How Could We Be So Stupid? Let Us Count the Ways
We are going to pile up another $3 trillion in national debt in just the first two years of the Obama administration. If the annual deficit should sink below $1.5 trillion, it will be called fiscal sobriety.
Why, when we owe $12 trillion, would the Obama administration set out budgets that will ensure our collective debt climbs to $20 trillion? Why are we borrowing more money, when Medicare, Social Security, the Postal Service, Amtrak, etc. are all insolvent as it is?
What is the logic behind something so clearly unhinged?
I present seven alternative reasons — some overlapping — why the present government is hell-bent on doubling the national debt in eight years. Either one, or all, or some, or none, of the below explain Obama’s peculiar frenzied spending.
1) Absolutely moral and necessary?
The country is in need of massive more entitlements for our destitute and near to poor. Government is not big, but indeed too small to meet its moral obligations. Deficits are merely record-keeping. Throwing trillions into the economy will also help us all recover, by getting us moving again and inflating the currency. And we can pay the interest easily over the next 50 years. Just think another World War II era — all the time.
So big spending and borrowing are genuine efforts of true believers to make us safe, secure, and happy.
2) “Gorge the beast”
The spending per se is not so important, as the idea of deficits in general will ensure higher taxes. Nationalized health care, cap and trade, new initiatives in education, more stimulus — all that and more is less important than the fact that huge defects will require huge new taxes, primarily from the upper-classes. I see no reason why the total bite from state income, federal income, payroll, and health care taxes cannot soon in theory climb to 70% of some incomes (e.g., 10% state, 15.3% FICA, 40% federal, 3-5% health care). In other words, “redistributive change” is the primary goal. This aim is premised on the notion that income is a construct, if not unfairly calibrated, then at least capriciously determined — requiring the more intelligent in the technocracy to even out things and ensure an equality of result. After all, why should the leisured hedge-funder make all that more after taxes than the more noble waitress?
So big spending and borrowing mean big deficits, and that means taxing the greedy and giving their ill-gotten gains to the needy.
3) Big Brother?
Or does rampant borrowing for government spending reflect our despair over the inability of millions to know what is best for themselves? For democracy to work, all of us must fully participate. But because of endemic racism, sexism, class bias, and historical prejudices, millions of Americans do not have access to adequate education and enlightenment. Therefore, a particular technocratic class, with requisite skill and singular humanity, has taken it upon themselves to ensure everyone gets a fair shake — if only government at last has the adequate resources to fix things. If it proves problematic for one to register and vote, then there will be a program to make 100% participation possible. If some of us are too heavy and too chair-bound, we can be taught what and how to eat. If some of us do not study, we can adjust academic standards accordingly. In one does something unwise, like buying a plasma TV rather than a catastrophic health care plan, then we still can ensure he is covered. In other words, an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-moral guardian class requires resources to finish the promise of participatory America. After all, why would we allow the concrete contractor to “keep” 70% of his income only to blow it on worthless things like jet skis or a Hummer in his garage or a fountain in his yard — when a far wiser, more ethical someone like Van Jones could far more logically put that now wasted capital to use for the betterment of the far more needy?
Three ways out:
1. Continued tax increases.
2. Big spending cuts (combined with repeal of Obamacare).
3. Massive inflation.
The Dems will be go with 1 and 3. The Republicans can fix things going the second route.
Sen. Ben Nelson’s interview with Greta (on Fox) about the Cornhusker Kickback was instructive. My main takeaway was that the bill shifts significant Medicaid costs onto the States in the out-years and it was set up that way in order to game the accounting and CBO scoring to keep the bill under $1 trillion.
Ben Nelson will lose in 2012 (if he runs) by 20 or 30 points. My prediction is he won’t run. And I actually know him!
It’s been proven that massive tax increases actually bring in less money 2 and 3 years out because they depress business so much. On a personal level, why work that overtime or see those 5 extra patients every day? For Barack Obama??? Hell, the money will all just go to taxes anyway! Inflation is the only way to pay off Obamas debt. Conversely, lower taxes actually INCREASE tax revenue because of the surge in business and the economy. Kennedy and Reagan proved it with booming economies. High taxes? , well, Jimmy Effing Carter is your model for that. And Obama too.
Obama is Jimmy Carter. But worse. Way worse.
The margin of error is much smaller today.
Today, Iran can get nukes. Carter only lost the embassy.
We cannot fix this with inflation, entitlement programs are indexed to inflation and those costs will increase at the same rate. Wages will not increase at the same rate as inflation and there is always a significant lag time for wage increases with inflation.
Increasing taxes will make it worse.
Republicans, even if they sweep the elections and boot Obambi out in 2012 will NOT fix this. When have we ever fixed anything? When have we ever rolled back any major Democrat entitlement program?
We are screwed. Buy canned food.
Natch, the big three.
I really like the postmodern, money as a social construct, concept. In the Obami minds, not really of any consequence.
That is fairly accurate. Barack Obama does not take our national debt seriously. He is so brilliant and wonderful that it will ultimately all work out in the end. The GOP will most assuredly pick up the minimum of 80 House seats in November if the voters clearly understand just how delusional is our current White house occupant.
The Idiot in Chief has lived his life and never worried a moment about money. He spent his $140K advance for his “autobiography” like it was water. He refinanced his townhouse multiple times. He traveled to Pakistan when it was nearly impossible to do so and without a dime to his name. He bought collision auto insurance and then got mad when the insurance company wouldn’t pay him when someone hit him from the rear. He quit as a lawyer, walking away from a 6-figure income.
Yet he lived like a prince.
So why should he worry about the country’s finances. Things always work out for him. He has been given the keys to the future.
He’s a genius.
6 or 7
Great piece, Dr. Hanson!
I follow you regularly because of your excellent prose which presumes an excellent mind. Also, all of your assessments are spot on. That helps too. :)
I, too, have a language degree (German and Russian from Rutgers), and I have a JD. After hearing my first Obama speech, I knew he was a fraud, and I concluded that in the course of my 70 years, this is the dumbest candidate I have ever seen and heard. Anyone who underestimates the intelligence of the American people can not be all that bright. My opinion is also shared by Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. IMHO, liberals are just too stupid to be dealt with. I stay away from them for my own sanity’s sake.
Based on the above I think reasons 6 and 7 answer your initial question.
God bless you and all you do!
The most likely answer wasn’t on the list: Severe deficit spending is designed to damage our private economy such that the federal government can “rescue” (bail-out and take control of) more sectors. Every major economy-related decision by Obama has worsened the private economy. Obama wants to move us a long way down the road towards a fascist/socialist economy. He believes that capitalism (what we have left of it) must go.
Capitalism already has been eliminated or hindered in much of our economy:
– Agribusiness: A large portion is beholden to the government for subsidies (grains), price supports (dairy and tobacco), or tariffs (sugar beets and sugar cane).
– Commercial Banks: Forced to take billions in loans, regulated up the wazoo, can be screwed by the government at any time.
– Investment firms: Some were bailed out and are beholden to the federal government, all are under tighter regulations, all are afraid to say ‘boo’ to the government because the SEC can shut them down in a heartbeat.
– Non-commercial banks: more regulations every week, forced to give mortgages to people likely to default, forced to change credit card terms, etc.
– Student loans: Totally government controlled now.
– General Motors: government owned and controlled, and its creditors were screwed.
– Toyota: getting royally screwed by the federal government for competing with GM and not using union workers.
– Health insurance industry: government controlled and soon to be disbanded when healthcare is nationalized.
I expect utilities to be next on Obama’s hit list after he and Congress implement some horrid version of a carbon dioxide “cap and trade” tax.
A perfect summation of the Obama administration. As Rush Limbaugh asked, “Will we even have elections in 2010?” I.e., will the Obama administration allow elections?
“Why are we borrowing more money, when Medicare, Social Security, the Postal Service, Amtrak, etc. are all insolvent as it is?”
The Progressive mindset is existentially convinced that money grows on trees—and I am only half-joking. These arrogant and narcissistic individuals are not really worried about out of control government spending. It doesn’t take even ten minutes a week of their time. They are incredibly brilliant and wonderful. In one way or another, everything will be all right in the end. The only thing that truly matters is their further acquisition of power.
8. Sarah Palin’s baby has more common sense than our president.
Troll.
Looks like an attempt to revisit the “wingnut baggers are the ones who really hate the disabled” meme that the opinion makers pushed in the wake of Rahm “Sharp Elbows” Emanuel’s use of the word “retarded” to describe “Blue Dog” Democrats who were, at the time, ObamaCare fence-sitters.
Remember, Sarah Palin took a brief spin on the P.C. merry go round when she criticized “Sharp Elbows” for using such an “offensive,” “non-P.C.” slur. Then the smart people in the MSM spent the next week constructing arguments — in Rube Goldberg fashion — that showed how the stupid, evil beotch Palin and the slack-jawed knuckle dragging racist RethuglicaNazis who opposed ObamaCare were the one who really hated and oppressed the disabled.
Apparently, those who issue marching orders to the brigades of lefty internet trolls (be they at home volunteers, or paid “professional talk radio seminar callers” and “professional internet trolls” sitting at cubicles in downtown Chicago offices) have determined that the same line of attack would be particularly useful to trot out once again.
Why? Who knows. But something’s clearly afoot.
Your erudite explication of all the various ways to understand the motives of Obama and his thieving gang ended with the perfect question.
They are simply NOT sane!
The human trilogy that always rules our relationships with each other can be used to clearly demonstrate this.
One can either create, sustain, or destroy.
Supply-side economics, for example, is a perfect human way to create wealth, to create order. A farmer, or a mere gardener like me, works and creates food, without which we humans will die.
Calvin Coolidge is perhaps a great person to use as someone who acted as a sustainer, by basically getting out of the way, and trying to keep the winning status quo American capitalist system running.
However, when we ponder Obama et al, it sure looks obvious to me that he is either ignorantly doing the work of the DESTROYER, or IMHO, he is aware of what he is doing, and enjoying every minute of his act as president.
My take is that he’s like that dude in the saying, “How you going to keep them down on the farm, once they taste gay Paree”.
Except, for him, gay Paree was, and absolutely still is, that INSANE church he went to for years—ergo, it’s just so:
the One, Obama, is ever the preacher, Rev. Wright, putting into action all his crazy crap.
