All Fall Down
In 2004, the media’s “jobless recovery” was the description of George W. Bush’s 5.4% unemployment rate. “It’s the economy, stupid” referred to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 annual 3.3-4% GDP growth rate. “Unpatriotic” was W’s $4 trillion in borrowing in eight years, not $5 trillion in three. If Obama right now had 5.4% unemployment, 3.4% economic growth, and a budget deficit of about $400 billion, what would the media call it—a job-full recovery, “it’s not the economy, smarty,” or patriotic borrowing?
Those with capital—slurred as one-percenters, fat cats, and corporate jet owners unless hit up for Obama campaign donations—are not hiring or buying. Maybe they think oncoming Obamacare will smash them. Maybe they see on the Obama horizon rampant inflation, debt cancellation, or higher taxes as planned liberal remedies for our endless borrowing. Maybe these shrugging Atlases see that fossil fuel energy is not pursued on federal lands, but needless new regulations are implemented.
Whatever the reason, they hesitate—only sorta buying here, kinda hiring there. And the result of millions of these collective hesitancies is an ossified Europeanized economy, run by technocrats without private sector experience and exempt from the sacrifice they demand of others, as they desperately try to borrow and grow the government to ensure a permanent lease on power through the creation of a vast angry dependent constituency. Not near-zero interest rates, not nearly a trillion dollars in “stimulus,” not four years of chronic deficits, not “quantitative easing,” not any classical priming seems able to shock the unwilling and hesitant back into action.
And Then There Is Our Survival
For about three years I have been monotonously suggesting that we were once again in a 1977-1979 Carteresque era, as Obama systematically trashed his predecessor’s policies, denounced “exceptionalism” and “unilateralism,” gave soaring narcissistic sermons on his/our new morality abroad, redefined both allies and enemies as morally equivalent neutrals, and generally suggested that if you were a China, Russia, Middle East, or Latin America, you had justifiable grievances against the pre-Obama U.S., at least during the era when the president was just “three years old.” Last time we did this, after three years of Carter’s sermonizing, calculating nations in 1979-1980 saw that it was time to get up from the table and cash in their chips. So we saw Russia in Afghanistan, China in Vietnam, Iranians in the U.S. embassy, communist insurgencies in Latin America, and radical Islam on the rise, culminating in the annus terribilis 1980. I’m afraid 2012 may be our 1980. For the Carter Doctrine will we get a Johnny-come-lately “Obama Doctrine”?
A “reset” Russia now threatens unilaterally to preempt and take out proposed U.S. anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe (Poland and the Czech Republic should enjoy that, even though it is mere bluster). The Chen case reminds of China’s growing contempt for the indebted U.S. (They did not get the message that a community organizer and Chicago part-time lecturer is a postnational, postracial healer.) The Arab Spring is turning into an Islamist Winter. What the media forgot to tell us about the spike-the-ball presidential trip to Afghanistan is the president’s promise to end Predator drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan—the liberal favorite tool of foreign policy (no prisoners in Guantanamo, no tribunals, no trials, no media videos of the explosions, no reports of the kids and granny blown up along with the suspect, little dollar costs, no U.S. lives endangered, no downside really other than we sometimes are not quite sure whom we blew up below).
The more we praised and emulated the EU, the more it unraveled and the more its leaders distrust the “lead from behind” America (Obama never quite got it that, when Europeans trashed us for leading and being capitalist, the whining was a psychological mechanism for being happy that someone other than themselves was still leading and somewhere outside Europe was still capitalist). Or alternatively, just as Obama is our Nemesis, so too he is Europe’s: be careful what you pine away for.
If I were a state or clique up to no good, and if I thought Obama might not be reelected, in my final window of opportunity, perhaps around September, I might flex my muscles in the former Soviet republics, send another missile over Japan or South Korea, cruise into Taiwanese waters, put some Argentine Marines on the “Malvinas,” seek readjustment in Cyprus and the Aegean, send some rockets into Tel Aviv, dispatch some suicide bombers from Gaza, and let off more missiles from Iran. Not just to make a statement, or to gain more “please don’t” concessions, but because it was my pleasure to do it—if only for the hell of it.
Ministry of Truth
Around January 2009, deficits became “stimulus.” “Jobless recovery” vanished from the vocabulary. Guantanamo, renditions, and preventative detention virtually ended. And Obama’s successful surge paved the way out of Iraq. Predator assassinations of hundreds of suspected terrorists and anyone nearby when the explosives went off were liberal improvements over waterboarding three confessed terrorists.
The good war in Afghanistan turned bad, and the bad one in Iraq turned good. The Obama “surge” brought peace to Iraq. We were told that we could not just sit by and watch Libyan thugs kill the innocent, but could do just that in oil-scant Syria. Obtaining UN and Arab League approval to go to war without the U.S. Congress was “leading from behind.”
Those who made over $200,000 never paid their “fair share,” but could—and not by paying more in taxes, but by buying a $40,000 a person ticket to an Obama fundraiser. Golf was no longer an aristocratic indulgence, but fresh-air, healthy downtime for an overworked president. Mangling words and abject ignorance—whether “corpse-man” or Maldives/Malvinas—were evident only to nit-picking partisans. A downright mean country redeemed itself with free jet service to Costa del Sol, Aspen, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard.
Yes, after January 2009, Al Gore lives in a tiny green home. “Two Americas” John Edwards did not really build a 30,000 square foot mansion, with a 4,000 square foot “John’s Lounge.” “Punish our enemies” was the new civility.
What Does It All Mean?
In short, liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature. I wish I could just say that about every thirty years or so, forgetful Americans take an allergy shot of it, suffer the reaction, and then get another three decades of Carter/Obama immunity. But instead statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe circa 1989, or the present-day EU, or Greece proper, or California or Illinois today.
– California, Doctor, we have been inoculated to four more years of misery.
You get FEMA, that’s it. We’ll feed you and clothe you, but not a penny more.
(My condolences.)
Breitbart reports that Warren has NO cherokee blood. She had no right to the preference that got her her Harvard job. Her ancestor committed atrocities against the Cherokee.
“Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/08/Elizabeth-Warren-Ancestor-Trail-of-Tears
Another great essay. I just hope the Romney crowd has someone reading these and is figuring out a way to use these observations to advantage during the campaign season.
Or hire VDH if only for one speech.
I would hope so too if I didn’t sense Romney is a carbon-copy of Obama. Look at how the media is treating him,making him follow Obama’s lead on religion,the economy,Romneycare, attitude towards women and homosexuals. The media is holding him to Obama standards of non-issues. They won’t dare mention conservative views. They will not be referencing anyone who touts virtues of limited government, charity,and self-reliance. I think it’s because they’re expecting catastrophe. So they rack up this debt on protectionist measures, keep it secret, damn truth seekers as nutjobs, let the poop hit the fan,proclaim themselves heroes, the ones in the know,.–as we watch in horror from bunkers and FEMAcamps the destruction around the world. Since we come out on top, the debt is washed in return for our emergency service to the world. And there you have it. The only way to make sense of this senseless government is to incorporate some conspiracy theory into your logic.
then it is up to Romney to rewrite the narrative. For all his faults, one of Noot’s strong points was a willingness to call BS on media questions that were inane, based on ‘gotcha’, or as you describe, follow-The-Obama. Mitt’s a smart guy; time to start acting like it and talking about what he WILL do rather than what POTUS has done.
I think you’re right that Mitt needs to more like Newt was with the media. I think, within Newt’s campaign, he did not have or need an adviser or a consultant telling him to do that. He knew instinctively from his past political battles that turning it back on the press would register positively with people. And it did with me and with my spouse although we did not think he was electable. (What a charged word that is.)
I’m going to have to start following Romney more closely to see if he is just “sound bite” confrontational, or “in depth” confrontational. I think the presidential vote is always split such that, the so-called independents need to be captured and I think, in this election, the way to do that is by going in depth, with facts, and numbers and by using the current administrations pronouncements, policies, appointments… their record, and turning it all against them in a way that Newt would have.
Amen to Newt. Loved it when he took it to the media re their BS. They are the real problem…. I believe the rise of Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, as well as Fox News Channel has forced the media to try ever harder in shilling for the dark forces of the left.
Don’t forget, Romney was the one that made the debate moderator look like an idiot with the question about ‘states being against contraception’
I also recall that when a leftie debate moderator kept trying to push Mitt into an answer to some BS Gotcha question, Mitt finally said “you can ask the questions you want, but I’ll give the answers I want”. Romney is definitely not a lay down and die like a gentleman type like McCain. He will fight. Mind you, he is no Reagan, but then who is. But with Obama being as bad as he is we dont have to have another Reagan, we just need somebody who is competant, and will fight. Romney fits that bill.
As for Newt, yes I like his fighting ability, and ability to frame issues, but I always worried about his personal instability. Romney is not as good at firing people up, but I think he has the steadiness and competance to make a beter president. Remember also that Romney beat both Newt and Santorum in a pretty stiff fight, generally held his own in most debates, and actually beat Newt in a debate in FLA, so he can fight hard when he has to.
Liberalism, Statism, Progressivism, Socialism, Communism – each and every one of the various -ism’s are nothing more than a naked lust for and seizure of power, carefully guised in the sheep’s garb of ‘caring’ and ‘compassion’ for the downtrodden. And once the power is gained, the downtrodden are discarded or ignored, as one would do with any tool, once the task is done.
It’s the age old story of a ruling elite. Yesterday’s aristocracy, priveleged due to birth, has been replaced with a new aristocracy, priveleged by their political beliefs. One could argue that the old aristocracy at least had some attributes, or at least pretense, of nobility or benevolence – as a goal if nothing else. The Romanov’s may have been oppressive but how many millions did they kill? The Bolshevik aristocracy – and aristocracy it plainly was, dachas and all – killed in the tens and scores of millions. That is undisputed.
A reasonably educated population, equipped with critical thinking skills would make these comparisons and ask these questions, but we have been robbed of that ability – by the Progressives who infiltrated and seized control of the education system. And, in concert with the equally infiltrated media information complex, they enable the new ruling aristocracy to gain dominance. The only question that remains is how ruthless will this new elite be?
You forgot the most dangerous of the unchecked ism’s…capitalism..
I must’ve been out sick the day they taught that in school. And that must’ve been the only day you were there.
I think the most danergous is ignoramousism.
Capitalism responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people, decade after decade? I had no idea.
Come now Steve, you must see the bodies lining our streets, those in the last stages of toxic and warm air diseases. Are you blind? Don’t you see the corpses (or corps’s if you prefer) caused by the slow starvation of fatsos. And yet Obama and the cowboy poet Reid want to make peace with women by making priests and nuns pay for contraception/abortion insurance.
Why the idea. Obama and Reid should use our tax money to pay youngsters to fxxx without contraceptives, thus enabling the births of more tax-payers. How else can the librul society advance to the tune of Hopey-change? How can the aborted be tax-exploited by the Dreams of Somebody’s Father if they are no longer among the young workers?
Clever post. It’s good to laugh these days.
Hundreds of millions.
Sorry, you were correct.
Yes, of course if the Founders had only established a socialist/Marxist state instead of one based on capitalism and free enterprise, just think of the level of success America could have reached. Why, we might have become the richest, most powerful nation on earth.
Rush. Thanks for your early “contribution”. You saved me considerable time this morning by not having to scroll down very far to come across the most concise but least informed and absolutely dumbest comment of the day.
Right. Capitalism is the only economic system in history to lift masses out of poverty. Let’s trash it & replace it with Communism that has only killed 114 million people in the last 100 years.
The left is a logic-free zone
“Capitalism” is not the same thing as the free-market economies described by the classical economists. Adam Smith or David Ricardo never heard of a credit-default-swap and would’ve voted to make it illegal the minute they did. Only through the co-incidence of mid-19th Century economics and politics did the term “capitalism” and the fact of large-scale speculation emerge at the same moment. Investing is one thing; speculation (gambling) is another. Classically, gambling was considered non-productive econmic activity, as speculation is today (actually, speculation is often counter-productive, i.e., even worse than gambling). So, get your facts straight before riding off into battle. Investing/borrowing — good; bear-raids/fractional-reserve banking — bad.
Apparently your cheekbones weren’t high enough for Harvard.
The most dangerous thing about capitalism is that it rewards ability and industry instead of pedigree. In a free society, it doesn’t matter who your daddy is.
Is that really as true in the U.S. as you believe?
‘Compared with people in other rich countries, Americans tend to accept relatively high levels of income inequality because they believe they may move up over time. The evidence is that America does offer opportunity; but not nearly as much as its citizens believe.
Parental income is a better predictor of a child’s future in America than in much of Europe, implying that social mobility is less powerful. Different groups of Americans have different levels of opportunity. Those born to the middle class have about an equal chance of moving up or down the income ladder, according to the Economic Mobility Project. But those born to black middle-class families are much more likely than their white counterparts to fall in rank. The children of the rich and poor, meanwhile, are less mobile than the middle class’s. More than 40% of those Americans born in the bottom quintile remain stuck there as adults.’
http://www.economist.com/node/15908469
Would you care to elaborate on that assertion? What? Nothing to say? Thought so.
