Anatomies of Electoral Madness
News That Was No News
I also assume that what we do not read in the proverbial mainstream media is the news and what we do is not. So there was not much about record gas prices, the Katrina-like plight of the Sandy victims still without power, the rising unemployment rate, or the impending “fiscal cliff.” Here are some other non-news items.
Iran and the Drones
Now we learn that before the election Iran attacked a U.S. spy drone in international waters. Why was this not known before the election? (Yes — that was rhetorical question.) And what actually was the result of that other drone crash, whose site we chose not to bomb/destroy, and thus the plane was perhaps sent to be reverse-engineered by the Russians or Chinese? And just how many have we killed with drones? Are the targets confirmed terrorists who brag of their crimes of the sort like the three who were water-boarded — or merely suspected terrorists who go up in smoke along with anyone unlucky enough to be near them when the judge/jury/executioner drone missile hits? Do the Left’s civil libertarians care about this, or care about it to the degree to note also that the administration had jailed the video-producer whose free expression supposedly caused the riots in Benghazi? Speaking of which…
Benghazi
We have a history of presidential second terms that explode in a scandal lingering from the first (e.g., Watergate) or due to hubris (cf. Reagan’s with Iran-Contra, or Clinton’s with Monica) deteriorating into scandal or just fizzling out (Bush and Katrina/the Iraqi insurgency). I used to think that the Libyan crime (not beefing up security when earlier requested, not immediately sending over help from the annex, not sending in relief during the various seven hours of assaults, etc.) was dwarfed by the cover-up (by all means protect the administration narrative of Libya as success/al Qaeda as impotent/Arab Spring as wonderful/the slayer of bin Laden as cool and competent commander in chief).
Now I am not so sure. Why did we even have a consulate in a secondary port city, when most countries had pulled their embassies out of Tripoli? Why, on the night of his death, was our ambassador meeting with a Turkish diplomat in Benghazi? Who delayed our team at the airport — and why? Why was an annex, with a large CIA contingent, even nearby? Why did the annex people apparently want to keep a firewall between themselves and the consulate? Who actually were the terrorists? Who paid them and what exactly was their mission? Were we destroying the Gaddafi arsenal, or rounding it up for anonymous resale? And if so — to whom?
The Rev. Joseph Lowery
Did Pastor Lowery, who swore Obama into office (Rev. Wright had apparently given up his Obama privileges), really say right before the election that “all white folks” were “going to Hell” and “I don’t know what kind of a n****r wouldn’t vote with a black man running”? Did that matter? And is it the sort of language that an Eric Holder finds offensive, or at least as offensive as an anti-Muslim video? Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, Rev. Jackson (who just said that the Tea Party wished to “overthrow our government, engage in secession, sedition, segregation and slavery.”), Rev. Lowery — all raise the same question: does Obama know any pastor who can speak without offering racist commentary?
The crux for the next four years is whether we become California or transform into a sort of socialist Germany, where the work ethic, fiscal sobriety, and ingenuity trump counter-productive energy and social policies. In other words, will the frackers, horizontal drillers, farmers, engineers, Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, the American farm belt, the coal industry, Boeing, Apple, and Caterpillar just keep chugging along, pulling the rest of us into the accustomed prosperity despite, rather than because of, us? Will the American spirit, like German industriousness, override socialist redistribution, or succumb to it?
As far as why a majority voted as it did, I prefer the wisdom of the Old Oligarch, Plato on Democratic Man, or Tocqueville to the latest spin from Republican grandees.
Also read: What Obama Should Have Done Before, and Won’t Do Now
” If the Republicans were to agree to amnesty for, say, two million who were brought here as children and are in school or in the military, do you really think the “Latino community” in response would celebrate and then also agree to deport those who did not qualify? ”
Not only that, we know such a measure would only amplify their anger and animus towards America. As it stands, we will spend the rest of our lives listeneing to stories about the heinousness of a “racist” America which “withheld” citizenship for so many illegals for so long …
Many black Americans nurse a poisonous grievance over slavery which was abolished 160 years ago. Yes, legacies of racism lasted beyond that, but not everywhere. Most of America was not the same as the heart of the slave owning Confederacy. and despite the deaths of 400,000 mostly whites fighting in part to terminate slavery, and despite the good wishes, good will and good earnest efforts of millions, and I believe the majority of whites in America to rectify the legacy of slavery, to hear the greivance mongers, you’d think white America still practices slavery. In fact, after the election of the first black President, venomous slanders of racism have never been more shrill in our lifetime.
Morton, people with enough brain matter – not indoctrinated to their core – understand that appeasing the crocodile will not save them. Not at all.It makes the hunt more deadly.
And to allow ones Conservative values to be held hostage to gangster-in-suits, and their thuggish foot soldiers, will not only backfire, but it will make matters more deadly.
Radical revolutionaries have been busy, for decades, prepping the groundwork. Conservatives – not so much. While Conservatives were busy fielding candidates, leftists were busy TAKING OVER all the centers that matter – cultural and educational. And herein lies the crux of the failure to capture Latino votes, and others on the fence too.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/20/what-are-the-chances-of-reining-in-a-lawbreaker-in-chief-who-abets-illegal-aliens-then-punishes-those-who-expose-said-lawbreaking-addendum-to-the-results-of-washingtons-dictator-in-chief-via/
Bringing a knife to a gunfight is always a loser’s game!
Adina: You are correct. The progressive liberals took over the education system and the MSM decades ago and the results are now paying off. The majority of entire generations of Americans have been indoctrinated by their liberal fascist dogma. Anybody who disagrees is racist, homophobic, anti-science, misogynistic and evil.
Unfortunately, in this country, there isn’t time to undo the damage.
Yep. The only thing we can do is organize White Europeans for their own protection and self interest. Identity Politics is the New Left Zeitgeist, time to play the game or be certain of losing all.
Our President would not have attended a Black Liberation Theology church for twenty years – butt in the pew, check in the plate – if he did not agree with its precepts. Barack Obama is a black racist, he hates white people and wants to depose us from government influence and private sector wealth and leadership. He is your enemy if you are white. If you believe that, then his words and actions make sense. If you are a white liberal you will be dealt with after the revolution is accomplished. I agree now that the only game in town is identity politics. Play it to win, and play it hard, or lose all.
The truth is you will not be allowed to create a Caucasian Civil Rights Committee. The slave-traders’ rationale was that blacks were born with a dark stain on their soul which made it okay to enslave them. The President’s vision of “revenge” is that white people are born with a dark stain on their soul which makes it social justice to enslave them — make them, forever unforgivable, work harder and harder to buy freebies for every other race, except, I suppose, Jews. The statue of a loving uniter like MLK on the Mall was revised by his family to instead be the image of an unappeasable bureaucrat.
Checvk out http://barnhardt.biz/. Her post on Nov 9th. Stop hollering at ghosts.
Thanks for link. Watching the videos. Very good. Lot of real good important points.
VDH wrote:
I used to think that the Libyan crime (not beefing up security when earlier requested, not immediately sending over help from the annex, not sending in relief during the various seven hours of assaults, etc.) was dwarfed by the cover-up (by all means protect the administration narrative of Libya as success/al Qaeda as impotent/Arab Spring as wonderful/the slayer of bin Laden as cool and competent commander in chief).
Now I am not so sure. Why did we even have a consulate in a secondary port city, when most countries had pulled their embassies out of Tripoli? Why, on the night of his death, was our ambassador meeting with a Turkish diplomat in Benghazi? Who delayed our team at the airport — and why? Why was an annex, with a large CIA contingent, even nearby? Why did the annex people apparently want to keep a firewall between themselves and the consulate? Who actually were the terrorists? Who paid them and what exactly was their mission? Were we destroying the Gaddafi arsenal, or rounding it up for anonymous resale? And if so — to whom?
………………………………
Adina,between you and VDH the truth will rise to the surface.
Please keep doing what both of you do. Remember whenever you shine the light of day on these vultures you expose what they do.Some of us always listen.
VDH poses some interesting questions above. Many of which I think you have already answered in other posts at your site.
My take on Benghazi after reading many of your posts and many other links is that either zero or his handlers were behind the terror types who attacked the compound and it was all planned by the obama mobsters who run the govt.–Jarrett et all.
The entire op was set up originally so Stevens could be captured and then “rescued”.It was a slight variation on the killing of OBL’s double.Designed to give zero something to talk about in the debates other than the 47% and not going back to the ones who brought us to this George Bush economy.(I wonder just how long they can ride on that anyway)
As VDH has already stated whenever you want the truth from these bozos just think the opposite of what they are saying. That way you can keep your sanity and avoid the dictates of whatever the bent axel is projecting, turfing or triangulating(or just outright lying their favorite technique of all) since you know he’s up to something 24/7.
If you ever wondered what the devil incarnate was or how he manifests himself on earth just watch his Axelcraft for one ten minute segment on any of the DBM shows and you will be amazed.
Once again thanks to both of you for what you do and don’t stop doing it. Truth always rises to the surface,sometimes it just takes a while.
rodguy911
All true but they also have control of the electronic voting software. You can’t convince me that in “the most important election of my lifetime” that conservative America voted in higher numbers for McCain than romney!
Not in a million years.
This election was hijacked at the computer terminal. Talk about Latinos, blacks etc is pointless. Our system has been coopted and most of what is written is either to ignore that fact, or shut those up who point it out.
Nothing happening here, move along……..
TennesseeVolunteer-
I know this is tempting but there is usually more incompetence than fraud. The fraud comes later when you try to correct it by getting a court to force the result you want. They were prepared to do that but it simply wasn’t needed this time. In any case in an area where Democrats outnumber you 7 to 1 fraud won’t much matter. There is no way to stop it when neither the courts nor the people have any interest in stopping it. As the old cliche goes- you get the kind of government they deserve.
In analyzing this you can’t have blinders on. I thought the polls were engineered because the response to poll questions (economy most important, country on wrong track,etc) simply did not match with the poll result-i.e.those same people supporting Obama. We now know those were accurate although I am appalled at the total logical disconnect. However if you add into the equation that these people had no interest in solving those problems but only in insuring they get their bribes -i.e.handouts- the polls and the results then make sense. Half the country is now operating politically with a 3′rd world mentality. That can be changed but it will be a long and hard slog. It also means campaigning heavily in heavily black or latino areas knowing full well you will be disparaged , insulted, etc. But in time if you can peel off a few percentage votes you can start to change it. But it won’t happen overnight and you can’t simply do it in a campaign and ignore it the rest of the time. And for a long time the results will be discouraging. It has to be a full-time process.
The other thing we missed was those Republicans who sat it out. That number is indicative of not just disinterest but active disgruntlement or demoralization. It was sheer incompetence on Romney and his staff that missed this. I am a layman and have no way to independently verify the enthusiasm of the party base. But he and his staff were supposed to be experienced – enough to judge the state of the electorate. That is on the Candidate himself. It was his responsibility to see to it that the base is energized. He didn’t and neither did his staff. Worse- they never even saw it.
Don’t be so self-righteous regarding the South: (1) very few whites were wealthy enough to own slaves; (2) there were also blacks who owned a lot of slaves; and (3) the other areas of the country you mention either had or has no black inhabitants or a minuscule amount (so blacks have always been a theoretical issue to them, not a real one).
Once you crack open that door of “the sins of the fathers…” your open it wide for all (that’s the way the game is played).
It doesn’t matter whether your family goes back to colonial times in Virginia or just came over on the boat from Poland. If you are white…
The right should stop the navel gazing: the most popular message in the world will make no headway against a society that has accepted mass vote and electoral fraud as a legitimate election.
No such ag3ncy has the means to expose the facts, assuming the will. I suppose we’ll be hearing about Al3xander’s resignation soon.
You’ve got that right. Even up into the 30′s my father’s family from Kentucky and into upstate New York had advantage only because they were white. They were dirt poor and one winter near starvation, but never took help. A third-grade education and a strong back, along with some insight into the potential of opportunities that arose generated a small collection of farms and land by my grandfather’s death in the late ’70s.
That isn’t to say that being black was any picnic, but living in squalor on the dole and blaming racism and poverty reflects only a poverty of ambition in times when anyone is capable of a high school education and learning at least a blue-collar trade, even if it’s only a pickup truck and a lawnmower. For too many, failure is a lifestyle to be embraced, and subsidized.
And how about this hard cold statement: if you don’t want you and your descendants to be at a disadvantage try not to put yourself into a position that would enable it. If we all sprang from the same australopithecine didn’t we all start the “race” at the same time??? Let’s call it collective responsibility (by analogy to individual responsibility).
It’s now time to nix all this other nonsense.
There were over 300,000 slave owners in the “Confederate States”, out of 5M whites. But most slave owners were heads of households, with wives, children, and other dependents – so about 1/3 of whites were members of slave-owning households. (There were a few thousand black slave owners.)
Nope – only about 3% of the population of the south owned slaves. Of that 3 percent 1% were the big plantations with huge holdings of slaves. Also, as has been stated, some of the biggest slave owners were blacks.
Also, not universally know, is the fact that a former indentured servant – a black man by the name of Anthony Johnson – upon gaining his freedom purchased an indentured servant by the name of John Casor. When it came time to release Casor, Johnson went to court and had him declared property. Thus, a black man enslaved another black man for his entire life using our court system.
It’s not just slavery.
*Legal* anti-black discrimination laws remained on the books in many states till the 1970s.
As late as the 1970s, in a number of states it was illegal for a black person to marry a white person. In the South in the early 1960s, blacks couldn’t go to the same restaurants as whites, drink from the same water fountains, etc. In the North, upscale hotels and upscale country clubs had “No Blacks Allowed” policies.
Today’s black leaders like Jesse Jackson experienced that discrimination first hand and they are still bitter about it. And that bitterness still carries on into their politics.
Blacks will have to wait till the Jesse Jacksons have passed on, and a whole new generation of black leaders who are too young to remember the 1960s and 1970s will take their place.
We’re already seeing some.
“Today’s black leaders like Jesse Jackson experienced that discrimination first hand and they are still bitter about it. And that bitterness still carries on into their politics.”
I see, so they are excused for being prejudiced against all whites, like the Polish legal immigrant mentioned above and all those who had not yet reached the age of reason until the 1980s, but whites have no excuse whatever in defending themselves against the racial hatred evinced by a good number of blacks young and old, not a few of whom work for MSM propagandists and the government. Anybody ready to buy some more crazy today as they did on election day?
And in particular regard to Polish Immigrants: they have been enslaved and re-enslaved for a thousand years by their far more powerful neighbors. Something to do with being a nation of agriculturalists living on a flat plain between the aforementioned.
Blacks are amateurs compared to the Poles. A fact of which I have pointed out to many of them, with predictably ignorant, self-serving responses. “Well, it’s not the same thing.”
Actually, for most of the last millenium, Poland was an enormous state that dominated eastern Europe and ruled over vast numbers of non-Poles. It was not until the late 1700s that Poland was divvied up by its neighbors (mainly Russia); that ended in 1919.
Of course, the great majority of Poles were serfs, exploited by Polish landholders, but that was the same as the rest of Europe.
Certainly it wasn’t continual over the centuries, but does go back to the early middle ages. Don’t forget that they have had to fight off (and frequently unsuccessfully) everyone from the Swedes, the Austro-Hungarians, Rus, Tatars, Mongols, Germans, Teutons, Prussians, etc.
Yes, of course I know of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire. But overall, their history of being bullied, enslaved, attacked and occupied extends much farther back and of greater duration than any American Black – which was the point.
Hey, I’m an American of Serbian ancestry. My people have been enslaved by the Ottoman Empire, the Nazis, the Communists, and now the US/NATO/Eulex coalition. The Turkish yoke alone added up to twice the number of years that Africans were under chattel slavery in the American colonies and, later, the US. If you want to call me that, hell YEAH I’m a radical Serb nationalist, and for that I make no apology! We need no special treatment from anyone – all we require is to be let alone to seek our own destiny.
Shame on any individual or group of people who dares to demand anything more!
And I’m very, very sorry and ashamed that we did what we did to Serbia in the 90s. It seems to me that the Serbs are the only ones left in Europe who have any balls about doing anything about what the rest of Europe (effeminate cowards!) seems to welcome with open arms. I used to live in Yugoslavia and I always thought that the Serbs get the same rap as Southerners in the United States. Hrani Bog Srbija!
“As late as the 1970s, in a number of states it was illegal for a black person to marry a white person. In the South in the early 1960s, blacks couldn’t go to the same restaurants as whites, drink from the same water fountains, etc. In the North, upscale hotels and upscale country clubs had “No Blacks Allowed” policies.”
And so it has come to pass that today that few Black people get married to anyone, Black, White, or other, Whites cannot go to the same restaurants and bars that Blacks do for fear of getting shot, knifed or assaulted,and there are no water fountains that anyone drinks from,(if they even work for lack of maintenance),thanks to MRSA.
It’s SO MUCH BETTER now…
But that’s alright, because I suppose that the White “minority leaders” of tomorrow will have a wealth of memories of discrimination of their own to draw from.
If you learn one thing from this election, learn that Race IS Culture.
And for God’s sake, when you MEAN “Mexican”, don’t say: “Hispanic” or “Latino”
A high-caste Creole Puerto Rican has about as much in common with a Sonoran Mestizo campesino as a Swiss banker has with an Uzbek factory worker.
If you don’t understand the Latin American caste system, you will always be hobbled in dealing with the various Spanish and Portuguese ethnicities. Don’t lump them all in together. they don’t like it because they by and large despise each other.
I don’t care. Blacks will never be satisfied until they have their own crop of crackers to use and abuse. They are not interested in equality – they are only interested in supremacy……theirs.
Recently a “survey” was taken wanting to know if whites had a poor opinion of blacks. Back in 07 it was around 4%. Today it is over 60%. In four years I expect that it will be over 90%.
Good post. There is no question the Chicago mobsters have set back race relations over 30 years. And of course it was all on purpose. They couldn’t have us getting along with blacks/Hispanics/gays etc. and everyone viewing the other as just another American. Instead the regime needed hyphenated Americans.they created a war on women, blacks, Hispanics, gays,contraception,the middle class and everything else they wanted market segmentation on.Just wouldn’t do for axels psy-ops plans to have Americans getting along with one another.Chaos is required at every turn every corner in the road.
Truth is five years ago when I saw a black person I wondered if he was a fisherman like I am. Today I just know that there is a 93% chance that he voted to destroy the country and he’s on the wrong side from my perspective.
Sad day for the country.
Very true about the Jim Crow laws, all passed (enthusiastically) by the Democratic politicians of the southern states. Yet the Democrats are now the champions of the blacks they tried to suppress for so long. Republican elected politicians have always voted for civil rights laws (in spite of Goldwater’s take on the ’64 Civil Rights bills) in higher percentages than the Democrats ever did. The second biggest distortion of fact perpetrated in the 20th century, overshadowed only by Germany convincing the world that Hitler was Austrian and Beethoven was German. That is the legacy of progressive education.
All miscegenation laws were rendered void in 1967 by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia/.
1967 is not “the 1970s”.
Sinz54, you are either fatally naive or willfully ignotant. No black will ever give up racism amd move past the slave mentality. Look what it has gotten them, the freedom from any accountabillity, affirmative action, wealth, power and best of all, license to blame everything on evil whites. Diversity has never worked, it has destroyed countries and empires and it is destroying us now. Look what has happened in post=apartheid South Africa. Only a fool would say things are better for everyone, blacks included, with the ANC in charge. This country should go back to Jim Crow and let blacks earn their success rather than be given it.