Woeful as things have already become, don’t think much worse can’t come about.
There’s a lot of ruin in a country, and as VDH constantly reminds us, in the material realm, we Americans are living high off the rich hog, so look out below if or when, due to all of the Obama insanity, something wild triggers chaos.
How about soon enough a nuke is used?
8). Cloward-Piven Strategy. Create a large enough crisis and the economy will fall, allowing govm’t control to ameliorate the crisis. I saw a picture recently of Cloward and Piven in the oval office with pres Clinton in the 90s. Between Alinski and these two, you have a complete rationale and justification for the administration’s actions.
Nailed it in one.
That’s the real reason behind it all. The others may appear to be, and in fact may be elements of it. But recreation is the goal, as Obama said – and you can’t recreate this nation without destroying it first.
Doctor Hanson:
Please say you would agree to participate in a Victor Davis Hanson for President draft movement.
I don’t think the good Doctor is interested in that job, but I’d sure want him as one of my top advisers if I had the job.
61. CGW
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Sharpshooter:
I don’t have a clue as to what the good Doctor wants or doesn’t want. What I do know is that our country is in deep trouble and that conventional democrats and republicans are not goint to fix it. I also know that if Bill O’Reilly gets to select the Republican candidate for 2012, the deep trouble we’re in gets deeper.
Doctor Hanson is a “Titan” among political thinkers and writers and he proves it on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. He is also a Patriot who cares deeply about this nation.
If the Socialist/Marxist takeover is not rolled back it 2012 it will never be. And shame on all of us for allowing it to happen. One voice, one leader. Not essays and division going forward.
What’s your plan?
All the more reason to elect him to the post. It’s always a sad state that those who want the office the most are usually the ones that should be kept furthest from it.
I’ll take #4, #6 and a little of #7, please. It’s like a Chinese Menu from Hell…
Obama is the anti-Reagan, instead of starve the beast it’s gorge the beast. In all likelyhood Great Britain will implode before we do. Sit back watch it and grab an adult beverage of choice, thats our future.We may already be at a point where we can’t pay our debt service.
Obama says we are broke but he spends more money, in a different era this would be called insanity!
No doubt all of these factors can be found animating, in different proportions and to various degrees, the individuals who compose and support this administration. But I detect something more sinister too. There is a kind of vindictive totalitarian streak. You heard whisps of it when BHO called for the formation of an armed ‘civilian defense force’ back during the campaign. What was that all about?
There are other signs that the Left is reading from the totalitarian playbook (control of the media, control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy, attempts to impose ‘groupthink’ in academia and in political discourse, attempts to demonize segments of the population, rapidly pushing through sweeping legislation that (in part)concentrates power at the executive level, a willingness to sideline political opponents, weakening representative instiutions etc. etc.) Whether its deliberate or merely the inevitable corollary of leftist ideology is hard to tell, but either way its not conducive to democracy.
” . . . because it is inexplicable how sane people could do such insane things.”
Is it really so inexplicable?
Because, they can.
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform . . .” Optimist that I am, it seems to me The One may be saving us from the stealth of creeping socialism. The “7 ways” you have described are marvelous magnifications of what wiser socialists of the past have done incrementally and sneakily.
In two ways the outlandish overplay of the socialist hand by the narcissist in the White House is doing at least these 2 wonders that could stop him in his tracks: 1) The USA welfare state will simply run out of money, which has already begun to happen, and it isn’t pretty. States are already severely squeezed with howling teacher unions; the seniors miss their cost of living increase; the arriving bankruptcy of entitlements is downgrading what was promised more and more. 2) With every excess the insanity is ever more obvious to the electorate, motivating them more and increasing the chances of 2010 and 2012 reversals of everything the juvenile would-be big brother is doing. Stopping this train wreck now can clear socialism off of the American table for decades or even permanently.
America is not amused.
TBranin,
You are wrong that Obama is dumb. It is We the people that are the dumb ones, we the parents who allowed others to educate our children, because we were too busy to teach them and too lazy to give them values, ethics, or instill in our children responsibility or accountability. Do you know that Obamacare is really a big blank check? There are over 800 instances in the new law that have the phrase “…the Secretary shall…”, and many of these continue by telling the Secretary of HHS what she shall determine…in time frames from 6 months to 3 years. There will be tens of thousands of pages containing rules and regulations that are not currently specified in the law. I predict that these will affect a lot more than just health care. The law is not likely to be repealed..the Conservative votes after 2010 will not be anything close enough to do so. Blocking funding might be the only possibility. Whether or not the law will be declared unconstitutional is not something I want to bet my 70 years on. “Fixing the law” is not even worth mentioning, since Obama will veto any such proposals, and there will not be enough of a conservative majority to override a veto. By 2012, it might be too late for ‘fixes’.
If cap and trade passes, if the financial system is manipulated by more and more regulations and is not permitted to operate in a free market environment, Obama and his cronies will have control of far more than 1/6 of the economy. Add it up, energy control, finance and banking control, education control, life and death control, the authority over what we can buy, what we can eat – is there anything I have left out? No matter, there is likely pending legislation to take that over as well. While it is true that there is a growing awakening, the real question is whether it is timely enough to make a difference. No, Obama is not dumb. He is doing what he set out to do, and because we still have too many Americans who only hear the sound of his voice and refuse to admit they made a mistake or are still too dense to understand where this is going, he is rapidly getting to the culmination of his agenda.
Dr. Hanson is right. We the people were the stupid ones, not Obama.
#4 Eliminate in their integrity, EPA, OSHA, Energy and several more I will think of later. Return to State jurisdiction, Education, Welfare, Agriculture. Keep but restrict, Treasury, State, Transportation and Commerce. Increase and expand Defense. That should cut the Federal budget down to size.
All entitlements are not equal. Some are paid for (sort of) and some are bribes for votes. Medicaid is welfare, Medicare is a program that allowed the Federal Government to take money out of pay checks with the promise of a future benefit, now the government says sorry we changed our minds.
Social Security took money with the promise of future payments. Food stamps and WIC are welfare. What is the number 47% of people that file tax returns pay no money?
I agree that the spending cannot continue. Lets start cutting. Foreign Aid, Congressional pensions after 6 years, farm subsidies, ear marks ( buying votes). Congressional travel and expenses what does the Air Force spend moving this dead weight around ? $100 million for an embassy in Iraq? Air Force One for 200 mile trips? Presidential pensions after 4 years or 8? Department of HEW? Is education a job for the federal government. AIDS treatment in Africa? Put this stuff on the table. Not defense,highways, boarder control. Just my opinion.
Hell, let’s stop with such small potatoes. Farm Subsides being about 14 billion/year. Let’s try going after the real money like the TARP deals and our military bases overseas. While we are after the real money let’s go after all federal pension plans and retrench their pay to 1990′s levels or just shut the government down for 1 working day out of the week and pay them for only 80% of their pay and benefits.
Come on, don’t be a piker! Let’s do this right.
The cost of government is not limited to actual cash outlays. Subsidies also end up distorting the market in ways that end up costing us in terms of food prices and health, and that crazy tax code we have to comply with means we have to pay $7 for every $6 the government collects, and that’s a conservative estimate.
I am a supporter of #6. It nicely combines their stupidity with their arrogance and hypocrisy. A most potent witches brew.
And, if I may knowingly digress in such bad form, speaking of witches, did you know that Hillery Clinton spoke at a tea party in 2003? (Scroll down to her photo and play the vid.)
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_041610/content/01125108.guest.html
Oh, it wasn’t a tea party? You could have foooooled me…and Bill.
Consider for a moment that all the world’s security services have a psychological profile of our president. Suppose also that the leaked memo from the French DGSE service regarding Mr. Sarkozy’s assessment of Mr. Obama is also true: “Mr. Obama is immune to ‘logic’ and ‘reason’ and ‘dangerously alien’ (crazy or insane).” Where does that leave us?
We can start by disregarding the notion that there exists a logical plan or exegesis behind Mr. Obama’s statements, actions, and policies. We enter a realm that is entirely subjective. The psychological needs of one man and his malignant narcissism must be met. His every public appearance is based on the need to feed his condition, a diseased ego that cannot be satiated. He lives for applause, adoration, and self-aggrandizement.
On the basis of this hypothesis the situation becomes suddenly explicable. We see a showman who lives in the moment. The future is irrelevant. His stage managers offer us one performance after another always devoid of substance. This week’s nuclear summit is just the latest example. It’s like being caught in the runaway truck run scene from Mad Max. “What’s the plan?”
“Plan? There ain’t no plan, mate.”
Everything done by this administration panders to Obama’s conceit; They know they can undermine the entire U.S. economy by chipping away at the capitalist fundamentals, and giving Obama the power to “regulate”. He loves it, and can’t get enough.
Oops, Hillary of course.
Men have wandered this planet for about 250,000 years. But it was only in the last 200 years that peasants have been able to eat, dress, live and travel as well as medieval kings. Today peasants have greater personal safety than kings. Liberals want to restore the Old Order.
Today’s Liberal dreams about recreating the Middle Ages when the peasants lived in harmony with nature; every one had his place; and all the wenches are comely because a national health care plan ensures they diet and excercise properly and have pretty smiles. Liberals see themselves as the nobility holding the reins of power.
No matter how poor the economy there will always be enough taxes to build a palace, enough peasants to staff it, and enough fellow liberals to put down rebellions.
Anyone who believes he deserves to be in command is completely unfit to be anywhere near any position of authority. Let them live under the yoke they would impose on us.
VDH:
Faulty premise –
“What is the logic behind something so clearly unhinged?”
If there is a logic behind what these clowns are doing it is something on the order of: “We Won” and we’ll do what we please.
The Obami are engaged in a pure power play with no (a priori) logic attendant. Insanity here is closer to the truth than we realize.
To some degree, all of your seven points are pertinent. The Dems float each of these ideas to different groups of supporters to “rationalize” the illogical, what they have done or what they plan to do. Whatever sticks with the Koolaid crowd works for them, and as a bonus irritates the likes of you and other old-fashioned logical thinkers.
In effect, we are witnessing a post-rational global nightmare, the predictable result of so-called post-modernism. Dire straits, rudderless ship, sirens singing to us from the rocks ahead.
5
What is the logic behind something so clearly unhinged?