Rather than go on about “rush’s” obvious two left hands, I will simply state here that Mark Levin spelled it out perfectly in his book, “Ameritopia”. It is quickly becoming a handy reference to dispute the ideological unicorn-hunting national socialists. Our founding goes back, not just a couple of hundred years but is referenced by the ideological dreams of “great thinkers” of a couple thousand years ago and how their utopianism was as false then as it is now.
People haven’t changed all that much. There are those who say, “Leave me be, I can do this myself” and there are those who say, “Who will do this for me? I cannot”.
And there are people who are mixtures of the two. In an ideal situation leave the people to do for themselves as they must. Government should be there to protect the rights and natural laws that are the simplest part of mere existence (unalienable rights) but utopians want a central well from where all things come. Jobs, homes, property…oh wait, utopians don’t believe in the right to personal property….usually because they don’t have anything. But if they do, they want to keep what’s theirs while giving away that which is someone else’s.
There is so much wrong with the left, there is inadequate space here to discuss it but again, Levin does a superb job in doing so. How the founding fathers of this nation came to the logical, clear, brilliant solution is beyond me.
But, perhaps we have been too free. By that I mean people who have so much time on their hands they can lament about “the poor” and any other allegedly downtrodden or disrespected or put-upon person or group. Thus the moral decay that is liberalism. In this case, pronounced “everyone’s a victim” except white, Anglican heterosexual men.
Yes, there are good and great people in the world who do marvelous things and make the effort to help keep society chugging along but it is all-too-often crippled or defeated by some national-socialist(s) who didn’t get picked to play sports in gym class.
So to “rush” I say, “I won’t argue with an idiot. Passers by may not be able to tell the difference”. I have my point-of-view, you have yours. I think you are dead wrong and you think I am. We will never agree. So, I build my fence tall and strong so that I may be the best neighbor I know how to be. But you, you would tear down that fence, then criticize the view afterwards.
Such is liberalism/national-socialism in a nut’s hell. (see what I did there?)
I agree!The biggest problem in this nation is that we all think that freedom of speech only applies to our opinion. Anybody that disagrees is a racist, stupid, etc. And, I’ve seen from all the posts on these sites like this that hatred is the motivating factor behind most disagreements. As a Christian & conservative, I don’t approve of abortion, same sex marriage, nor do I approve of racism in any form. But, I also do not hate those who are for those things. Hatred will be what destroys this nation in the end. I see it coming on a daily basis, & unless we all decide that irregardless of differing view points, we’re all Americans & human beings, it’s going to totally wipe out this nation as we know it. Plus both sides of the media are going out of their way to fan the flames of it.
capitalism is the system that rewards those who serve others, the more service the more rewards. this system takes the “greed” that you despise and harnesses it for the service of others. in all those other systems rewards come through pleasing the government, and only through pleasing the government. why do you think that is better?
Excellent post. Right to the point.
capitalism is the system that rewards those who serve others, the more service the more rewards. this system takes the “greed” that you despise and harnesses it for the service of others. in all those other systems rewards come through pleasing the government, and only through pleasing the government. why do you think that is better?
Age old story indeed. I think of the president as Barabas Obama
LGoPs you hit the nail on the head with the isms.
There are only two types of people in this world: tyrants and freemen.
Tyrants are those who want freedom for themselves but not for others.
Freemen are those who want freedom for themselves and for others.
Since both groups want freedom for themselves, you can tell little about them when they cry “give me liberty or give me death”. You must first ask “Give you liberty to do what?” For most of history the answer has been “Give me the freedom to compel you to serve me.”
It’s only when you hear “Give me the freedom to be left alone to live my life as I see fit so long as I don’t impose my wishes on you” that you can tell you have found a fellow freeman.
The same is true in our country today. There are a whole lot of people out there crying for freedom (the right to health care, early retirement, a job, a home, a handout, free contraception), but most of it boils down to wanting the freedom to force others to serve them.
The only question that remains is how ruthless will this new elite be?
…No, the question that remains is: What do you intend to do about it?
The search for power argument, like the [evil] human nature argument is nonsensical and stands outside of history. I wrote something about that here: http://clarespark.com/2009/09/03/advice-for-the-lovelorn-with-thoughts-on-hero-worship/. Retitled Manifest Destiny and Liberty. Almost all my essays on the website go up against the notion that this world belongs to the Devil and earthly solutions for suffering are pointless. I also cannot believe that VDH agrees with his own statement in the article that relies on the human nature argument to counter what he calls “liberalism” but that I call statism of an ever more extreme variety.
Interesting. Clare, do you not consider the will to power as a factor in most of the slaughter and atrocity we have witness in the last 150 years or so?
I’m not 100% sure I understand you and I am not going to wade into the swamp of your blog, but if you do not understand the lust for power that exists in the hearts of some men you really do not understand life or history at all.
Approximately 6,000 people were executed under the Romanovs. . . . (That’s 300 years of Romanov rule!) Stalin was responsible for the deaths of upwards of 50 million. The left continues to ignore the facts.
Approximately 6,000 people were executed under the Romanovs. . . . (That’s 300 years of Romanov rule.) Stalin was responsible for the deaths of upwards of 50 million. The left continues to ignore the facts.
They say the devil’s greatest victory was in convincing so many people that he did not exist. Ditto Leftism’s lie that all the ‘isms’ are just variations on power-hungry political movements. But, wrong!!!!! Rightist regimes are authoritarian. Rightists abolish politics; Leftists politicize everything. Rightiosts operate on greed; Leftists on envy. No diff? Allow me — a Right-wing dictator may want a fleet of Mercs (paid for by your taxes). But a Left-wing dictator wants your own car, your own stuff. See the difference? At the margin, the Rightist is interested in preserving existing society, culture, religion, language, while the Leftist is trying to destroy the entire society. That’s why in Spain under Franco, the streets were safe to walk in the middle of the night anyhwere and nuns were not murdered. Under the Republicans, anyone might be arrested and executed for political incorrectness at any time, for any (or no) reason, and priests, nuns, and churches were under ceaseless assault. Sorry, by any normal standard, Spain in 1970 was a much better place than Spain today. That’s also why Rightist regimes do not conflict with normal human nature, as all societies are based on common ancestry and common language, religion, culture, and history/mythology. As the aim of every Leftist is to eradicate all of these things, the Leftist agenda is, in every single instance, contrary to human nature.
This would make a great five minute speech for Romney. But, I don’t think he has the cojones to give it, even if he gave credit to the good Dr. Hanson.
Socialism cannot work in just one country. For socialism to work the competitive spirit must be replaced by the cooperative spirit. The triumph of cooperation over competition can never occur as long as there are countries in the world that tollerate capitalism because capitalists always exploit the generosity of socialists.
Obama’s policy is to destroy capitalism in the US because the US is the last bastion of capitalism. If competitive capitalism can be destroyed in America it will be destroyed everywhere in the world.
Obama’s greatest enemy is the US military. Obama’s goal is to withdraw from all foreign entanglements so that he can simply eliminate the military. Internal peace can be kept by the Department of Homeland Security which is loyal to Obama personally. As a bonus, when the US military is eliminated Obama can use its weapons and budget to build up DHS.
Once America and all the other capitalist countries have gone socialist, and once the capitalists have been re-educated or neutralized (see: Pot Pol) then the whole world will be socialist, world peace will break out, everyone will live in peace and harmony. The state will whither away and love will rule the stars.
grey eagle,
are you, perchance, on a vision quest and have not eaten for a few days ?
If not that, whatever you are smoking is seriously bending the reality around you. . . .
And he’s not sharing whatever it is he’s smoking.
Sarcasm.
I thought he was being facetious with a heaping dose of sarcasm.
Coming from a prog, thats pretty rich. It’s you that has been drinking the kool-aid
If Bush were elected by voter fraud, you’d think he would have faked the election better than by having a never-before-seen 0.01% lead in one crucial state the required numerous recounts until the supreme court intervened and declared him the winner.
The supreme court was correct to do so. The lead in Florida at the time was so small, so much a matter of chance counting, that there was simply no practical way to know who REALLY won. So the supreme court did the one reasonable thing and decided Bush, who at least won the original count and the recounts by a very slim margin, is president.
Whether he was “really” elected is a real issue, but, it was even less likely that Gore was the “real” winner. There was no choice but to decide that he won, apart from doing something like holding a runoff election, which the Constitution of course has no provision for.
…except that the NY Times, WaPo, CNN, and such re-counted all of the ballots (access acquired under Florida’s FOIA) and when they were done, Bush had more votes in Florida than Gore. That little factoid doesn’t get mentioned because it spoils the mythology of the stolen election, which is an important tenent of the Democratic faith.
If the 10′s of thousands of “illegal” votes from the barrios, graveyards and the under the radar Acorn absentee ballots were discounted that year the margin would have been much greater in Bush’s favor. Not that that did us any favors. If the rino Bush II would have lost we might have been so horrified @ a Gore presidency obummer might not have been elected.
“The triumph of cooperation over competition can never occur as long as there are countries in the world that tollerate capitalism because capitalists always exploit the generosity of socialists.”
Quite the reverse, dim bulb. Socialism can only exist to the extent there is capitalism around to pay the bills. Germany “works” to the extent that it does because of Daimler-Benz, Siemens and all the other capitalist enterprises creating value to be ‘redistributed’ involuntarily in the name of fictional cooperation.
Are you seriously trying to claim Cuba wouldn’t be the impoverished basket case Castro has made of it were socialism universal?
Guys, guys…I’m 100% certain that grey eagle was being sarcastic. His comment parodizes every major talking point of the utopian socialist fantasy. Even his name (“grey eagle”) seems to be a parody of the “me Indian” fraud critiqued by VDH in the first part of the column.
If there’s anything to criticize in grey eagle’s parody, it’s that he didn’t go far enough to clue us in that it was sarcasm. He should have said something completely ridiculous, for example, that Obama’s re-election will be “the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless;…the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Then we would have known it was a joke.
Sincerely,
– JPL17, a/k/a “Flying Cloud”
But..but..it’s really hard to satirize the current situation! It takes a really major, totally irrational exaggeration, because the minor ones are already in Obama’s plan for his next term, and we all know it.
This was sarcasm…the comment about the “generosity” of socialists kind of gives it away….
Germany “works” because the board of directors of major German corporations contains as many “stakeholders” as it does “shareholders”. The Germans also didn’t buy into the “free trade with everyone” that the USA did. Germany’s health care costs are far lower than ours, leaving more money available for productive uses. Germany is also more “friendly” towards people wanting to start their own businesses than is the USA. Nor is Germany supporting a military that soaks up as much of their GNP as ours does with us. They do “welfare” better than we do, enjoy shorter working hours, and have less unemployment. Having tax supported educational systems through the Ph.D level for qualified students also means a better educated labor force than what have.
Nor does Germany have a common border with Mexico.
Germany has a large population of ‘guest workers’ from Turkey and other places. Very like Mexcian workers but they have to have their paperwork.
grey eagle, I think the word you are looking for is “submission”, not “cooperation”.
While I’m sure you are being sarcastic, there are those who will not realize this because of the many Marxists who would say things much like what you have, but with a straight face.
Wrong. Socialism is not generous. It rarely produces enough for its subjects to subsist on, let alone anything left to share with others. Further, how can anything that relies on theft of some peoples’ labor to “donate” to others be considered generous. Charity requires free choice to be charitable. Otherwise, it is just theft. For example, why is the US continually bailing out Europe via the IMF, etc., as well as providing for its military defense for the last 65 years? What has Europe done for the US lately?
This is obvious satire, and only satire, on grey eagle’s part.
That said, even obvious satire is missed by some people. I myself have been flamed on other sites by fellow conservatives and libertarians when I did not include the /sarcasm tag on what I thought was obvious satire of the left’s worldviews.
I never indulge in satire, as I am not a particularly funny person. Anyone who knows me face-to-face would say that the only way you could apply the word “funny” to me would be to add the word “-looking” right behind it.
I also am circumspect in the use of sarcasm, and carefully mark it as such.
That said, I find it difficult to use humor or sarcasm re progressives. First, because they are not particularly amusing; one might as well try to write a sitcom about Attila And Those Wacky Huns (even Monty Python had trouble with that one).
And second, because no matter what sort of off-the-wall, completely crazy thing you might say as a parody, you will find that a real progressive has at some point already said or done something even more insane- and done so while being absolutely dead serious about it. The “10:10″ campaign and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement being cases in point.
It’s nearly impossible to parody something that is, by any normal definition, bats**t f**king insane. Let alone somebody with the same problem.
Doubly so if they have political power. They tend to both react badly, and have the wherewithal to register their complaints in no uncertain- and often highly lethal- terms.
clear ether
eon
Give Ward Churchill his due: he worked at it—unlike Warren, who junked her supposed great, great, great grandparent once she got tenure and being “Indian” was a drag at Cambridge cocktail parties.
As far as I can tell, Ward Churchill has no Indian ancestry at all, which is why he had to work so hard at it. My mother was an Okie. Both her brothers married women who were 1/8 Indian. I find it entirely plausible that Elizabeth Warren, given her Oklahoma origins, is 1/32 Indian. The propriety of her possibly using her ancestry to advance her career is another issue.