You know the saying: absolutes are never true.
I had a CSM in the Army who was black, and the epitome of a hard-working, self-directed individual. He had an honorary Air Force grade, and several awards for joint operations. He was working on his PhD when I was there, and had the respect of everyone under his leadership.
The Dems might be working hard to kill such spirit, but they have not yet succeeded, as long as such men exist.
It’s good racial politics and will continue until whites no longer pay attention, and it no longer energizes the left. That may be a long time, a time which has never come in some multi-racial countries.
Dr. Hanson, If this is being leaked…a NYT’s letter from July of 2012…does someone inside an agency want us to know something more…even perhaps Petraeus…Labradore was one of the first I saw
Dr. Broadwell I presume: oh not so fast…a message…my my, are we talking blackmail…lonely hearts …or what:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07…
MY WIFE’S LOVER
My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job. I strongly feel that exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort. My issue: Should I acknowledge this affair and finally force closure? Should I suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project I feel must succeed? Should I be “true to my heart” and walk away from the entire miserable situation and put the episode behind me? NAME WITHHELD
Don’t expose the affair in any high-profile way. It would be different if this man’s project was promoting some (contextually hypocritical) family-values platform, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The only motive for exposing the relationship would be to humiliate him and your wife, and that’s never a good reason for doing anything. This is between you and your spouse. You should tell her you want to separate, just as you would if she were sleeping with the mailman. The idea of “suffering in silence” for the good of the project is illogical. How would the quiet divorce of this man’s mistress hurt an international leadership initiative? He’d probably be relieved.
The fact that you’re willing to accept your wife’s infidelity for some greater political good is beyond honorable. In fact, it’s so over-the-top honorable that I’m not sure I believe your motives are real. Part of me wonders why you’re even posing this question, particularly in a column that is printed in The New York Times.
Your dilemma is intriguing, but I don’t see how it’s ambiguous. Your wife is having an affair with a person you happen to respect. Why would that last detail change the way you respond to her cheating? Do you admire this man so much that you haven’t asked your wife why she keeps having sex with him? I halfway suspect you’re writing this letter because you want specific people to read this column and deduce who is involved and what’s really going on behind closed doors (without actually addressing the conflict in person). That’s not ethical, either.
Could somebody whose Google-fu is better than mine please post the *full* link to that “MY WIFE’S LOVER” column? The partial link leads nowhere, and Google News came up dry.
Aha, I’ve got it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/a-message-from-beyond.html
Conservatives want the latino vote they should establish a Spanish-language conservative tv and radio network. Not propaganda or pandering but one that latinos would tune in to that doesn’t ‘hide’ or ‘spin’ everything to liberal advantage. If they started such a beast now they might have some kind of voice in the latino community by the next Presidential election. With a voice you can do voter registrations and rallys and such. Otherwise you’re just like Charlie Brown’s teacher wonk, wonking from the distance and being blasted out by the Liberal Latinos who are as well embedded as their liberal white counterparts are in mainstream media.
Yep. That is the type of thing billion dollars spent on election ads should be spent on.
The side effect is exclusive employment opportunities for conservatives. Being conservative literally pays.
Dr. Hanson…”a majority voted as I did”…..
You’re telling us you voted for Obama? Wow, if ever 1 +1 = 3 …I guess this is it…you seem to espouse conservative values yet vote for Obama….Go figure!
“As far as why a majority voted as it did, “
Thanks for pointing this out. I thought I was reading that VDH voted for O, too. I was about to slit my wrists when i saw your comment.
If a black Republican were to run against a white Democrat, blacks would vote for the Democrat.
If a Republican promised to give all blacks one million dollars in reparations for slavery, the Democrat would still get the black vote.
If a Republican were to open the borders to all Mexican immigrants the Hispanic vote would still go to the Democrat.
They will always go with the devil they know. Pandering to them has not and will not work.
Professor Hanson – First, I would like to take a moment to thank you for your always truthful and erudite postings. I have seen the hateful postings directed toward you time and time again, even in this blog. But as Spencer Tracy said to Maximillian Schell at the end of Judgemment at Nurenberg: “so, what you suggest may very well happpen. It *is* logical, in view of the times in which we live. *But to be logical is not to be right*, and *nothing* on God’s earth could ever *make it* right” Nothing on this planet will ever make the fraud that has been perpetrated against the American people right.
Keep on espousing the truth and eventually people will listen.
Will we become California or Germany. I think Greece is more like it. I suspect that across this nation millions of cash based business owners have decided to protect themselves.
They can’t audit my finances if I do all the math in my head, right?
I was planning on putting in a pool but now have decided to wait and see what happens in the first six months. I think I will not be alone. People will suspend spending on luxuries for a while because we don’t know what the tax increase will be and the impacts of runaway inflation and other maladies of a democratic government. I know it will hurt the economy but I’ve got to take care of my family first. We will slip into a recession for sure and maybe even a depression. Rig for stormy weather…..
American socialism will have no appreciable resemblance to any EU country. Nor will it look like Greece. As to California, I suspect we will go through that phase marching to the left, but even California isn’t close to their own socialist endgame albeit interesting to watch.
In the end I suspect that American socialism due to our enormous wealth (at least for now) will be bigger, bolder, faster, more violent than anything the world has seen since the Bolsheviks.
If/when the clash comes odds are for a not so gentle subjugation of the masses by the elite rulers. Of course they live in their bubbles (and gated communities) in DC/NY/LA/and the other Blue Bubble Worlds of elitist PC, denial, deceit, and righteous feel good thinking.
With 35% of the small arms in the world including all standing armies in the hands of our citizens, nothing good can come from an attempt by the leftists Obama Pigs standing on their hind legs to crack the whip and attempt to make us heel. But I suspect they will try. Up til now they have been content to move the country left by the inch, by the foot, baby steps, any way they can. I would guess that they now feel that they have gained such power that they no longer need to hide their true intentions since the proletariat have enshrined their values and thus they will begin to move with more force.
This is bad thinking on their part, but we might as well get going as I see no way to stop it now. Nemesis and her ‘Divine Retribution’ stands winged in flowing robes and mighty looking down on we mere mortals.
Good Luck to all of you no matter where you stand.
Forget about firearms in the hands of ordinary Americans. We are only one or two Supreme Court appointments away from losing the Second Amendment altogether. Those appointments will come in the next four years. One way or another, most of the guns will then be rounded up.
Actually one of the first things the O Thugs did after the election was to notify the UN that they want in on the Small Arms Tade Act they have been trying to put together. It doesn’t actually ban ownership of small arms by citizens but it’s a good start in that direction. It is sort of a race to see whether the SCOTUS or the UN can get there first with the prize.
Then I guess it will have to come back to pitchforks, that is if we still make them.
Oh and for the record the second thing the O thugs did was put restrictions on a previously agreed development of Shale oil deposits in the west and the third thing the O thugs did was send out several thousand pieces of regulation from Interior and EPA; of course a small mountain of regs and tax info from HHS on Obamacare. Then there’s Dodd Frank. All of this and more we don’t know about in three days. Who knows what prize the Russians are getting. Iran gets it’s nuke. Israel gets sent a dead fish wrapped in a newspaper. And now time for a VaCa in Asia. Whew, what a work load for only one man.
So little time to destroy this great country so much do. Gotta go, Gotta go, Gotta get it going, faster, faster, get out of my way, this is important and so am I.
Obama is a symptom of rot, not the rot itself.
Bingo Bob!
Don’t treaties of this nature have to go before a vote in at least the Senate? harry reid may run the show but I can’t believe there isn’t at least two or three democrats that would vote against something like that. Even if they are willing to vote for it, I wonder if every gun owner in America will be willing to roll over and let themselves be lead to the “slaughter” (I use the term slaughter because somehow I doubt all the armed “obama sheeple” would willfully hand their firearms in). I hope someone in this administration realizes just what this would do to the country, there wouldn’t be much left for them to convert to socialism. No better time for someone to invade, while we are busy taking each other out.
If trends continue, becoming California or Germany will seem like an improvement. We might be Balkanizing.
These next 4 years will be much worse from the previous 4 on all fronts. There is nothing stopping the administration from any sort of excess – the MSM will cover for them.
The America I grew up in is dead, and for the past four days I have internally alternated between fury, incomprehension and grief. But I fear not even our democracy is guaranteed to survive the next four years intact. This is a Chicago political machine in charge – and when Daley took over Chicago 50 years ago, he instituted a system that wormed its way into the private sector and has had an unbrakeable lock on elections since then.
My parents are not racist. My grandparents were not racists. I have never been taught to be a racist. Yet what I’m hearing from Obama supporters is that the color of MY skin is a mark of shame and my comeuppance has come due. It shocks me that race grievance demagoguery has become so widely accepted that it is unchallenged and unquestioned.
Oh, and apparently just my having thoughts that the current administration might not be perfect and the most wonderful thing ever to happen means I’m a racist…….it seems our culture has become more virulently intolerant of dissension and non-doctrinaire thinking than it has been for possibly 100 years, or maybe more.
This is much worse than the 70′s and the Carter years. I did not think it possible.
I get the worst of this accelerated racial hatred due to being half-black, but raised by the northern white family instead of the southern black family.
Even from the white liberals, I get it, with the “voting against your self-interest” line (which, despite not being as ‘severe’ as the “Race Traitor” talk, is still quite insulting).
The question I keep wanting to ask, and they keep refusing to answer, is thus :
“Why would I want to think and act more like you, when you’ve become so virulent and prick-ish?”
And of course, after a generic “I’m smarter than you” or “MAGIC UNDERWEAR!” (Clever, kids, but I’m not a mormon.) or “BUT BUSH!” from them, they tell me that I’m a horrible person for not wanting to give up what little money I have, and yet don’t see any disconnect in them bragging that they have more money than I do (and that somehow that makes them a better person).
I swear, the attraction to Liberal Progressivism must just be that you get to play the old Alinsky card, attacking other people for not doing things that YOU don’t do either.
One thing that puzzles me: Black people (or Latinos) would probably say they don’t want to be stereotyped, right? That it’s offensive to think “All black people are/do [fill in the blank].” That it’s offensive if the conspicuous misdeeds of some blacks (e.g. drug gangs in the hood) are thought to reflect on every black person. And that it’s an insult to say that black people can’t think for themselves.
Yet the majority of black people, at least in political terms, impose the same kind of stereotyping etc. on themselves: “Real black people are all Democrats; the others are oreos. Black people must be crushed if they think differently. A black person must vote for a black candidate (unless it’s a Republican). Any criticism of a half-black president is an attack on every black person.”
The high emotionalism with which black people defend Obama and insist he’s doing a fabulous job suggests they think if he is seen as a failure, then they will have failed, too. If you told them that white conservatives don’t see it that way — that we don’t think their own personal merit has anything to do with Obama’s — they would probably find that offensive, too.
Put in your position, I would take every opportunity to rebut those people with quotes and video clips from Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.
I will take this opportunity to share my very favorite Dr Sowell quote,”The poor are the human shields government uses to grow government.” Notice how Dr Sowell made no reference to either political party.
I just LOVE the “I’m smarter than you” line, mostly coming from those who mistake education for intelligence. I like to reply with a modification on a quote from Margaret Thatcher: “Being smart is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t”
More correctly; those who mistake credentials for education. These days it is very possible to be highly credentialed and pig ignorant; many are.
oh, honey- that’s heartbreaking! That’s mean.
Come to Austin. I haven’t met a black person with two black parents, yet. One- from Africa- everyone else is mixed. You’ll fit right in.
I am fairly even-tempered, but I walked out of an around-the-lunch-table conversation at church back in the summer in which more than one rich, white Episcopalian – all of them very nice, believe me! These are my friends – expressed their disappointment at Republicans of the lower or lower-middle class who would vote “against their self-interest.” Why do people who otherwise cherish differences insist on such gray conformity in political behavior? (To say nothing of the idea that perhaps these people might not see “their self-interest” in the same light as the commenters. That NEVER seems to occur to the rich white Episcopalians.)
In my own circle, where I as a conservative am pretty grossly outnumbered, I really do think most of these people value individuality, uniqueness, difference. Yet I’m reminded of pretty much every Jane Austen book in which, though Emma might try to Pygmalion the poor orphan, class is nevertheless all-important and, further, implies a code of behavior that might as well be a minuet, it’s so circumscribed.
I’ll do what I damn well please, thank you.
What is certain is that the next four years will be worse,but funnier for us who are watching from far away.In fact this has started already with Petraeus.As for Balkanisation,some Russians believe that the country will disintegrate,the Chinese do believe that the US will be a failed state.What is certain is that the economy will collapse!
@Stallion: “….it seems our culture has become more virulently intolerant of dissension and non-doctrinaire thinking than it has been for possibly 100 years, or maybe more.”
That’s liberal fascism in action. Progressive liberals are all about tolerance and free speech. It’s just that the tolerance must only be directed towards them and free speech means you’re free to agree with whatever they say.
Re: “The crux for the next four years is whether we become California or transform into a sort of socialist Germany, where the work ethic, fiscal sobriety, and ingenuity trump counter-productive energy and social policies.”
We won’t get either, we spend 40% more than we earn and are simply printing money out of thin air QE3 to pay for it all. That which cannot continue will stop.
Towards the end of Obama’s second term we WILL become Greece today and Argentina in 2001 shorty thereafter.
More Argentina than Greece, because unlike Greece and like Argentina, we can print our own currency. So it’s Argentina or perhaps Weimar Germany.
I don’t understand why hispanics are not insulted by the press 2 messages they get when phoning. Doesn’t this imply that they, alone among all immigrant groups, are too dumb to learn English? Don’t they have the advantage of having other hispanics who can help them learn how things function in America? Don’t they, like The Chinese Girl in the Ghetto, have children who learn English in school and translate for them? I am sure many hispanic immigrants have adapted to America just like other immigrants. Why are they not outraged by being judged as particularly incapable? And why are the upper 10% Obama voters incapable of seeing their own condescension?
And why does our first black president not deplore the Trayvon Martins who change from cheerful-looking 13 year olds to middle-finger-raising, gold-grid-sporting 17 year olds? Why doesn’t he not want to slug the rappers who think it’s cool to call girls just like his daughters whores and bitches? Who are really ruining the chances of young blacks? And to the super provincial blacks who find the ebonics more liberating that English, why don’t you tell these kids that they’ll never get a Nobel prize in chemistry, because you have to know the international language of science to talk with fellow chemists in Japan, Germany, and Brazil.
Why would Obama care about blacks – he doesn’t want competition!!
I suspect that Obama secretly wants to be Asian because stepdad Lolo was more of a dad to him than his own father, but in lieu of that, he secretly holds African-Americans in contempt because his father was an African who wasn’t descended from slaves.
This presumes that the Kenyan really was his father rather than the very American, very mixed, very communist black, Frank Marshall Davis. Look at Obama and Davis’ pictures side be side and see who you think is most likely the father.
Look at Obama and Davis’ pictures side be side and see who you think is most likely the father.
Fat chance. Knock it off. There’a zillion times more similarity between Obama and his brother George.
The reason is that Mexicans are colonists, not immigrants. They intend to take over, not assimilate. There numbers are so great in some parts of the country that english speaking Americans have to assimilate into Mexican culture as opposed to the other way around.
The reason immigrants, Asian, Hispanic, whatever, don’t vote for Republicans is not issues. Issues are epiphenomena.
One side screams “racist, sexist, homophobe,fascist, fat-cat, etc., freely riots in the streets supported by the police and fed by the local business denounced by the rioters; bombs buildings, demonstrates in favor of Chavez and Che, etc. and the other side does nothing, and everyone, immigrants included, can tell who is the strong horse.
If I were new and and uncertain of my position in a society, I’d vote the raging, hate-filled majority too. I left my homeland to stop being a victim. Why volunteer to be a victim in America?
“stupid ads worked”
“vast underclass”
“no deportation of criminals”
“cynial opportunism”
The Roman tribunes are not the only items missing. Some combination of presidents will be our Augusuts (Augusti?). But that is the past: Obama was and is aiming to be the Chavez, Castro, or Mao of America, all leaders for which boomers and epigone have openly and frequently declared their admiration.
All this seems inane and insane to a dying people who can’t comprehend that the overwhelming majority of all people in all times favor authoritarian rule. America has long refused to teach its children to love freedom, take responsiblity, and endure hardship.
The society has been permanently transformed. There is no going back. Welcome Chavez when he comes. Or else.
“does Obama know any pastor who can speak without offering racist commentary?”
No. Don’t be silly. Like every other Democrat, Obama knows only Democrats.
Professor Hansen I hope you enjoyed Hillsborough. One thing that occurs to me is that our culture has radically changed from my youth where idiocy once spoken would receive the proper response….”that’s stupid”. We live in this matter-antimatter where cliche becomes truth because “all the right people believe as I do and if you don’t you are a _______(fill in the blank). This all sugar coats actual hardship and misery that is coming our way whether we admit it, or not. What has occured in our culture is that verbal censure has gone the PC way.
Not to delve too much in the pig sty of racist accusation, we all know it is merely a tactic, but we as a culture need to quite simply not put up with this anymore. Rather than be silenced by absurd accusations we need to call out this Sophistry for what it is at each utterance. Respond to harsh language with harsh language. Go ahead, give it a try. As one who was publicly accused of racisim because I advocated that my monitarily broke little town could not afford to change the zoning code to allow chicken coups in every back yard my response to this verbal flatulance was…”That is the most dumbest thing I have heard tonight.” Yes, the accuser sputtered, and looked for support from the usual crowd she also was shushed by the chair.
Too often we resort to logic and history to defend our positions against just plain stupid talk. When those weiling the accusation to advance their cause resort to censure don’t fall into the trap of reason. Just allow, to borrow a phrase, “stupid is as stupid does” to stand alone. When they persist in riling the rabble point out that that is what they are doing and again, label it for what it is. That is still stupid.
“I guess we will have to vote on it to find out whats in it.” That is stupid.
“You didn’t build that.” That is idiocy on stilts.
“The dream act.” I think you are way too in touch with your inner child.
“That is white privilege” Would you explain that, Gomer?
“It is global warming!” Did you learn that from TV?
Go ahead, give it a try. Of course they will be developing spittle issues and the in crowd will be aghast but let them know that they are still children even when they control the reins of power and group think.
Let your inner curmudgeon be free.
Remember John Derbyshire’s dictum…”When they say ‘it’s for the children’ I hide my wallet.”
Just read last night that a bunch of people in Louisiana have filed a petition of secession from the United States. It is my understanding (although I haven’t done any research yet) that it takes just 25,000 signatures on such a petition for the fedgov to be compelled BY THE CONSTITUTION to address this as serious (as if this administration pays any attention AT ALL to that document).
If they get their 25,000 this weekend (not a far-fetched notion with a widely available internet) I could see the good people of Texas joining them. If Arkansas were to join too, I might just put the ol’ mattress on the roof and head south. (How would the Alamo work with modern weapons?)