…it is the Saul Alinsky model. they just know how to destroy things … they are anarchists. No where in their plans are fixes or alternative scenarios. There is no grande plan for the future.
Did Mugabe ever offer any vision ? ..(besides screwing whitey). Zimbabwe was a strong productive nation before the tribelists/communists/marxists/progressives took over.
Obama is schooled in the same lies and methods.. …when did a community organizer do anything but claim victim hood ?
When did a community organizer ever look to themselves for an answer ?
Welcome to AFRICA. Show me one prosperous sub Saharan country !
Look at what happened in New Orleans when the hurricane hit …strong able bodied men asking for help instead of offering help.
VICTIM HOOD is not becoming and it doesn’t solve problems ..it creates them and so does OBAMA
Obama may have already destroyed the USA …time will tell. I am not optimistic for America.
You are so right. Like Mugabe cleaned up Zimbabwe (really Rhodesia to me), Obama really cleaned up the south side of Chicago didn’t he. Millions flock there every year now to see the wonders he worked as a community organizer. I hear the citizens there are joyful for all the prosperity he brought them. Just like Robert Mugabe has brought to his people.
Enough sarcasm. Americans wouldn’t have hired a lawn boy to tend their yard with as little experience for the job as this joker had to be president, but still they gladly gave him the nuclear trigger. Go figure. Who’s the idiot here.
The City of Chicago is more dangerous for an American than all of Iraq.
Thank you, Mr. President!
I just returned from living in Shanghai for 3 years and then lived in Washington, DC for six months. What struck me most when I first arrived back in the States were the differences between the women of these two parts of the world. I have also lived in Europe within the last 10 years. I will say that the US is one of the most feminized countries in the world. First, the rudeness and arrogance of American women. Especially, college-educated ones (who dominate DC). There are studies that show when women got the vote, state-by-state, increase in government spending followed. Women in the US comprise 57% of white enrollment in state universities vs. 42% white men. Eigthy-five percent of Vasser students supported Obama. There are “diversity” diktats issued by government agencies that are more like Jim Crow laws targeting white males than the equality envisioned in the Equal Rights Act of 1964. To me, the facts are obvious: Women have seized power (pace Sarah Palin) and are going to nag and bully us all, instead of nagging and bullying their husbands, which, of course they don’t have anymore.
9. Redistributing the wealth
10. Government always makes a better deal than private citizens
11. Representation isn’t really “all that”.
12. Father government always knows best.
@ 1. Cornhead: 3 ways out
Fourth way out: Create new wealth.
@ 5. Dr. T and 9. jack: The Worse the Better C-P
This is for your own good.
This hurts me more than it does you.
One day you will thank me for doing this.
Add this one: TPTB think that the US is finished,
there is no way to save it, so it does not matter
what they do; Might as well please themselves.
@ 1. Cornhead: 3 ways out
Fourth way out: Create new wealth.
@ 5. Dr. T and 9. jack: The Worse the Better C-P
This is for your own good.
This hurts me more than it does you.
One day you will thank me for doing this.
Add this one: TPTB think that the US is finished,
there is no way to save it, so it does not matter
what they do; Might as well please themselves.
It’s all of these and more. Just like some people vote Republican because of abortion and others because of the war on terror, it’s impossible to try and find a unified field theory for these insane deficits. Instead, I would suggest that if you want to combat them, you should argue that they are inhibiting compassionate behavior by pulling money away from anti-poverty programs and handing it to our lenders in the form of interest payments. In essence, the borrow-and-spend crowd is taking from the poor to feed the bankers.
In the end, Greece will point the way.
http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2010/04/zombie-greece.html
Your correct. Even though current spending is now being reduced, since 2000 (when there was no deficit), spending has rocketed to the moon. However, to cut spending drastically, even thought we are now climbing out of deep recession/financial collapse, would not be wise as the economy needs a bit more of a push to recover. If the economy booms again, as in the 1990.s, then we should be able to cut spending further and possibly erase some (if not all), of the huge debt. But, as you correctly point out, one big problem remains, everyone wants to cut funds for the “other guys” pet project (wars, tax cuts) while supporting their own pet project. I guess that is why they invented politics. The billion (trillion?) dollar question is… will the economy boom again? Who knows eh?
You are absolutely correct. As soon as the republicans take back the house and senate (Nov.?) they can begin to reduce this massive generational theft that is now taking place. Just like they did under the last liberal administration. Wouldn’t you agree?
Poor Cit: There was a deficit in 2000, contrary to ‘popular spin’. The deficit increased that year as it has done every year since, and had done for many years in a row before. To claim otherwise is to ignore fact.
In America we excel at stupidity!
You must not travel much.
“–how insane people could do such insane things” Dr. VDH lets not give insane people such a bad, unwarrented rap. The insane truely have an understandable excuse to do irrational acts – they need and may bebefit from psychiatric assistance. Obama and the democrats are engaged in sinister and essentially evil acts. With clear minds they intend to economically enslave the american people for as many generations as possible. They must fulfill this agenda within their 4 years at any and all costs including the sacrifice of many of their own. Of course they don’t care what you or any non liberal thinks. In fact the only way Obama could be re-elected would be to bait a foreign terrorist into making a strike on the homeland ie the promise of his no-nuke response policy instituted recently. After all who wouold dare change presidents in such dangerous and disasterous times ?
So insanity is not the problem, but evil self serving intentions are. I hope you will emphasize this important distinction in the future. We have meds. for the insane and elections for purging the evil, the socialists, the corrupt, and the American haters. I would further suggest that all incumbents be rejected in the next election as they were largely responsible for loss of the senate, congress, and whitehouse. Now wouldn’t it be “insane” to put these incompetents back in office to solve the problens they largely caused ?
VDH, you should take the time to read these responses. Even you may learn something. Regards
#8
A catastrophic attack upon the current world order, primarily directed at the United States, Europe and Russia, is on the horizon. All of the “powers that be” recognize it’s imminence. These “powers” (elected officials, political appointees, corporate elites and their prized managers and all underscored lackys) are scrambling and posturing to collect as much wealth as possible before doomsday. The rest of the survivors will wallow in squalor.
There, somebody has to say it.
“a wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.”
N. Machiavelli-The Prince
#4. Well said ! Lets face it – Obama is educated way beyond his intelligence. He substitutes charisma over IQ and has been ever so successful with the poorly informed “sheep” lockstep leftists. They are too dumb to know that they will actually be paying the price for many generations even if they are currently hopefull of getting “other peoples stuff” cradle to grave.
Having abandoned reason (or never developed it initially) in order to swallow — undigested — the Marxist/leftist propaganda rammed down their throats in the brainwashing camps that have replaced our institutions of higher learning, today’s “progressives” are dominated by what is left when reason is banished: raw emotion — and the chief emotion dominating them is hatred — hatred for and toward all those who have not abandoned reason — and hatred for all the things reason makes possible: independence, intelligence, financial success, capitalism, a highly prosperous free society, the United States of America, our technological superiority over our enemies, etc.
This is the Democratic party “base”. The leaders — Obama, Pelosi, Reid, etc — are merely power-lusting manipulators promising to give the various “progressivist” factions what they want. The base plus a big chunk of the “confused middle” was enough to get Obama elected — whereupon, the swarms of haters emerged en mass.
This hatred explains the actual — as opposed to the stated — intention of the various “progressivist” factions.
The environmental faction claims to want to preserve the environment and save man from himself — what it actually wants is to punish mankind — especially Americans — for having dared to invent the industrial technology that gives us control over nature. Industrial technology is a product of man’s reason.
The healthcare “reform” faction claims to want to bring affordable healthcare to everyone — what it actually wants is to punish those Americans who’ve dared to choose to retain control of their healthcare decisions and expenditures. The power to choose to control one’s own life is the power of reason.
The union faction — the ones pushing “card check” — claims that it wants to make it easier for employees to choose to unionize — what it actually seeks is the power to intimidate, threaten, loot and punish those American workers who’ve dared to maintain their independent relationship with their employer. Independence is made possible by the exercise of reason.
The pacifist faction claims that it merely wants better relations with nations around the world — what it actually seeks is the emasculation of America’s military and the humiliation of Americans forced to watch the Commander-in-Chief apologizing for our existence to the murderously brutal dictators, tyrants and theocrats of the world. Our technological superiority over the tyrants is a function of our commitment to reason.
Etc., etc. ad nauseam with the whole Obama agenda.
So there is no real mystery why Obama is pursuing obviously destructive policies that promise economic ruin and chaos. The destruction and the ruin is the whole point — it “fires up“ the haters that form his base — it puts America “in her place“. i.e. on the path to becoming nothing more than just another unexceptional, struggling, stagnating nation.
The only reason Obama might back off from his agenda of destruction is to attempt to win over enough of the gullible “confused middle” to get a second term. Then the destruction will begin anew.
And remember, the destruction won’t affect Obama — he’s already set for life — once out of office he’ll do the same thing Bill Clinton is doing. He’ll make millions jetting around the world to speak to legions of adoring mediocrities who will applaud and praise his success in putting America on a path of decline.
I am reminded of the more reptilian characters from ATLAS SHRUGGED, who spent as much time on self-deception as anything else, avoiding at all costs the acknowledgment that their entire program added up to one colossal death wish. Their counterparts are legion- and all too real- today.
As with the housing bubble, they know what’s going to happen. They’re just betting it’ll happen to somebody else.
Well, like Jack at # 9, I vote for deliberate sabotage and Cloward-Piven, because it seems to me that if–time and time again–your actions always and clearly make our economic situation worse, while at the same time expanding government’s control over that economy, this is not stupidity at work, or negligence, or happenstance; this is a plan.
What else could one expect from Obama who, a good argument can be made, was raised as a “Red diaper baby,” who from age 6 to 10 lived in the Muslim household of his step-father Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia and was educated as a Muslim (“give me a child until seven and I will give you the man,” said St. Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits), was taught and groomed in his teenage years by Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. Obama, who absorbed the Marxist based rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright’s Black Liberation Theology for 20 years, and who, as he got older, made the choice to befriend and surround himself with Marxists, Muslims, crooks, and self-professed unrepentant domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?
“Fifty-seven State,” “my Muslim religion” Obama is basically a “foreigner” in experience and outlook, who is neither really familiar on a fundamental level with, or likes America, Americans, or our history, culture, form of democracy and Republican form of government.