Anyone who has taught in a university has come across the “Cherokee” con, especially given the Oklahoma diaspora in California.
You know better than I how this plays out in the university setting. It is entirely possible that some claim “Cherokee” ancestry when they do not have it. My reaction would be that an additional con arises when one tries to get something special out of the Indian ancestry, such as some affirmative action action. My California cousins are 1/16 Indian, from their Okie mother. Neither they nor their mother ever tried to get any government money or affirmative action action from their Indian ancestry. Their Indian ancestry is not a con.
Good points. Most old line Oklahoma white families have some degree of Indian ancestry. One note: If a person is tribally enrolled they are considered Indian no matter the degree of ancestry.
To get a Certificate of Degree of Indian Birth (CDIB) and thus be legally entitled to federal “Indian” benefits one must be one-quarter Indian OR be accepted by a federally recognized tribe as a member of that tribe; here there be much fraud. East of the Mississippi, the US either killed or pushed out all the Indians and named the rivers after them, so it is very difficult to sort out who has Indian ancestry. The Southern Indians other than some Seminoles were relocated, but they were already much interbred both with other tribal groups and with whites and even blacks. This was made even more complex by the fact that many Cherokee (they weren’t all Cherokee, but it fits as a label for most of the Southern Indians) owned black slaves, whose descendents have some claim to tribal membership.
Even in the West where many Indian populations remained more or less intact, the notion of a tribe as the organizational unit of Indian life is a white construct for groupings of independent clans. In Alaska only the Tlingit, Haida, and Tshimshian Indians of Southeast Alaska had anything like an over-arching tribal structure and even they were an assemblage of clans. The Interior Indians, the Yupik and Inupiat Eskimo had only a clan or village structure, and we don’t really know what the Aleut aboriginal structure was because by the time of US contact there had been a long interaction and much interbreeding with Russians; there’s a good argument that an Aleut is a Yupik Eskimo whose g/grandfather was a Russian fur trader, though the Aleut don’t much like that definition. I came to Alaska as “enrollment” of Alaska Natives under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was spinning up, and the race was on to find some Native heritage to try to get in on a billion bucks and ANCSA corporation shares. A standing joke in Alaska at that time was, “me no Filipino, me Tlingit,” as many people who’d been longstanding members of the Filipino community that came to Alaska with the fisheries suddenly discovered that somewhere back there was a Tlingit grandfather or grandmother. The same thing happened and is again happening in Hawaii as it became profitable to have Native Hawaiian heritage.
You are correct Art. I-Nu-It all along.
:)
You know better than I how this plays out in the university setting. It is entirely possible that some claim “Cherokee” ancestry when they do not have it.
I think the term we’re looking for is “cherohonkee”…
I’m 1/8th on both sides (great grandmothers on both sides – one Seminole, one Choctaw). So with 2/8ths does that make me a quarter? (snark) I’m about as white as you can get and have never brought it up.
I, Liberal
I’m sure that there could never be
A man as virtuous as me.
I’ve honed my precious self-esteem
In ways no common man could dream!
To feed my moral vanity,
I preen for all the world to see;
I thrust in everybody’s face
The noble causes I embrace.
And lest there be the slightest doubt
That I’m no bitter, clinging lout,
The bumper stickers on my Volt
Affirm that I’m no right-wing dolt.
As these credentials will attest,
I am the brightest and the best –
And true to my enlightened soul,
Utopia shall be my goal!
The planet should be mine to run;
I know what’s best for everyone.
My Nanny Squad will nag and scold,
Until the plebes do as they’re told.
My Social Justice Ministry
Will outlaw inequality –
With good intent unwavering,
I’ll redistribute everything!
I’ll be obscenely generous
With subsidy and stimulus;
To fund my drunken spending sprees,
The fat cats’ profits I will seize!
For those who fail, my heart will bleed,
But woe to those who dare succeed.
I vow to vanquish human greed –
To each according to his need!
There’ll be no want, there’ll be no war,
My Welfare Corps will feed the poor.
There’ll be no limit to my grace,
When I control the human race!
I’ll heal the Earth, I’ll low’r the Seas,
My Healthcare Force will smite disease –
And all will rightly worship me:
The Savior of Humanity!
Wow!
Bravo! Beautifully done.
Pulitzer!
Excellent! You and Buzzsawmonkey need to get together!
Winslow! Bravo! This isn’t your first poem – is it ? Nice.
I wake up each day with nothing to do
Shit man, is it a quarter to 2?
Turn on the tellie, watch Judge Judy
Thinking, my God, who can I sue?
I like my women with fat rolls and stringy hair
And complain all day life ain’t fair
So I rolled me a joint
Because life has no point
I have no job and I don’t care
I love Lenin, Stalin and Obama too
Public education turned me into a brainwashed fool
Forget Jesus Christ, I worship Karl Marx, he’s cool.
Ain’t he just another dead Jew?
Why should I be free
When I can be a ward of state
Gonna get me some food stamps
And buy me a big juicy steak
Though I am a vegan, and you should be too
I am a hypocrite, so what, screw you
I’m a liberal, that’s who I am
Trying to screw you the best I can
Don’t need to earn any money,
I’ve got yours to spend
Because I have got the Democratic Party
And the tax man
Got a $1000 tattoo on my neck,
Now can’t pay the rent
Won’t find a job
so I joined an Occupy mob,
And now blame the evil 1%
that I sleep in a tent
I practice unsafe sex and have unlimited abortions
Cuz those condoms and pills cost me a fortune
I am a feminist like Sandra Fluke
With a face that will make you puke
The Catholic Church should pay for my sex life
Or whip up Rush Limbaugh “war on women” media hype.
I feel bad for Trayvon Martin yo
That George Zimmerman, he looks like a White Latino
Ah, the liberal media, they do a good job
Have turned the press into a high tech lynch mob
And don’t forget MSNBC, CNN, and CBS
Playing the race card is what they do best
Illegal aliens invade the US everyday,
killing Americans every which way
Give amnesty to foreign criminals
Or be called a racist, at minimal
Better to be ruled by La Raza
Than a Gringo Founding Father
I’m a liberal, that’s who I am
Trying to screw you the best I can
Don’t need to earn any money,
I’ve got yours to spend
Because I have got the Democratic Party
And the tax man
Barack Obama ate my dog
Though liberals won’t let me eat hog
Too much fat and cholesteral
Obamacare mandates now rule us all.
Until the Supreme Court rules no way
You can’t force Americans to pay
Socialism is where its at,
taking orders from a corrupt bureaucrat
America is broke, that ain’t no joke
Better to leech off the state and break the bank
The public employee unions say, let them eat cake
I love black people, though they call me a cracker
We are white sheeple and Obama our master
Time will tell who will win the class war
I am a Marxist, hear me roar
I’m a liberal, that’s who I am
Trying to screw you the best I can
Don’t need to earn any money,
I’ve got yours to spend
Because I have got the Democratic Party
And the tax man
Dear Winslow, you freakin’ genius,
Please contact me at permanentnewbie@rocketmail.com. I want to discuss a proposition with you.
Yours and greatly impressed,
werewife
Hi werewife.
They are two separate poems written by two different people.
I am the person who wrote the second one.
Just so there is no confusion.
Yep. I suspected as much. Whoa !
Should be a Romney campaign ad!
You should hire a good voice actor to read that on youtube.
Publish a collection!
Awesome! THEY think we need subsidized cowboy poetry. I agree that this could be made into a YouTube video.
Excellent poem! We must set it to music.
Rap it baby, yo.
Now comes the bill! (Not to be rude,
But, Brother, we are truly screwed!)
As my much Maligned,DI would Say”Unfreaking Believable!! Carry On !
I’m convinced that nearly all politics today is identity politics.
We are warring tribes.
And that’s why the Left went after Clarence Thomas so hard. He left the tribe.
Heard that the new French President wants to “bring them together.” Fat chance. Just like Obama yesterday at OSU. He wants one America while we disagree with nearly everything he says or does.
Were it not for the awkward spelling all lawyers could claim Native American heritage. As members of the Sue Tribe. Darn those French and all their superfluous vowels. Sioux my butt.
P.S. I hear it on good authority that Ms. Warren carries a Nez Purse. It’s the latest fad and is going after the Gucci/Coach market.
According to Dennis Miller, Ms. Warren’s tribal name is Princess “Spreading Bull.”
Get your nose pierced and you become a member of the Nez Percé.
The section regarding the quite probable activities of Russia, China, North Korea, Argentina and pretty much everyone else with a neighbor they’re less than fond of is my nightmare. Mostly because Obama is the worst of all possible worlds as far as foreign policy goes – ignorant, arrogant, and thin-skinned.
He’d view any of the “just for the hell of it” actions as a personal insult, and he’d react badly. Fortunately, nukes are probably out.
You know we’re in a lot of trouble when I’m using “probably.”
What liberal experiment? We have shed 700,000 government workers and the deficit today is smaller than when Obama took office, while taxes are generally unchanged from their generational lows due to repeated extension of variants of the Bush/Obama tax cuts.
If something is failing, it sounds like conservatism.
Ahem.
By current figures, the projected 2012 fiscal deficit is $1.3 trillion.
This is not smaller than when Obama took office. Further, it is simply an insane amount of money; literally, beyond the realm of sanity, because there is no way this can possibly, piled on top of the rest of our debt, be paid back.
Half-white man speak with forked tongue.
A clean, tightly written piece from Hanson. I hope somebody with Romney – preferably a speechwriter – is familiar with Hanson’s work.
You don’t need to hammer Obama, FOX News-style. In fact, that would backfire with moderate voters. You simply – sadly – point out the reality and let gravity deal with “the temple of postmodern liberalism.”
As for the recent outbreak of Trolls, I can’t imagine these impotent dummies are being paid to plant these comments. They remind me of the Chinese Online Apparatchiks who often comment on Western sites and betray their stunning ignorance of both English and how free societies operate.
Although Romney should probably steer clear of the word “temple”…http://www.google.com/imgres?q=mormon+temple+salt+lake+city&hl=en&client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&biw=1267&bih=
700,000 civil service jobs? Really? Obviously those weren’t federal jobs. Still even if true, thats hardly enough. 7 million civil service jobs would be a good start to get the country back on its feet. Hate to bust your bubble sparky but you aren’t worth further borrowing or higher taxes.
The average number of federal employees remained pretty static from 1981 through 2008 at 1.07-1.2 million (down to 1.07 under Reagan, up to 1,2 million under Clinton). In 2010, however, the number of federal employees was 2.15 million, almost double the average. Now what happened in 2008? Hmmmmm.
It has dropped a bit to about 2.1 million but federal employee wages have increased 20-25% since 2006, while private sector wages have remained stagnant or have dropped.
The number of feds making over $100K in 2006 was 12%; in 2011 it was 22%.
Federal employees are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off.
So Chad, if you want to make the case that government is shrinking, I wish you the very best of luck.
I really really need someone to show me how Obama is trying to kill capitalism. What law has gone into effect or what policy has been proposed that anyone can point to and say “damn, he’s trying to kill capitalism?”
Nor do I see any evidence that Obama is, literally, a socialist. Again, please point out specific agenda items that are pure and utter socialism? The right makes up half the arguments it has without a care for facts. Remember Obama was going to take away guns? Odds are he’s never even uttered the word “guns” in the 3+ years he’s been there nor is it at all likely he’s going to do it in the second term.
And if socialism — if that’s what this is — isn’t working, then what do we say or conclude about the Bush years? Can any here agree with the statement that “The Republican policies of the 8 years of the George W. Bush administration were effective, good for the country, and worth doing again?” And if so, why?
Out of curiosity – what is the color of the sky in your world?
The sky remains quite blue. I remain still waiting for actual facts.
Socialized medicine = ACA.
There you go paid Soros troll.
That would be true had it been Obama who developed Medicare or Medicaid. I’m quite she he did not propose either one of them. If he’s “guilty” of anything it’s allowing the those who have next to nothing/nothing have what the rest of us have already. Next you’ll tell me that Obama was the brains behind Social Security. So go tell your parents that you prefer a country without Social Security, without Medicare, and without Medicaid. End result — YOU my friend will wind up mortgaging your (now semi-worthless thanks to Bush) house to pay your parents medical bills.
The health-care mandate is undeniable evidence of Obama’s socialism, for those who are too willfully blind to see anything else. The mandate is unquestionably unconstitutional, yet Obama argues, with a straight face, that because a “majority” enacted it (a lie, of course), it must be constitutional. We might as well pass a law requiring you to buy a Chevrolet Volt, and penalizing you if you buy anything else.
radiobill-
You are either not very smart or you haven’t been paying attention.
Socialism examples:
Nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or more commonly known as the secondary mortgage market.
Nationalized the student loan business.
Nationalized GM and AIG.
Obamacare is not exactly socialism, but the extent of the federal government’s reach into the healthcare industry as a whole and its mandate forcing US citizens to buy health insurance against their will or send an IRS agent after you is more akin to fascism, an emergence of corporate and state power, than it is socialism. It is statism all the same.
Qualitative easing.