It has already started, I don’t know if this will go viral or not. We can of course only hope this gets some attention.
http://www.unitedstateoftexas.com/petition_to_seceed.html
I was called for jury duty recently near Shreveport, Louisiana. The defense lawyer did not deny the charges — shooting a cop and an attempt at incest — but pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
During jury selection, the prosecutor asked the same question again and again: “How long have you lived in Louisiana?” He explained that he trusted Louisianans to think straight, but didn’t know about people who grew up elsewhere.
Now that is funny!
As far as why a majority voted as it did, I prefer the wisdom of the Old Oligarch, Plato on Democratic Man, or Tocqueville to the latest spin from Republican grandees.
Indeed. De Tocqueville above all since he saw us directly, at our most optimistic, energetic and best. Coals of fire will no doubt descend, but Ayn Rand ain’t up to it — however great the temptation to gloat and Go Brain Dead, excuse me, Go Galt.
Before we give up entirely on our country or espouse illegal activity as protest measures, have we exhausted all avenues for protesting election results which are at best suspect!?
http://obamavoterfraud.com/
Going Galt is not illegal and is the only solution that well educate the other side.
Talking to these people who have taken over is a waste of time and mental power. Just let them have the whole thing. None of them have enough brains or talent to do the manual dirty labor that keeps the machines running. Let them eat each other on the way to hell.
We have two competing and conflicting legalities. Slavery was outlawed but the government claims any share of our labors it wants. So, it is up to us to decide which law we want to be under. This election was the tipping point. We know the government will take it all if they can get away with it.
Obama is our caudillo.
Many here accurately understand that the primary poison is in the education system, both K-12 and higher ed. That has been accelerating for decades. The problem that complicates what we can be in the future is that Obama’s Ed Programs like Race to the Top, Positive School Climate, and the Common Core (which is actually changing values by the way) were designed to close off all available escape routes. Private schools, Moving to the suburbs, Gifted and Talented. Having the accreditation agencies as the enforcers of John Dewey’s vision of Social Reconstruction really takes the German option off the table unless we understand what is really going on. And quickly.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/hiding-educations-theft-of-individual-freedom-behind-the-positive-school-c/limate mandate gives us a first hand example of the coordinated attempt to thoroughly realign the culture by requiring communitarian, collective values as a primary focus of the classroom. No individuals. Just race, gender, ethnicity, specialness, and then community. Where the cultivated consensus will be mandated on all.
How can a Republic survive when taxpaid educators and politicians are so intent on so reframing “hearts and minds”? Which they declare openly and repeatedly.
Thanks again Robin. I really appreciate your expertise in this area.
If I understand your arguement it all comes down to the fact that the class warfare arguement worked.
There is one point in your section on ‘the Rich’ that I question. You said the Republican party is middle and upper middle flanked by the supper rich and the lower classes. Is there no more “establishment”? By that I mean people with money with conservative values and classical educations. Leaders with diplomacy when needed but a strong heart and resolve as well. Living in California surrounded by tech head millionairs your perspective may be different.
If they are out there, I sure would appreciate their reemergence. This ‘meritocracy’ that David Brooks so admires is not working out too well.
The Left took over all institutions. They are the Establishment now. Too late to wake up to that fact.
I really do believe Libya is going to be Obama’s Watergate. Libya was far worse than Watergate because nobody died in Watergate. Here we have four dead Americans, one of whom was an American ambassador, the first one killed since 1979. Worse, you had an administration that covered it up for political purposes. And now with the resignation of General David Petraeus, this is only going to add fuel to the fire. Somebody is going down for Libya and now that Petraeus is no longer part of the administration, he may be more willing to talk about what happened, even if it means that Congress is going to have to force him to do so. We are in for a bad couple of months and the Democrats in Congress are beginning to feel it.
Something is really wrong about Obama accepting Petraeus’ resignation. Remember, Eric Holder is still in Contempt of Congress and has litigation pending against him from Congress, and he still has a job. And Obama is throwing Petraeus under the bus for an affair? Something is not right here. And I think the key to Libya will be Petraeus. Which is why I’ll bet the White House is very worried right about now.
Libya will fizzle. The MSM will make sure it does.
Bingo. Amd they already made an example of Petraeus, a popular Gemeral.
If the General is smart, he’ll find a nice island to retire to before he has a “tragic car accident.”
Or worse, “commits an inexplicable suicide.”
It’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, for the truth to surface in this Libya fiasco. We have five or six or more media outlets all trying to outdo each other in their versions of “Pravda.” Frankly, I think that we no longer have a free press, except for Fox and the Internet. I understand that Andrew Sullivan has argued that Fox needed to be silenced. This from a former citizen of the UK–I guess Mr. Sullivan never inculcated the principles of free speech, or rather his version of free speech is speech with which he agrees.
I know that in the end, economics, as one commenter noted, applies to be Conservatives and Liberal/Progressives. It’s going to take some time, but eventually, these massive budget deficits are going to have an impact, a horrendous “black swan” event. Unfortunately, the prudent along with the irresponsible will be affected.
This Petraeus “affair” stinks to high heaven of rotting fish. What man who is having an affair goes to his boss’s house, confesses his affair, and then quits his job? Did you know Petraeus was having an affair? Neither did I. The position of CIA director is a pretty low-limelight position.
An affair is a matter between a husband and wife, not a matter between a husband and his boss. If Petraeus hadn’t spilled the beans, who would have known? Maybe some office workers whispering over the water cooler at Langley, but nobody else would have known.
This affair is another cover-up. I believe the real reason he resigned is because he was going to testify truthfully at next week’s hearing, and Obama just couldn’t have that.
Do you think David Petraeus would throw his wife of 37 years under the bus for some sort of sinister coverup? I don’t.
I think he is an honorable man who did the right thing. This country has asked too much of him. I bid he and his wife well.
Ironic isn’t it that when Bill Clinton had an “affair”, the MSM said it was between he and his wife. Once again, the double standard is in effect–Democrats are treated differently than are Republicans and Conservatives.
The Benghazi scandal will go nuclear and take down Obama? Not likely as long as the too-loyal opposition has no balls. Which it sure doesn’t.
Petraeus didn’t go to his boss with his indiscretions, he went public with them, thereby defusing blackmail. The only question left is who blackmailed him for what reason? And the fact of the indiscretion doesn’t matter at all, perhaps it never happened, was only an FBI/CIA or WHOSITS fabricated ploy in the first place.
Obama was arming Al Quaeda surrogates among the Syrian “rebels” from the Libyan weapons trove. Stevens was the arranger on site with the Turkish middleman playing the shipping agent. The US government is in civil war with many factions, and Patraeus played the card everyone thought he couldn’t in order to take himself off the field.
Question now is what does Patraeus do? One thing sure, he’d better not walk, drive or fly for the nonce.
What does he do?
Accept that half million dollar a year defense consulting contract.
He and the missus will do quite well I’m sure.
He is, after all, a Democrat and political brass.
Nothing will be the democrats watergate. To have a watergate scandal, you have to have a media that will pursue it. We don’t have a free media; we have a propaganda arm of the democrats.
The media will be the true undoing of this country. I despise them.
It was just a matter of time before the Marxocrats overtook the rest of the population. As Rush Limbaugh says, you can’t compete with Santa Claus. The Democrats are the party of the free stuff. The people with the Obamaphones LOVE him!
And Romney for all his vaunted “admistrative” skills, got out organized by the community organizer. If Romney had gotten his voters out to vote, he still could have won. But he didn’t and the blame has to go to him. He hired the consultants to develop ORCA that didn’t work. And he wouldn’t attack Obama where he was weak.
Karl Rove, Freedom Works, etal wasted millions of dollars for little effect.
You can’t let the Marxists take over big media, big education, big university, big Hollywood, big music, and big tv and expect that the people will simply love traditional America. As you see, they voted for Amerika. And cheered about it. And unfettered illegal immigration of millions of illerate people who willingly sign up for either the jobs or the free stuff. They don’t necessarily like America for the they cheered for the Mexican soccer team against America in LA. But they do like the free stuff.
“If the Republicans were to agree to amnesty for, say, two million who were brought here as children and are in school or in the military, do you really think the “Latino community” in response would celebrate and then also agree to deport those who did not qualify? Or do you imagine the deal would at least result in deportation for those entirely on public assistance or with a criminal record? ”
Uh, I’ll take “Cheap Labor For $100″, Alex.
It is a curious thing that Obama’s surrogates are fond of touting the fact that the Obama Administration has deported more illegal aliens than any other Administration in history, and yet 7 out of 10 of “Hispanic” voters cast their ballots for Obama.
I think that the message here is unequivocally clear. The more that you deport illegal aliens and talk smack about the White Gringo, the more that “Hispanics” will vote for you.
Let’s try THAT kind of “outreach” if we ever get back into power.
Heck, if its marketed as the truth that these are opening up jobs for native and legal immigrant Americans, we might actually win Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan next time.
I’d gladly lose the 10% of the total elctorate “Hispanic” vote by an 8 to 2 or 9 to 1 margin to get the 71% of the electorate that was White another 2% for us.
Obama can kill with drones, “support the surge in Afghanistan, keep Guantanamo open, actually NOT try to take away your guns, and deport the most people, but they still love him, and you still hate him. What a country, eh? It is almost all about assuming tribal positions and stances, wouldn’t you say? ;-)
“What a country, eh? It is almost all about assuming tribal positions and stances, wouldn’t you say? ;-)”
It shouldn’t be one country, to my way of thinking.
And to paraphrase a great “Man of God”:
“I don’t know what kind of Honkie doesn’t vote for him when a White man is running for President.”
It is what it is.
Dr. Hanson:
The question you pose is the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is the Salvadore Allende scenario where Obama’s policies create social chaos and the military steps in and puts an end to Republic as we know it. While many will say this is far fetched because the culture of civilian control is too deeply embedded, there are those who don’t want to see the end of the nation. As they say “the times they are a’changin” and we will “have to destroy the village in order to save it.”
So I say to the Obama mob be careful what you wish for because you may end up in a football stadium some day.
Reagan gave a ‘ONE OFF” Amnesty for 3 Million so why are there now 12 Million. Amnesty will never stop the flow only secure borders will. Oh and the Republicans LOST 7% of what little Hispanic vote they had at the next election after Amnesty . So Amnesty does NOT bring Hispanic votes. Its the Santa Claus USURPER and his freebies that get the votes of the workshy and unfortunately America they are now the MAJORITY. Not in paying Taxes though of course.
For some time now I have followed the rule that they actually mean the opposite of what they say. Seems to work every time.
Also, if the wealthy voted for Obama, then I suppose they really want to pay more taxes. Why should we oppose this? Let them take all they want from the Obama-voting wealthy. It want make much of a dent in our debt, and no doubt it will be used for new spending, but I have no interest in defending people that gave us this future. Take ever last time from Obama’s millionaire voters.
On education: They teach the children to believe they are smarter than their parents. This is actually very basic to progressive thought. Every generation is smarter than the one that came before. Therefore, the children learn to believe they truly know more than stodgy old mom and dad. Then it becomes a very short step to vote with the smart people. I was naive enough to believe that in spite of indoctrination they would still be smart enough to realize their futures are being destroyed. I know they are indoctrinated, but maybe I didn’t realize to what extent.
Good point about the Obama-voting wealthy. As has been widely reported, 8 of the 10 wealthiest counties went for O. I live in one of those areas, outside DC, and I can’t tell you how many McMansions I’ve driven past with Obama/Biden signs in their yards. Of course these aren’t the hyper-wealthy for whom money has lost all meaning, they’re generally 2-income professionals making a total of maybe $300K-$400K a year. Enough for the $15,000 a month mortgage, but not enough that they won’t feel the tax increase that Republicans are working so hard to protect them from.
If O actually gets his “tax on the wealthy”, his high-income voters might lose the McMansion, but they’ll still be able to enjoy their sense of moral superiority, right?
I’m with you. My wife and I are around 60 and we are well off but we live a more conservative lifestyle – a small house, cheap cars, no ostentatious displays of wealth, NO debt. I have a small consulting business. If higher taxes on “the rich” come, we can easily cut back on income-producing activities and still retain our lifestyle and not be affected much. Can these Obama voters with the McMansions and the Mercedes say the same? Can’t wait to find out.
Higher taxes primarily hurt the up-and-coming aspirants far more than the already wealthy. ero, the wealthy support higher taxation in order to stymie the competition.
Dr. Hanson’s analysis is incomplete. He doesn’t seem to account for Colorado, New Mexico, even Nevada, going for Obama. Yes, the three states have large Hispanic populations. And, the oldest government building in the country still in use is in Santa Fe, dating to 1610 (Palace of the Governors).
For Colorado, some Hispanics have been here since before Colorado became a state, with families spanning generations. I can find Hispanic owned small businesses all around the state, especially in the large metropolitan areas. Our Hispanics aren’t all illegal immigrants and lacking in education.
One hidden issue never came up, that I know of, except in Colorado; protection of the environment. Even die-hard conservatives like to take advantage of Colorado’s outdoor recreation amenities, the bulk of which occur on public lands. Outdoor recreation is the 2nd largest industry in the state, after agriculture. We got a new national monument in September thanks to President Obama and Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO).
Our public lands are the economic gift that keeps on giving. Mitt Romney’s attitude was to question why Colorado, and the West, has all these public lands and maybe we should start selling them off to private interests. Big non-starter.
When your precisou public lands belong to “everybody” they end up belonging to….marijuana growers and dealers.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/1-billion-in-pot-uprooted-from-public-lands-in-california-west.html
Or they wind up “belonging” to the bureaucrats and rich greenies that can get to them. Only someone on government travel or among the very wealthiest will ever see most of “America’s Wilderness Crown Jewels” in Alaska and that is true of much of the public land in the rest of The West. That’s how they get away with showing you pictures of lush rainforests in Southeast Alaska while telling you that the beautiful scenery will be destroyed if ANWR is developed. Of course, the reality is that there isn’t a tree within 300 or more miles of ANWR and there is almost no wildlife other than summer migratory birds and animals. And there ain’t a Humpback whale or an Orca within a thousand miles even though the last anti-ANWR commercial I saw in the Lower 48 a few years ago was all about those pretty whales.
I wasn’t talking about Alaska, Art. Alaska went for Romney. Suggest you plan a visit to the intermountain West to see our wonders. You can even ride an ATV or go jeeping in a lot of places. If you’ve never been here, how do you know what lands are easily accessible and what lands require a bit more effort?
See, SteveB, in Alaska they have these things they call airplanes that take off the ground and fly you to all sorts of places. And in those places they have these things called rental cars that you can use to get anywhere there’s a road. The only part of the US I’ve never travelled in is New England north of Boston, and I have even seen Russia from Alaska, though I was in Diomede on a US Government Travel Request.
Every year and every chance they get the US limits more areas to non-motorized transportation only. Here they’ve even talked about prohibiting flight over their precious public lands and use of motorboats on their precious rivers that traverse federal land. When I lived in Juneau the view out the windows on three sides of my house was of federal land and there were USDOI trucks marked Law Enforcement patrolling state owned roads that traversed their damned “National Forest,” in which you couldn’t use motorized vehicles. Don’t get me started hating on the USDOI! Sure, they let you take your toys to a few federal areas, but I read the snow machiner, 4WD, and ATV press and all they talk about is the limitations on where they can go and what they can do.
This is a reply to Art, whose latest comment is just below. Like I said, Art, I’m talking about the intermountain West, not Alaska. I also read some of the same publications put out by motorized recreationists that you do. They seem to do a lot of whining. Here in Colorado, we have thousands of miles on USFS and BLM land that are open for off-highway vehicles, both for summer use as well as winter. More miles of 4×4, backcountry, roads are open for plated vehicles.
It’s worth reminding you that the current push to end wide open travel anywhere on USFS lands, and move to a system of designated trails, started officially in 2005 with a new Federal rule created by the Bush Administration. The BLM has followed along.
Steve, the original push to close public access to federal lands began under Reagan. Oddly enough, none of the Democrats elected to office have ever tried to roll back federal restrictions, so I count that as bipartisan.
Another way to look at it is that the Dem strategy is just an updated version of classic Tammany Hall/Boss Tweed politics. Greet new immigrants with a few goodies and promise more as long as they vote right. Just now they do these things on a national scale.
BTW, CNN reported that Romney had a majority by *7 points* among white 18-29 y/o voters, so we shouldn’t assume away the “youth vote” in general.
Dr. Hanson,
I encourage you to visit Fredericksberg, Texas in the Hill Country. There you will find a climate much like the Mediterranean one you mentioned in a previous article. ( great article too ). You will find a thriving wine grape industry and that too will remind you of your present stomping grounds you love so much. Perhaps one day your progeny may go back to California to recolonize it.
I’d hate to lose you and if you stay in California much longer you won’t be able to get out. Come here to the bastion of freedom ( for a while anyway ) and help lead the resistance from friendly territory. It is clear we have lost the battle to save America but the New America will rise from Texas. And Oklahoma and some neighboring states.
Your article in which you state why you stay in California was very good and informative but you are dreaming. The only way the far Left Coast and New England will ever flip back to reality is as a Phoenix rising from the ashes. And the blue enclaves will never crash and burn as long as they have our ( the producers ) money to fund their totalitarian ways.
It is time Dr. Hanson. We just need some brave leaders to get out in front and herald the rise of a new nation. Please step up. A decent God fearing people need you.
I second your statement about Fredricksburg, It’s where we discovered Texas wines. WOW! Every-time we go into the hill country, my wife and I always marvel about how much it looks like SoCal, except without the beautiful San Gabriel mountains.
Do you mean to say that in the Mediterranean you can go the entire month of august and never get below 100 degrees?
Victor don’t fall for this trap. A summer in Texas and you will realize why Texans are so unimpressed with global warming.
Fairly low humidity in the Hill Country most of the time though. The bad heat doesn’t last long and usually even when it gets hot its bearable until about two in the afternoon. That’s why siestas were invented. %^) It gets hotter than blue blazes in high summer where Dr. Hanson lives too.
I’ve spent a few nights in California not far from where VDH is from, sprawled in my underwear on the lawn, trying to sleep. The Central Valley gets /hot/.
My boyfriend won a trip to San Antonio some years ago. I had him drive us to Fredericksburg, where, as the only patrons of a German restaurant, we enjoyed a delicious meal of schnitzl and a fabulous cucumber dill salad, which, for years I have been trying to replicate. Lovely place.
Not California.
Not Germany.
Zimbabwe.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-16/head-zimbabwe-central-bank-explains-qe3
I worked a polling place in a lower class to working class section of Tucson. There were about 90% Mexicans voting, probably 95% solid Democrat,and about 40% who showed up to the polls not on the roster.
Hate to stereotype people but I would say they are largely uninformed, probably percentages of illegitimacy equal to the black inner city rate, concerned solely with getting theirs and prime recruits for La Raza. This group is highly unlikely to ever vote for the GOP.
Saul would be proud of his student Barry and how well he has been able to use his education.
Not California, not Germany. Zimbabwe.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-16/head-zimbabwe-central-bank-explains-qe3
Gono of Zimbabwe is justified in being concerned. Zimbabwe, like Ecuador, uses the U.S. Dollar as its currency.
I believe that you are mistaken. Zimbabwe has the Zimbabwean dollar. It has been suffering from horrific inflation. At one point a year of or so ago, the US$1.00 = Z$3,000,000,000,000 (one US dollar was the equivalent of 3 trillion Zimbabwean dollars). The BBC reported that store shelves were empty and that the poor people suffered enormously. Of course President Mugabe and his cronies did all right!