America is being punished for the laxity and gullibility of a majority of our electorate.
12. Pedro “Obama is the anti-Reagan….”
You mean the Reagan who raised taxes, expanded government, stated that one of his goals was to eliminate nuclear weapons and, as governor, outlawed the open-carry of firearms?
Keep dreaming of your never to be utopia. I will take poverty any day to a nanny state. I guess some people just don’t think freedom is important.Yes, I have been poor.
Reagan wasn’t delusional enough to believe that disarmament was a good idea. Reagan wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons by making them obsolete; if we could shoot down the entire Russian arsenal, nukes would lose their strategic value.
Yes, Reagan raised income taxes from 75% to 25%. Now Obama is lowering it back to 45%. And soon, Barry will lower it back to 75%…
Considering the Laffer Curve, your irony is quite accurate.
In other words, Americans are the disease and “progressives” are the cure.
We’ve somehow managed to vote people who very much dislike their own country into office. This curious turn of events has grown out of control to the point that most in Washington feel secure enough to rule against the peoples’ wishes.
All of the justifications you list, Dr. Hanson, have one foundation: control over you, your family and your future by those who don’t care for your wellbeing. Their power is all that matters to them and they will do anything to advance it, as we are seeing.
It’s really astonishing how dead-set the Administration is on re-making the country over in their image- or at least their image of us. I still can’t quite believe that they and their congressional lapdogs were willing to foist this kind of massive health care reform on us in the middle of a severe recession. I don’t believe they are ignorant of the mathematics, here- there is NO serious attempt at cost control in the plan, not even something as simple as shutting down pharmaceutical advertising, which would save billions for everyone. There’s just more of everything for everybody. The plan as it is will bankrupt us as a nation and individually- but they know that.
That’s when they will have to “rescue” us with a real UK-style nationalized health service.
ANd that’s just one example of their damn-the-torpedo-full-speed-ahead attitude. So I’m going with a combination of #3 and #7. The administration is going to do what’s “good” for us, whether we like it or not. This is a big, productive, wealthy country. But this deficit hole is going to destroy our standard of living for decades to come. But maybe that’s the plan, too.
It’s the Cloward Piven strategy
We cannot inflate our way out of it Doc, the entitelments are pegged to inflation. If we inflate the costs of .gov go up incrementally and we are toast.
All of the above, with #7 gaining steam in recent days.
Besides his jokes about “healthcare” (“ohmygosh, no Armageddon”), joking at Gloria Estefan’s house on Thursday about how we all should be telling him “thank you” for those alleged tax rebates in the Porkulus boondoogle.
Obama does care what Sean Hannity says.
He, the thin-skinned authoritarian, hates the criticism all around, but isn’t quite in a position to silence his detrators in the style of a Stalin or a Mao.
Kudos to Dr. Hanson for using ‘we’ and not ‘they’. Knowing what I do now, at 60 … I look back on the vast majority of my life and my generation and see excess. Along with a great lack of introspection. And now we’ve got two more generations on deck that are even worse. There is a lot of blame for the ‘greatest generation’ as well for having done a generally piss poor job of raising their kids.
This is nothing new. ‘Gay nineties”. ‘Roaring twenties’. IF humanity is to avoid a new Dark Age we will have to have a world wide financial collapse and a World War. Prepare yourselves to lose a lot of your kids and grandkids as cannon fodder. Given Jesus the Christ and Saint John were not frauds … this could be IT folks.
I completely agree that Obama appears to relish provoking anger. I can’t help but wonder if, on some level, part of his agenda is to create a civil war, a race war. By framing everything in terms of race, by painting those who oppose him as racist, he tries to pit white against black. And by behaving like a child having a tantrum and further inciting the opposition, he fuels and fuels this divide, which deepens every day. Of course we all know this is NOT about race, but in his mind, I believe that’s how it’s construed and he may well yearn for a civil war.
Obama craves approval above all else. It’s part of his narcissistic personality disorder. He does not consciously provoke his opponents; he just can’t help gloating because his self-image demands that everyone acknowledge his victories.
We will see an entirely different set of behaviours when he starts to suffer political defeats. All presidents do, but Obama won’t be able to handle what he perceives as personal rejection. Then it gets ugly. He will become aggressively provocative to stir up real animosity between factions in order to punish dissenters. Expect violent civil disorder at the very least.
I wish defeats would start coming already. So far, he and his administration have managed to advance their agenda despite public opposition, despite horrific poll numbers, and so forth. I keep waiting for when this pattern will end. So far, I see no end in sight, and I’m not counting on the November elections since the Dems will pull out all the stops to make sure they stay in power. And with the media in their pocket, it’s not so hard to do. We need to grow our numbers. Quickly.
He wins political victories because he is content to spend his political capital. His power will never be greater than it is now, and he’s willing to have his party suffer any consequences–knowing that he will survive at least another few years. We will spend the next several decades recovering from the excesses of the last thirty years of liberal ascendency–the epitome of which is the Obama presidency. The first anti-American president.
The horrid picture your paint, I fear, is our best case scenario.
Progressives have always based their political philosophy on divisions between take your pick; Classes, Race, political beliefs. In Russia, Cuba and Mainland China, it was about the Haves against the Havenots. In a socially and culturally diversified nation like America is, their plan is to pit the races against each other. The only way for the progressives to win is to foment a civil war whereby the government can then step in and “fix” things. Although I believe that might be their Waterloo. There are still too many Americans who believe in the second amendment, have plenty of guns and ammo and know how to use them. I just don’t believe there are enough people in the military services who would support this government in a civil war type scenario.
Michael at #38
Right. Furthermore, many great minds warned this was coming well back in the previous century. Orwell and C.S. Lewis wrote in no uncertain terms this was already happening in their day. Along with so many others. It happened anyway. It is a done deal. Now begin the wars.
I think they are quite conscious of what they are doing and, given their philosophical outlook, very reasonable.
The deficit will create a fiscal emergency, which of course will not “go to waste”. The government will have to fix it, and that, in turn, means government taking over whatever is left to take over.
In the meantime, the expansion of entitlements will plunge, like a barbed but narcotic arrow, into the heart of the populace, never to be removed, ensuring that no one will vote for any nasty conservative that might want to change things.
Thus social Democracy.
If you think this is crazy, think again. Evil, maybe, but not crazy.
9). They are evil. How can people lie as much as Obama and Pelosi and ilk not be evil. Their smiles are their tell.
It’s just about the power, that’s all really. Elites do it all because they can. Who’s to stop them? The only policy in play is grab all the power you can while you can. Sneer at those who restrain themselves with religion, morals or sense of fair play. The god-king can stand on the pile of rubble with his franchise holders and declare themselves absolute rulers over all.
I always wondered how somebody could say God anointed him king and everyone didn’t beat him to death with clubs. Now I know. He was audacious while all around him were restrained. Mankind has learned nothing in 2000 years.
Some of that, but also most first-generation kings were excellent leaders; often military leaders that people considered strong and wise. However, a king who inherits his kingdom often has no appreciation for the people, neither the soldiers who fight for and under him nor the commoners who pay the taxes that fund his treasury.
What’s really annoying is the trump card used by those who promote these strategies, which is that all opposition to Obama is simply racism.
No matter which of the seven theories is the reigning one – and it could be a combination of all seven – those of us who object to any of this can be written off as “racists”, which is what we’re seeing with the media’s treatment of the tea parties, stressing the “White” and “Wealthy” component.
All very depressing, as usual, but thanks once again for elucidating the thought processes of our dear leader and his cronies.
“Nationalized health care”
If only. Alas, the lack of a public option keeps us under the thumb of the insurance industry.
But this really is an incredible blog: on and on about the deficit without a mention of the two ongoing wars that erased the Clinton surplus long before Obama took office.
Despite the tax rate cuts under Bush, total collection of individual and corporate income taxes along with excise taxes increased by $2.644 trillion over Bush’s 8 years in office.
Total national defense spending (which includes Homeland Security) under Bush increased by $1.48 trillion over those same 8 years.
Thus, increased tax collections exceeded the cost of the wars by nearly $1.2 trillion..
Conclusion: The cost of the wars did not wipe out the “Clinton surpluses”. Had the cost of the wars been the only factor involved, we would have continued to run a surplus.
What wiped out the surplus was this:
Total non-defense spending went from $10.475 trillion under 8 years of Clinton to $15.469 trillion under 8 years of Bush, an increase of $4.99 trillion — a 48% increase in non-defense spending. At the end of Bush’s terms in office, the increase in annual non-defense spending was approaching $1 trillion per year.
It’s the welfare state — which Obama passionately supports and is increasing massively — that wiped out the “Clinton surplus”. Bush deserves blame for supporting it. But don’t try to pretend that the wars caused the deficit or that Obama is somehow opposed to expanding the welfare state.
All numbers available here:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/hist.html
You should know better than to quote facts to a lefty. They don’t care — they’ve been told it was “two wars” (really, just one, but they’re too simple to understand that, too), and they’ll stick to that line until their masters give them another talking point.
The deficit was 450$ Billion before TARP. Obama has multiplied Bush’s exorbitant spending by 4.5…. you didn’t know this? The debt doubled during the Bush years. Obama will double if not triple it. Bush was a bad president, Obama is exponentially worse. If you can’t remember Obama’s campaign rhetoric about the “failed policies of the last 8 years, ” we’ll be happy to refresh your memory.
No, it doesn’t Joseph.
Right now, if my insurance significantly fails me, I can work (and in fact, have successfully done so in the past) with my employer to change our insurance and get something that better serves me.
Or, I can change jobs and work for someone that has better coverage (which I have actually contemplated years ago, at a previous employer, when my spouse was beginning to encroach upon a lifetime coverage limit).
Or, I can seek charitable care (as many have done over the years, and still do today) … or I can pay cash as I am able.
You establish that public option … and entitlement creep, along with over-regulation of the private sector in the name of politics, will work together to make the public option the ONLY option … or turn the private sector into mere contractors for the government plan.
Once you do that – ALL the work-arounds that protect me from insurer failure go away, as the Feds will be the keepers of every gate … even charitable care, in the name of “fairness” and “quality assurance”.
THEN you will be under a thumb … with no recourse except the unpredictable and glacially-moving political process.