Timothy Geithner’s stress tests.
$5 trillion deficits over a period of 3 1/2 years, more deficit spending than the first 41 Presidents combined.
If General Motors were nationalized the government would own 100% of it and it’s nowhere near there. And while the government will lose money in that part of the deal the amount of money saved by not having a few hundred thousand people on unemployment far outweighs that loss. I’m in Michigan — this state would have been obliterated. And by the way it was Bush’s idea.
Greed took this country down Winston. And by the way Bush inherited a huge surplus.
So we have a choice — go with Obama where things are improving, albeit slower than we’d like. Or go back to what got us into this ENORMOUS mess in the first place. How can you rationalize this?
It was Bush, not Obama, that was our leader during the housing meltdown, Wall Street meltdown, and trillion dollar wars. What, pray tell, has Obama done that is even remotely close to this? And in your world banks should all fail, wall street should fail, and the auto industry should fail. This is a solution? Obama inherited all this and had that choice. And he made the right choice because I shudder to think about the world you appear to admire.
Radio-
You liberals are ridiculous.
I gave you your evidence of socialism and all you do is make lousy excuses of “but but, Bush…”
Bush isn’t president, liberal.
And your Democratic Party had power over Congress when the economy collapsed.
The Democratic Party writes the laws.
Do you want to compare the Republican Congress of 94-2006 with the previous Democratic Congress and the one that came into power in 2006?
Because if you want to play that game, liberal, we can, and you will lose.
Just like we can compare the economic records of all the liberal run states in the union.
How is California doing, liberal?
No, and thank God Bush isn’t president anymore. Lord knows where we’d be now. But there’s no denying it ALL happened on his watch Winston. Bloody admit it. Obama’s trying to fix this mess of epic proportions. You don’t just fix this overnight especially without a fillibuster proof majority and especially with the Republicans in Congress who would say FU to absolutely any idea Obama has no matter what it is. And you know it.
On thing led to the present disaster – the Community Reinvestment Act – forced financial institutions to lower their lending standards
One could well argue that human nature led to the present disaster, but if there were one somewhat recent political act it would be the credit fuelled economic expansion begun by JFK, LBJ, and the “Humphrey-Hawkins Act”. Both Bush and Obama are helpless before the tsunami of debt that has now broken on our shores.
No politician had the stones to take away the punch bowl.
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” Von Mises
Radio-
Like a typical liberal, you can’t defend yourself with facts, so you rely on hubris and hysteria and spew propaganda that has no basis in reality.
Obama’s record(and the record of his Democratic Congress) speaks for itself, compared to Bush, Clinton, and every previous president and their Congresses before, he and the Democratic Party are failures.
You can blame Bush for all your failures in life, but that doesn’t take away from Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s actual record.
There is not one piece of legislation you can cite that reformed a piece of legislation passed under Bush and the GOP Congress that has qualitatively and quantitatively improved the position of the United States.
Put simply, he hasn’t fixed any mess.
Regardless, I think it is hilarious, but ever so typical of you ignorant liberals, is the fact that you think presidents have the power of imperial fiat when the truth is that we have a federal government with limited powers and that we have republican form of government, with an executive, legislative and judicial branch, and 50 sovereign states that make their own laws.
You might want to go re-read Article I of the US Constitution.
This notion of yours that Bush was King of the World and responsible for everything wrong here and abroad is sign that you are incredibly ignorant and don’t live on Planet Earth.
“Greed took this country down Winston.”
Especially those greedy unions and public “servants.” Envy played a roll as well, but we might as well add all 7 of the deadly sins.
It was Bush, not Obama, that was our leader during the housing meltdown
It was Barney Fwank getting kickbacks for his lover at Freddie that was the biggest obstructionist to reform. Sorry, Charley. Only a dimwit with an agenda still thinks Republicans are to blame for the meltdown.
1977: President Jimmy Carter (D) signs the Community
Reinvestment Act (CRA) guaranteeing home loans to low income families
1999: President Bill Clinton (D) puts the CRA on steroids,
pushing Fannie & Freddie to increase the # of sub-prime loans.
2003: White House calls Fannie & Freddie a systematic risk.
2003: Barney Frank (D-MA) says Fannie & Freddie are not in crisis.
He bashes Republicans for crying wolf and calls F & F financially sound.
2003: Democrats block the Republicans-sponsored regulations
legislation.
2005: Sen Schumer, (D-NY) says “I think Fannie & Freddie
over the years have done an incredible job.”
2006: Sen John McCrain (R-AZ) calls for reform. “For years I have been
concerned about the regulatory structure that governs F & F
and it needs to be reformed NOW.”
2007: Democrats again block reform legislation.
2008: Housing market collapses, Democrats blame the Republicans
What sparky and the rest of the progressive tools forget is who put The Full Faith and Credit of The United States behind all of those junk loans? Democrats. Who put in the requirement to lend to those who weren’t credit worth? Democrats. But that to them is an inconvenient truth that needs to be discarded.
Well said. Thank you.
How about you write me a check for the $40,000 in GM bonds that the feds stole from me to give to the UAW. Be a sport and put your money were your mouth is. I would have received a decent portion of my money back had GM been allowed to file a normal chapter 11 bankruptcy instead screwing the bond holders, shareholders and general creditors to pay off the unions.
“Obama’s trying to fix this mess…”
Really? He had the advantage of being at the helm while both houses of Congress were being run by the Democrats for the first two years of his term. Who on Wall St. responsible for the housing mess went to jail? What were the top priorities of the Obama administration for those first two years? Hints: Health care takeover & padding union fat cat pockets. But do feel free to provide your informed input. I can hardly wait.
Radiobill you are either willfully blind or purposely lying, but there is ONE thing you may be right about: When you say Obama isn’t a socialist, I assume you mean “socialist” in the accepted sense of being a Marxists. I’m not so sure Obama is a Marxist. It’s my observation that Obama’s thuggery is more closely aligned with the National Socialist Party of Hitler’s Germany than it is with Marxism. Hitler demonized capitalism in public but behind the scenes he harnessed industry to his own ends. He didn’t replace German CEOs with bureaucrats (one of the Soviets’ many fatal mistakes) but he made it clear to CEOs that they were now partners of the State, and it was to the State that they owed their allegiance, not the shareholder.
Obama’s alliance with GM’s Jeffrey Immelt and Warren Buffett are his way of neutralizing captains of industry. By cooperating with the Obama Administration GM got access not only to taxpayer subsidies but received tax dispensation. Obama’s refusal to approve the Keystone Pipeline project creates more business for Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owes almost a billion dollars in back taxes, so it’s not a stretch to suspect that Buffett may be trading his support of Obama for favored tax treatment.
I think in the end, Obama is fine with capitalism (despite his straw man invective) as long as capitalism does his bidding.
“I think in the end, Obama is fine with capitalism (despite his straw man invective) as long as capitalism does his bidding.”
Congratulations. You’ve just defined “syndicalist socialism” in a single sentence.
My respects.
cheers
eon
Nationalizing General Motors was one of the biggest blows imaginable to the capitalist philosophy that a company must succeed in the marketplace by its own efforts. GM was a badly run company. It deserved to go under. There is no nationalization in a capitalist economy.
Cap-and-trade would dragoon all American businesses into a totally concocted artificial market created by Government edict, and force businesses into that negative-sum game. (Fortunately, if the ObamaCare mandate is unconstitutional, then cap-and-trade certainly is unconstitutional.)
Obama has made it clear that he wants to put the fossil fuel industry effectively out of business. And replace it with totally unproven pie-in-the-sky “green” technologies which are being artificially propped up by government subsidies, because they’re uncompetitive in the marketplace. Even you have to admit that’s his goal.
In short, Obama and his nutcase environmentalist supporters are prepared to throttle America’s free economy if they think that’s the only way to Save The Planet ™ from global warming.
Right?
It was called a jobless recovery under President Bush because President Bush ended his first term with a net job loss of 13,000, in addition to unemployment being higher than the 4.2% unemployment rate he inherited when he became president.
Bush also turned a surplus that he inherited into a 10 trillion dollar debt, and left this country in an economic meltdown not seen since the Great Depression that the new President had to take over from. I don’t know who this author is trying to fool into us believing that Bush was nothing less than a failure as President for his handling of the economy.
Flights of fantasy about Bush being the cause of this rotten economy are simply part of the distractions, lies, demons and smears which utopian socialists must use to avoid discussions of the toxic effects of their utopian monster gov-meant policies that have failed worldwide…
the democrats took the purse in 2006 so go from there…
and the democrats had total absolute control for 2 years…they could have done wonderful things…but noooo, they socialized medicine behind closed doors (exempting the few of course) and never got to all those whines they have now…
heck, they can’t even be honest enough to do a budget…so we are not fooled by baloney blame0shifting…
voters sent 730 democrats home for a record in Nov 2010…it taught Obama nothing…maybe another 730 this November will.
It’s funny how you want to skip to 2006 when the Democrats won the House, and ignore that Republicans where in FULL CONTROL of the Presidency, the House, and the Senate from 2001-2006, which incorporates President Bush’s first term when he was able to pass what he wanted, and is therefore fully responsible for his record of economic failure from his first term through the end of his presidency.
After Bush’s first term, unemployment was higher, He had a net job loss of 13,000 which made him the first President since Hoover to have a net job loss as President, he exploded the deficits with his irresponsible tax cuts, and presided over an economic meltdown where we lost more than 700,000 jobs on average for a year before he left office. Facts may be inconvenient for you, but you or the author that wrote this article are fooling no one.
If Bush’s average annual deficit of 250 billion is an explosion, then Øbama’s average of almost 1250 billion must be a nuclear explosion! That’s what’s called an order of magnitude, dude.
Couldn’t agree more. The Repubs had all the control and look what they did. About the only things you tea partiers have to fall back on is that A) the economy hasn’t improved ENOUGH under Obama (and how much of that is the Republicans in Congress, they of 14% approval rating?) and B) Obama DID try and get health care for everyone. What an awful terrible idea — the thought of actually getting every American actual health care. There but for the grace of God go all of us.
How can anyone in their right mind think the Bush years were BETTER? How many institutions and corporations need to fail before you under stand that GREED rules the world and left to their own devices the ultra ultra rich and powerful will run roughshod on all of us. Even you tea partiers! They don’t give a crap about you or me. They don’t want regulations so they can do even more. They don’t want workers rights so they can do even more. They want to control our elections so they can control us even more than they already do. You may hate Obama and that’s your right but there’s NO WAY these ultra conservative politicians give a rats ass what happens to any of us. The banks, wall street, polluters, all of them can have their run of the house and it’s all of us that are left holding our……….
How about “the actual thought of getting every American actual” food. What is next – cars to get to the doctors?
radiobill-
You shameless revisionist history is astounding.
The Democratic Party had control of Congress when the economy collapsed.
The Congress writes the laws.
You might want to revisit your high school civics education when you get a chance, because you might learn that the president is not an emperor who rules by imperial fiat.
I agree. Why bother to feed the needy and miss out on all the fun of trying not to drive over dead bodies in the streets, dead from hunger. Definitely the Christian thing to do.
And yes, Winston, exactly when the economy collapsed the Dems had control but NOT fillibuster proof control! More than any other congress in the history of the country. So “control” is a very relative term, doofus.
And before that the Dems controlled Congress from ’95-’07 (and in ’07 it was tied). Same with the House. So maybe YOU should study your history a bit.
radio-
Here we go with the liberal hysteria and hubris once again.
But, but with the Republicans controlling the federal government, people will be starving in the streets.
Your hysteria is a joke.
The federal government doesn’t exist to feed you.
You act as if we don’t have a country of 50 states and thousands of counties and cities that take care of people locally.
You live in an intellectual vacuum with nothing but MSNBC propaganda to keep you warm at night.
What kind of uneducated person actually believes that unless the federal government doesn’t feed people that people will starve.
You certainly live in an alternative universe.
How many corporations failed? Oh, wait, you mean the government is supposed to use tax payer dollars to bail them out rather than let them fail because of greed. Oh, wait again, they only get bailed out if they workers in unions that are in good standing with the Democrat Party.
Can I honestly things are better under the Bush Administration? Are you serious? Absolutely it was, and Bush was a horrible, liberal, globalist that you yokels try to paint as some paragon of Federalist policy. The double talking boloney that comes forth from your keyboards is astounding to witness. $3 gas prices under Bush were disastrous. Under Obama, “chirp… chirp” “Gas prices, what?” say the media. Just one stimulus, that has done no stimulating, was greater than the sum of war debt for both conflicts. At least National Defense is the constitutional responsibility of the Federal Government, whether you agree with the war or not.
Bush was a bad President, but viewed next to Obama he’s like a saint.
Radiobill: “Why bother to feed the needy and miss out on all the fun of trying not to drive over dead bodies in the streets, dead from hunger. Definitely the Christian thing to do.”
My. The only large numbers of dead bodies in the streets any of us have seen (when the leftist TV censors allow us to see the footage) are those who died from smoke inhalation, fire and impact with concrete after a plot hatched under “had bin Laden in the crosshairs but didn’t have the balls to take him out Democratic President Clinton, whose WH attorney Gorelick also thought it a cool idea to put up a firewall between CIA and FBI intel-sharing, was carried out just seven or eight months into the Bush Presidency.