Lyrics from “Taps”
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Fading light, dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar, drawing nigh, falls the night.
Thanks and praise, for our days,
‘Neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, neath the sky;
As we go, this we know, God is nigh.
Sun has set, shadows come,
Time has fled, Men must go to their beds
Always true to the promise that they made.
While the light fades from sight,
And the stars gleaming rays softly send,
To thy hands we our souls, Lord, commend.
Precisely. However, the first German model of socialism was National Socialism under Adolf Hitler. What is taking shape in California right now is essentially the state Latin Americans seem to naturally evolve toward: Peronism, a Hitler-lite model of socialism featuring single-party rule, Potemkin-village social services, and rampant corruption. The German model depended on the wealth and factories confiscated from the rich (Jews); and because these factories were immediately ramped into hyper-production, this seemed for a time to be an economic miracle. However, all they really produced was war materiel– which led to the inevitable. There is no such problem with the Peronist model; it leads to a solid state, punctuated by dramatic fiscal crises and periodic faux-revolutions in the streets leading to– you guessed it– a new female or ethnic Peron. This is California’s future. And as California goes, so goes the Democrat party.
As for the Republicans, their only possible future is through increased states’ rights, leading to a “soft secession.” This is not, I emphasize, a question of demographics or ideological purity– it is one of Constitutional survival.
“However, the first German model of socialism was National Socialism under Adolf Hitler”
Not true. The Germans had a highly developed and very socialistic social welfare system even under the Kaiser. The Wiemar Republic was very socialistic with elaborate social welfare systems, almost universal unionization. Their labor scheme was remarkably similar to that envisioned in various versions of “Card Check” legislation in the US today, including even interest arbitration for contract renewals. This scheme is what enabled Wiemar to keep relative social and economic order as they tried to inflate their way out of their war debt and reparations. The Worldwide economic downturn of the late ’20 caused governments to be unable to keep up the social welfare spending and employers to be unable to meet the wage demands imposed by the arbitration system and social unrest led to the NSDAP coming to power. Hitler secured the support of German capital by reducing some of the socialism, especially by eliminating most of the Wiemar labor scheme and thus union power.
And before the Weimar Republic, there was the social welfare nation-state of Otto von Bismarck in the late 19th century.
“The Worldwide economic downturn of the late ’20 caused governments to be unable to keep up the social welfare spending and employers to be unable to meet the wage demands imposed by the arbitration system and social unrest led to the NSDAP coming to power. Hitler secured the support of German capital by reducing some of the socialism, especially by eliminating most of the Wiemar labor scheme and thus union power.”
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it . . . .” (Santayana)
Thanks for reminding us, Art!
All technically true, but not really what I was talking about. The socialism of the Weimar Republic was International rather than National, and the socialistic policies of Bismarck were in reality a form of industrial feudalism where, just as in Britain and France during the same period, wages were kept artificially extremely low and the political power of the unions was co-opted by the state. In the case of Prussia, for example, every fourth citizen was a police informant, a condition which persisted in that unpleasant place until the 1990s. The modern socialist movement only achieved real power in Europe after the bloodbath of the governing classes in WWI and in the US after the Wall Street crash.
A “soft secession” will only occur under statist government if the collective wishes it to be so and they won’t, not to mention that the current batch of repubs agree with the statists. Keep your powder dry. Thank You.
Not California.
Not Germany.
Zimbabwe.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-16/head-zimbabwe-central-bank-explains-qe3
I wish someone would bring up the fact that those million of illegal illiterate immigrants pick our crops and allow to buy food at the lowest prices on the planet measured against income. A PhD in engineering is certainly an ideal immigrant but if we had to choose which would contribute more positively to our standard of living the million illegal illiterate immigrants would be a clear winner.
We do need an agricultural and service industry Guest Worker Law, just make sure the guest workers are ineligible for citizenship.
Two generations ago my grandparents left their extreme poverty as tenant farmers in Alabama to come to Florida and pick citrus. Mr grandmother sectioned grapefruit. Those were the days before automation, and this awful job was performed by women glad to help support the family.
Next generation my uncle joined the army and became a career soldier. He was able to give his family much more opportunity and today his daughter is very successful in business. My mother certainly had her share of trials, but we, her children are all hard-working members of the middle class.
At some point came a great shift. Most women working in canning plants today in Florida come from Mexico and Central America. As do the pickers. These are jobs Americans won’t do anymore. Why? Beneath their dignity? Is it more dignified to sit at home and accept handouts? No doubt the farm workers also qualify for benefits like food stamps, so in a sense we are paying double. In the food we purchase we pay the workers. In our taxes we pay to assist both the workers and those too dignified for work.
When we reached the point where some jobs were considered beneath us, perhaps then we turned down the path that has brought us to the events of this week. I do not expect this shift to change. I honor the hard work of my grandparents. They left their descendents something of greater value than money: an understanding that regardless of the work, there is dignity in an honest day’s toil. But this too is a concept fading out of memory.
In the absence of illegally imported cheap labor to perform most of the work “americans wont do” either 1) production would be automated 2) production would get exported 3) product price and labor cost would increase . By socializing a large part of the costs of cheap labor (schools, food, medical care), much of the cost of production is subsidized. Thus none of the above 3 market solutions occurs .
The Ph.D might be the one who invents the automated fruit or vegetable picker that would make the stoop labor unnecessary. When I was a kid in rural Georgia in the ’50s and ’60s it was an article of faith that cotton cultivation could only be done by hand, that only hand picking was possible on the small cotton farms on uneven land common in much of The South, and that all tobacco cultivation had to be done by hand. Of course, all that hand labor was either black or the very poorest whites. Funny thing, when the Civil Rights Act and The Great Society took away the peon labor, in less than a decade all cotton and tobacco cultivation was automated, and only somebody my age or older has a clue how to “crop” tobacco, tie bundles on sticks, fill the racks in a barn, and lay the cured tobacco out on burlap sheets – the only way it could ever be done.
The reason we don’t have automation is cheap, mostly illegal, labor and if getting rid of illegals means I have to pay a little more for food, so be it; the differnence should be recovered in reduced social costs.
The reason we don’t have automation is cheap, mostly illegal, labor and if getting rid of illegals means I have to pay a little more for food, so be it; the differnence should be recovered in reduced social costs.
Were it that simple, unfortunately and ironically, much of our fresh and seasonal food production has moved to Mexico and South America. Uber rich family cartels and global conglomerates now control an increasing percentage of fresh table and fruit production as well as canning. Take avocados for instance, until just a few years ago they were advertised as “California Avocados”, now the ads are for “Avocados of Mexico”.
I too was born in the Central Valley and am stunned by the increasing poverty and crime. As VDH has written, parts of the once prosperous valley look like the third world. Orchards and vineyards that supported generations of farmers and communities are being sold for firewood (wood fires will no doubt, soon be banned in CA).
That the left has laid waste to the Central Valley’s food basket is still a puzzlement, unless the ultimate goal is control of the food supply, but I fear they were not so prescient or organized and it is an unintended consequence of a myopic green movement. Which of course will be seen as an opportunity to extend statist control over agriculture and ultimately the food supply. The anti-obesity drum beat grows stronger, as with Obamacare, it is not about health, but rationing and ultimately creating a permanent voting block as in California where GOP registration has shrunk to 29%.
We’re in for some ugly times.
good, we’ve earned it.
You are exactly right. When I was 16 in 1969, I worked in tobacco in eastern NC, the largest tobacco producing area in the world at that time. As labor costs rose, farmers did exactly as you stated–first there were mechanized tobacco harvesting equipment where the tobacco pickers could sit and pick from two rows as this machine in which they were riding, rode through the fields. Later, farmers started using “bulk curing barns,” instead of the old method of hanging sticks with tobacco bundles tied to them with string (which eliminated a lot of workers); the tobacco picked in the fields was just laid on these large flat sheets and stuffing to this “cabinet,” much like maps are put into a cabinet. US agriculture will mechanize, too, if the illegal alien labor supply dries up.
I’d like to note that apparently, in the 19th century due to rural labor shortages in the USA, American farmers adopted labor saving farm equipment, e.g., McCormick Reaper. European farmer had so much surplus labor that they chose not to go the mechanization route. Mechanization is, obviously, the way to go. Now with Obamacare in place, I bet that this cheap illegal alien labor won’t be so cheap any more.
This automation topic sent me rushing to my latest [Oct. 2012] copy of Inc. Magazine. (Inc.com)
What do you find on Pages #76 &77? An article about a Gent [Rodney Brooks] who used to run ‘iRobot’, the Co. that makes Roomba and the ocean probe SeaGlider.
He left them to create a simple, easily programmable ‘industrial helpmate’ and it is coming to fruition faster than anyone can believe.
It’s name is BAXTER and must be seen (and be explained to you,the layman)to be fully comprehended. It needs little, if any, intensive programming to function and learns by doing. A simpleton can make adjustments by demonstrating his/her needs while BAXTER observes with it’s sensors/”eyes”.
Need to adjust positions? Take your hands and reposition BAXTER’s. It then replicates what you demonstrated and looks to you for approval.[Not A Typo]
The Kickers? Basic training takes 1 hour . Price? $22,000 dollars.[Not A Typo]
The name of The company is ReThink Robotics.
Brooks, until 2007 ran MIT’s A. I. Lab. iRobot was just a waystation.
His next step is to get BAXTER to make copies of ‘Himself’.
Watch out guys and girls,…here it comes…..
And their offspring born on US soil arent granted citizenship.
It’s a win/win.
The alternative coalition, (conservative, anti-statist, libertarian), stands almost solely upon rationality as a means of establishing credibility on issues of governance. It’s attempts to touch the emotional side of the electorate employ virtues that are devalued by post-modern social constructs. Love of country, traditional family, self-reliance are now “oppressive patriarchal values”.
My perception of events of the last ten years or so is of a world turned on it’s head. Many share this perception; most likely because they remember the times before. Before what has yet to be fully defined or, I fear, experienced.
After witnessing this election campaign, I’ve come to believe that we have transitioned from what appeared to have been an open marketplace of ideas and views to something different. A Corporatist driven Common Unified Truth perhaps. An orthodoxy that can be disputed but never confronted or opposed to any great effect.
Presidential Elections: Powerful “Special Interest Groups” Won Again By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, November 07, 2012
http://www.globalresearch.ca/presidential-elections-powerful-special-interest-groups-won-again/5310972
Another good article and some thoughtful comments as well.
I worked the election in Colorado – a key swing State. We got our clocks cleanded by the Democrats in the ground game. Absolutely wiped out. While Colorado Republicans gathered to be with Mitt Romney the Sunday before the election for a concert, 300+ Democrat election workers gathered in Denver to coordinate their ground game.
The election was close, but it should not have been. Romney was Alf Landon. Neither candidate chose to emphasize a plan for the future. I honestly cannot explain based on the campaigns how Romney’s Administration policies would be markedly different than Obama’s. All those people who stayed home, on both sides, more 2008 Obama voters failed to show up than missing McCain voters, had nothing to vote for! Romney did not present a case as to why his policies would be markedly different than Obamas. There were no Reagan Democrats and their should have been. Another dismal GOP campaign managed by a liberal Republican running on a flawed resume rather than a passionate conviction for changing the direction of the country.
Come on folks, this is not hard. Until the GOP attempts to stand up and actually present a dramatically different policy direction for the country we will lose. The GOP has NO influence on the culture right now. We cannot win a culture war against the media, acadamia, the dominant rent seeking professions. The Tea Party fell in line and we worked hard for Romney, but we were working and voting against Obama.
It is time the Whigs went away. We need a bigger coalition, but it must be one centered on an actionable and energizing plank. The Republican Party was born in the moral contest regarding slavery. A new Republican Party must be born in the moral contest against the pernicious and unsustainable welfare state. It is a fight for Liberty. Surely we, conservatives, the Republicans, can define Liberty.
Any conservative who thinks that the Republican Party is against the welfare state and the modern behemouth Federal State has not been paying attention.
While there’s tons of straw to add to the camel’s back, there seems to be a denial of the integrity of the Romney/Ryan campaign. Secrecy, rhetoric, spin, and abject dishonesty was presented to the voters and they just didn’t buy it. Now granted, all politicians spin, are dishonest, and lie but the R/R team brought this to a new level. They built their entire campaign on outright lies and blatant dishonesty while having the chutzpah to change any given position at any given time contingent on what that particular audience wanted to hear. They ignored the fact that their numbers on the most important issue (the economy) simply didn’t add up. While people in general wanted nothing to do with Ryan’s budget, the campaign were vague, inconsistent, and simply pretended those issues weren’t there. The R/R team presented themselves as the worst of the worst of the used cars salesmen, telling their prospects absolutely anything they wanted to hear to make the sell. Romney dismissed fact checkers, ignored reporters, hid his tax returns, refused to explain what loopholes he’d close, and just became more mendacious while flip flopping at an unconscionable pace.
At the end of the day, people buy from who they can trust the most, rely on the most, and feel they’ll get the best service or protection from for their investment. Regardless of how you trust or distrust either, Romney’s campaign strategy simply failed to make the sell.
And you trust the guy who promised to stop the rising of the seas and close down the coal industry till he decided he was for Sarah Palin’s all of the above approach with special interest on crony capitalist donors? To say nothing about improving our standing in the world?
Ron- You forgot about the evil rich dude part, as well as the “thank goodness we’ve kept the Nation’s uteri safe”.
Romney is a better grade of technocrat, that is clear.
Your willful ignorance cannot and will not exempt you or me from it’s consequences.
VB, John, et al, my post doesn’t endorse or promote anyone nor is it about conservative views or ideological differences but rather about selling an agenda to the electorate. You know, to the folks doing the voting.
We can argue special interests, capital donors, Palin, or the better of the 2 but that’s not my point. Let’s haggle the history of campaign strategies. I’ve followed elections since Carter beat Ford and I’ve never seen a campaign as secretive, misleading, or inconsistent on the issues as what Romney presented. It’s like being sold a new car with a refusal of telling you what the warranty and interest rate is, all while covering the odometer with duct tape.
And to further validate my argument, at the end of the campaign, Obama was actually running his campaign on “who do you trust”. And he won!
“Obama was actually running his campaign on “who do you trust”. And he won!”
While all the while bombarding the electorate with all the memes that you just repeated and in the end providing graphic evidence that a majority of the American res publica is just as stupid and gullible as you.
“Willfully ignorant”? “Stupid and gullible”? Such an angry crowd! Obviously, constructive discussion isn’t exactly the long suit at PJ Media. I suppose changing dialog to diatribe or perhaps flogging the messenger somehow mends the wounds of being slapped down by that steal hand of reality on Tues.
Perhaps Art, in that no holds barred chess game of a campaign from both sides, it was Romney’s strategy that opened the gates for that “bombarding” of “the electorate with all the memes” that from you own admission, provided “graphic evidence that a majority of the American” used. Had Obama started his campaign earlier with “who do you trust”, the Romney-Ryan team could have had a field day with it. In the end it was a very biting blow that Romney couldn’t counter.
Once again for fear of being misunderstood, I’m not attacking anyone’s credibility but rather their decision on how to run a winning campaign. Mitt understood early that withholding his taxes had consequences. He also knew early that Ryan’s RNC speech was scrutinized as dishonest. It was determined early that the Ryan budget did not address the debt and that the math of Romney’s 5 point plan was questionable. When asked to explain what loopholes he’d close, he told us he’d tell us after the election. Somewhere along the line they needed to come up with some substance but instead doubled down on their claims while refusing to answer, rationalize, or explain.
What you should realize is that most voters aren’t political analyst. I’d wager that 7 out of 10 can’t name the 3 branches of government. So in all fairness, Mitt letting his guard down and allowing Obama to slip in with “who do you trust” was Mitt’s very own shortcoming.
The willful ignorance to which I refer is this: unquestioning acceptance of the common narrative. The narrative which not only defines the scope of the debate but the context.
When I listen to a list of Democrat talking points used to contextualize the debate it indicates that the speaker accepts without question their premise.
Talk about home court advantage!
It may be helpful to turn down the chatter and look at the constant, which is the pursuit of raw power for it’s own sake. What if we look at ideology and issues not as ends in themselves but as vehicles?
The questioning then turns to who is really driving the bus and what is our destination?
If you’re suggesting John, that the Romney team ran a campaign on openness and honesty as anything other than that is Democratic talking points, that certainly brings the term “willfully ignorant” into the conversation.
Lord, maybe we should all beat our chests and throw ashes upon our foreheads, lamenting the tragedy of losing an election already gone when Romney won the primary.
The Gop was placed on suicidal path when Rove manipulated evangelicals and traditional republicans in W. Bush administration. Add tea Party that forces candidates to extreme right, then immediately shift after primary…its suicide to force a candidate to run this gauntlet. It will continue getting worse until someone finally stands up and forces the GOP to pause and give thoughtful deliberation to its future. Getting rid of influences like Norquist, Rove, and Limbaugh would be a good start.
As afar as the economy, its not going to get better, it is built upon the sand of the petro dollar system in 1973. It is recycling dollars into petrol sales and back into treasuries and back into stock and debt markets, into derivatives and back into petro sales…it will collapse under its own weight. Nobody in GOP or DNC has the balls to question logic and reason of handing the future of the US dollar to Saudi Arabia. So yes, the economy will get worse because Nixon and Kissinger built on sand instead of Granite.
Truly this election is an example of leaders asking where are my people running so i may lead them. The GOP is without cohesive leadership, instead relying on fractured approach that had predictable results. Hopefully someone is able to read the writing on the walls.
Getting rid of influences like Norquist, Rove, and Limbaugh would be a good start.
Regardless of one’s leanings, to equate any two of those three morally or politically or intellectually is just so much mischief and dissembling coming from the direction of the Obamamedia.
Norquist is a lobbyist for the Islamization of the GOP disguised as a conservative tax reformer.
Rove is a paid political strategist bent on making the GOP into a mirror image of the democrat party.
Limbaugh is a talk radio host.
Excellent commentary on the recent national calamity as well as on where we’re probably all headed. I believe that we’ll survive Obama, but we’ll be diminished some and people need to accept that as a given and prepare accordingly.
It’s inevitable that the vast bank account of mistakes and scandals built-up during the last four years will produce political dividends for conservatives—call it the coming Obama political dividend.
The sad truth for the dems is that they probably won’t be able to dig up another Obama, so they’ll have to run a white person. A plus for them is that he or she will likely have the good sense not to utter O-gaffs in public. But as blessed as this relief will be it won’t be enough to get their nominee past O’s dismal record, although they will try, in every hilarious sense of the word, to ‘capitalize’,’ in alternate reality style, on his policies.
There will be a high tide of scandals in the coming years that will likely turn O into an LBJ non-person, but this will be very poor compensation for the harm he will have inflicted on this nation by then.
Your analysis is correct and of no use to the Republican party and the members. Obama’s campaign was nothing short of brilliant. Who in the Republican establishment would have thought that an ad with a 20 something whore talking about her first time voting would make a sensible ad? But it sure did. Who in the Republican party would have thought a 30 something whore talking about her need for free condoms in a mock Congressional hearing would make sense? It sure did. I am sorry that there is no future role in government for good decent people who live lives like Ozzie and Harriet or Donna Reed or the Cleavers, but there isn’t, and four more years will prove me correct. None of these voters are going to convert to the Republican party ever no matter the message. Shortly they will incorporate the drug users (soft core at first), the child molesters (consenting partners only at first of course) and the felons into their “big” tent.