Be careful what you ask for … and don’t let your profit-phobia blind you to a far greater threat to your liberty.
Poor Joseph would remove the optional thumb of the insurance companies and replace it with the mandatory boot of the federal government. But as Joseph knows, the Bill of Rights and Constitution both clearly spells out our right to health care while it never mentions anything about common defense. Silly us, missing the fact that democrats have always been the real fiscal conservatives. Well Joseph, keep on spending until we have neither health care nor a nation to defend.
Elites think they can get away with the profligacy as Europe still seems to be “ok” after 65 years of it.
What they forget is that Europe has relied 99% on the USA for military matters, and defense budgets on the continent have been minimal. Had Europe had to defend herself without benefit of American generosity, she would now be in desperate straits.
I vote reasons 6&7 – The neocommies don’t give a dang about spending other peoples money because their cause is “just” and they’ll get in your face about it too.
And now for the neo-commie response;
It’s Bush’s fault…..
Maybe he just doesn’t get it. With over 12 million in income the last three years, Obama still hasn’t paid off the mortgage on his 1.65 million dollar house in Chicago. He paid over 50k in interest again last year. And pre-election (as best I recall), when we got a look at his investments, he seemed to not have a clue about personal finance.
So personal financial irresponsibility/ignorance carries over to his stewardship of the nation.
Or not, I’m on board with 5, 6 and 7.
Just one more thing, doesn’t Obama’s jump in income to 6.1 million last year deserve a little attention?
Rush Limbaugh has been pilloried for saying of Obama, “I hope he fails.”
In reality it is Obama who hopes the US fails.
Clearly you are lashing out (guessing) and way off base.
All American policy is to perpetuate: “the nice long lasting war and sell lots of weapons”!
No jobs equal join the army.
Pissing on your former allies and cuddling the tyrant dictators that parade as religious ultimately continues the war.
Deficits equal weak country equal loss of confidence in the dollar equals bringing the American standard of living more in line with Kenya; few jobs equals join the army.
State, federal, sales tax et al totalling70% on the “rich”; gives the “rich” no incentive to work in a manner consistent with employing anyone; army jobs will be available.
Every American general thru the Korean war would be a war criminal under today’s “rules” of war that we, not our enemy, adhere to equals no way to win equals “nice long lasting war and sell lots of weapons”…
Either you get it or you dope…
Sharpshooter:
I don’t have a clue as to what the good Doctor wants or doesn’t want. What I do know is that our country is in deep trouble and that conventional democrats and republicans are not goint to fix it. I also know that if Bill O’Reilly gets to select the Republican candidate for 2012, the deep trouble we’re in gets deeper.
Doctor Hanson is a “Titan” among political thinkers and writers and he proves it on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. He is also a Patriot who cares deeply about this nation.
If the Socialist/Marxist takeover is not rolled back it 2012 it will never be. And shame on all of us for allowing it to happen. One voice, one leader. Not essays and division going forward.
What’s your plan?
55. Lugh “Poor Joseph would remove the optional thumb of the insurance companies and replace it with the mandatory boot of the federal government.”
Yes, millions of seniors are suffering under the boot of Medicare. If only Congress would repeal it!
Josie,
Medicare is going bankrupt. If it were a private fund, it would have been already closed due to its insolvency. Is this what you want for the entire US economy?
Government-funded insurance that covers only a portion of the population, and continues to utilize the private-sector infrastructure to deliver services, is a LOT different than government control of ALL coverage … and then, care itself.
We’ve already seen the messes that even these partial insertions of the State into highly-individualized areas of life create … it is a fool’s errand to expand the partial, into total.
Michael Smith “Conclusion: The cost of the wars did not wipe out the “Clinton surpluses”. Had the cost of the wars been the only factor involved, we would have continued to run a surplus.”
With wars so cheap, maybe we should start a few more.
With wars so cheap, maybe we should start a few more.
Your words, not mine.
But I do advocate the launching of one particular war.
We desperately need a war on the idea that “Man is his brother’s keeper” — that is, a war on the idea that all men are born into perpetual, life-long bondage to whatever “needs”, wishes, wants, whims or desires any collection of “brothers” can convince the government to satisfy at the expense of all we foolish suckers that produce enough to attract the looter’s attention.
It is this idea — growing uncontrollably like a cancer infecting the American soul — that is devouring this country and empowering the current batch of power-lusters led by Looter-in-Chief Obama. We either stop it — by standing up for our right to exist for our own sakes, as independent individuals possessing inalienable rights to our own lives, our own liberty and our own pursuit of happiness — or America will go down in an orgy of looting for the sake of those “brothers” demanding to be “kept”.
You almost touched on it. The root of it all is ENVY.
Truly a cancer on the human soul. Envy is THE power source that keeps the progressives going. All they need do is fan the flames. Quite easy actually.
You’re incapable of refuting the data, so you resort to snark?
At least you admit the deficits did not come from the “two wars”, but rather from wasteful transfer payments.
Dude, the wars will start, give Obama time! He’s just finished hellth care, and he’s still kissing Iran’s ass, Chavez is on deck, and North Korea is still warming up in the bull pen.
Be patient, you’ll get your wars.
‘bam is more than hoping America fails. He is trying to bring America down.
Like his pal Bill Ayers & the Rev. Wright, he hates America.
That explains all the steps he is taking to weaken America militarily, from missile defense to the nuclear summit.
And that explains all the steps he is taking to wreck the economy, too.
I agree with you about the other stuff, but how did the nuclear summit weaken American security. Near as I can tell, all it did was secure us some cheap uranium.
Suppose one asks a typical Obamaphile college sophomore whether socialism is preferable to capitalism. Said college sophomore will invariably expostulate on the evils of capitalism, the benefits of socialism and offer a rewrite of the last 2500 years of Western civilization to buttress his/her opinions. An independent observer could conclude that the college kid holds rational and reasoned political beliefs.
That might be a logical conclusion, until the next nine college pukes recite the same catechism with nary a deviation. Then, on further query, they all offer as validation of their “rational and reasoned” opinions no argument other than their inflated grades from the same list of “learned” Lefty agit-profs at Whatever U they attend. Any further questioning of their beliefs is then countered with ad hominem attacks against their interrogator. How dare this racist/fascist/bigot question the revealed knowledge spoon-fed us by our renowned Lefty agit-profs?
This is the new “logic” of the know-nothing Obami, who have either bought into it, or at a minimum feign acceptance of it in order to manipulate the masses who do truly believe in it. Faithfully believe in it, no less. It’s sort of ironic, or oxymoronic anyways, that this is a faith based system of logicality, where our enlightened leaders use their supernatural intellectual powers (obtained by osmosis from the best Ivy League Universities) to force reality to stand on its head. And, empirically it works — well, at least once, in the 2008 elections. Stupid won out, and now demands the right to remake the world in its image.
Great multi faceted look at the agendas of the Left, Dr. Hansen.
I’m afraid that the time is rapidly approaching when we must contemplate the nuclear option — repudiating the national debt.
This would, of course, lead to a world where no sane person would loan the US another dime. And it significantly threatens the US role as a world reserve currency….but it handily ensures balanced budgets for the indefinite future. In times of war or other national emergency, specific assets could be pledged to borrow funds, but unsecured lending would come to a grinding halt.
Having been a victim, myself, where my credit card had a thief’s charges run up — I can say that I felt no great necessity to pay off these charges with my own assets. Similarly, anyone purchasing the treasuries that go to Porkulus, TARP, the current deficit, or Obamacare has only my contempt for aiding and abetting a felony.
Starving the beast was so ’80′s. It’s time to cut the beast off at the knees.
Wonderful examples! Thank you. Remember an autocrat, like Obama, Caligula made his horse a member of the senate of Rome. Short time from now our president might put up his favorite jackass, ?, as a new Democrat-progressive-radical member of the U.S. senate.
Insanity it is. The pity is that Pat Santy has apparently retired from her Dr Sanity site.
If one ever needed a prototypical VD Hanson article to point out to others how tendentious, tedious, ponderous and slick-snarky Hanson can be in his writings, this would be the one.
Folks, this man is getting way more out of Obama than Obama’s supporters. If Obama did not exist, Hanson would have to make him up. And would make Obama up.
Look. Obama sucks, ok? No doubt about that. But Hanson and the rest of the National Review crowd have been paying for their tony New York apartments and their chi-chi soirees for years by standing on the sidelines, poking their sticks at bete noirs and trolling for organizational contributions and salaries since William Buckley graduated from Yale.
Please. Real quick now. Point me to one piece of legislation, one election, one actual event in recent history where anything that Hanson said or wrote made a difference.
I thought not.
I think you are way too kind to the Boy Blunder. From early in his administration, it became clear to me that (a) he is perhaps a complete economic idiot [still a possibility] or (b) his purpose is malevolent, in that he wants to destroy the currency and thus, in effect, the country.
I have come to the conclusion that (b) is the situation. No one, not even a Dem, could be as stupid as Obama appears to be.
But, he has performed at least one miracle: he has made George W. Bush look moderately intelligent.
This is no joke: I once asked a liberal colleague of mine what is the difference between federal revenues and federal outlays, and she didn’t know. Seriously.
And even more incredibly, my liberal colleagues truly do think that our income taxes actually pay for government. (But then, even Gail Collins of the NYT thinks that!) They honestly have no concept of the staggering debt the government is mounting. And when they do, they take the “Scarlett O’Hara” approach: “I can’t worry about that today. I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”
If you’re referring to the annual deficit we’re running, you’re right. If you’re saying that the income tax just pays the interest on the debt, usdebtclock.org says otherwise.
VDH, If I had to pick exactly one, it’d be a variant of #6. There is a sort of mysticism-driven culture that has taken hold. Otherwise normal people, that reject perpetual-motion machines in physics, completely accept that other – in-the-know – leaders keep them spinning in economics and consumption.
***
“Deflation” – the CPI selectively includes housing, and people think they have plunged in cost – they have not! Those houses’ costs, have merely been moved from those consuming them to the treasury.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE WITH YOUR FEET
The problems you write about exist because we have lost the right to vote with our feet.