Besides, you hate Christians and everything they do. I’d suggest you cast a spell to make the world better but something tells me you prefer the dark arts. Your persona and ideology are just about negative control wrapped in faux humanitarianism.
Why does no one here point to the enormous potential economic implosion set off by 9-11 with which Bush and his Congress had to contend by “working with” and yielding to the Democrats and their even greater spending way to get bi-partisan support in the WOT? Yes, the Republicans have been pretty big spenders for too long, but the Democrats need to have their credit cards cut up and hands slapped out of others’ pockets.
Who to believe? You or my lying eyes. By the way sparky, when did Bush have 60 republican seats in the senate and 50+ seats majority in the house?
Why don’t you come to Canada (where I am) and give national health care a test run? I can guarantee that you, who are used to getting in to see a doctor and having any tests required done within a short timeframe, would be running and screaming all the way back to the U.S. to get your old health care program back again.
People who say universal health care is swell really haven’t tried it.
If you like long waits for appointments and tests and treatments (sometimes up to two years), you’ll love socialized health care. And the rationing of care for old people is a real plus.
Unlike some other conservatives here, I do NOT make excuses for Bush, and I do NOT think Bush did a good job with the economy.
Evidently some other conservatives here still feel it necessary to leap reflexively to Bush’s defense, every time the Dems try to change the subject away from Obama by mentioning Bush.
And it works every time–we stop talking about Obama’s track record and start talking about Bush’s record, falling into the Dems’ trap of deflecting attention away from Obama’s track record. It’s a sure-fire trick the Dems have to avoid having to dwell on Obama’s track record. And they play many of my fellow conservatives like the proverbial fiddle.
Doesn’t work with me though. You can mention “Bush….Bush….Bush” all you want, but I’m not going to be baited by you. I’m going to keep talking about OBAMA’S TRACK RECORD.
Remember that we don’t have a parliamentary system in the U.S. We do NOT elect parties to the Executive Branch, we elect CANDIDATES. It’s not Dems vs. Repubs. It’s not even Obama vs. Bush. It’s Obama vs. Romney.
All else is irrelevant, and I’m not going to be baited by the likes of you into talking about Bush, or Nixon, or Herbert Hoover. NOT INTERESTED.
Obama has done far worse than he himself PROMISED to do. He himself said back in 2009 that if things hadn’t gotten better by 2012, then he might well end up a one-term president.
That’s one promise we’ll make sure he keeps.
Yes its funny how much better it was when there was a republican senate and how much worse it got when there wasnt.
And how bone harrowing awful it became with a democrat president , senate and house or representatives.
Now we have a democrat president and half of the two houses of congress are in solid socialist hands, with only the house of representatives pushing back for the American people.
Winston Smith – you wrote “The Democratic Party had control of Congress when the economy collapsed. The Congress writes the laws….”
The housing bubble began deflating in August 2006 which was BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS WON CONTROL in November 2006.
You also wrote “You might want to revisit your high school civics education when you get a chance, because you might learn that the president is not an emperor who rules by imperial fiat.”
You might want to revisit civics class yourself, because you might learn that a president can veto any legislation he doesn’t like.
Now, I want you to name ONE PIECE OF LEGISLATION that the Democrats wrote and passed in 2007/2008 that Bush could not have use his veto. I bet you can’t.
What he said.
And no, the federal government does not exist to feed people Winston, but the federal government in the greatest land in the world is obligated to assist those in need because the alternative — hundreds of thousands of people homeless, hungry, destitute, desperate, and eventually violent in many cases — is not acceptable. This isn’t Cuba. Not everyone can have the life you have, no matter how poor it is. And I’m the last person to quote religion but I can’t for the life of me figure out how god fearing religious republicans can be so in favor of a “let ‘em die” “let ‘em starve” position.
radio-
I feel sorry for you, because you live a life that has no relationship to reality.
You live in this world that unless you have an overbearing Federal government Nanny State micromanaging people’s lives, people will starve in the streets.
How absurd are you?
Do you know how many churches, synagogues, mosques, Buddhist and Sikh Temples, secular non-profit organizations, as well as state and local governments, give to poor people outside the purview of the federal government every year?
Americans are a extremely generous people and this notion of yours that unless the federal government is feeding people, poor people will starve in the streets is so ridiculous that it shocking to me that somebody as ignorant and deluded as you would even dare to make the accusation.
You really must live in an area of the United States where people are truly evil and do nothing for each other.
It is really sad when I think about the existence you must live.
You might want to move to different parts of the country where people are not as evil and selfish as you and your liberal neighbors and experience the goodness of the American people.
You need to educate yourself. There is no real poverty in America. Read the Heritage Foundation’s report on poverty in the U.S. “Poor” people in our country have all the modern appliances in their kitchens; they have cars; they have air-conditioning; they have flat-screen TVs, i-pods, i-pads, cell phones, $200 a pair Nike shoes, and the list goes on and on.
The current financial mess we’re in was put in motion by Carter when he signed The Community Reinvestment Act in the late 70s. This act forced banks and lending institutions to give loans to minorities without them having to meet any of the standard requirements for a loan, such as having a job. They were not required to prove that they could actually repay the loan. Read Thomas Sowell’s book, “The Housing Boom and Bust” and get the real story.
By the way, George W. Bush tried five times to get legislation passed to fix the problem created by the CRA, but was shot down by Congress, particularly by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Wise up.
YOU my friend will wind up mortgaging your (now semi-worthless thanks to Bush) house
The housing bubble was *created* by Democrat policies, most especially the revised lending rules promulgated by Andrew Cuomo under Clinton, and the runaway recklessness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the Bush admin tried on 18 separate occasions to rein in but was thwarted by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd- the same ones who created the business-smothering finance bill which leaves the GECs unregulated.
Sorry, dimbulb: the financial crash of ’08 was NOT the “failure of capitalism” you masturbate to, but the direct result of government meddling in the markets. The Bush era was marked by a very solid economy up until the crash, which Bush had nothing to do with: he happened to be in office when the time bomb the Democrats planted went off.
Yep, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. May their names go down in infamy.
You have one point: Bush should have proposed a repeal of the various acts put in place by democrats that lead to the disaster along with clearly stating the US Government would not guarantee the freddie and fannie paper. Hopefully President Romney won’t make that mistake and instead clearly states the federal government will not guarantee state and local bonds or their respective pension funds. That will end the liberal excesses.
Look also at the worst basket cases at the state and local level. Almost all are/were long-term Democrat states/cities. Spend. Tax. Businesses leave. No jobs. Poverty. Hand out free stuff to get popular. Tax. More people leave… Rinse and repeat. Not a great model for success. Only willfully blind people cannot notice the relationship between liberal policies and terrible outcomes. Pretty soon the federal government will have to bail out California. Hang on to your wallet. Yes, YOUR wallet.
Bush also turned a surplus
That’s a lie. The CBO in January, 2001, made a projection using the growth of the prior decade of $5.6 trillion dollar surplus. It was a projection based on the tech growth before the bust. The so called surpuls never existed to begin with.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704738404575347302831199046.html
“Bush also turned a surplus that he inherited into a 10 trillion dollar debt, ”
Um, huh?
Are you seriously pretending there was no federal debt when Bush took office?
PS: the federal debt increased every year of the Clinton Presidency.
I believe he is conflating ‘budget deficit’ with ‘debt’. That is the only explanation for such an outrageous statement. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that he read it on some list of lefty talking points and just repeated it here without stopping to think about it for more than a few seconds. It is obviously a totally false claim. The federal debt when Clinton left office was well over $5 trillion.
The so-called surplus came from 2 years of capital gains taxes derived from a bull market. By the time Bush came in to office the country was already suffering from a stock market crash and a recession. Then came a one day hit to the economy of a trillion dollars on 9/11. You are entitled to your opinions but not your facts. We would be dancing in the streets right now if the unemployment and growth rates today were those of the worst day of the Bush Administration.
Bush borrowing = deficit. Obama borrowing = stimulous. Got it. Considering the average unemployment rate and labor force participation versus Obama’s it is obvious you got backwards.
The personal pain of secular socialist utopian’s toxic policies will trump the daily bold lies.
Gas up 100.6%.
Food Stamps up 35.1%.
Jobless up 146.2%.
People in poverty up 9.5%
Jobless blacks up 25.4%
National debt up 34.4%
His books told America what he would do…
the clueless one that lowered the qualification bar as low as Klinton’s moral bar.
J. Carter Obama, as I posted July 29th, is TOAST…
this arrogant apostle of utopian socialism is what he is…not bright at all…
socialism has failed for decades all over the globe but the dimwitted dems rammed it down our throats…
He ignores all Economic Laws and history…that is simply dumb..
the voters sent 730 dimdems home 2 years ago and will do the same this time.
The pain is personal.
The pawn media will change his diapers daily but it will not be enough.
Doug, I am not as sanguine as you — re: the “he is toast” comment.
By popular vote, maybe, but there is the electoral vote map, state by state, and based on what I’ve read so far, it is not a slam dunk. I think there are too many people out there who will still vote for this guy, just because he is a Democrat.
Frank – The Electoral map may tell the story. If we have 4 more years of this phony, socialistic narcissist the Republic is over.
Frankly, Either massive voter fraud gets him elected or there will be a ‘wag-the-dog” civil unrest that allows the Progs their Kristallnacht.
But remember, it is all “for the children”.
You mean like the massive voter fraud that got Bush elected?
Man you are one paranoid guy that’s for sure.
Hey look – It’s Vivo with a new name! Must be some sort of election coming….
You are confused. The massive fraud occurred in LA, St Louis, Philadelphia and Chicago. Not exactly republican areas. And what about the massive credit card fraud Obama pulled off in 2008 when they refused to verify the credit cards as coming from within the US?
You, radiobill, are one truly brainwashed lefty idiot guy.
TROLL ALERT!!! Cleanup on Isle 5…Get Real Radiohead…Liberal=IDIOT
whether friends, neighbors, members of my congregation including the rabbi, along with casual acquaintances, and fellow townspeople, will vote for Obama again, no matter what, come November, convinced he is the One and Only.
I know many people who voted for Obama last time who definitely WILL NOT vote for him again. I do not know anyone who did not vote for him, who will time?
Bull. Then how come the percentages he’s getting in nationwide polls are extremely close (some slightly higher some slightly lower) to what he got in 2008? Anyone who voted for Obama but is a bit dismayed is NOT going to vote Romney because of that. Are you kidding? I might not be thrilled with how everything’s turned out but Romney will be a horrible President. He stands for nothing — how do you have any idea what he even believes in. It’ll be complete chaos. The country will be run like a business led by someone who has had every opinion possible about every big issue we face. Sounds wonderful. You should’ve just nominated Ted Nugent.
No, Romney should do about as well as Obama, maybe better.
VDH is articulate, but one-sided. He may or may not know that he could write a well-knit essay, similarly decrying and mocking the man he wrote a few speeches for…GWB.
Both sides are quite convincing that the other one has screwed up…because it always has. It may now be Romney’s turn to screw up. He at least has SOME motivation to slowth the growth of government, whereas Obama’s base provides none.
While we are bloviating, let me note that a significanct difference between Carter and Obama is that Obama inherited being a war-time President, so could just kind of go along with military efforts already in place, whereas Carter was the culmination of the anti-Vietnam retreat from the military. Obama would be of a mind-set today to engage in certain military actions which Carter would have agonized over, not so much because of differences between them, but because of differences in the circumstances they inherited. Reagan would just have invaded some country with an army of 12, and our country would have felt better about itself…which turns out to be important.
“VDH is articulate, but one-sided. He may or may not know that he could write a well-knit essay, similarly decrying and mocking the man he wrote a few speeches for…GWB”
No D-White, being principled would get in the way.
But! But! Is he clean?
D-White, you could write a loose knit mockless essay possibly supporting Solomon, maybe “similarly” somewhat going through with it. Or maybe, but just maybe, but, you “may or may not know” that you are the re-incarnation of Pilate.
D-White, Purveyor Grayness, the Institution of All that is Relative, “may or may not know” that outcomes are determined by causes, and that human action does factor in in those outcomes, and choices are mandatory in life, because one must choose to live or die, and that life and death are built upon choosing… forks in the road.
Forks which D-White will reflexively sit on and gladly wait it out, while others move into the future, controlling their own destinies. D-White can then bring up the rear, all the while not knowing why those people could ever think like that.
When the Pick It Fence But is not available a Fork will do. Sitting on that? Will that fit in with the Ping Pong Tongue?
Don’t “screw up”.
You better stop, look around
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes.
No,actually they won’t. “the awakening” will have reached critical mass by election day.Put your ear to the ground.
great article. ALso might add if Obama is re-elected he;ll appoint more liberals to the SCOTUS thereby changing the course of the country for decades and making the COnstitution just the piece of paper the liberals want.
You bet he will — therefore lets’ hope he wins. I swear some of you would have been much better off being born in 1750. The opposite, of course, means that Romney will do the opposite and put people on the Supreme Court that will strip such things as civil rights, privacy, voting rights, and more. And just how are these things not shredding the constitution my friend?