The idea for the ad is not new . It was used before. First in Australia and then in Russia .
As an Ohio voter, I heard the ads for months. It was one of the most viscious, underhanded campaigns of modern times.
We got people like Senator Harry Reid telling the public that he had it on good authority that Romney had not paid taxes …. and got a total free ride from the media. He was accusing another citizen of a crime, never provided one shred of evidence of his claims, and was not only not called on his wild charges, but they were repeated as fact by a complicent media.
It’s no wonder that people are confused and think that Romney was hiding something on his taxes.
Senator Reid, of course, is a multi-millionaire despite never pulling in a paycheck that would explain his wealth. *Silence on the part of the “fact checkers”* In his tenure as Senate leader, he has never produced a budget – a fundamental responsibility of the position. Again *silence on the part of the “fact checkers”*
But, despite being one of the most incompetent and ethically challenged his place is secure ….. in the line of succession to the presidency. If Biden and Reid as possible presidents doesn’t keep you night, nothing will :D
Romney and Ryan made their share of mistakes in this campaign, but changing their every position on issues at a drop of hat was not actually one of them.
One of the Obama campaign’s commercials in Ohio was to say “Romney claims that he believes this …. but we know that he really believes ….” again without providing one shred of evidence that Romney really believed what they claimed he did. It wasn’t true, but it gave the impression of a Romney flip-flop and Romney failed to address the misrepresentations effectively.
I think the concept that there is a Democratice base at the top and at the bottom of the population is most accurate. In my personal experience, while the economically top Democratic group may have some concern for their poorer cohorts, they have little respect for them.
Great article! It provides so much clarity.
I am reading this from pajamas media which is an appropriate place to fully grasp your meaning. In Hollywood, the script writer gets to determine the heroes and the villains. In one movie, we cheer the renegade cop who captures the bad guy; in the next, we cheer the bad guy and boo the evil renegade cop. The story is the same; they just switch who puts on the white v/s black hat.
And that is where we are.
I will point out what has changed, though no one will listen. Prior the mid-20th century, Judeo Christian laws “wrote the script” of western values. One ALWAYS wore a black hat if one was stealing, lying, committing murder, bearing false witness against a neighbor – etc., etc. Class warfare didn’t sell as you were clearly coveting your neighbors’ goods. We were to think of the Good Samaritan and bear the heavy lifting of charity by ourselves, not wait for the government to come along and do it for us.
The “script” for our country has flipped. It is now: Government, from who all blessings flow. In Government we trust.
Until the script changes back, we will just be another 3rd world &&&thole with a class of uber rich, a class of merchants and a class of grinding poverty (and eventually slavery will return).
There is a reason that western civilization and Israel were different. It’s not rocket science people. Want to change America? Send your kids to a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue. One that actually believes in and teaches God’s laws. Until then, you can look at your history books to see where we are headed.
Exactly. And you are right. No one will listen. On these political chat sites a huge majority think libertarianism is the answer. Just more man made man corrupted brain blather. God told us from the beginning that we would fail but that HE would provide the ultimate salvation for the few who would accept it. These are the Last Days people. Sneer all you want. This Great Falling Away we are living through is the most readily and easily discernible sign. Soon you will see pretty much total apostasy as conditions worsen. We few are looking up a lot as we know our salvation draws near. ( Not referencing the ‘rapture’. )
Mass immigration to the West is caused by massive population growth in the Third World which outstrips the ability of those Third World countries to provide a living for their own citizens.
In the West itself, the classic “bleeding heart liberal,” out of touch with the reality of what this will eventually mean in an overcrowded lifeboat, is infused with the political correctness that means the lifeboat eventually won’t have a navigator so to speak.
Liberals believe all is equal, even as they blame the obvious signs of inequality on racism and put forward entitlement programs meant to hold the fort until racist whites no longer can oppress the new immigrant and already present black minority.
If liberals are correct, all will be well. If they are wrong, America will be an irrelevant slightly upscale version of the Third World itself. It’s not the land, it’s the people.
America has become a nation of imbeciles. Again, exit polls showed the majority of our populace believe Barack Obama, after what we have witnessed the last four years, could manage the economy better than a man whose entire career has been predicated on business success and achievement. It’s surreal – almost as if I am immersed in some bad script of a Twilight Zone scene.
You can’t reason with or fix that level of abject stupidity.
History will record the elections of 2008 and 2012, the American Bolshevik won.
As a white, conservative, Christian male, responsible for all that ails us, I am left with four choices – a fifth if you believe like I do in the theological, but that is for another discussion.
(1) Leave the country – not going to happen and where would I go any better?
(2) Accept that my fruits are their fruits, but their fruits are their fruits and live within the double standards of behavior and opinion. I hesitate to use these words which could be construed as weakness and whining – but demonized, ridiculed, marginalized by a feckless and corrupt national media and entertainment because of my heritage + gender.
(3) Push for secession – possible and the demographics where I live make this possible, but getting there would be incredibly bloody.
(4) Finally accept that my opponent is both ruthless and unteachable, indoctrinated in Marxism and can’t be reasoned with or corrected. Protect my assets and work like hell to crash their world, first the entire public education system and more specifically higher education. Make it personal, and go after academia and media on their level, demonizing and marginalizing them, truth be damned. Starve the economic system of cash and opportunity when and where possible. But I don’t think I have scope of like minded people necessary to do this at present.
You would like to think you can win the battle of ideas and convince those who disagree that your message is the truth, when it so obvious their way has failed. But I’m afraid at least in the foreseeable future, that is not possible and this election proved it.
Giving up and resigning myself to this becoming a slave to a nation of immoral imbeciles is not an option. My methodology may need to change, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with my message of truth.
Yes the gimme class should be prepared for the Great Delousing.
Lurker and Tex Taylor, you have spoken eloquently.
What is it about Self-Interest, Properly Understood… that the purposely-sub-taught cannot seem to grasp?
The Slightly-Intelligent Overlords of the Right Lip of the Intelligence Bell Curve, believe that they can sub-teach and hidden-mind-enslave the bell curve’s masses; believing that they, the Slave-Master-Overlords, will not become enslaved themselves! But enslavers always become enslaved, as the saying goes.
Perhaps Shakespeare had it wrong: First we kill the mind-enslaving system of sub-teaching (public schools and universities) and then we kill the mind-enslaving system of sub-preaching (the media and modern, dumbed-down broadcast Christianity; each full of wiles, snares and hidden mind-shenanigan games; all hiding self-interest.)
Meanwhile, the goddess Nemesis gets ready to party hard. Guaranteed worst hangover, ever! When it’s time to wake up, where will be our money? Our clothes? Our vehicles? Our homes? What have we done drunk on hubris?
Captain of the Be
By Robert Winkler Burke
Book #3 of In That Day Teachings
9/26/08 http://www.inthatdayteachings.com
My men are full of elementary lust,
Of hate and misery,
I cannot seem to discipline them,
Said the Captain of the Be.
Then they have scurrilous, mutinous thoughts,
A cruise will wake them up!
Send them out of safe harbor in a nasty storm,
And let them all throw up.
Said the wise, old Admiral of the Fleet,
Any questions, Captain?
Yes, many, sir. My men are immature,
I fear what will happen.
Captain of the Be, this is tough,
I loathe immaturity,
But fear not. We will prevail,
This is the military!
Send them out on endless drills,
Sailing just around,
Tell them they’ll get nowhere,
Until they are sound.
I’ve tried that, Admiral, and,
They evermore complain.
Oh, then this is serious, Captain,
One thing does remain.
Send them to war, to war, to war,
Then they will mature,
When they realize it’s life or death,
They’ll improve, I’m sure.
But Admiral, cried the captain,
Isn’t there an easier way?
No, my friend, there isn’t,
When rebels won’t obey.
Thank you Tex. Let us try to remember what Noah must have felt like when he found his contemporaries behaving, as you say, like imbeciles. Yet Noah did not despair but kept his faith in the true Rock of Ages, and his faith was ultimately rewarded. But it takes great faith, love, and strength to build and board an Ark while being mocked and persecuted by one’s contemporaries. Let us pray that we find the strength to endure our trials and avoid the black pit of despair, and provide our friends and families with critical moral support as the Golden Rule demands.
Funny how Obama got 100% of the vote in so many areas!!!!! See the following.
http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/what-luck-obama-won-dozens-of-cleveland.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=s7jm5n7knuo#
Worth a view for anyone who ever had any doubts about the security of computer collected votes. =’[.]‘=
Get real people.
Countries come and go. The average age of a great civilization is 200 years.
Either enjoy the decline (there are many ways to do that), or relocate to an ascendant country, like your ancestors who once came to America did.
” The average age of a great civilization is 200 years.”
I wish people would quit repeating this canard.
Rome lasted 2000 years. How many Dynasties did we have in Egypt? In China? the great civilization in England?
Just because it wasn’t a republic doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great civilization. Even the Roman Republic lasted from 509 BC until Augustus took over in 26 BC. A few more years than 200.
Let it Burn.
and you think the flames won’t burn you too? There is no place on the planet that will not feel the heat of these flames. So before you cheer it on, you might want to take a moment to note that the majority of the world’s population lives in dirt poverty. Currently there are hundreds of millions of street children.
That’s your future and the future of your children if western civilization burns to the ground. You won’t be cool when you are looking for food in a garbage dump, wrapped up in rags to keep warm.
Gots my bag of marshmallows.
for now you do.
Zimbabwe and collapse. That’s our future. You know what, why prolong the agony? Just let Boehner raise the debt celing to $40 Trillion Dollars and the let all the taxes and spending cuts in place. Then sit back and watch the riots being. We’ll get martial law and FEMA camps; but that was the plan all along. One deal after another isn’t going to save us. The die has been cast and there is no going back.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Or, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“We don’t need no stinking badges” has been post-modernized and rigorously applied by power mad leftists like Obama into “We don’t need no ID to vote”, and we just saw the results of this latest explosion into anarchy.
Don’t forget the distinction between de facto and de jure. California is a perfect example of how people THINK that hunk of land and the people within it is a part of the US, but in fact as VDH regularly details, with his personal bad experiences in the Fresno area, most of the “state” has long ago been overrun by illegal Hispanics.
If the GOP actually follows through with the amnesty path, (now backed by Hannity and Krauthammer, for heaven’s sake!), as has been true in the past, the nation will only follow the trend setter, California—and it’s adios the USA.
Maybe, though, there is also an updated (heretofore) SILENT majority of MAKERS, the almost 50% who bothered to LEGALLY vote for Romney. The “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” crowd, who have figured out that the legal system is corrupt, so why not find ways to bypass it?
Perhaps the true leader of the makers is Rush Limbaugh.
He gets “elected” everyday, by the marketplace, and I predict his “approval ratings” are about to rocket up, and the Obama minions will be sure to pay him notice, and try to rebut him—for the latter, it’s NOT Boehner and the House of Representatives who are their main problem!
And, FINALLY, everyday man Limbaugh stumbled into the simple truth, and put it in terms no one can misunderstand—liberals are the Santa Claus Party.
The whole immigration brouhaha has NOTHING to do with amnesty! The vast majority of Hispanics vote for the Democrats because they love the government– they want something from it.
Put yourself in the shoes of an illegal Mexican, say. They KNOW they are poor! So when they succeed in sneaking into America, they are ALL ABOUT getting their share. From whom? And, how?
Of course they must work, but they ALSO come from a place where the government is the “parent”, and so they look to OUR government, through the Democratic Party, for goodies.
If the liberals succeed in bamboozling Republicans in DC, and pass amnesty, that’ll only grow the number of voters who will put even MORE Democrats into power!
Indeed, IMHO, I think it’s already too late.
Californian “voters” just agreed to pay more taxes, AND put into power a super majority legislature, to join with Governor Moonbeam. The next few years should be awesome!
Yes—the reelection of Obama is just a step on the way to exactly THAT result, for America as a whole.
Now, if we can only “fix” that pesky House of Representatives, one holdout seat at a time—that’s the true agenda for the American version of the one-party-rule of China.
There are too many fat bodies and fat heads in the silent majority, and just like that scene in “Saving Private Ryan”, when a German soldier gets atop an American, and slowly shoves his bayonet into the heart, saying, “Sehr einfach” (very simple), the viral majority of takers are doing the same to the sick and weak makers NOW, in the USA.
America is (likely) doomed.
If the GOP actually follows through with the amnesty path, (now backed by Hannity and Krauthammer, for heaven’s sake!),
I’m waiting for Hannity to come out of the Democrat closet. His chief goal has always seemed to me to plant doubt in the minds of the working class with regard to republican candidates and policies. His fascination with Rove and Coulter and Buchanan only cements this impression for me.
The Hate Whitey coalition won, and it’s time for White Europeans to organize for their own protection and well being. The National Organization of White People and a plethora of like minded organizations is the near future. It cant come soon enough. As a wise Jew once said, when people say they want to kill you, believe them. The deomonization of White Europeans for the last half century is coming to fruition. If you want to do more than survive as a demonized and ill treated minority, then it’s time for racial solidarity. Pan Europpeanism.
Krauthammer is all for the Dream Act, but Hanson towers over Charles and all other political pundits, perhaps because of his “embedded” perspective on America.
I came across this on Rantburg the other day:
And at the last from inner Egypt came
The strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed;
Silent and lean and cryptically proud,
And wrapped in fabrics red as sunset flame.
Throngs pressed around, frantic for his commands,
But leaving, could not tell what they had heard;
While through the nations spread the awestruck word
That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.
(from Fungi from Yuggoth by H.P. Lovecraft)
Dr. Hanson is correct in his assessment of the results to the extent that we should not accept that the GOP change its platform regarding immigration but only touches around the major reason why we lost the election. The GOP does not have to radically its platform as it relates to fiscal, government, and national defense, it only has to weaken the socially conservative planks. Why? If we are to believe the exit polling the Democrats won the women’s vote by 11% (a 17% net gain for Obama when we see they made up 53% of the electorate) and I think we all know why. Yes, many women are one-issue voters who focus on reproductive rights and the GOP derides them instead of doing something radically more simple, remove the anti-abortion and anti-birth control planks from the platform. If our message was stripped of its social components it would have been much more attractive.
Aiken underperformed Romney by 24% and Murdock by almost 14%. In Florida 10% more people voted for Romney than the defunding abortion referendum. The belief that somehow allowing abortion in the cases of rape and incest (even there we were wishy-washy) is moderate in frankly insane. The GOP reads too much into studies showing that half of Americans are pro-life because that number includes a great number of Hispanics and Blacks, who ironically have the vast majority of abortions. In a race that was decided by 2-3% does anyone believe that a truly moderate stance on women’s issues would not have made the difference?
We were killed by our own primary system, which gave us Aiken and Murdock. Has anyone forgotten the infamous all male panel which was called by our lawmakers to discuss the church and birth control. What imagery! I personally know many conservative women who were convinced that Romney/Ryan would have appointed judges whose aim was to overturn Roe v Wade and voted accordingly or did not vote.
Those who insist on the social issues are not real conservatives in the classical sense. Rather, they are more interested in morality issues than economic ones. I have the sense that the majority of them, primarily in the South belong to that 47% that Romney was referring to. In short, many are paying little to no federal taxes and so the GOP message on the economic issues does not have the same resonance with them. They are only Republicans because of the social (losing) agenda.
Until we go back to our conservative roots, smaller government, fiscal discipline, and economic growth, we are doomed to be sacrificed at the alter or the moral high ground. I would argue that using birth control is far more economic than having society pay for unwanted children and one who does so is taking responsibility for one’s own actions and should be encouraged to do so. The same goes for abortion. However, the fact is that if the GOP could learn to separate the temporal world from the spiritual world, our message would be more consistent ( fewer government intrusions in all aspects or our lives ) and have a better chance of winning. We should not be pandering to Hispanics (as Krauthammer suggests) when we have (excuse the pun) fertile ground among America’s biggest electoral group, women.
give me a break. Did you even read the article to which you are responding? If so, you entirely missed the point. Go back and read it again.
If the GOP suddenly became the champion of birth control and abortion, it would not have changed the election. Birth control is cheap and available. It’s cheaper than a beer that kicks the evening off. Romney would not have been able to undo Roe v/s Wade. To pretend otherwise is to be willfully ignorant. The fact that they believe he could, speaks to the article at hand. The Obama “women” voters of whom you speak are the same ones who suddenly become very silent when the topic of Sharia is discussed. They are the same ones who sat silent when Clinton sexually harassed Monica Lewinsky and now gleefully pointing fingers at Petraeus.
Clearly you missed the point.
I think you missed my point, which was to agree with Dr. Hansen that no matter what we do on immigration it will not necessarily increase Hispanic support. My post takes his point one further, that the Democrats successfully created a “war on women” narrative which was reinforced by extreme candidates such as Aiken and Murdock.
I am not saying that we “embrace” birth control and abortion, but rather that we say these are not issues to be decided on the national or federal level and don’t scare away the customers.
My point is that (so-called) conservatives who put social issues first are not true conservatives, but theocrats.
You generalize that “they” sat silent about Monica or this or that but that is simplistic when you consider the gap. I am not saying to change the message, but to simplify it by stripping it of the Falwell era amendments.
It is the ultimate social “conservative” hypocrisy to criticize sharia law while promoting their own version of it.
Southern social conservatives used to be Democrats until the 1980′s and I suggest that if they really care about Republican principles they should keep their morals at home and in their churches. Otherwise, go back to the Democrats where you came from and join forces with the Latino social conservatives. Theocrats have no place in politics in America!
you really do need to read the article….more slowly this time.
And also take notice of this part: “just imagine the opposite to learn the truth”
So you think that Christian values are similar to the Taliban. Yea right, you are a real genius. Funny how only Christian societies allowed women the ability to move from the status of chattel to individuals with rights.
You really are waaay too uninformed to argue with if you are foolish enough to make that comparison. Lame.
Christian values are not similar to Taliban values. What is identical is trying to legislate morals. You have dragged what used to be a wonderful party back into the stone ages with all of your emphasis on moral majority politics. Guess what? The 1980′s are over. I do not have to agree with every aspect of Dr. Hanson’s summary, although he is correct in much of what he says. So no, I do not have to read the article again as if it is Gospel.
If you were correct in your belief that we can win on a values platform don’t you think we would have won last week considering the weak economy?
Do you want me to honestly believe that abortion should not have been legal in 1961 Hawaii if you get my drift. I wish it was! Grow up and get a little tough for a change. It is not our children who are having abortions 9 times out of 10, it is the other side’s. Let God deal with them.
We can not accomplish anything if we keep losing. Otherwise, you better start learning Spanish.
“Yes, I agree with you, even though you are being sarcastic.” – haha.
I know you do, Scott. It must be so difficult to know that if everyone would just agree with everything that you think, that every future election will be in the bag.
We can agree that Government needs to shrink. But here is the rub, Scott. You are delusional if you think that the Christians are the ones who lost the election. They showed up in force for Romney. Romney, did not run on a platform of ending abortion or birth control. He was painted by the left as someone who would do those things, despite the fact that as a president it would not be possible for him to do so. You are just sucking up the script put out by the left. What most “true conservatives” do agree on is that the Government should not force individuals and businesses to perform them or pay for insurance that supports what they believe is murder.