Please remember 3 things
1. 100 years ago, In 1910 the United States was a Federation of independent states. Each state government was sovereign and had its own set of laws. The Federal Government had almost no power over individual people. In order to outlaw drinking it needed an Amendment to the Constitution. But today the Federal Government can and does regulate anything, anywhere it wants without any restriction. State laws that legalize something the Federal Government prohibits are simply ignored. Thus in 1984 the Feds passed a law that made drinking illegal in the US for everyone under 21 no matter what State they lived in. The Feds have taken away our right to vote with our feet.
2. The only vote that a person has that is guaranteed to increase her freedom is the one she casts with her feet. That goes for men, too. We had that vote in 1910. We could leave a state with bad laws and go to a state with laws we liked (or even no laws). That is impossible today. We can go to any state we want but the laws are controlled by the Federal Government.
3. Women’s rights, gay rights, and the elimination of slavery exist only because of the prosperity created by free markets. Fee markets exist only because we have the right to vote with our feet. What proof do I offer. Simply this: These rights never existed for everyone at anytime in history except in the last 100 years in the USA. To be sure Caligula was gay and Marie de Medici was free to poison anyone she wanted but in their times gays were hated and women were chattels. Some of the Pharaohs were Africans, but even they owned black slaves.
How important is the right to vote with your feet. Ask any Russian immigrant and remember the Berlin Wall.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE WITH YOUR FEET
The problems you write about exist because we have lost the right to vote with our feet.
Please remember 3 things
1. 100 years ago, In 1910 the United States was a Federation of independent states. Each state government was sovereign and had its own set of laws. The Federal Government had almost no power over individual people. In order to outlaw drinking it needed an Amendment to the Constitution. But today the Federal Government can and does regulate anything, anywhere it wants without any restriction. State laws that legalize something the Federal Government prohibits are simply ignored. Thus in 1984 the Feds passed a law that made drinking illegal in the US for everyone under 21 no matter what State they lived in. The Feds have taken away our right to vote with our feet.
2. The only vote that a person has that is guaranteed to increase her freedom is the one she casts with her feet. That goes for men, too. We had that vote in 1910. We could leave a state with bad laws and go to a state with laws we liked (or even no laws). That is impossible today. We can go to any state we want but the laws are controlled by the Federal Government.
3. Women’s rights, gay rights, and the elimination of slavery exist only because of the prosperity created by free markets. Fee markets exist only because we have the right to vote with our feet. What proof do I offer. Simply this: These rights never existed for everyone at anytime in history except in the last 100 years in the USA. To be sure Caligula was gay and Marie de Medici was free to poison anyone she wanted but in their times gays were hated and women were chattels. Some of the Pharaohs were Africans, but even they owned black slaves.
How important is the right to vote with your feet. Ask any Russian immigrant and remember the Berlin Wall.
I don’t agree with these.
The spending and debt is a means to an end. The goal is to make America incapable of being a leading nation in the world. A bankrupt America full of entitlement-addicted overgrown children can’t be a superpower or a leader.
Obama and the left have never liked America. This is their effort to force our comeuppance.
Obama is what happens when you take post modernism seriously.
Any mind which can embrace such concepts is defective.
As to Congress, I think we have a lot of what was going on in Rome during its decline. They don’t even bother remaining sober while they attend to their duties anymore. Pelosi’s only talent seems to be getting liquored up and finding new and interesting ways in which to screw the American people. Then she charges us for it. I can’t even imagine what a million dollars worth of alcohol looks like but apparently she requires it for her forays overseas.
To fix all of this in any meaningful way we are going to have to repopulate academia and the media with better people… both morally and intellectually. It would also help to start considering an Ivy League degree to be the liability it obviously is. It’s not that they haven’t been taught anything, it is that all of it is wrong. They use the perceived prestige of the institutions they attend as a substitute for making rational arguments. Obama for instance would know infinitely more about economics than he does now if he had worked at McDonalds instead of attending college. It doesn’t help anything to pretend otherwise.
How about Destruction, plain and simple? Nothing fancy or complicated, just the plain old urge to destroy, to use government as a means to act out the aggression and bile that eats away at one.
Tell me that Obama isn’t an example of that.
Somebody already did count the ways, way back in 2004.
Snarky comments aside, there are two massive problems that you guys don’t get and which Obama is trying to fix, which you again don’t get: health care costs and large scale financial misbehavior. The two not entirely related: you could call these days “The Age of the Evil Bean Counters” in which any method that results in more money is good regardless of all other considerations. Refinement and computerization of financial exploits like derivatives have created a massive imaginary banking system that dwarfs even things like the TARP (Go see this PBS Frontline episode as a good intro.)
While the economy is recovering and things will probably look pretty rosey by the summer, the financial infrastructure will still be a framework of cards stuck together with chewing gum, and fixing that will be a long term project. A serious obstacle is an oddly philosophical conundrum: imagine a credit card that you can charge near unlimited amount on, and the minimal monthly payment increases at a far less rate than the amounts you charge to the card, and then imagine yourself realizing that there is no point to ever paying it off since the monthly minimal payment amounts to more than a rent for a very lucrative lifestyle. So where is the real money that’s paying for your lifestyle? You don’t know and you really don’t want to know. It might be related to the Nike model of manufacturing — more and more stuff made extremely cheaply someplace far away by people being paid very little, and then sold at tremendous markup at the end with all sorts of folks along the way getting part of the action. Or is might just be pure borrowing on highly speculative projections on timelines going into future decades. It’s all very murky and again you really don’t want to know.
That’s what our financial system has become.
The evil bean counters in health industry have likewise discovered that people are willing to pay almost anything for medical treatment and to feel better in general. The ancient Hippocratic Oath was for millennia a moral compass for doctors engaged in a profession that could easily be exploitative. However time tested to be true and forever for how long, it’s a modern grossly inflated conceit that such an ideology can be dismissed as being something quaintish and having remaining relevance despite modern people being the same people we were in the ancient Greek days — we haven’t exactly become Star Trekky creatures of pure intellect in the meantime: our ever increasing ability for large scale killing kind of puts a lie to that. So medical costs start skyrocketing because…just because they can. And that’s increasingly a good enough reason for a lot of people hiding behind confidentiality agreements and financial misdirects.
So in others words, you people dumping on Obama are the dumb ones. Sorry.
>Snarky comments aside, there are two massive problems that you guys don’t get and which Obama is trying to fix, which you again don’t get: health care costs and large scale financial misbehavior. >
Healthcare costs are too low and large scale financial misbehavior is insufficiently common?
Obama is working to push health care costs up, and to subsidize the misbehavior while protecting its perpetrators from honest competition.
…you have really drunk the koolaid. It is pathetic that you have the right to vote, with your total ignorance, in this country.
Actually the reasons Obama and the libs operate is irrelvant. What they have done is only set in motion the coming conflict.
At some point a system based on the governing elite – think Kings and nobility (todays DC based lib-pro; a shrinking productive class; and a growing useless entitlement class will implode and then explode.
The coming WORLD AT WAR will make all previous conflicts and genocides look like a cake walk…..
Sorry but that is the future…get ready for it.
My only hope is that the elites get eaten alive by the entitled when they find out there is no more bread and circus.
I didn’t invision a World War as much as fierce regional ones around the world.
What I did invision was violence in the USA to the extent that Obama would activate his personal civilian army against citizens. Martial law forever. Despotic control. That’s a worst case scenario.
The best case would be the Republicans taking over Congress in 7 months and bringing accountability back to the government and separation of powers.
7 months…so near yet so far.
I think Dr. Hanson missed the prime reason for their apparent abandonment of reason — the destruction of the West and it’s bastard legacy, i.e. the enlightenment.
The left wants to see America, and all of the West adopt the tax-and-spend regime that crushed Europe back in the 70′s – 90′s… tax burdens over 50% of GDP, social welfare and government maintenance costs through the roof, new businesses smothered in their cribs. They want this slow death because they want the rest of the world to economically catch up (and pass if able) the West.
They want this because:
:: they view the wealth of the West as stolen though colonialism (even the domestically produced wealth, one “stolen” dollar contaminates the other ninety nine);
:: they view the mindsets of Westerners as artificial constructs when compared to the naturalistic, holistic philosophies of everyone else (the cult of authenticity);
:: they see the Western concept of individual rights as an impediment to the implementation of the more humane communitarian social order that they, as authoritarians, prefer (all leftist philosophies today are authoritarian, only a second rate mind believes the pro-masses propaganda).
You see, the left is for all intents and purposes dominated by the Dark Ages mindset. They think the world cannot function without them, without their guidance the world would spin off into an oblivion of repression and exploitation, so they must grab the reins to ensure the repression and exploitation are done in the name of the people, by the best and brightest, for the betterment of man. The return of the king.
This is why the left is nonplussed by the authoritarian regimes of the world — their structure is fine, they just need a few Western academics to run the places.
This is why the left wants to eliminate all borders, take in all comers, and let them keep their native cultures — those immigrants are already conditioned to accept authoritarian regimes, and that’s a plus in their book.
This is why the left seeks to bankrupt the nations of the West — to de-legitimize the legacy of individual rights and return humanity to its communitarian roots. With the academic left in charge, of course.
The bloating and collapse of America is by design, and it’s designers think they are doing the world a favor.
All of the above “reasons”, without question. Leftist radicals currently infesting government and their enablers (AKA Democrat voters) adopt whatever italicized rationale allows them to feel good about themselves and denigrate the knuckle-dragging unbelievers. With so many attractive myths to choose from, 60+ million managed to rationalize voting in an angry, ignorant, incompetent, quasi-Muslim, black radical community organizer for our President. I tend to think that easily qualified as insanity on an individual and group level.
And I resent that “we” in the title, though I get the point of using it.
I have to agree with comment #64 and others, regarding Obama’s sense of lyalty to the United States. Quite simply, he has none. What he has is a list of grievances against this country. He has never done anything to demonstrate any loyalty or love for this country, and I could recite the long list of ways in which he has subtly (or not so subtly) projected disloyalty and even contempt towards the United States and towards its traditional allies.
He wants us to go bankrupt. Moreover, he wants us to go bankrupt after reallocating massive sums of wealth, financed by debt, towards Democratic constituencies.
Howiem!
Thank you for a well-reasoned, well-written, and respectful post.
You might be right. Obama might not be dumb, but ALL the people are not, IMHO. The only group for whom Lincoln had total respect was all the people. With that reference I rest my case as to Obama’s judgment. There is more to success in life than a high academic IQ, i.e., one can be judged smart or stupid in other areas than academia.