THe Constitution is the guiding principles of our land that have done pretty well. I wouldn’t trust the country with the decisions of the liberal left or well end uange it.p like Greece. There are ways to ch
Very eloquent. Your third grade teacher must be extremely proud.
Flash for you, lefty punk: lefty and intelligent are not synonyms no matter what your teachers/programmers told you. I hope nobody is paying you more than minimum wage as you sit spouting Democrap propaganda like a Talkingpoint-O-Matic. Fortunately, many of you braindead lefty children are being mugged by reality as you learn that your worthless degrees are, indeed, worthless. The only place you can get a job that suits your lofty expectations is in government, and, you know what punk, you’re not lucky because all the Blue states and the US government are broke, and we in the Red states that still have a little money aren’t stupid, so we won’t hire you “educated” little lefty punks. Sucks to be you!
i think many of the lefty trolls on pjmedia are the cream of the brainaddled lefty crop
i believe many of them are professors and academics “fighting the good fight” until it’s time to sniff their farts in the lounge in an hour or so
The lefty trolls certainly come out like flies to Dr. Hanson’s pieces. Perhaps they are mostly academics who pounce on Dr. Hanson because he has the audacity to leave the lefty academic plantation. In any event, they’re still all the same stupid lefties spouting the same stupid lefty cant; predictable as sunrise.
You know, Bill – (can I call you Bill?), you were born about a century too late and a few thousand miles westerly of your true home. But for that, you’d be singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” at the top of your lungs in a local biergarten.
Yup. Either the singer, or the closing image.
Well liberalism is alive and well in France. THe new president -elect wants to impose a tax rate of 75 per cent on income above €1m and many wealthy French are planning on move out of the country. Got love liberals. They never learn.
Wealthy French have been making plans to leave France, a few to the UK but many to Quebec, in anticipation of this outcome.
If Obama is re-elected, the left will see tax revenue from the top 10% of earners dry up. Many of us have been planning for some time how to take as little as possible in income to avoid the tax increase an unrestrained Obama will pursue.
Interesting Zuckerberg decided to take his company public this year. Do you think it has anything to do with capital gains taxes going up next year if Mr. O stays in Washington?
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”—Thomas Jefferson
18. Rocket Surgeon
“If Obama is re-elected, the left will see tax revenue from the top 10% of earners dry up. Many of us have been planning for some time how to take as little as possible in income to avoid the tax increase an unrestrained Obama will pursue.”
——————-
You are late to the party. Some of us went mostly Galt in 2007 when it became evident that Obama would be elected. I lowered my business activity and income by about 75%. The new simple life is most rewarding. Living in a tiny town is much nicer than a big city. My BIL moved out of the country entirely. I’ll join him if things get worse, freedom-wise.
There is a quiet revolution happening that is going to whack tax revenues. We are starving the beast. Tax increases don’t matter if you don’t make enough money to be in the high tax bracket. One must have already ammassed other assets if one is to live well under these conditions of course. Some of us Boomers going to skate, but almost all young people are in real trouble.
What is amazing is that some still think there is some way out of this fiscal situation without long-lasting massive pain for most Americans. There is not.
Austerity is coming, either by agreement or force. Republicans and Democrats are in agreement to allow the fiscal collapse. Ignore their words and watch their actions and inactions.
Assuming they don’t tax assets, of course.
Simply put, I cannot believe I am witnessing the destruction of this great country before my very eyes, in not-so-slow-motion real time. This is the stuff historical nightmares are made of.
Whenever I think this is only a fluke, I think of the ignorant, misguided minions who elect this scum to office, and who continue to defend them in the face of massive failure on every front. And then I see how entrenched the enemy’s stronghold is.
God have mercy.
Couldn’t agree more — who doesn’t yearn for years and years of Bush and Cheney? Ah the good old days — turning a surplus into a deficit, lying about weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib, Iraq, tax cuts for everyone while fighting wars, Jack Abramhoff, Halliburton, Hurricane Katrina, and on and on and on. And, oh, 9-11 DID happen while he was leading this great country. So what is it you yearn for so much?
I agree with you completely. So does John Corzine.
GUFFAW! Chris Christie got the laugh of the night recently when he invoked the name of Corzine…http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/305842-1
RB, your teachers must be so proud – you’ve absorbed every little bit of liberal groupthink you could.
“… Romney will do the opposite and put people on the Supreme Court that will strip such things as civil rights, privacy, voting rights, and more. And just how are these things not shredding the constitution my friend?”
Evidence? Sorry, forgot – Obama supporters don’t require evidence.
“Ah the good old days — turning a surplus into a deficit (debunked over and over), lying about weapons of mass destruction (not true, unless being in error = lying, which would make being a liberal = lying), Abu Ghraib (So Bush ordered that?), Iraq (Bush caused Iraq to exist? never suspected he had that power!), tax cuts for everyone while fighting wars, Jack Abramhoff (Aha – so Bush was hi partner in that?), Halliburton (a company no one had ever heard of until Cheney became VP), Hurricane Katrina (GWB and his evil weather machine – scary!), and on and on and on. And, oh, 9-11 DID happen (after Clinton fell asleep on the job) while he was leading this great country.”
“So what is it you yearn for so much?” Obama out of office, and a start on repealing legislation going back to the ’30′s. Barry O the Very Slow didn’t start this train wreck, but he’s doing his best to accelerate it.
It is not the destruction of the country. It is the end of the FDR\LBJ brand of communism in the U.S.A. Richard Trumka and his union thugs are doing their best to keep the Bluestate model alive even tho it’s already dead & stinkin (see Wisconsin). The Bluestate model needs burying at the crossroads with a wooden stake thru its heart, the way they buried self-murderers in the old days. The U.S.A’s true-blue liberals are a sho’nuff delusional pack of sick-sick puppies.
Its fun watching dinosaurs rail against the coming asteroid…
One major problem with ideology is that in a contest with reality, reality always wins in the end. The reality is that you evolve or die. The old order is dying. Call it what you want, but be sure to consult your physician about the dosages you’re taking.
“Farrakhan was not born Farrakhan (yet just try to be a cool black racist as the Caribbean Louie Wolcott, aka Calypso Gene)”
-aka “The Charmer”; recordings available online:)
Some very simple principles:
1) A dollar earned by a person or a business is better left in the hands of that person or business than it is taken, having a portion of it wasted, and then the rest wasted upon a person or business who did not earn it.
2) All government spending is harmful. Government spending does not add to GDP – it is at best neutral, and more frequently detracts from GDP. The reason is that the cost of acquiring the money (taxes, borrowing, printing) outweigh the “benefits” of spending the money.
3) With rare exceptions, the government cannot “invest”, it can only spend and waste money.
4) The more you tax something (hiring and risk taking) the less you get of it.
5) However, the root cause of our problems are neither fiscal, nor monetary in nature. The root cause is that we have pursued a set of policies that have systematically left our workers ill prepared to deal with global competition. The really big mistakes that we have made are:
a) The minimum wage which prices too many, especially young people out of the labor market.
b) Government employee unions which have the effect of letting government employees pick their own bosses who compete to give them better raises at our expense.
c) Tenure all all levels of the education system, which has the effect of protecting the incompetent in our most important profession
d) Subsidies for higher education (grants and cheap student loans), which have the effect of causing universities to raise prices
e) A refusal to let market forces work in our health care system, so as to let them impose price discipline upon health care providers in the same manner that the free market imposes price discipline upon everyone else.
f) Subsidies for green energy (starting with corn based ethanol) that drive up the cost of food and energy for everyone.
Imagine an America where health care, education, food, and energy prices were not constantly overwhelming any increase in compensation that anyone managed to eke out. Imagine an America where teachers at all levels were held accountable for the performance of their students, just as any manager is held accountable for the performance of his or her employees.
Dr. Hansen,
You forgot to mention that a 1/32 Cherokee is a definate member of a Minority and clearly due to her high cheekbones NOT White, but a 1/2 Mestiza is a White Man plain and simple in this current administration’s viewpoint as well.
The most telling of this article at the end….”growing affluence and leisure of the West….” We have come here because this is what we are willing to have for our “conveniences”, which we are coming to see are not convenient at all.
The other day I baked a blueberry and tuna fish pie. Everyone who tasted it thought it was horrible. I guess they don’t like blueberries.
The other day the financial sector collapsed because it over-invested in securitized subprime mortgages. To enable the poor to own homes, the federal government created the subprime mortgage market by pumping banks full of liquidity, relaxing lending standards, and guaranteeing subprime mortgages. I guess capitalism doesn’t work, which means we need to give the federal government more control over the economy.
Most of America’s elites would reject the first conclusion as nonsense while endorsing the second conclusion as Absolute Truth. But they’re the same kind of nonsense – non sequiturs. This doesn’t stop our elites from claiming that capitalism doesn’t work, though, just as it doesn’t stop them latching onto any ethnic bling they can to demonstrate their inate moral superiority. We allow these people to rule us at our own risk.
Holy blueberry pie! I’m using that anology in the future. It’s not that they think Capitalism doesn’t work. They know it does, or they wouldn’t have to work so hard at subverting it. Capitalism just doesn’t give them enough control.
I don’t know the whole answer, but I’m pretty sure that in the Southeast the “part Cherokee” thing is a long-standing meme among the rural working class and their ancestors. It’s associated with being descended from hardy, Scotch-Irish frontiersmen rather than uppity English plantation owners. The farther back in the mountains you go, the stronger it gets. And there’s probably some truth to it. Before they got relocated, many Cherokee were living a mostly European rather than native lifestyle, owning farms and businesses, living in towns alongside white people, often as prosperous and respected members of the community. Mixed marriages were probably not unheard of – though not between handsome pioneers and beautiful Indian princesses. Just between folks.
It’s strange that the Cherokees got sent to reservations even though many of them were already “civilized,” while the plains Indians got sent to reservations in order to be made “civilized.” That is, the Cherokees already were what the government wanted to force the plains tribes to be. In the end, it wasn’t about culture – it was about land.
The Cherokee and other Southern Indians who were relocated weren’t sent to reservations as such; they were sent to the “Indian Territory,” which later became, mostly, Oklahoma. It was run as a territory with towns, governments, etc. Interestingly, the Indian Territory “seceded” from the US and allied with the Confederacy. My step-daughter’s 8th Grade History teacher assigned the class to write papers on “a famous American,” but the person couldn’t be a white male. So, I helped her do the research to write her paper on Bg. Gen. Stand Watie, a full-blooded Cherokee who was a wealthy plantation owner complete with slaves in the Indian Territory and when he finally surrendered, his Cherokee Brigade was the last Confederate field unit to surrender to the US. The teacher was apoplectic! Her first reaction was that it was made up because it didn’t fit her programming. Lefty teachers have to be among the stupidest of lefties, probably only second to the “Studies” majors.
When I was 7 days old, I was adopted and raised by WASPs. That’s my heritage, and it doesn’t come by blood, about which mine I know only a type that I share with around 30% of humanity. So while I can understand that a very Scottish looking woman can derive some ethnic frisson from a picture of a Cherokee on her aunt Bee’s wall, I can also understand that the Red Cross doesn’t collect your identity along with your blood donation. I’m not discounting the sense of belonging that looking, acting and thinking like your kith and kin bestows; I’m only telling you that there are other roads to finding (or not finding) your identity, most of which are internal, and if you’re honest with yourself, ruthlessly exacting. Thank God the federal government has no authority to regulate that.
Why is it ALWAYS “Cherokee”?
I asked that question once. Other than the Apache, they are the most famous. They have songs about the trail of tears and stuff. I knew a guy once in the Navy with a fiercely German last name, who was as Caucasoid as they come who told me he was 1/4 Cherokee. You are right, it’s always Cherokee.
Because its so? Joe Louis comes to mind. You knew he had Cherokee ancestor’s didn’t you? Probably white as well.
All we know about our family history is what our parents grand parents and great grandparents will own up to.
Universal DNA testing might surprise a lot of people. It may well have surprised Mr Gingrich and Mr Obama to find out they were related.
Yeah, nobody ever claims to be 1/32 Chickasaw. Not sexy enough.
Among the tribes here in the west there is an inside joke that I have heard repeated many times: What do you get when you have 100 Cherokees together?
Answer: One full-blooded Indian.
The reason it’s always Cherokee is because they will accept anyone into the tribe with ANY amount of Cherokee blood no mater how minimal. It makes it a joke. I kid you not, I once saw a tribal card that said 1/132 Cherokee. But the sad part is, by being a card carrying member of a tribe, even at that minute amount, the person is allowed full access to the indian health centers and all of their medical, dental, and other similar benefits. The benefits are one of the reasons everyone wants a card. That and because at this time in our once great country, it is now “cool” to be anything where you can say “your people” were/are “oppressed”. And then getting reparations for it, medical benefits, is the icing on the cake.
I, unfortunately, had a full blood grandfather, and do have that look, those “high cheekbones”. I am ambushed constantly by stupid people asking stupid questions and constantly telling me they too are Cherokee (just like everybody else, rolleyes). They always ask what nationality I am, and I proudly tell them I am an AMERICAN! They wont shut up and go away though. One time it was a woman with pure lilly white skin, hair so blonde it was almost white, and crystal blue eyes, but sure enough, she too is “Cherokee”! Gack! It is a curse.