If morality is the issue, why didn’t the American Muslims support Romney. It wasn’t the defining issue. You just bought the script.
Women voted for Obama for many reasons – a grand percentage are receiving government subsidies and want them to continue, among many other things.
Obama won because he ran on a platform of class warfare and he promised everyone a pony. The idea that the rich need to pay “their fair share”. Christians don’t fall for that schtick. They try not to covet their neighbors goods, so it doesn’t work as well on them.
You are a bigot. You have this cartoon idea of who Christians are which you have developed by watching too many tv sitcoms. Considert that many democrats are Christians too. Many democrats, nearly in the same proportions to republicans are opposed to abortion as well. So….how does that figure into your brilliant analysis?
Look at western civilization, Scott. Then look around the world. What is the one thing in common in societies that produced rights for women? Can you name any other society, not founded on Judeo Christian principles, that can make that claim?
I don’t expect you to stop blaming the Christians for all the world’s ills, Scott. After all, blaming the Jews has worked for tyrants and despots for millenia. Apparently blaming the Christians works equally well for you too.
Scott
I really get tired of that “don’t legislate morality” nonsense. All laws legislate morality. If there were not a question of right or wrong, or fair or unfair, or of “protection”, there wouldn’t be any need of a law. Just because the current leading theology is secular humanism doesn’t mean there isn’t morality of some sort behind every law. What you folks are really saying is, ” don’t consider Christian morality in making laws.” Your own morality is, of course, politically correct.
I am not saying that morality should not be the deciding factor in our laws, quite the opposite. I am agreeing with ETAB’s comments below that the Federal government does not have the framework for this when it comes to religious questions and the only, best, and realistic vehicle for this is at the state and local level.
I am also saying that if we want to further the conservative ideas which this country needs right now (because we are facing economic collapse sooner than most think) we must win. In another post I gave the example of Stephen Harper and what he has accomplished in Canada. None of which would have been possible had he made his personal pro-life stance his party’s platform. If you do not get elected, then the other guy makes policy and picks the judges.
Why do I say this, because we do not need to pander to the Hispanics in order to win. We got almost 20 million fewer women’s votes (most of these were independents as it turned out) than the Dems. Aiken underperformed Romney by 24% in Missouri. These numbers show where the real problem is.
If we go along with the conservatives who are saying we should change our stance on immigration rather than reproductive issues we had better all learn Spanish, and be quick about it because it will guarantee a Democratic supermajority just like in California. And believe me, because I live in CA (in a reddish area at least), you do not want that.
I fully agree with you, Scott, that social issues must NOT be decided at the federal level.
The federal government must deal only with those constitutional duties that enable the people, all the people, to have a reasonably viable economic and secure life. That is, federal duties refer to the economy, fiscal policy, security and defense, common communication and transportation infrastructures and foreign policy. Period.
Social issues belong, not to a government, but to the people. To consider them as decisions by a government is equivalent to the views of an Islamist fundamentalist government or a communist totalitarian state.
Social issues belong to the people and must be decided by the people. This means at the State level and by referendum.
The Democrats wallow in social issues; they abandon their federal duties to provide a sound economy, a viable defense, a population secure from criminality, and constructive foreign relations.. The Obama Regim has been negligent and even disastrous in all these areas. But, social policy? Heh, they are all over the place, dividing people up into adversarial Identity Blocs by ethnicity, by ‘race’, by gender, and class. They use their federal power to bribe and bind these people to their side – but, the US is on the brink of an economic and, yes, ideological disaster. Divided amongst itself, incapable of providing a sound economy.
In other words, we have to become Marxist lite to “win.” That isnt winning, that is surrendering.
So by your logic leaving the issue of abortion to the states equates to marxism? I will counter that insisting on brining religious convictions on specific issues at the federal level is no better than what the Taliban does.
You have reinforced a comment by a wise person I read recently:
There are two parties in America, the Dangerous Party (they won on Tuesday) and the Stupid Party. I belong to the stupid party, as evidence by your way of thinking.
Pro-choice is marxist? That is maybe the stupidest comment I have ever read on this site.
Roe v. Wade took the abortion issue away from the states.
Roe v Wade is not the issue. The issue is the perception among independent women that their reproductive rights are threatened, whether it is real or not. If you would rather stick to your pro-life guns and lose elections, the door is that way ——>
Indeed, Cultural Marxism, look it up. Check out abortion in Communist countries, past and present. As has been pointed out Roe v Wade took the issue away from the States. But alas…youve already been compromised and you dont even know it…and so it goes.
You bring up that marxist countries allowed abortion? You bring up European civilization? Therefore if we can go by what other countries do and do not do let’s look at the list. Abortion is allowed in virtually every single European country, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and almost every other western country. About half of these are governed by conservatives.
Example, if Stephen Harper in Canada put a pro-life plank in the conservative platform his party could not be elected, even though many conservative MP’s are pro-life on principle. In a recent vote on the issue in Parliament he told his Members to vote their conscience as the party will not take an official stance. In the past 8 years since he got elected he has been able to shrink government by over 30%, open uplands for shale oil and other domestic energy policies, and scale back the welfare state. Result, Canada is still booming and has lower taxes than most American states. Google taxes in Alberta and compare them to American rates. NONE of this could have been achieved if he never got elected. NONE!
Since when did conservatives become idealistic utopians trying to save the world from itself? Worry about your state, keep your morals in your family and community and let the New Yorkers and Californians self destruct if they want to. If want to have a say in their personal lives it means that you are giving them say in yours. Do you really want that? I don’t, and millions of other classical conservatives will fight to take the soul of the party back and limit our platform to a more consistent message:
Smaller government (including abolishing the EPA and dept of ED), limited spending, no government intrusion into our lives (this include protecting our 2nd Amendment Rights), School choice, and personal liberty.
I personally would argue against abortion for my wife or my daughters but that is my family and my business. I can care less if Sandra Fluke has one and in fact, I think she should not reproduce. The scope of government should be limited to fiscal and defense matters, that’s it. The moment we give it providence over spiritual and other cultural matters then we give it license to intrude in other areas.
Youre pi ssing in the wrong direction. But dont let that stop you. It really doesnt matter anymore.
In reply to Scott Stams, I consider that you are exactly right. Excellent comments.
First, you are not against morality, as so many on this thread seem to think that you are! You are saying that morality exists but in order to keep it strong and part of our deep identity and beliefs, it must not be legislated by a federal government but by ourselves. I fully agree.
Morality is a basic infrastructure of ‘being human’. The federal government must not define ‘what is the nature of being human’; the people must do this. They do this in their religious and intellectual ideologies. All that a government must do is provide the ‘superstructure’ that enables them to be free to debate and follow their moralities. So, the federal government must enable freedom of life (and speech) and liberty. It must provide for economic achievements, security of life and property (defense, police);common infrastructures of transportation, foreign affairs. Period.
The rest, the social issues, belongs to the people and must be decided by them, within their personal lives and by referendum at the state level.
To legislate social issues at the federal level is akin to a fundamentalist islamist nation, ie, the Taliban, or totalitarian communism.
To spell it out for you abortion attacks a core institution for a healthy society, the family. It is just one of many attacks on the traditional family unit, designed to undermine European Civilization and institute dependency on government and the ultimate socialist utopia to be built upon it.
Clueless rubes still dont get it.
Not to mention the very basic right to life, aand you don’t have to be Christian to recognize that abortion kills a living human creature.
‘Clueless rubes” Your ad hominem attacks are tacit admissions that while you believe strongly in your convictions, you realize you can not win the argument. Therefore you resort to name calling.
“dependency on the state”? What else do unwanted pregnancies result in the vast majority of cases. I refer you to the following link to illustrate my point:
http://www.abort73.com/abortion/abortion_and_race/
I will give an analogy that should clear things up:
If you give the power to the Federal government to for example paint everyone’s houses Red because you strongly believe in it, then what is stopping the next administration from coming in and saying everyone’s houses need to be painted Blue? Or that your garage door should have a rainbow painted on it? Or that you should speak Spanish while you are doing the painting?
Do you see? Any power given to the Federal government can (and usually is) turned right back against us. If we tell them we want to decide on religious issues question A, then they can turn around and tell us that we have to accept question B. (for A please read reproduction and for B please read marriage)
The only way to guarantee pro-life legislation (at the federal level) would be a constitutional amendment and we all know this is not going to happen. Therefore, since this is not something that can ever again be achieved at the Federal level so it makes no sense having it in our platform.
Is the only reason it is in our platform even though we know we it can never pass is because we want to wear it on our sleeve and shout to the world, “Hey, look at us, we are not baby killers like you are!”? No, the only reason we have a pro-life platform is to please the portion of our base, who will always choose religious convictions over economic interest, no matter what the cost to the rest of us. Please ask Murdock and Aiken about how that worked out for them.
In reply to Scott Stams, who is exactly right in his comments, I’m stunned that so many on this thread seem to misunderstand the role of government is to protect and secure the freedom of the individual. To think, to work, to debate and decide on, yes, moral issues.
The federal government has a basic role. To enable and secure the economic viability of its population and, the freedom of its citizens to govern themselves. Got that? Govern themselves.
That means, as Scott says, that the government doesn’t tell you to paint your house red or blue. With regard to morality, no-one is denying that these are not vital issues! They are! And therefore, government should not be involved in deciding FOR you. YOU should debate, discuss, analyze and come to your own decisions. These debates must be done on the personal level rather than dictated to you. AND, decisions must be by referendum at the local or state level.
To have the federal government involved is totalitarian. After all, the Taliban are most certainly involved in all aspects of life in their Islamist totalitarian states. As are the communists. Is that what people want?
As Scott and others have pointed out, Canada under the best Prime Minister it has ever had, Stephen Harper, is indeed an excellent example. Harper has insisted that social issues are not the prerogative of the federal government, but are issues to be decided by the people, at their religious, personal and local governance levels..by referendum. Never, ever, by The State.
Stams you can make the Eugenicist argument to your hearts content and think that I am unable to effectively destroy it.
Frankly, Im uninterested in further communication with you.
Keep pi ssing away.
Line breaks friend. Line breaks. Nobody’s gonna read this.
Hansen is on point. The politics of personal destruction, or perhaps race & class destruction was brilliant. Never answered, no push back, no counterargument. The field of battle was cold. One side simply swept through and on to victory. Where was the fight, what happened to all that money? Who runs these campaigns? Fools? Speaking as one of those people, everyone here voted for Obama. You fight every day or just shut up. It gets old, it gets tiring. Republicans, they are not even in the game. One suggestion to those in Cali, start studying the espanol.
America had free,open immigration from 1880 to 1910 (- ish- my dad told me this.) Then they stopped all immigration until the middle sixties. They gelled the immigrants’ kids into Americans. Fifties childhood memoirs aren’t about “smith” and “jones”- they are about “smith” “jones” yastremski” “keshishian”. From Clinton until now, we’ve had an even larger wave of immigrants- more than any other country in the world at any time, at all,ever. We can shut the door and cook the kids down in the melting pot. I don’t think it happens until the Baby Boom starts dying off, though. The charts on Japanese business growth parallel their charts on economic growth- we need kids to make stuff. Immigrants are usually young, and they usually work.
California is a welfare basket-case, and it always has been. Americans, in the 30′s, were fleeing to California to get on Cali’s welfare rolls. They had guards at the border to stop them. It didn’t work. The Supreme Court intervened on behalf of the Okies. The Okies remember, and vote.
California has open Communists running their labor unions. One threatened to throw acid in a young actor’s face, just like an Indian bride-crime, or the Taliban to a girl getting an education. The actor was Ronald Reagan. The communist ran a Hollywood union. The communists have always been uncivilized barbarians using third-world violence to try and get their way.
I don’t know that I feel bad about this election. I’ve been crying all week, and researching as much as possible. I cannot believe I live in a squalid, amoral, ignorant nation. Then I read the Economist’s review of the campaign. Romney got within a million votes without having a ground game. None whatsoever- no Get Out the Vote, no clear answer to what the working poor will do for care, no deploying all five of his sons and their wives on social media, no puff pieces in magazines- nothing. And yet- nearly won. I think it’s down to fractions of thousands in a few precincts, and obvious vote fraud. That tells me that anyone who can run an average, normal campaign- poll-watchers, precinct captains making calls, ads on cable tv- will win. I look at the county by county map- Obama barely put together a win, and most people, in most places, hate his guts. No ground game- nearly won.
I’m a registered Republican in a red-lock state. I get that I will never see any campaign ads- but I will note, I got two separate calls from Democrats insisting I go vote, and not one from a Republican. I got a robo-call two days before the election- “Hi, I’m Mitt Romney…” – but on election day, two calls from Democrats asking if I knew where to vote, and if I needed help with the kids while I went and voted.
In my area, voters were just as mad that Romney wanted legal immigration for those with skills, education, and capital.
Good! Glad to hear it! And Dr. Hanson, you make a huge mistake mixing this into the other immigration, class, and economic issues. And apparently, in taking the wrong side on the issue yourself.
(although I might separate the capital issue from the others)
I agree with pretty much everything else in this article. And yet, Romney by seeking and gaining the nomination had to expect all such class attacks, valid or not as either personally or philosophically valid. His failure to respond effectively, or at all, was politically incompetent. My take on Romney is that he is personally an empty suit, and his $250,000,000 fortune was not “earned” in any significant way. He may yet be a fine fellow, btw, and would have made a far far better president that Obama, but I do not salute his money or impute anything positive or negative to him, on a numeric basis, and I can fully understand how a party that suggests the average voter should kowtow to the mere fact of his wealth, would be defeated. That, in fact, is a mark of a healthy American, even if in this case it leaves us with a cancer in the White House. Sometimes the choices are terrible.
apologies for several typos in the above, why doesn’t the edit feature work on these forums, PJM?
Josh, wae you sure you are not a liberal? You blame Romney for trying his hardest but not winning and you blame PJM for your typos.
Did you personally do anything to help Romney win? I didn’t think so.
My suggestions for the GOP is to remain conservative, in the economic sense of the principles promoting economic growth, namely: low taxes and limited government.
1) The tax code should be reformed to eliminate loopholes but which do not penalize the small business community. Obama’s increased taxes on those making over 200,000 penalize the small business community many of which file taxes as individuals rather than corporations.
Small businesses are the basic infrastructure of a growth economy; that is, this sector is the only one amenable to numerous new businesses, new products, new jobs.
2) Leaving profits/wealth in the hands of the private sector is absolutely vital in a modern economy. These profits are then used as INVESTMENT, put into new businesses, new equipment, more hiring.
If the government removes this Investment money and redistributes it to those who only use if for current CONSUMPTION needs, then, this implodes and destroys the capacity of the small business community to Invest and grow the economy.
3)Limited government means to reduce regulations that prevent small business growth. The Obama regime’s regulations are imploding this sector of the economy, and this means that more and more people have no jobs, have no capacity to run their own business, and become dependent on government handouts. No economy can afford to sustain the majority of its population if the small business community is destroyed.
So, the GOP should focus on these two factors as their ideology: the small business economy, limited government – and a balanced budget.
4) Reform entitlements, to keep this ratio sustainable.
5) Immigration. It’s a reality. Perry was right in his approach to illegals, but the GOP vilified him. There is not way that a generation of illegals, allowed in by both GOP and Democratic governments, can be deported.
Therefore, secure the borders AND, set up an ‘amnesty’ which would give these people something akin to the Canadian Permanent Residency status, which would allow the individual to legally work AND thus, pay taxes, to contribute to their current use of our medical, our hospitals which have become clinics for illegals, our schools, our roads, etc.
They would not yet be citizens and could not vote, but could apply for citizenship.
This tactic would keep them out of the black market economy and the illegal (drugs and gangs) economy – and, taxes would be paid.
6) Social issues, such as marriage and abortion, have no place within the regulations of a federal government. The Democrats are big on social issues. The GOP should REFUSE to get the federal government involved. A federal govt’s duties refer to enabling a sound economy, security and defense, interstate infrastructure, foreign affairs. Period.
Social issues belong to the people. Not to a government – unless you live in a totalitarian Islamic or communist state. Therefore, these issues must be decided by the people, not the government, within each State, by referendum.
The GOP should refuse to have a federal government intrude on issues that are essentially, the domain of the people.
ETAB, you’ve nailed the central issue:
“A federal govt’s duties refer to enabling a sound economy, security and defense, interstate infrastructure, foreign affairs. Period.
Social issues belong to the people. Not to a government…”
Until the Rs grasp that essential fact, they will continue to lose at the federal level. And lose big.
Thanks, but have you noticed how many people simply don’t understand this point – that a federal government should NOT legislate social issues (such as abortion) but that these issues belong to the people. Not to a government.
The people must make the decisions about these issues. If you insist that a government do this, then, you want a Taliban or communist totalitarian government.
But people answering Scott Stam’s comments, which are exactly the same as mine, totally misunderstand. They think he’s against ‘being moral’. No, he’s against a government telling us ‘what is moral and what is amoral’. Such decisions belong to the people not to a collection of legislators even if those people are ‘duly elected’. Decisions about social issues, or morality, are vital and not the prerogative of government. They reside in the decision-making rights of the people.
Decide them within the family, decide them by referendum of the people. At the state level. Never, ever, at the federal level.
Well put and summarized. You put things far more eloquently than I ever could. Me thinks however, that many of the readers on this sight put their religious agenda ahead of liberty and the economic issues.
In any case, we need to take the fight to them at every opportunity if we are going to revive the GOP and by extension the USA.
Yet another rant on illegal immigration.
Ok, fine.
How about offring some real solutions?
Make voter fraud a capital offense, with twenty years imprisonment as the minimum penalty. Combine that with total and complete asset forfeiture upon conviction, regardless of marital status or parenthood. No loopholes.
THEN, you can get into voter ID and some form of official US photographic ID in order to receive welfare benefits, etc. Close all of the loopholes.
Once you’ve gotten voter fraud under control, then, and only then, can you address related issues, such as deportations of illegal immigrants and tightening up aspects of legal immigration.
Once you’ve done that, is when you slash other budget items, including regulations and taxes on businesses, as well as welfare and foodstamps.
Until you start offering – and discussing – real world solutions to the underlying problems, you’re just blowing smoke. You’re trying to treat the symptoms, instead of the disease.
It is not a rant on illegal immigration, it is an honest assessment that the GOP does not need to change its platform on the subject as some are suggesting because that is unlikely to bring the desired result or increased Hispanic support for the Republicans.
You’ve been arguing about it for over thirty years. Nothing’s changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse.
When the problems keeps getting worse, instead of better, you’re doing something wrong.
Problem: ‘Hispanics” keep coming into this nation illegally and they keep voting for Dems in greater numbers than they vote for Republicans. The ongoing solution from Republicans has been to find a way to get those illegal immigrant to vote for your candidates.
iow, you’ve misread the problem and thus, applied the wrong solution.
How can someone who is illegal, actually vote? Only citizens have the right to vote. Preventing illegals from voting is a basic reason for the ID cards, and the Obama Democrats adamantly oppose these ID cards!