I do, however, agree with all you say but I am more optimistic about this nation’s future. Malcolm Forbes said something to the effect that all who have voted against America’s survival/success in the past 200 or so years were ultimately proven wrong.
I think that with Obama the people were hoodwinked. Lawrence Eagleburger called him a charlatan in Spring, 2008. Subsequent events have proven him correct. We now have the Prevaricator in Chief!
I think that when Obama’s reign bites the American people as a whole such as Carter’s loss of face overseas and 21% prime, things will change. But the bite has to be big enough. We probably remember the gas lines, the inflation, the 21% prime, and the malaise speech. Here where I live the real estate business was at a complete halt.
Bottom line, I hope you are wrong! :)
Rob Crawford “You’re incapable of refuting the data….”
The data is bogus. The costs of Iraq & Afghanistan are not only tallied under defense spending. The millions to contractors, Blackwater et. al., the nation-building costs, the pallets of cash that disappeared into the pockets of our friends….
Professor Hanson, you over-analyze. What motivates the current administration and its enablers in Congress can be summed up in a single sentence: “We had to destroy America in order to save it.”
If one subscribes to the present-day “liberal” orthodoxy that America has been the source of most if not all of the world’s problems, then the way to restore us to the good graces of the “world community” is demolish the foundations of American power and influence: its economic strength, its global military power, and its sense of its own uniqueness.
When America is reduced to the same economic stagnation, military impotency and spectators-to-their-own-fate collective ennui that are the hallmarks of Europe today, then America will be in no position to cause trouble in the world. And the world will love us in return.
I wish I could say that the Democrats were simply being ignorant, incompetent and delusional in what they are doing to make the USA just another minnow in a school of minnows. But they know exactly what they are doing.
Hyphenated American “Medicare is going bankrupt. If it were a private fund, it would have been already closed due to its insolvency. Is this what you want for the entire US economy?”
Yes, it would have been closed and the seniors covered by it would be left to fend for themselves. Is this what you want for your fellow Americans (and hyphenated Americans)?
The right thing to do is for people to save up for their own retirement. Failing that, children ought to care for their parents in their old age. Those who refuse should be shunned by polite company (assuming that the parents in question aren’t the scum of the earth). If the elderly person/couple in question has no living children or they are unable to assist their parents, let the Church take them in. It’s really not that complicated.
BC (#79), only the most gullible of people would believe that Obama is trying to fix health care costs. Obamacare is all about control of people’s lives, and not about health care at all.
There are ways to tackle rising health care costs [and some folks have actually described how], but the Boy Blunder is not interested in such in the slightest. Believing he does is simply some sort of cult-like behavior.
BC, By the summer, yes, the recovery that is always occurring. Hold your breath sucker.
“Stupid”, you dare use that word! The history of government is almost entirely a history of corruption, incompetence, waste, cost overruns, power grabs, exploitation, lies, unintended consequences, favored elites, bribery, and quite often, ruin.
This may vary from administrations, regimes, rulers, parliaments and so on, but the record is consistent and plain to see.
Except to lost and empty fools who crave something to believe in and yearn for other people to be dominated by force, something their miserable selves crave but can’t pull off.
My #78 post is honor of you babe, you and your low class friend and hero, The O.
P S, I did like your brilliant comment about borrowing going into timelines & future decades, sharp, very sharp. Wonder where else that might apply?
Comrade citizen! Does not 2+2=5?
excellent point # 83 !
‘bam’s contempt for America extends to America’s traditional allies. He treats the Brits and the Israelis with real hostility.
Curiously, he seems to like Chavez and others who hate America, bows to others who hate us (the Saudi bow) or who threaten us (the Chinese bow).
Somehow it all seems to fit together.
Mr. Hanson: Nice work as usual.
1,2,3,5 are the excuses the Left always uses, pretending to care for the little guy while what they are really doing is enslaving a large portion of the population as a dependant voting bloc. The left hates these dependants but sees them as mindless sheep to be manipulated and controlled by “free” money. These are the power hungry rich in government who believe their wealth has entitled them to take yours. Do some of them believe 1, 2, 3 and 5? Of course they do but they would like everybody else to believe it more. These are the words of every tyrannical government throughout the 20th century. This is their moral cover, the lie they use to defend themselves; “We are good”.
4, 6 and 7 are the truth at least partly. Government defiantly lives to serve and feed itself, the bigger it can become the safer it feels. Unrighteous men look at government largess and say to themselves; ‘man if I can only get one of those jobs I’ll be set for life’. The “screw you” mentality comes from the left because these second handers know who they really are; parasites that must feed off of the rest of us to survive; removing them from the public trough is like trying to take a bone away from a starving dog. They are viciously lashing out at anyone who would try to pull them away or even expose what they really are.
We have not yet seen the full depth of their hatred and their desperation but as the money runs out and the pressure builds there will be trouble amongst the parasites. The insane thing about the Left is that they will kill the golden goose in suicidal fashion just because they hate, which makes them strange bedfellows with the Islamist homicide bombers.
For those who cannot stand the light of day and the sharp sword of the truth; hatred and lies are all that they have for a defense which truly makes them appear insane.
@79
Thank you for sharing your good governance expertise despite your busy schedule as an Obama senior staffer. And thanks for checking the snark, it makes your comments far more credible.
We had not considered evil bean counters in either finance nor health care but we’re glad to know that the Obama team is on it. Apparently your team has secured the imaginary, magical credit card and is using it wisely. Since it’s “all so murky and we really don’t want to know” we’ll just let you super geniuses figure it all out.
My brother and many friends are unemployed and they’ll be glad to hear that the economy will be “looking pretty rosy by summer”.
Your most astute comment was “…Star Trekky creatures of pure intellect in the meantime: our ever increasing ability for large scale killing kind of puts a lie to that. So medical costs start skyrocketing because…just because they can.” Profound! I struggle to wrap my mind around this level of thinking. No wonder Obama needs uber powers to fight the non-Star Trekky peoples of impure intellect that kill…and stuff…because they can.
I know it hurts to have to call us dumb and that’s why you apologized. Please come back often and share your insider knowledge. Please don’t hold anything back next time. We want to hear it all.
79. BC:
“So medical costs start skyrocketing because…just because they can.”
Excellent analysis of a complex problem. You should use your real name when you post so Rahm can find you a management position in the burgeoning ObamaCare bureaucracy. They’re gonna’ need a lot of people with insight like yours to make that fiasco work.
The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion and cost thousands and thousands of American lives and save very few
and most of that money will go oversees, The Health care bill will cost a trillion BUT most of that money stays here in the U.S. to help AMERICANS IN AMERICA and will SAVE millions of americans . Even if Obama passes every one of his bills He will not and can not out spend the Bush’s wars and the High cost Patriot acts .
AND NO I DO NOT FEEL SAFER HERE OR ABROAD, INFACT MUCH LESS SAFE as it is now much more dangerous to travel as we are hated and disrespected by most of the world for Bush’s WAR and republican greed…….the world will never hate us for the health care bill
I find it ironic that your reply to the cost of the Iraq War is to start 20-30 of the fiscal equivalent. I’m going to guess this is a case of #7.
What concern is it of ours if they hate us? Let them hate, so long as they fear.
I’m just wondering, where is all the inflation in Japan that everyone was certain would come with their large budget deficits. I’m not arguing that they arrived at the current levels in the most effective way – tax cuts and deregulation would have been moreeffectice -but they have been in disinflation for over a decade.
@95
Excellent, the program commenters have descended upon the good professor’s blog. The topic must have hit a raw nerve at the SEIU/ACORN/Obama situation room. And He has sent forth his Master Commenters.
PR are ye saying that we must choose between national defense and health care? Should we choose health care and just ignore those unfortunate Americans that are killed by chemical, biological and radiolgical weapons because we can’t afford reasonable security measures or won’t attack those planning to use them against us?
How is ObamaCare going to save “millions of Americans”? Are you suggesting that millions of Americans are dying because they are dying from lack of care? Please cite your source of this claim.
You claim that you feel much less safe traveling because we are hated and disrespected in the world due to Bush’s WAR and republican greed. Do you look like Bush? Did some surly foreign dude glare at you and speak to you with harsh tone while traveling because he mistook you for GW? Try wearing a Hezbollah uniform with keffiyah when traveling, that will make people love you.
By bankrupting the USA, Obama makes everyone more dependent on government. The physician sickens, then offers to cure.
“The bloating and collapse of America is by design, and it’s designers think they are doing the world a favor.”
quote 81-bc…… and yes that was the republicans who designed the aftermath of 911, the patriot act, the war on Iraq and others to take our civil liberties,money and freedom away….. during bush’s time at office I pay 245% more in health care premiums ,fuel prices have doubled,My pensions are gone , I make less money ,have lost most of my civil liberties ,lost two friends to the Iraq war and the countries I used to travel to for business during the clinton era used to love us now they hate us …..the U.S. was once resepted and loved for what we did BUT thanks to bush and the republicans that will NEVER be the same….wake up people we are not the only ones in the world
@99
Oh fred, you know that the Patriot Act and invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq were passed by a bi-partisan Congress. Please describe the civil liberties and freedoms that you “lost”. The democrats have had the presidency and congress for 18 months. Has Obama made you healthy, wealthy and loved by the world yet? Has your healthcare bill gone down 245% and are you filling up the clunker with $1 per gallon HugoGas? Why hasn’t Obama restored your civil liberties and freedom? Why did Obama escalate military action in Afghanistan?
And, what does this have to do with your previous comment, “wake up people we are not the only ones in the world”?
Darn these less-fortunate unemployed people! The poor and starving get all the breaks!
More money for the top 1% please!
None of the above, although the answer has elements of many of the choices.
The answer is that it’s about power. They want it. They got it, and they can keep it by mortgaging the future to cement their position today.
Ruining the country economically is nothing that they are concerned about. Russia and China were poverty stricken under the commissars, but the comissars lived quite well, thank you very much.
Indeed, ruining the country only makes their grip on the country that much stronger.
None of the above. Answer: To enslave America. Social justice.
VDH, now you are just embarrassing yourself with this tripe. You managed to conjure up seven total strawmen and demolish them all. Seriously, your unintellectual political commentary seriously undermines the credibility of your scholarly military history. If one set of your writings is rotten, perhaps all of it is?
