these policies will obviously result in an absolute bonanza of revenue and allow America to finally move Forward, courtesy of those politicians of every stripe, who had the courage and patriotism to come together in order to ‘work hard for the American people’ and ‘get things done in Washington’.
And for the first time, let’s let them own it.
Lessons learned from the election
1. For better or worse, the Republican party is the standard bearer for conservatism. Dime store new dealism is not a victory strategy.
2. We must create a counter culture. We need to read alinsky’s rules for radicals and implement.
3. African american conservatives are an existential threat to liberals and they will desparately do anything to destroy them. We must aggresively protect them.
4. We cannot count on the press to report conserative ideas fairly or at all. We must engage the public positively, clearly and directly. We need to engage in information operations. We need to go around the press.
a. Economic literacy has a high corelation with conservatism. We must teach economics.
b. Liberals rely on emotion, conservatives rely on logic. As a result we look cold. We need to include emotional appeals.
c. We know what we are talking about, we cannot assume the public does. We make arguements that appeal to us that we understand. We need to understand how the public sees things and tailor our message accordingly.
d. The next election begins Nov 7, 2012. We cannot wait until 2014 to make our case.
e. Conservatism is not a value system for those who are rich. It is the values of those who want to be rich. Liberalism is the value system for those who want to be poor.
f. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, conservatives love people and want them to suceed. Conservative trust people, liberals do not. Liberals want people they can control. Conservatives want people out of control.
5. We cannot afford for conservatism to be a white man’s ideology. As Pat Buchanan has pointed out, minorities are becoming a larger share of the population. However, we need to be sophisticated in how these minorites understand the world and tailor our message to them. No group is a monolith and we can appeal to aspirational segments of these groups.
a. Asian Amerians and South Asians are a group we can cultivate.
b. African immigrants have a very differnt outlook than African Americans persuade toward conservatism.
c. We need to listen and understand as well as persuade. Aspiration segments in each ethnic group need a methodical cultivation.
Defiance is important. But it needs to serve a strategic purpose, as the israelis demonstrated. We need to build a new coalition as the old conservative coalition has broken down.
One thing that people haven’t mentioned unless I missed it is that red states have to take steps now to protect themselves against voter fraud. The voter ID laws are a good start, but we need a 2 strikes and you are out law and EXTREMELY harsh penalties for anyone who does this on a large scale.
For instance, vote twice in the same election and it is a misdemeanor. Do that a second time and it is a felony and you can’t vote again. Run operations or assist operations for large scale fraud and you face 5 years in prison.
Red states need to do this now as fraud is part of the playbook for turning red states purple and purple states blue.
I am OK with some sort of amnesty, but it should mean them pleading guilty to breaking the laws, registering and paying a license for the “right” to continue to work and live here, and relinquishing the right to ever vote in one of our elections. If they want to vote, then they can go through the regular channels by going home and applying for citizenship.