Again, what we’ve seen here is that the two political parties have moved out of focusing on the proper role of a federal government, and into the personal, emotional, and, may I say, irrational issues. The Democrats focus almost exclusively on social issues which do and will always, divide people; namely, abortion, marriage, gender identity, class envy, ethnicity, ‘race’.
What should a federal government focus on? Exclusively and only on: the economy, fiscal policies, enabling private sector business, non-intrusive government security and safety measures, security of private person and property, foreign affairs, inter state communications. That’s it. Nothing emotional and personal about these issues.
What the Democrats have done is to not merely ignore, but even to devastate the valid government issues: they’ve imploded the small business private sector economy with their regulations and taxes; they’ve bought the loyalty of Identity Groups (unions, ethnics, gender, class) with trillions in debt; they’ve inflamed the Islamist world, alienated our traditional allies and set state against state.
But ah, they’ve purchased lots of loyal followers with their love-ins on gay marriage, abortions, the Dream Act and so on. None of these should be the domain of government.
The GOP ought to insist that these issues belong to the people and must be decided by the people and refuse to get involved. BUT, get heavily involved in the economic and other issues. Focus, focus, only on these.
As for the illegals, as I said elsewhere, acknowledge them, by a status akin to the Canadian Permanent Residency Status, – which would relieve the nation of economically supporting them, because they would be allowed to work AND PAY TAXES.
A Dream Act or some version of it may not win over any sizable portion of the Hispanic vote but it may be necessary to regain and hold onto some of the younger vote. Also keep in mind that a good portion of illegal immigrants are not Hispanic. And they are spread throughout the country so too many people know a good, hardworking illegal immigrant as a person and don’t want to see that person penalized. They don’t like illegal immigration in the abstract but struggle with the people they know. They feel that people who have been here for years and built lives shouldn’t suddenly be treated like criminals when for so many years we turned our heads the other way. These people are not comfortable with the strident “deport them all” rhetoric that is often displayed in the immigration debate.
Plus the anti-ILLEGAL immigration stance of the Republicans is too often shortened to anti-immigration causing many legal immigrants(or descendants of legal immigrants) to feel targeted. Toning down the rhetoric will help there too.
Perhaps some options could be found — could we perhaps open a path to citizenship to those who can demonstrate that they’ve been here for some period and are productive (i.e. demonstrate no use of public assistance). That would have the benefit of both recognizing those who are productive and encouraging others to follow that path.
I also think the Republicans need to play the emotion game too — find those legal immigrants who can’t bring their families over due to quotas caused by the influx of illegal immigrants. Or others who want to immigrate but can’t due to those “jumping the line”. Play the fairness card for those immigrants.
The point is not merely to ‘win over’ the hispanic vote but to deal with the economic reality that over 12 million illegals live in the US.
They use its tax-funded services, such as K-12 schools, hospitals where they use the emergency services as regular medical clinics, other public services such as fire, police; other public services such as roads etc – and yet, since they are illegal, the majority pay no taxes to sustain these services.
This also means that they move into the black market and illegal economies, neither of which contribute to funding these public services.
Therefore – reality must be acknowledge.
I suggest an amnesty that gives them something similar to the Canadian Permanent Residency status. This is a legal status that allows the individual to legally work AND PAY taxes. If they wish to move to citizenship, that requires a second step on their part.
But – it removes their 12 million size burden on the legal taxpayers.
Then, secure the borders.
But to deport people who have been here for decades, something enabled by governments of both the GOP and Democrats, would be insane.
Mr. Meade: what ‘consulate?’ Weren’t the 37 people there mostly CIA? Note we hear nada from or of them.
It was a CIA operation.
Follow these “dots” from reports as diverse as Reuters, NYTimes, Longwarjournal and BBC:
- Weapons loosed when ‘NATO’ intervened to topple Qaddafi(stories @ March ’11)
- Weapons from Libya flowing to Algeria, Palestine, Gaza.
- Militias and militants proliferating in Benghazi, infiltrating gov’t.
- They are Al Qaeda affiliates or have Al Qaeda connections.
- Libyan militants showing up prominently in Syria. Weapons?
- Confusion re who in Syria are good guys and who are bad guys.
- Iran’s weaponry support – through Iraq – into Syria.
Who will begin to put any of this together? Why did Mr. Obama intervene in Libya so quickly? With which D’s and R’s did he confer, and what were they told? Why was Romney silent?
Mark Levin is hinting at a new solution.
First, he’s saying that even with a super-majority: house, senate & President under Bush W., government was grown exponentially, not shrunk.
Second, Therefore, Federal government will never shrink itself, as it cannot.
Third, Levin implies only the States can “kill the beast,” greatly shrink the power, might and oppression of the Feds.
I could not agree more with you and Mark. I think he is hinting at something that is only discussed around the margins, that many conservatives among us are not true conservatives. Support for bigger government (Cheney – “Deficits don’t matter”) or federal involvement in social issues has nothing to do with classical conservatism. Good governance and liberty can only be guaranteed at the state level. Example, if Alabama wants to outlaw abortion but California wishes to publicly pay for it, then that is the way it should be. If Alabama wanted limited government but California wanted an intrusive nanny state (like it already has) then so be it. The Federal government has far more power than was ever intended by the framers.
yeah, Scott – only YOU are the “true” conservative. All of the others aren’t true. Just you. And those who think just like you. If only you had the power to control the world, you could make it all right.
Yes, I agree with you, even though you are being sarcastic. The message needs to be no Federal government intrusion into non-defense and other limited issues, smaller government, and fiscal discipline. That is what Republicans used to stand for. What do you care who sleeps with who or does what to themselves in say New York City? Since when did we become the busy body party? Besides, the numbers clearly point out that pro-life is a losing strategy. If you want to go down in flames on principle, then so be it. There are millions of us in the party who believe otherwise, especially those of us old enough to remember the GOP before the Southern Democrats came in. It should be an interesting fight.
Exactly right, Scott Stams.
A federal government should focus only on economic, defense and security, fiscal and foreign affairs. It should enable the infrastructure for individual citizens to be secure, to be able to constructively develop their economic well-being. Period.
The social issues, which is to say, morality of belief and behavior, belong to the individual Never, ever to the State. I am astonished by the number of people here who seem to want a totalitarian state that dictates moral actions. That’s how the Islamic fascist states function, where they refuse to allow, not merely abortions, but, heck, women aren’t allowed to work, to get an education, must cover themselves from head to toe in public, must weir veils, can’t vote, can’t walk alone. Can’t marry freely, are stoned to death for ‘violations’ of this state-decreed morality. Is this what people want? That’s federal legislation, where it removes morality from the control of the people..and locates it only within the Federal Government.
Morality is so important, so vital to ‘being human’ that it must never, ever, be legislated or dictated by a federal government. It must be decided by the individual, by debate, discussion, in religious or secular environments, and, any legislative rules must be dealt with by referendum. And only at the State never the federal level.
The federal government must be returned to its Constitutional tasks. Under the Democrats, and under Obama, it has almost totally rejected these tasks and focused instead on social issues! The Obama Regime has divided the population up into adversarial social-blocs: ‘race, ethnicity, gender, class’, and defined itself, as a government, as focused on their unique (???!!) requirements.
The economy? Obama is destroying the small business economy, the backbone of any growth-economy by his taxes, regulations and Obamacare. Foreign affairs? Think Benghazi and Iran and Honduras and Britain and Israel. But heck, he sure is catering to the Identity Blocs and moving them into a state of dependent paralysis where they are unable to enter into a free economy (so many are now dependent on food stamps, student and other subsidies, unionized benefits of the public service, medicaid and other social services).
The GOP, instead of, like Harper in Canada, refusing to move the federal government into social issues, moved itself in, with an opposing view. Wrong. Morality belongs to the people. Not to the government. Never. Ever.
I’m stunned that people here are so willing to give this basic right up to a government.
From AWR Hawkins, at Breibart’s Big-Government…
While national eyes were on the presidential election on Nov. 6, citizens of Louisiana were voting on a state-constitutional amendment that made the right to keep and bear arms “a fundamental right,” and put gun-grabbing judges on notice.
Titled the “Louisiana Right To Bear Arms, Amendment 2 (2012),” the amendment passed 73.45 percent to 26.55. It bolsters the exercise of 2nd Amendment rights within the state by eliminating “language within the Louisiana Constitution that would allow passage of laws prohibiting concealed weapons.”
It also mandates that “any restriction of a [gun] right requires the highest standard of review by a court.” In other words, it removes the ability of a judge to unilaterally implement his or her anti-gun agenda or diminish gun rights on a whim.
The passage of this amendment was a brilliant, preemptive strike for liberty on a day when liberalism seemed to win nationally.
Like the Texans who refused to give up their cannon at the Battle of Gonzales in 1835, our Louisiana brothers and sisters have hunkered down with their liberty intact via the “Right to Bear Arms Amendment.”
Consequently, the message coming out of Louisiana is the same message that came out of Gonzales nearly two centuries ago, “Come and Take It.”
I’m not sure how Republicans win elections that include people in urban areas, but we shouldn’t be losing any rural ones. We can win enough local elections to frustrate the urban elites. There is also lots of room for creative non-compliance. Think of how we defeated the hated national 55 mph speed limit.
One advandage of the United States is the federal system where lots of basic government functions are done at the state level. Governors and state legislators in the Red States still have significant control over election law, public education, insurance regulation, public utilities, etc. There will be a core of competent government to help rebuild after Democrats fail.
As I understand the new Obamacare and banking regulations, there is lots of room for small businesses to fly under the radar. Stay small and exurban and maybe your business avoids federal government interference. I vow to pay cash to small businesses, saving them the credit card fees. If income goes unreported, that’s more money that stays in my community.
Return with me now to the mid 1960′s when the Kennedy’s, LBJ and Congressional Democrats set out to fundamentally and foundationally change the USofA (Obama is way late to the party, but doing everything he possibly can to help), although I doubt they thought of it in such terms. I believe they merely were trying to legislate themselves into a permanent Democratic majority, but once you’ve created the monster, it can be difficult to contain it.
JFK got the ball rolling with his executive order permitting federal employees to unionize. This was bare knuckles politics at its best as Kennedy understood the public employees unions would be big, rich, powerful and Democratic.
The civil rights legislation of the 60′s was necessary and noble. But was it? Necessary, yes, absolutely, but perhaps not so noble as they would have us believe. Johnson famously declared he’d have the blacks (my word, not his) voting Democratic for the next 200 years. That’s kinda tough to accomplish when southern Democrats were doing everything in their power to intimidate those voters and suppress their votes. At the time, the Republican party was the only place a southern black could go to register. (And were it not for the Republican party, that legislation would never have seen the light of day.)
Which brings us to LBJ’s pièce de résistance: Establishment of the Great Society and its War on Poverty. This was how Democrats began construction of the permanent underclass which became its base of bases. That it rendered fathers superfluous, destroyed the family structure and decimated entire communities is, of course, unfortunate. But you can’t make an omelet of dependency without breaking a few traditionalist eggs, now can you.
But wait. Restructuring our own lower classes just wouldn’t be enough to get the job they wanted done. So we got the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. We’re told the Kennedy’s were incensed at the rank unfairness, not to mention the unstated racism, of our immigration policy concentrating as it did on white Europeans (after all, it was the 60′s and the refuse of Europe’s teeming shores weren’t nearly as wretched as they once had been). We’re told the Kennedy’s were champions of the third world huddling masses who, they felt, were just as entitled to live the American dream as the descendants of our fore-bearers. We’re told it was because of their innate compassion, love of the underdog and fealty to the doctrine of noblesse oblige. (I say horseshit. I don’t believe those boys ever felt even a twinge of white liberal guilt in their whole privileged lives.) In any event, we started bringing in masses of unskilled, uneducated, even illiterate, immigrants from the third world. And we fixed it so they could bring their children and parents and grandparents and siblings and their siblings’ families as well because, you know, la familia is everything, the very foundation of our society. Part and parcel of the plan was ignoring illegal immigration except, of course, when legislating amnesties.
So there you have it. Isn’t it amazing how you can find the roots of almost everything that ails us in the 60′s (FDR not withstanding). What a decade.
For all of those imagining a scandel erupting in the second term, forgetabouit. The media will keep a lid on any scandel just like the kept a lid on everything else these past 4 years. Instead, it is far more reasonable to assume that we will get more of the same and the general public will remain blissfully and somewhat deliberately unaware until something massive shakes them up.
In expectations that such an event, be it economic or military/terrorism or whatever, I suggest we all stock up on the various necessities.
The next four years (if we’re lucky enough to hold out that long) is going to be one long dark – and probably stormy – night.
I hate to say this, but I think a lot of this is over complicating the American public. I drive a taxi for a living in Denver, (I’ve gone mostly Galt already), and I get a WIDE swath of the public through the back seat. When talk goes political in the car it is (I’m not kidding) mostly like this:
young woman: “I didn’ vote fer that Ronemy cuz he’s fer rape an’ no abortions.”
another young woman: “Romney will take away our choice and stuff.”
young affluent man: “Obama man. He’s just cool as shiz.”
Even on the Romney side the reasons for their votes were based on ads they saw on TV…and that’s it. It is a rare time when someone gets in the car and actually voices a reasoned opinion based on personal research and introspection.
The conservatives lost this time because of their lack of messaging, and I hate to say this, they didn’t break bad on the opposition. Demonize your opponent seems to be the “winner” in this time of American idiots on parade, at least from my seat. :-(
Interesting. I talk to a lot of young adults and am continually amazed at how utterly foolish and uninformed they are.
Doesn’t change the environment or the situation at hand, but does make me glad that my own children were educated in exclusively private schooling. Though not rich by any stretch, it was the best money mother and father ever spent.
I hear you,Casey.My son,a liberal law school student,didn’t seem to care much about the election results except the outcome of the marijuana initiative in Colorado.I’m torn between concern for the legacy we’ll leave for our children and future generations and a nagging sense I’m wasting my time.
Romney played the gentleman (after eliminating Gingrich) while Obama remained a Chicago thug . Romney wanted to be liked by , or at least be on polite speaking terms with the Washington establishment (which is a ridiculous aspiration for a republican) so he avoided Sarah Palin who would have made a great secretary of the interior and could have demolished the war on woman nonsense . Romney never explained HOW he would create 12 million jobs . In fact government cant create any private sector jobs (but it can remove government roadblocks to private job creation ) . Thus , even I , who loathe Obama, and contributed the personal maximum to Romney, did’t believe Romneys’ big sell point . I would (mentally) yell “explain how!” every time I heard it ( and that was a lot of times). Now we hear of the complete failure of the GOTV effort due to poor software development . There is no doubt at all that Romney ran a distinctly inferior campaign to Obamas . Perhaps Romney lost the election, rather than Obama beat Romney .If so then there are very different problems with the Republican party than what its’ immigration platform is . For example what will become of the ORCA project GOTV application ?
As Mark Steyn preaches, it all comes down to demographics and one way or another, the demographics are CHANGING. Europe is seeing it big time with the muslimsand their aging population and the US is seeing it with the illegals and with the Boomer bulge that is now starting to retire(leave the workforce) and claim benefits (SS) and the SHTF.
You know, America, there is another way. …
STOP PAYING TAXES.
Begin a campaign of MASS civil disobedience. March yourselves down to the IRS office, and announce “this year, and for all years to come, I am no longer going to file tax returns. Your system is unjust, intrusive, unconstitutional and immoral, and in every way unworthy of free men. I suggest you simply arrest me now, and lock me up. I am never, ever going to give you my income again.”
Sit down, and refuse to leave. What are they going to do? Lock up 35 000 000 people?
More importantly, at that point, the game is up. The statists have lost, since they produce NONE of their own wealth. America needs another declaration…
This was not an election; it was a coup d’etat, achieved through 1) a totalitarian media; 2) the replacement of the historical American population with reflexively socialist, anti-white Third World hordes; and 3) the Democrats’ old friend, voting fraud (everyone is noticing that the official vote totals and patterns jibe neither with the polls, anecdotal evidence, nor precedents). Politics no longer exists, and it doesn’t matter what the Republican party does or doesn’t do. We either have Revolution, or we have nothing.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a Winner!!!
Shrewsbury nails it! …and in less than 100 words. Good job.
Exactamente!
I’m a republican. I don’t care about immigration or birth control or porn or gay marriage.
I care about energy – fracking , exploration, use.
I care about the economy. I care about my neighbor’s jobs being shipped over seas. I like tech. I like manufacturing.
The fact is both Meg in the California governors race, and Romney in the national election were classic big company republicans. Happy enough to ship jobs overseas if the numbers looked better.
I’m sorry I want someone on my side. I want my president or governor to be pitching for me. So I voted for Romney but I can understand how he can lose. He didn’t really come out and make the pitch to working class whites. Or for that matter ‘browns’.
You don’t think people with suntans want jobs too?
Jobs go over seas if sales do, or if costs in the USA are much higher than an overseas location . Romneys lowering of corporate tax rates would certainly help keep jobs here, but so far AS i can recall he he never explained that, so it probably sounded like a tax cut for (rich) corporations.
By Tom Tillison
Florida Political Press
The blog Pundit Press reports that out of 175,554 registered voters, 247,713 vote cards were cast in St. Lucie County, Florida on Tuesday.
Needless to say, Barack Obama won the county… in fact, he won the entire state by 52,370 votes and the difference between registered voters and votes cast in St. Lucie County stands at 72,159.
Gertrude Walker, Supervisor of Elections for St. Lucie County, said she is not sure why the Election Summary Report lists “Cards Cast” as 141%. “They may have had something like that in Palm Beach County, but we’ve never seen that here,” she said.
“We’ve never seen that here.”
As reported by WPTV, Morningside Library, was the last of 65 total precincts to be counted. The boxes containing the precinct’s votes were left by a worker at the library, locked inside, according to Walker. “I’m not sure why he left them there,” she said. “That’s never happened to us before.”
“That’s never happened to us before.”
Seems like there are a lot of first’s happening in St. Lucie County, does it not? And Ms. Walker doesn’t seem very sure about much of anything.
Oh, by the way, St. Lucie County just happens to be in Allen West’s district… Congressman West lost his reelection bid by 2,456 votes and has called for a recount amid the growing scandal.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/robbins-report/2012/nov/9/allen-west-asks-recount-amid-growing-vote-count-sc/
The number of extra votes in that county exceeded Obama’s margin of victory in the state.
This story emphasizes the necessity of having people willing to fight at all levels of government. No doubt there are other communities in the country where vote totals should be challenged. But I’m guessing not many have an Allen West
According to the county website they are having an emergency meeting tomorrow.
The hardest part of republicanism is convincing people that the 10th commandment is a good one.
There is a change in the electorate. There is a significant group of former voters who absolutely know (and with good evidence) that the political system is not capable of solving our problems. The dems are flying the country into the ground and the repubs are abetting them, afraid of the left’s propaganda.
The idea that someone is going to invest hours into a political campaign believing that their guy is going to be the one to do good, now appears laughable to many people.
I’m surprised at Dr. Hanson. If he wonders whether we will go the Greek or German model, he need only look a little farther up Highway 99 to get his answer in Sacramento. He can now observe the process up close and personal as the new super-majority Democrat California legislature addresses (or not) many of the same European problems. That is his and your answer.
Folks, it is over. Forget any talk about the next presidential race. The Chicago thug machine is in place, and it will never let go. Obama’s successor will be the equivalent of an adopted Roman nephew put on the throne.