The real reason for the US debt is that the American people have been voting for ‘something for nothing’ for 30 years and now the politicians have given it to them. The ‘something’ is offered by the Democrats, and the ‘for nothing’ is offered by the Republicans. Lower taxes and higher spending is something for nothing. Wake up, we Republicans are as much a part of the problem as the Democrats. The two parties combine to create the debt. We need to cut spending and cover what we do spend with taxes. Period.
It is so important that we work within the system to put a halt to what is happening to America. We need to encourage our friends, family and neighbors to get involved in changing Washington in November 2010 or, my friends, it just may be too late. If you would have told me that there exists 60 elected Senators willing to mortgage the future of the US for socialized medicine (that is not funded) I would not have believed it. We MUST expose Obama for the fraud he has wraught upon America (all the while we will be branded racists) and rid the Congress of the ultra-left that has become the mainstream of the Democratic party. Don’t fret that I am a uber-Republican, but at this juncture, they are our only hope to bring America back to the center.
Dr. Hanson -
None of the above.
LBJ’s War on Poverty cost $6.6 trillion over a thirty-year period. Poor families were destroyed when money was given to women and children but only when no father/male was present in the household, so the men all left, often to the streets and to crime and drugs. There was as much poverty after thirty years and $6.6 trillion as before the program started. The money was not so much redistributed as wasted, and the recipients were worse off at the end of the experiment. The national debt was $5.92 trillion in 1995 at the end of the $6.6 trillion War on Poverty.
The War on Poverty could have been a terrible government boondoggle gone terribly wrong, but with the end of the War on Poverty the Democrats already had another “Share the wealth” (Obama’s phrase) program in progress: the Unaffordable Housing Project. Created to “help the poor” to buy housing, the Unaffordable Housing Project had the opposite effect, depriving great chunks of the citizenry of both housing and wealth. And the national debt is now near $12 trillion.
Could the Democrats have gotten two well-intentioned programs so horribly wrong by ignorance or stupidity? Probably not.
Banks, Detroit autos, health care, energy, and education are now targets of the Democrats tender ministrations. The national accounts are rapidly sinking into insolvency and confusion. Who owes what? Who owns what? There are fewer and fewer coherent answers to these questions.
But everyone would be equal if the economy went crash, we would just elimiante money, and let Obama rule by fiat, directing resources where he thinks best.
The Soviet Union and China proved that Marxists could not take feudal socities and create socialist states, but that is not what Marx said would happen anyway. Western Europe, Cuba, Chile, and now Venezuela are closer to the type states that Marx proposed for his conversion from industrial societies to socialist/communist utopias, and all have failed miserably, even with Europe’s wealth, Chile’s copper, and Venezuela’s oil resources.
But hope springs eternal, and the Marxists are now convinced that they can build their dream world in the USA.
The signature characteristics of Marxist states are operational inefficiency and institutional corruption, and we see that now in the USA with Fan and Fred, Dodd and Franks, and the massive waste and fraud of the War on Poverty and the Unaffordable Housing Project.
Renew the American Constitution and principles, or you are going to have a long, dishonest, heart-sick existence.
What is truly scary is that just under 50% of the country still believe Obama is performing well as President. Dumbed down doesn’t even begin to describe almost half the electorate in this country.
Wow there are actually nuts who believe the lies about Iraq/Bush causing this recession.
Just Wow.
If America survives the Obama administration we will never be the same.
Obama has done more damage in his short time than could ever have been imagined.
And what is worse is that the only real solution is Republicans.
Every once in awhile we have to let the Democrats have full control to realize why we vote for the Republicans.
Better a slow slide than being sucked into the vortex.
I wonder if we will ever fix what Obama has broken.
It’s Cloward-Piven and this is a coup. It’s glaringly obvious to anyone whose eyes are open.
When the collapse finally occurs, at least the TEA partiers and their like will have the organization, skills and determination to rebuild America one neighbourhood at a time.
What fate awaits the dependent masses is going to be ugly; starving in the streets may be the least of it. Most of the elites have few real skills or aptitudes; starving in the streets might be an option there as well.
Large numbers of the starving and desperate may choose a life of brigandage, but well organized local militias springing out of self organizing neighbourhood associations will be able to deal with that. Others might offer themselves into helotage, but I can imagine what sorts of people would take advantage of that, and people like you or I would would probably not be living there…
This college dean you mention – is he still married?
The simple summation between the fine theory of supporting the ‘needy’, the ‘poor’ and the ‘elderly’ with government help that then seeks to add on ‘health insurance’ for all Americans without addressing the cost of the previous entitlements going through the roof is a very simple one, known in science and engineering:
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
That is called The Theory and Practice Conundrum, and it describes the inability to examine previous theory and its outcomes to adjust future theories to account for the outcomes of past application of theories. It does not matter how ‘good’ it feels to think that government can ‘take care of’ the poor, needy, sick and elderly if you ignore the outcomes of previous work driving the government, itself, to bankruptcy.
War is not a causation of deficits: government should be cutting extraneous programs as a war-time efficiency. Yet the concept that we must actually cut extra goodies, say the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Education and then have austerity budgets without one piece of pork is never cited as a problem for deficits. Yet Congress authorized both conflicts and is on the hook to pay for them… if you decry the ‘wasteful spending on war’ then do acknowledge that war is a priority set by Congress and that Congress could easily cut non-mandatory spending or even whole departments not given in the Constitution to pay for that priority.
If Obama is the pinnacle of this thinking, the underlying pyramid of it is represented in a Congress unable, unwilling, and unwanting of any change in its path of guiding good government to fiscal sanity when its own perogatives mandate that it must do so. For all the waste in DoD, the aforementioned Departments that have not been touched have yet to show any capability in actually getting a sound agricultural system in place, dealing with energy so we do not get ‘energy crises’, and raising the literacy rate one scintilla above the level set by the deplorable description of when Poor Johnny just couldn’t read. These are absolute failures of long-term Departments, and if you say that Agriculture ‘solved’ the DustBowl then do look at previous work done to encourage the very same sorts of farming that caused the DustBowl pushed by the very same Department of Agriculture.
Saving us from the greatest disaster that government can create is not a definition of good government. Good government requires frugality, fiscal sanity and examining ‘entitlements’ to see if they are in any way, shape or form sustainable. Pushing new ‘entitlements’ when the old ones are failing as social constructs is not a path to a better future but a worse one. The theory is all fine and dandy, this bleeding hearts slitting fiscal wrists to show how much the blood is red… the practice that ends up in perpetual red ink, however, is a different story. Bring that up and the bleeding hearters show up, yet again, to point out how ‘mean’ you are… being unable to conceive of the end-state that their ‘goodness’ brings. All this spending on the ‘poor’ has not eliminated poverty, has not brought about a good understanding of personal finances, has not actually invested in the poor so that they can get a leg up and out of poverty… by encouraging bad spending habits, bad eating habits, and bad work habits the ‘poor’ are not ‘saved’ from poverty but condemned to it in perpetuity. Yet that is touted as ‘good’.
In theory it sounds so nice.
In practice it condemns society to servitude to government largesse with fewer and fewer able to pay for it, until the largesse disappears completely in a new sea of red… not one of ink, unfortunately.
Those pushing such practices could learn from the outcomes of previous theory and be ‘smart’.
Instead they perform the same experiment over and over, expecting different results.
That is the definition of insanity.
The Democrat Party has wanted a mindless mouthpiece in the White House for decades; They now have him.
To Henry Bowman and johnt: Just because Republican politicians at the national level tend to be not up to any good doesn’t mean all politicians are likewise. Heath care issues are way overdue to be fixed. Clinton tried but was upended by the usual Republican ne’re-do-wells, and Bush did squat. Another Republican president would likely also do squat unless it became an immediate crisis, and then stupid, half-ass measure would likely be enacted. Any responsible president would have made fixing the health care system a priority, and that’s all Obama is doing. And his plan is a real plan, and not some half-baked, poorly researched (if at all) collection of talking points that the Republicans belatedly and laughably concocted as some sort of alternative.
Obama has been bashed relentlessly even before he took office. After Obama became President, the attacks by right wing numbnuts went off the charts. Actually I dare anyone here to post anything about Obama that got circulated through the right wing media that wasn’t mostly idiotic BS targeting even more idiotic Republican supporters.
“I went on at length with all these hypotheses, because it is inexplicable how sane people could do such insane things.”
Well, there’s the answer right there.
I offer up this delightful video of Obama in a bit of a panic as he is heckled during a Boxer (gag) fundraiser:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/19229254
Enjoy!
READING ALL OF THESE COMMENTS has made me want to go out and by a gun, and Protect myself from the ignorant ideas and slanderous and hateful comments AGAINST OUR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE BY RADICAL RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS WHO FORGET THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE WE ALL MADE TO THIS COUNTRY “”"”" “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”"”"”
i SUPPORTED BUSH EVEN THOUGH IN MY HEART I DID NOT FEEL THE WAR OR PATRIOT ACT WAS RIGHT, BUT I DID NOT WHINE OR COMPLAIN I DID WHAT WAS RIGHT AND SUPPORTED HIM JUST AS YOU SHOULD SUPPORT OUR NEW PRESIDENT EVEN IF YOU DISAGREE ….REMEMBER THE WORD INDIVISIBLE BE A REAL AMERICAN AND SUPPORT YOUR PRESIDENT!!
The problem with Dems and Reps is that they both subscribe to the Burkeian Theory of Representation. They got elected, so they are far more fit to make big sweeping decisions for the poor stupid people that put them in office…and if their nest gets well feathered in the process, well, they really deserve it.
We need another Constitutional Convention. We need to eliminate elections and utilize a system that randomly selects qualified indiduals (citizen taxpayers would work for me) as our representatives for a period of say 6 years…then back to reality. Judges would also be selected this way with one modification…a law degree would bar you from serving as a judge. There are already enough lawyers in the room, we need a bit more ‘justice’ and less ‘legal’ in the system.
I believe these two changes would balance the budget in nothing flat, and make my country one hell of a lot more pleasant place to live.
FF
8) Cloward-Piven.
Sorry about the smiley face. I meant # 8.
hi, this is Smith
i am so coooooooooool.
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