I took my son to the indian clinic when I had no insurance when he was little. I told them I thought it was stupid that people like me, born and raised like any other American, should get special benefits. Needless to say it did not go over well. I hated having to use it, but I was in a bad way financially at the time, and as any parent knows, you do what you have to when it’s your kids.
Spelling error, “mater” should be “matter”. If there are others I apologize.
About the card I saw. I stand corrected. As if it weren’t ludicrous enough already, I have been reminded it was 1/256, not 1/132 as I wrote previously. Full indian health clinic benefits. But the person was a darned proud (and assumed to be “oppressed”) indian.
That is why it’s always “Cherokee”.
Trust me, I was asking a rhetorical question. I lived/worked near or on Indian Reservations for many years, and I’ve seen how the game is played! (I’m not Native, myself).
People claim Cherokee because they can. The wannabes don’t get the same level of accommodation from the Navajos, Apaches, Hopis, and Papagos (the tribes in my corner of America). Claiming to be one of those tribes without documentation will get you laughed to the edge of the Rez.
“Trust me, I was asking a rhetorical question.”
Ah, sorry missed that.
When my dad was growing up, and even when I was young, they were all dirty rotten, no good, whiskey drinking, lazy indians. Then when he was in OK, being 1/2, he was considered one of those no good, evil, lying white boys.
DNA tags. That reminds me of the character of Vincent in Gattaca lamenting his situation through narration. “I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.”
Liberals need an underclass. If its determined through DNA and not by previous third world status, so be it for them, just so long as they have someone to lord over. They are empty without that.
Also, it’s not that Americans forget every 30 years, it’s that a whole new generation of voters, raised post-Carter, have been churned out by our left leaning public school system. A person born in the mid to late 80s has no idea about Reagan and how the 80s differed so drastically from the 70s. To them Jimmy Carter may as well have been ancient history (I wish he was).
The corollary of the Will to Power is the Will to Submit.
VDH, there is nothing liberal about small c communism.
In the past several days, Atlas Shrugged yet again. Putin is being sworn in as President in a deeply divided Russia, where leftists who never learn, yearn for a little more KGB…and those who have learned, the hard way, yearn to be free.
France, joined the PIIGS in the Orwellian stockyard. Or, maybe…the PIIGS just got “acronym F’d”….as France is sure to join them in the death spiral dance of Western Europe. Germany must be thrilled. Socialism, the economic flesh-eating disease that it is, devouring Western Europe from the inside, as “multi-culturalism” in all its fraudulent glory, lays waste to whole economies and destroys nations one by one like a medieval plague.
Sarkozy was weak and a dismal leader. Hollande will be the dike that breaks, while effite leftists tilt at even more windmills.
Elizabeth Warren has an unusual mirror. Except for the sad Basset Hound, what other creature claims high cheekbones and low jowls? Are White Cherokee and “white Hispanic” part of the Melange Ministry? Are we doling out credits and demerits for the impurities of inheriting “whiteness”?
Will we one day begin to see an argument that Caucasians are in reality…Asians from the Caucacus mountains who suffered greatly in Turkey under assaults from Attila the Hun and we have seared, seared I tell you…. in our collective memory and DNA the atrocities of Genghis Khan?
The UN not only wishes to force pre-Columbian land rights upon the now grievance-ready and long suffering Cauc-Asians, but I’m quite sure they are going to press the rights of reclamation on behalf of the Blackfeet and Crow against their Lakota Sioux oppressors and land grabbers.
Not quite sure which century leftists wish to draw the line in the sand, where land rights begin and grievance ends, however. It doesn’t appear to go back to the days of Israel, “Zionism” being a dirty word among post-modern leftists.
Somewhere between the Exodus and Columbus seems to be the land conveyance clear, bright line that only leftists can see.
As for Socialists, Orwell himself would be confused. The term no longer has much meaning in the world of small c communists. They don’t like to admit their adherence, want to camouflage its existence and while they promote the Workers Party, trample the Constitution, rape the information stream and ignore parliamentary rules and procedures with impunity…one dare not call them Socialists…even those who attended and championed the Socialist Scholars Convention…because that would be “McCarthyism”.
Promoting racial warfare, class warfare, gender warfare, is simply Small C Communism writ large.
And, all of it…is Bushitlercheney’s fault. The all-time scapegoat for the excesses, atrocities, traitorism, and sedition of the left.
We are in the middle of an overthrow, VDH. And, here we are…squabbling over semantics and pedantics and theatrics. OWS, DOJ, NLRB, EPA, IRS, the acronym destruction of our lives.
America’s Rome is burning. What tune shall we play on our fiddles?
That would be the same old song with a bit of jazzing up to rouse the masses with the new memes. Neither side has the final answer, but they certainly have some jaunty tunes about the knaves (for you it is small c communists) on the other side. Such rhetoric turns me off, but what do I know, except that I will vote for someone in the upcoming election.
“Such rhetoric turns me off…” Why?
“…but what do I know…” Check your premises.
“…except that I will vote for someone in the upcoming election.” Did you change your mind D-White? Again? Romney, or will that choice decided by wind direction? Or by who talks nice, last.
Oh who’s to blame
That girl’s just insane
The wind cries “Mary.” Which ticket is she on?
After all the Jacks
are in their boxes
And the clowns
have all gone to bed…
Come on D-White, you’re getting there!
It’s failed. Modern Liberal Boxed Clown Life is so… reactionary. You know it. No amount but maybe will get there.
Get off the Fence.
I know I know
You’ll probably scream and cry
And your little world won’t let you go.
Modern Liberals think
We are made out gold
And so easily bought and sold.
Are You Experienced?
Have you ever been Experienced?
Take a chance D-White. It’s never too late.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-215252372701675386
All kidding aside, there’s a better insight into the cowardice and the moral failure implicit in Dwighty-boy’s outlook:
Dwight’s problem is that he can’t quite bring himself to stand up for his own civilization. I’ll grant him the benefit of the doubt in that I don’t quite believe that his equivocation and feeble attempts at leftwards Hegelian triangulation are maliciously inspired. They are rather the products of at best, a supercilious and snarky down-the-nose look at those whom he imagines are beneath him. Otherwise, they are the products of moral failure and cowardice. Two of the signal characteristics of “progressive” politics and its adherents are a conviction of moral superiority and an attempt to avoid confrontation with avowed enemies by acknowledging their every complaint as justified and transferring the blame to their own domestic political opponents. This is an attempt to transcend conflict in pursuit of some Utopian fantasy-land, hence the conviction of moral superiority. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see how our moral failure, Mr. Dwight fits this particular pair of shoes. Or jackboots, as the case may be.
I must applaud, you, Mr. Lucky for making Mr. Dwight your personal chew toy. He deserves that bedevilment at the very least. But we can’t forget that Dwight is the existential enemy of those of us who believe in the guiding principles of our brief Western civilization – the rule of law, the sanctity of private property and the inherent value of the individual and the validity of his conscience. Those of us who believe so are at non-negotiable, irreconcilable odds with most of the rest of the world. In short, we’re playing for everything there is. The triumph of our enemies – the triumph of those driven by the will-to-power – will usher in an age of slaughter, cruelty, barbarity and slavery from which the human race may never recover.
Hey cfbleachers — I sure hope you’re wrong, but in case you’re not, I think I’ll start selling fiddles.
“The temple of postmodern liberalism was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling.”
If this *were* true, WHY then would only states like California with crazed Governors be so affected…but not the entire United States with Obama? Wishful thinking.
GREAT article as always. You only have to listen to Obama too see where a second term will be heading, Government by mandate.
Unless one is a good enough friend of the administration, in which case a waiver could be arranged.
Something just struck me. Would it be interesting to take a facial picture of Ms. Warren and do some facial analysis with it and use digital calipers to measure the height of her cheekbones? I’m sure there are reference values for cheekbone height that her cheekbones can be compared to in caucasians, as well as native Americans, right? Maybe that’s the litmus test is to take her claim at “face value” and objectively investigate it. Maybe someone knows a plastic surgeon, or a forensics guy in police work, or some artist who knows how to do this? It’d make for quite a funny column,..er…enlightening column, IMO.
Look, folks, it’s a matter of lack of common sense. Academics make little money. This is nothing new (it was also true in Plato’s time); it is no more surprising or unfair than the fact that businessmen write few philosophy books.
But while no businessman would suggest that the fact that few millionaires are made philosophy professors is evidence the universities are unjust and evil and must be torn down until millioanires get the academic respect they deserve, many academics — lacking in common sense and experience — DO think that the fact that few academics are millionaires is somehow evidence the business world is evil and must be toppled until a sufficient number of philosopher-millionaires are created. As the business world doesn’t listen, they do the next best thing: try to force government to do it for them.
“Academics make little money.”
Have you looked at full professors’ salaries lately? Many of them are payed hundreds of thousands a year and get a good rake-off with grants and contracts and publishing revenue. The ones trying to get in are hardly paid at all, but once you’re a “made” man or woman, you do very, very well.
It really must be hard to endure those “Billy Jack”-like “Indian taunts” when you know that those throwing them your way are complete fools, not in on the real joke.
My grandfather didn’t think to ask the nearest conservative pundit if it were ok to marry a Cherokee woman. Don’t go shaking your family tree if you don’t want anything surprising to fall out.
A good historian you may be but you would make a poor consensus geologist. The use of the term “fossil” when describing hydrocarbon fuels shows your bias. But, the oil companies love the myth so why not play along.
The weak spot that will condem us to reliving these Cartereque times is that our education system is dominated by Leftists. If we don’t take back the education system we will indoctrinate future generations to believe what the OWS crowd seems to believe.
I have an idea for a campaign ad the Republicans should run. The video is moving camera footage of slums and failing schools and crowded DMV’s, wrecks that have been there for decades. They can take some of it out of old “Wired” episodes. The voice (emphasized by text running along the bottom, with the successive names of the cities being shown in bold at the left) says: “The ten poorest cities in the US have all been completely run by Democrats for more than 3 decades, mayor and council. Reasonable people might debate whether Democrat policies are responsible for causing this failure, but no one can reasonably still suggest Democrats have a useful solution. This year, vote Republican for a change.”
Good essay.
In case the author ever scans the comments. I am sure he knows people will agree with 98% of an essay and then vent their spleen on on the one part they didn’t like. – griping only on good essays.
Another completely cathartic essay by Dr. Hanson. Laid out with historical accuracy.
Dr. Hanson has a crystal ball that is programmed with ancient history, that compares current events to past disasters of civilization.
Even the crystal ball is getting tired of repeating itself.
Obama and his lackeys, are creating the “American Black Market”.
A market “of, by, and for, blacks”. They don’t care if it works; Just so long as it is a dominant “Black Market”.
And the wannabes will act, dress, and talk, like blacks to assimilate. Some, like Elizabeth Warren, will even try faking documentation to acquire minority status and benefits.
As Rush has mentioned several times; This is “The Great Society”, with trolls to match.
All cultures are equally good. There is no difference between iphones and tomtoms, between a federation with separation of powers and tribal thugocracies, between Mozart and Snoop Dog, between a president who can’t speak grammatically and Abraham Lincoln, between Maxime Waters and Margaret Thatcher.
Likewise, Sharia law is just as good as English common law. Sure, a few women here, a few billion there might suffer once in a while, or even a lot, but it’s all worth it to be fair and balanced about the equivalence of cultures and morality. Particularly if you are benefitting, heh?
Excuse me, to quote from the movie Lord Jim, you’re out, he’s in and he’s the fool? Contemporary liberalism, which is the old far left radicalism, has taken over the US, just took over France and Greece, and is posed to be returned to power in the US thanks to the electoral college and they are a failure? They are in power, that is the only thing that matters in politics.
If you mean can Obama fix the economy, talk Iran and the Taliban into loving America then OK he’s a failure. But as you noted that is why we have a Ministry of Truth; to handle misconceptions about Obama’s greatness of vision.
A typo: “the Japanese interment” should be “the Japanese internment.”
95% of the things that make life living have been developed in the last 300 years (3% of the duration of civilization).
And it wasn’t Karl Marx making it happen.
Romney won’t “strip” any rights, and you know it. Stop lying.
The Japanese have a high civil award that translates as Living National Treasure. If we had the same, VDH would be a shoo-in.
One peeve that may have been missed:
[For decades, growing encroachment/intrusion by the state has provided] much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector.
That’s overstated. Often expensively educated, yes, but that’s not the same as highly educated (Obama, Hillary, John Effing Kerry, Al Gore — ad nauseam et infinitum). And accessorizing yourself with electronic/consumer toys you neither understand nor use well is often just a fashion statement to accompany the power tie and underscore a deep sense of entitlement.
In short, these ‘elites’ are nothing of the kind; no surprise they don’t function well in the real world. Best seen, perhaps, as a reminder that power is rarely seized — usually, it’s granted willingly or by default as the rest of us doze or look away.
Now it’s harvest time.