From time to time, I comment carefully on this and other blogs. Frankly, I don’t care to anymore, anywhere. We have already become something else.
Almost twenty years ago, in quick succession, California voted overwhelmingly against illegal immigration, bilingual education and affirmative action. That show of numbers went nowhere. At the time, I thought, “Surely, Washington D.C. will listen now,” but today we are in a worse, even dire situation.
Legal immigrants then attacked the heart of New York twice, in 1993 and 2001, not to mention all points in between in one way or another, before and since. I thought again, that after 9-11, a dot.com bust, recession, a manufacturing and housing collapse and near-depression, that these would finally put an end to all this foolishness, but no. Democrat and Republican alike did nothing to fix the fundamentals. We’ve also had brown-outs, tuberculosis outbreaks, you name it, and no, nothing changes.
I teach at a private vocational college here in California. The student body is more than 90 percent non-white and 70 percent immigrant. Their hatred is palpable. The things they have said in class discussions would cause Klansmen to take pause and jot down notes. Of course, I must be teacherly and accept all opinions as valid, or I’ll get fired… If it isn’t on your doorstep yet, it will be.
For twenty years I was a journalist at various Califoria newspapers, so I have not been surprised by the MSM. The fact that they sacrifice their own career advancement by exchanging golden opportunities for a scoop in order to cover up for Obama is par for the course; self-sacrifice is a primary characteristic of the True Believer, as defined by Eric Hoffer.
So all this talk of, “Well, finally, NOW the people will wake up.” Nope.
Maybe if the “people” hit rock bottom?
In any event democracies, more than other countries, deserve what they get.
You know there is one small ray of hope. Perhaps a glimmer on the horizon. What do socialists do when their backs are truly against the wall? And its throat cutting time. They kill. En masse. The nazis were socialists. Once they had complete power they weeded out many who brought them to power. There are many other examples in history.
Well that doesn’t sound like hope. Oh yes. It is. This nation can only possibly rise again as a Phoenix from nearly complete devastation. Just don’t get caught in the fire. The US can possibly rise again.
“Our goddess Nemesis noticed — so beware, Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Obama, she is an all-powerful, take-no-prisoners deity with a long memory.)”
So, like, when does she start doing something. Because I’m getting a little sick of waiting.
And the Germany comparison, or any other, doesn’t work. Because Obama is weapons-grade insidious and unlike anything seen in the Western world in my lifetime. We lost an election we simply COULD NOT LOSE, and that we did so after the lessons of McCain and with four years of knowledge of who this Obama is simply defies all extremes of self-loathing or stupidity.
The problem was never in the Republican party, the problem is the electorate. Childish, immature, spoiled like any child brought up in riches and security and never having to experience real life, it choose what was fashionable and fun. We all knows how does plays out. Forget about the new electorate learning after hitting rock bottom, they will just rationalize it in some way.
Dr.Hanson, you’re the historian, is this it for the US? I see no way out of this.
I am 38, a legal immigrant from Russia, been in this country for 18 years, former US military, currently IT professional.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I share your pain. My wife and myself voted for Romney and Scott Brown in my home state of Massachusetts. And I can’t simply describe my feelings after the defeat. Crushed, probably, would be the best word to describe it. Totally destroyed. Just like you feel, I am sure. And it’s just sad that such a guy as Mitt Romney will never be our president. We _had_ a great candidate.
In any case, we lost. We mourned, and keep mourning (some of us, including me).
But you know what – we have to stick to our conservative principles, because those principles make sense. I don’t get that “soul searching” in the GOP that is going on right now that somehow “should make our party more inclusive”. GOP makes sense for _legal immigrants_ like my family, or, for that matter, for any sane person, because GOP is clear in it’s message. Well, at least used to be before the election.
No amnesty for illegals, No to drugs, No to gay marriages, No to new taxes, Yes to free enterprise, Yes to personal freedom, Yes to second amendment, Yes to our own decisions about our lives, be it healthcare or social security investments.
Conservative principles _make sense_ for any rational person. Period!
We can’t abandon them in order to win elections. We’re not Left.
I am an immigrant, and I am Proud to be a Conservative Republican, even in MA. I am Honored to stand with you, my fellow Americans, even after the defeat.
The republican message is in disarray right now on the news and all. Some republican commentators are now arguing for amnesty (even if jokingly), some are arguing for flat out “give everything to democrats so they can fail”.
I personally disagree with both positions. We can’t give in on our principles. Our message is not in disarray in our minds.
Let’s fight them! :) Let’s stick to what is right, to what we believe in – and I assure you, we’ll be victorious!
God bless you!
THE BIASED MSM WON THE ELECTION FOR OBAMA.
I don’t think there was anyone who campaigned for the GOP nomination who could’ve won against Obama.
Most Americans think ABC, NBC, CBS tell the truth. Those who know better — fans of PJM, Breitbart, Fox, Rush, Hannity, John Batchelor, VDH, etc — think their alternative media are powerful. They’re not.
Russians always seemed to have known their media was nothing but propaganda. Until most Americans realize this, the lying leftys will win.
The biggest error the conservatives have made is not recognizing that they are at war with an adversary that believes ends justify means. The matter has descended into jungle warfare and will be won or lost by power however achieved. The recent campaigns of the democrats have torn the social very badly and we have perhaps reached a tipping point of sorts where honest compromise is not feasible. After what has occurred how can any party on the receiving end of such sludge engage their advisories in meaningful exchange? I do not forecast a Cromwellian event however the country is now divided so sharply and deeply that almost anything is conceivable. Hard times indeed.
Hey, Victor, from a recent and soon to be past fellow Californian: We’re done here.
Now the California lefties have a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature. Moonbeam heads up the Executive Branch. Kamala, Gavin, etc., own the positions of power. Mark Steyn (in the NRO) said in his blog today that we should forget about national politics: “For the moment, tend to your state, and county, town and school district, and demonstrate the virtues of responsible self-government at the local level.”
Sorry, Victor, and (sorry, Mark). I’ve come to a decision here just south of Watsonville. This is not an option in CA. Property tax caps, ALL tax caps are coming off to provide unlimited WIC Vouchers to illegal immigrants, Free Head Start Farm Worker Daycare, sucky Norteno/Sureno gang-infested school systems with crappy results/capabilities and expensive price tags per student. Oh, and the inability to fire public schoolteachers (without paying said teachers off) who sexually assault your children (CA SB1530).
Pension reform is now dead, dead, dead. Bankrupt city with no services coming soon to YOUR town. Good luck putting that fire out, and waiting half an hour for police (who will just take your guns away). The inmates haven’t just taken over the asylum, they’ve franchised it statewide.
So, I’m leaving– forget leaving, gone. Crossing the border on Monday with my nice big rented truck. Taking our 49 jobs with me, got a NAFTA visa to move to Vancouver (TN Visa doesn’t cost much these days if you’ve got a good education and track record). Hiring fresh cross the border is cheaper than paying CA Payroll Taxes, and cheaper for our folks who wanna move– taxes in CA are SO high, even before the latest round of tax hikes. Now I don’t have to pay for my three neighbors retired at 50 and making $120K/year on CALPERS– but you do :-)
Better quality of life, cheaper, you can’t beat that. Going Active Galt, you could call it. Less regulations, more money to be made, more opportunities for entrepreneurs. And the mountains are a 20 minute drive away.
Even the Canada of socialized healthcare and gun control (already got my paperwork in for my PAL) has done it MUCH better than the moochfest coming in California. My kids’ private school fees are cut by 60% because of private school government subsidies– Vouchers not necessary. My crappy $1200/month high-deductible Obamacare insurance drops to $200/month with NO deductible, no co-pay– my kids get sick, I take ‘em to the doctor and don’t think about how I’m going to pay for it. If you are going to do socialized medicine, do it right, not the half-assed crony-capitalistic crap that the Obama Administration and their Congressional toadies cranked out.
Gotta say, Stephen Harper is rapidly becoming my hero. Balancing environmentalism and the Northern Gateway pipeline, shipping the oil to China for good hard cash, rather than waiting for the idiots to one day finally approve Keystone XL. Watch your gas prices explode in the name of Stephen Chu’s energy policy dreams(nightmares)?
Don’t let the door hit my backside on the way out? No worries. I’m outta here. Think that same door is gonna slam into those who voted Obama and break their noses? More than likely. Hope they have a nice life.
Maybe I’m wrong, and Utopia in California will commence. On the other hand, maybe I’m right. If that’s the case– sorry, Victor, wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.
And your not alone.
I have a friend who has an ailing mother in CA who does not have long. He emailed this weekend and said once his personal affairs are done he will finish liquidating his assets, sell off the last of his property and leave CA forever.
The failure of the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland resulted in mass deportations to the American colonies and Austrailia. Sales of Highlanders in groups of up to 1,000 as agricultural slaves were documented in the colonies of North and South Carolina. The Ottoman empire tolerated slavery until it was succeeded by Turkey. One Turkic ethnic group (Circassians) held Caucasian agricultural slaves into the 20th century.
In Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole claimed to be a Circassian, blond and blue-eyed. It saved his hide.
How many times are we going to give amnesty before we finally notice that it doesn’t work? How many times are Republicans supposed to fall for the ruse that illegal immigrants will back them if they just accept amnesty as a fact?
Illegals come here to get their toes in the door and to get free stuff. The majority of them, anyway. Republicans won’t give them free stuff, so Republicans will never get the vote, even if they agree to eliminate the border altogether.
There’s only been one amnesty in the last 25 years. And there’s no guarantee there will be another one in the near future. It’s not like the government is doing this every other year.
-In 1994, an amnesty for illegal aliens (Section 245 (i)) was added to the FY 1995 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill. The rolling amnesty ended on September 30, 1997, and resulted in 578,000 illegal aliens being granted permanent legal status.
- The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) Amnesty of 1997, granted amnesty to 1,000,000 illegal aliens from Central America.
-The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty (HRIFA) of 1998, granted amnesty to 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti.
- In 2000, amnesty was granted to about 400,000 illegal aliens who claimed they should have been amnestied, but were not under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
-Legal Immigration Family Equity (LIFE) Act Amnesty of 2000 removed deportation orders and/or granted permanent legal residency to an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens.
Bill Clinton granted amnesty to at least 3,000,000 illegal aliens.
Just keep on believing what you do Victor. You’re insuring the Republican Party will remain in permanent minority status and very likely the slow extinction of the conservative ideology.
Dr. Hansens most cogent observation: “But until these groups are jumbled up — following the path of Italians who, after immigration from Sicily and Italy ceased, fragmented culturally and politically due to economic success — we are in for some strange times. ”
All thing not being equal, what will 2014 bring?
Check 6
Hey Mongo – WRONG! Bill Clinton granted amnesty to 3 million illegals.
-In 1994, an amnesty for illegal aliens (Section 245 (i)) was added to the FY 1995 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations bill. The rolling amnesty ended on September 30, 1997, and resulted in 578,000 illegal aliens being granted permanent legal status.
- The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) Amnesty of 1997, granted amnesty to 1,000,000 illegal aliens from Central America.
-The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act Amnesty (HRIFA) of 1998, granted amnesty to 125,000 illegal aliens from Haiti.
- In 2000, amnesty was granted to about 400,000 illegal aliens who claimed they should have been amnestied, but were not under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.
-Legal Immigration Family Equity (LIFE) Act Amnesty of 2000 removed deportation orders and/or granted permanent legal residency to an estimated 900,000 illegal aliens.
Bill Clinton granted amnesty to at least 3,000,000 illegal aliens. Obama will go for 12 million. Mongo, you are WRONG.
“Will the American spirit, like German industriousness, override socialist redistribution, or succumb to it?”
All of America will become like California if we non-Californians don’t react. The American spirit contains a lot of fight, but that fight needn’t be violent. 23 states enjoy Republican control of the political branches. Those of us who believe that the federal government will destroy our country need to meet with top Republicans in those 23 states and starting discussing federal nullification.
What is federal nullification? Simply refusing to recognize, enforce or cooperate with federal acts while undertaking states acts in direct contravention of federal authority.
To illustrate, imagine a DOJ lawyer attempting to enforce a federal judgment against a citizen of a state, but every state court judge refuses to recognize the federal judgment on grounds that it violates public policy. How does our DOJ lawyer enforce the judgment? He doesn’t, he can’t, and therefore it’s worthless. This simple measure would neutralize the federal judiciary and much of the bureaucracy in that state, and so protected, state citizens could begin to simply defy federal laws en masse.
Another example: Imagine a state whose law enforcement agencies refused to participate in or support federal law enforcement undertakings against citizens of their state. Does IRS Agent Smitty want to serve a federal search warrant on Joe Sixpack? Serve it yourself; city police personnel are stretched to thin. Talk about a negative force multiplier.
As you can see, federal nullification could be devastating to federal power if implemented precisely in those areas where the federal government cannot enforce its will on individual citizens without state cooperation. Withdrawing that cooperation would impose a negative force multiplier on the federal government rendering it nothing more than a paper tiger. Yes, the feds would withdraw billions of funding from such states, but money is how the feds co-opted the states to surrender their sovereignty. Yes, sometimes criminals and other bad people would benefit. But on the whole, a federal government who can’t work its will in a significant number of the states will eventually realize that its foundation of authority and legitimacy cannot long survive.
Sounds good … up until the next to last sentence. We need to go the whole way and stop sending money to the fed gov. And that’s full on secession. It is the only REAL way to save this nation and ourselves.
Wow, it’s always such a shock to drop in on the alternative universe of people like Hanson and his fawning sycophants. Only in this universe can statements like “a decent fellow like Mitt Romney was reduced to a cutthroat, outsourcing, racist, tax-cheating, felon-committing epitome” coupled with Hanson’s promise of revenge for this supposed distortion gain nodding, unquestioned agreement while blithely ignoring that it is in this same alternative universe that Obama Derangement Syndrome created the Invisible Obama that only conservatives can see, one the “liberal” MSM ignores and along with most Americans. And the hate-talk and hysteria that created this distortion is so intense in this universe that this imagined Obama elicits not just opposition but virulent hatred. He’s constantly smeared with every possible label from “fascist” to “communist” to “socialist” to “Muslim” to, hilariously, all of the above. And new faux scandals are trotted out daily. Oh, and he reads from a teleprompter and his wife wants your kids to eat carrots!! And you wonder why you lost this election.
I’ve watched in awe for years as the conservatives have developed a competing reality reinforced by their constant repetition of the mantra that they are the victims of a “liberal” MSM. This drives them to tune out this “biased” reality and focus only on those that repeat the version of reality that they subscribe to. The echo chamber that has resulted reinforces this myth further offering not “fair and balanced” as they would like to believe, but an often fact-free bubble where any talking point continually repeated becomes unquestioned “fact”. Ironically, the same echo chamber that is seen by it’s devotees as the place to carefully scrutinize the facts pays no attention to it’s own sometimes blatant distortions. In fact it embraces and celebrates them like a badge of honor. This new set of competing realities – the right-wing echo chamber v. the rest of America – is what now drives more than anything the partisan divide that is making this country ungovernable.
And, if there’s one central reason for your failure in this past election it was that you share a “reality” that most Americans don’t, not because those that oppose your hyperbole-fueled misconceptions are “takers” and you are the “makers” or any of the other various excuses. It’s because you’ve been so successful at fooling yourselves with a faux reality created by the likes of Faux Nooze, Rush LIMPbaugh, Shawn Insannity, Glenn Dreck, and Shrill O’Liely. It’s because you’ve created a bubble that separates you from the rest of America.
Nothing could be more ironic than your success at creating a parallel universe leading to your failure to be able to connect with the rest of America and your defeat at the polls. So, please continue to drink the hysteria-sweetened kool-aid, it’s going to lead to more of the same.
‘… Only in this universe can statements like “a decent fellow like Mitt Romney was reduced to a cutthroat, outsourcing, racist, tax-cheating, felon-committing epitome”…”
Mitt Romney WASN’T a decent fellow?
Odd how such an unmitigated Capitalist bigoted bastard managed to get himself elected as Governor of Massachussets…that well-known hotbed of reactionary Free-Market Republicanism and Christian Fundamentalism.
Seriously…who is in an imaginary parllel universe and drinking the Kool-Aid here?
“It’s because you’ve been so successful at fooling yourselves with a faux reality created by the likes of Faux Nooze, Rush LIMPbaugh, Shawn Insannity, Glenn Dreck, and Shrill O’Liely.”
Aaaaaand THERE’S the “cartoon music” soundtrack.
My question is answered…I now return you to your regularly scheduled caricature of Your Own Personal Reality.
It’s not a TV show, but one day it COULD be!
LOOK! A Unicorn!
And, “Look, a newly-created version of the shape-shifting, etch-o-sketch artists know as Mitt the Trickster that only Bilgeman can see, Moderate Mitt”. Who needs a unicorn when you can have the most transparent con artist to ever walk the stage of American politics.
Guess you missed the many reincarnations of the Trickster since his days as the governor of Massachusetts, huh, including his repudiation of the health care program that he put in place that was formulated by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing “think” tank and was, of course, the blueprint that Obama followed for Obamacare. Obama’s program was characterized by the slobbering cretins on the right as “socialism” (see above comment).
But, thanks for showing up as an illustration of my point.
Which side lives in the truth? Well look in your wallet and bank accounts in a very few years and when you find you have no more real money, only worthless paper, try and remember back to which folks were telling you we were in a fiscal due to profligate government spending.
When some scumbag kicks your front door in and robs and beats you half to death try and remember which folks told you we have a crime problem due to rampant illegal immigration and a welfare state where people miseducated by government schools prefer crime to working.
When no one you know has a healthy happy marriage and the illegitimate rate doubles to 80%, look back and reflect that one side told you we have a moral collapse brewing in America.
Then as society completely crumbles all around you and there are riots everywhere all the time … just keep telling yourself that the Rat party and all you little rats are the only ones with the answers and you KNOW how to create a great country.
fiscal CRISIS
Among other things, he is a Muslim. Get the wax out of your ears.
If Romney had been 100% approved on every issue, by 100% of the voters and still lost the election, would anyone think voter fraud possible? If during 3 debates Obama looked like a warmed-up zombie, and still won the election, is voter fraud an issue? If any president ignored for hours his diplomatic staff begging for help, and still won an election, could voter fraud be suspected?
If any POTUS made a quick-show for the cameras after the terrible destruction of hurricane Sandy and still got elected, would it be racist to suspect voter fraud? If an incompetent, do-nothing,be he black or white or purple, spent four years in a job he was (is) unqualified for and still won an election for four more of the same, I would suspect voter fraud.
It is pleasing to read many of these letters, as the writers all seem to have a correct grasp of the English language, with educated comments and insights.
There was only one error that I have detected so far, and it was by Mr. Hanson.
One does not say ” stupider.” You are supposed to say, stupid, MORE stupid, most stupid.
To me, it is like ” reign in the government,” or, someone will ” loose ” the election, and other such stupidities. It is like ” littler.” No. One should properly say SMALLER.
Victor, in all honesty, I view the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have petitioned the White House, so that their state dissolves all ties to Washington, as the best route to the future.
It will be interesting to see how many states cross the threshold of getting 25
thousand signatures in a month.
“The crux for the next four years is whether we become California or transform into a sort of socialist Germany…”
Oh, hell no!