“We were told that we could not just sit by and watch Libyan thugs kill the innocent, but could do just that in oil-scant Syria. Obtaining UN and Arab League approval to go to war without the U.S. Congress was “leading from behind.”
Yes, and the civil war in Libya was not a civil war, but a “Kinetic Military Action.” I loved that one. And that when Gaddafi was dead, it ment the end of the United Nation’s “humanitarian mission” in Libya. The Obama administration believes that it’s not a war if you call it something else. It’s also a pity that Congress now has no say in whether or not we go to war. I’m sure the Founding Fathers would have taken issue with that. And so should we, big time.
Exellent commentary Dr. VDH. Hope you request and acquire a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. I doubt it will happen. As usual the Repubs. are busy being passive and inept for fear of winning the presidency and having to decrease the amount of money being extracted from the morons who continue to work (50%) and pay taxes. After all what’s the fun of being a politician if you don’t have ever more money to spend, benefits to enjoy, and hearings to hold to express your rightous indignation about the liberals. Don’t blame the Democrats, blame the Republicans who allow them to thrive. Solution: if they are an incumbent vote them out. A clean sweep may be the only hope for the USA short of a military coup. Hmmmmmmmm??
Unfortunately, much of the country has not gotten the message that liberalism does not work. The latest polls show Romney and Obama running neck and neck, within the statistical margin of error. A one point lead, is no lead at all. (Does Romney really believe that all those highly paid Government workers in northern Virginia are going to help him carry the state, so that he can eliminate their jobs?)
We can only hope Romney will pick up support as we move closer to the election. But,I am close to despair, that Americans think that Obama is just politics as usual, that this is just the normal political ebb and flow between Republicans and Democrats. And, I am concerned that too many Republican politicians see it the same way. What is happening is a leftist revolution from within the very institutions of government. We have a shadow government of czars to bypass the normal Constitutional authority of Congress. Add to that executive orders and regulations to accomplish the same ends. And do we hear any noise from the Republicans? Only deafening silence. I am beginning to refer to Republicans as collaborators.
Americans have no sense of our history anymore, because the leftists running academia, have made it a point to delete that from the curricula. Without knowing who we are and where we came from, makes us susceptible to swallowing the snake oil, the leftist are selling. It also doesn’t help, that we import new citizens from countries that have no history of the kinds of freedoms that are American, and who refuse to assimilate, as past waves of immigrants did.
I am hoping that America will wake up in 2012, because my gut feeling is, that four more years of Obama, will be the coup de grace for America, as the Founders intended.
What is happening is a DEMOGRAPHIC revolution. Every 4 years, the percentage of white voters in America declines by 2 percentage points. When Reagan won in 1980, 88% of the electorate was white. When Obama won in 2008, only 74% of the electorate was white–a 14 point drop. And Obama won most of that–nearly all the blacks and 2/3 of the Hispanics.
The GOP is a mostly white party. Except for George W. Bush, no GOP candidate for President has ever received more than one-third of the Hispanic vote. But as the Hispanic vote is the fastest growing voting bloc in America, the failure of the GOP to win more Hispanic votes is really starting to hurt.
By 2040, America is going to be a majority-minority country. White voters will be less than 50% of the population. If the GOP hasn’t begun to appeal to large numbers of black and Hispanic voters by then, it will be doomed.
For all you fools that take issue with Dr. Hanson, there’s David P. Goldman with charts, graphs, and data, that documents the Obama regime’s failings.
Of course, this data will be challenging, and hard for you to digest, since you are products of the last several decades of progressive education.
But, if you play up your ignorance well enough, you could qualify for disability compensation.
The trolly McTrollersons are out in full force, CG! Methinks there is fear in the air and more empty seats ahead. haha
Yeah! I was wondering what that smell was; Just plain old panic.
Indeed they are out in full force, and with an air of fear and loathing. A skeptical person might wonder if Uncle George has plonked down a few additional millions in order to step up the troll legions to coincide with the less-than-spectacular kick off of the Obama campaign.
– observation, but over the years it has become noticeable at PJM that they fall silent toward the end of each month yet pick up again after payday.
Yes, they are. Dr. Hanson is anathema to them. They lack the price of admission to any reasoned debate: a respect for facts, reason and logic. Their idea of history reads like a cut and paste ransom note.
No matter. We’ll settle this and many other fascinating issues in the next American Civil War.
Intrinsic to Dr. Hanson’s laments is the shameless joining in by the dominant liberal establishment mass media [1] (or DLEMM) as partisan political players in our country. The DLEMM has always been left-leaning, but a few years back, they at least TRIED to pretend they weren’t, and tried to be objective, and didn’t so openly champion their preferences for Democratic / Leftist / Environmentalist / Marxist / Myopic (DLEMM) causes.
The lesson here is stop trusting them as unbiased sources of information (most PJ Media regulars already know this, of course), and start taking everything said through their mouths with the proper filter of their open and frequently zealous partisanship.
1 – DLEMM acronym from Mike Rosen (KOA Radio 850, Denver, M-F, 9 to noon, Mountain TZ) and means the ususal media suspects such as the New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, L.A. Times, Time Magazine, NPR, PBS, BBC, CBC (Canada)Guardian UK, Nat’l Geographic, etc.
Has anybody ever asked the POTUS, if corporations are so evil, why does he take so much money from them on a weekly basis?
Just wondering.
For the same reason they have robbed tobacco companies blind for a couple of decades while telling everyone not to smoke, and are now pissed that this golden goose is all but dead. If they where honest they would admit they where targetting corporations for the same reason that Willi Sutton went after the banks too: M-O-N-E-Y.
Further complicating the “Cherokee ancestry” claim made by many people today is the fact that some families, especially in the south, invented an “Indian princess” ancestor to explain away darker physical features in the family.
Those darker features were not due to indigenous blood, but rather to ancestors of mixed African and European ancestry who were no longer clearly “black”, but not unambiguously “white”, either. Claiming Indian ancestry was a protection against the stigma attached to anyone with any identifiable African descent in those days.
Subsequent generations of those families in many cases were brought up to believe the “Indian princess” story, and have no idea they actually have recent African ancestry. One famous case is of the Melungeon people of east Tennessee and western Virginia.
The Melungeons often claim to be of mixed Native and European ancestry, while some hold they are of Turkish, Portuguese, or Spanish descent. Recent DNA testing showed that in fact the Melungeons are of about 10% sub-Saharan African origin, and have almost no indigenous ancestry at all. Historical research shows the Melungeon families originated in eastern Virginia before the American Revolution, and were considered “free people of color” or “mulatto”, before they moved to the Appalachians and their background suddenly became more ambiguous.
I am not a member of a “Native American people” but I always identify myself as a native American if that is one of the choices for my “ethnicity” because America is my native land; I was born in the Bronx, New York, which is part of America!
It’s one thing for American Indians to self-identify themselves as native Americans, but I refuse to give up my right to accurately self-identify myself. Everyone has the right to be considered a native of the land of their birth, and I will not give that up to satisfy someone else’s PC dictates. I was born in America so I am a Native American!
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) By James Bamford Email Author March 15, 2012
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
Related, what do you make of this? (from the generally-considered-disreputable ‘prison planet’ site, of course –but it is researchable info).
Most people vote FOR someone. Last time, guilty liberals and college kids voted for hope and change. Hope for what? A balanced budget – or any budget? A black president? [Racist, by the way.] Responsible spending? Flying the dog alone to Marthas Vineyard on a govt jet at taxpayer expense while pushing ‘green energy’? Hope so Putin can give Obama some slack while gutting American foreign policy? Etc. etc.
This time Americans will vote AGAINST Obama. In force. I don’t really like Romney, but I will vote for ANY candidate against Obama. So will the voting majority of the public.
Especially when the Supreme Court votes down Obamacare 6-3 in June. And Arizona immigration. You heard it here first.
Obama is toast.
An Acoma indian told me that unless you had an indian mother – you weren’t considered an indian. Even children with an indian father with a non-indian mother – were not considered indians by his tribe.
Hey, remember the sushi scam? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/science/22fish.html
People were passing off cheap fish as expensive fish… until some kids got wise via DNA testing. Hmm, gives me an idea!
When recalling the ‘intelligence’ of our President, let us not forget ‘Cinqo de Quatro’ and ‘speaking Austrian’, either. Obama is a fount of wisdom and learning…..
Great essay and the answers too the problems will be ignored as always but some answers do stay around more than others like this one…….. http://www.wthr.com/video?clipId=7054149&autostart=true
Hanson, do you have any idea what a “grandee” is?
Name 3 from Mexico City. Quick now. You can pick any time from Carlos V to Fernando VII. Come on, you can do it.
No, you can’t. There weren’t any. Go back to school and learn something about Nueva España.
Except for the descendant of the Emperor Moctezuma, the Aztec, Pedro Tesifón Moctezuma de la Cueva, 1st Viscount of Ilucán, Lord of Tula and Peza, Caballero de Santiago.
Sans prosperity, America cannot endure.
No, it’s because of the oblivious self-deception that slaps down European attempts at going it alone and having any of that, something that – curiously – leaves the U.S.A. on top by default. Europeans are not “happy that someone other than themselves was still leading and somewhere outside Europe was still capitalist” but unhappy that someone other than themselves ended up with that by rigging things that way, a rigging that ring-barked Europe and denied those things to Europe. Just remember what the U.S.A. did to prevent the recovery of the European maritime empires in the period 1945-60 or so (after which it was locked in). You now have the world you were warned about when you stopped Europe from dealing with the Suez Crisis.
That was a dangerous and damaging amalgam at work: a native US anti-colonialism based on our own revolutionary heritage combined with the Soviet/communist desire to deprive the European powers of their natural resource base in the colonies. Seventy years on it is graphically evident that most of the European colonies were FAR better off as colonies than they have ever been under self-rule, and while the Soviets didn’t bring many of the former colonies into their sphere they certainly wreaked havoc in them and caused untold suffering and death. ‘Course, you have to be over 50 or have personal interest in History to know a thing about all the anti-colonial pressures post WWII. Hell, you practically have to be over 50 to put WWII in the right century and name the participants, and forget about understanding any issues.
Government is designed to fool the rubes in search of something to believe in, and enrich the various classes of insiders. Everything else is fraud.
“…..the liberal favorite tool of foreign policy (no prisoners in Guantanamo, no tribunals, no trials, no media videos of the explosions, no reports of the kids and granny blown up along with the suspect, little dollar costs, no U.S. lives endangered, no downside really….”
You don’t have to be a “liberal” to like THIS outcome. Bush was all about never-ending inconclusive, social work-oriented fake “wars,” whereas I warned long and hard that the bizarre way the “wars” were conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan would bring immense disrepute to our cause.
Real Wars don’t last ten years with at best an ambiguous ending, or no ending at all. When your seeming primary purpose is to avoid civilian casualties and kindly rehabilitate terminally-diseased societies, you will lose public support. Fast.
The public by and large, wants the bad guys killed and killed with real dispatch, not stuffed away for endless trials and incarceration in a Caribbean vacation spot with white gloved Koran and fattening ethnically-appropriate food. This is not the way real enemies are treated, and that is why Bush went down in infamy.
“Smart bombs” are actually and ultimately only effective against those who deploy them. Like poking a bear with a sharp stick -it just makes them angry and determined to retaliate. You don’t win a boxing match with a jab. You win with a knock-out punch. Bombing Baghdad into the stone age makes for a lasting impression and a much shorter war, i.e. don’t tread on us. Obama’s drone strikes are nothing more than an irritant and are seen as the acts of an apologetic coward by the enemy. But that is who he is. A never ending war by a never ending campaigner. As I recall didn’t BO suggest “if they bring a knife we bring a gun” ? Very big talk from a very little man.
And exactly what country is it now that we should be bombing back to the stone age?
Pay attention Dwight – you might learn something. Or maybe not. ForTruth is right about the difference between a 10 year war and a 10 day war. You apparently prefer the 10 year fiascos.
Dwight’s just engaging in another one of his usual snarky non-sequiturs. That’s all he’s got to reinforce his delusions of superiority.
These never-ending, slow bleeding-to-death inconclusive wars ….Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are ALWAYS going to be unpopular. The model for popular wars and how to fight them, in my opinion, begins and ends with Harry Truman, and nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the cringing Japanese refused to unconditionally surrender.
Truman swaggered to the podium and announced to the effect: “The treacherous Japs attacked us at Pearl Harbor. They have no been paid in full.”
You can criticize Obama’s conducting of the War on Terror, but it is also likely true that politically, it is the only way left to conduct any war at all after almost 11 years of slow bleed. I seriously doubt that if a Republican gets elected in November that any of Obama’s war-fighting policies will change. No republican is going to send the troops back to Iraq.
I savor, cause I found just what I used to be taking a look for. You have ended my 4 day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye
Well i read your whole article and went onto conclusion that all this is power and nothing else. When power in your hand you deal it the way you want. Some people will be in your favour and some will not be. It’s all about what we think and what we want. And as we talk regarding economy then i will say that unemployment is to minimized and aain if we talk about Obama, Bush then the same critic came in front of us and i.e. power. Nice post. Keep it up. :)