Gas Dreams Come True
High energy costs to the Obamites are only unfortunate in terms of overcoming short-term political challenges. Otherwise, they are more or less welcome. That is not a partisan slur, but simply a summary of the 2007-8 Obama team’s view of energy prices — and the 2009-11 uninterest in exploring for new oil. True, we are, as the president says, pumping more oil than ever. But that is only because of prior leases, approved by Clinton and Bush, that have come on line, and the quite spectacular — and unexpected — oil finds in the North Dakota Bakken fields.
If one were to collate Obama’s campaign rhetoric (bad coal companies would be “bankrupt” under his envisioned cap and trade plans, energy prices would “sky-rocket”) with that of Secretary Chu’s (“somehow” American gas prices should climb to European levels; we should be worried about our abundant fossil fuel resources that can “cook” us), then the present climb to near $5 a gallon gas is what the president and his energy secretary once thought would be salutary — a sort of Europe U.S.A. After all, we Americans in our ridiculous pick-ups and SUVs (remember the president’s advice to the questioner concerned about fuel prices to trade in his gas-guzzler, or perhaps his earlier advice to inflate our tires in lieu of off-shore drilling) sort of got what we deserved.
Just consider all the positives that accrue from climbing prices: Subsidized mass transit (“high-speed rail”) — managed by government and operated by public union employees — becomes more palatable. When fewer people drive, then we are “cooling” the planet and lessening our carbon footprint. Moreover, subsidized wind and solar and “millions of green jobs” are closer to reality. The Volt, not the Yukon, is on the horizon — but, again, only at $5-6 a gallon.
In short, the only reason why Obama brags about record U.S. oil production is for purposes of reelection (otherwise, he would rather borrow to buy Brazilian off-shore finds to help our southern neighbor). We are living the Obama-Chu dream as outlined by both. Again, to quote Secretary Chu, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
I think that “somehow” has been reified.
Big Debt, Small Problem
What is so bad about this year’s $1.6 deficit, or the additional $5 trillion in debt piled up by Obama since January 2009? Without the 2010 Tea Party-inspired midterm correction, would Obama today be at all rhetorically concerned about deficits? We lament that such borrowing is unsustainable, but why do we think others would agree? Is not Greece a more equitable, a more livable place in 2011 than in 1990? Instead, look at debt through the Obama prism.
Printing and redistributing more money devalue the currency, and are already leading to increases in inflation: those without capital benefit, those with it find their stash lessened in value.
The decline of the U.S. dollar is an inevitable reflection of a new unexceptional America, one nation among many abroad, with a currency that reflects such a readjusted profile. If it were a question of balancing the budget or expanding federal employment and entitlement payouts, then obviously “people come first.” Record debt means record levels of federal employment and redistributive entitlements. We have now reached a point where half the population pays no income tax. More money was borrowed in February than in all of “Bush did it” 2007. Half the population also receives some sort of federal pay or entitlement. For a quarter of the population, federal money is about their only source of income. Some may vote on the basis of worrying over deficits; but others may vote on the basis of whether checks are cut off and reduced — or instead maintained and increased.
Republicans have leverage to cut spending instead of raising taxes when the deficit is $300 billion; but at $1.6 trillion, tax hikes may be part of any “deal.” Raising taxes in this gorge-the-beast agenda is, of course, good. Compensation is arbitrary, and the government has a moral right to readjust net income, to ensure an equality of result rather than a mere law of the jungle equality of opportunity. In short, learn to love deficits. Greece and Portugal had Germany for back-up, we have the “rich.”
The Logic of Illogical Foreign Policy
An alien from the outer solar system would look at what we see as the confusion, misdirection, irresolution, and disingenuousness of American foreign policy in the Middle East, but conclude instead several clear-cut themes. One, we are suspicious of democracies. Why else would we harangue Israel and complain about the policies that led to a constitutional Iraq — the only two democratic states in the region?
Two, an outsider would also suggest that anti-Americanism is a good thing. Why? The two most anti-American and deadly regimes in the theater, Iran and Syria, both exported terrorists to Iraq, are wrecking Lebanon, wish to destroy Israel, are trying to acquire nuclear weaponry, and slaughter their own. Yet they are precisely the two regimes which we consider most authentic and worthy of reset diplomacy, and thus we apologize to them, promise not to meddle in their countries, and declare their dictators “reformer [s].” In contrast, brutal pro-American dictators, who nonetheless do not exercise the level of violence against their own as do the Iranians and Syrians, are ordered to go — and did. The former two surviving rogue nations bandy about pseudo-words like “revolutionary”; the latter two defunct regimes were simply less flashy, more straight-forward kleptocracies.
This is the most important essay Mr. Hanson has written and one of the most important essays of the last three years. It is as important as the Codevilla’s Ruling Class essay published in July 2010. Mr. Hanson should expand it into a longer piece with more examples and PJM should make it the centerpiece for a month. It needs a summary paragraph in the simplest possible language at the very beginning that lays out the key themes.
One of the key themes is certainly that while we agonize about legislation and overt nose thumbing, the hard work of the Obama Cabal continues behind the scenes implementing the “change” he promised. The change that 60% of the country, if they could understand it, would violently reject.
The American people need to understand what this change is and Mr. Hanson’s essay describes it accurately and without the hyperbole that people who understand it commonly use.
I also wish that the good doctor would stress that the public machinations that the make believe media focuses so intently on are only a fraction of what is really happening, and might well be nothing more than inflatable tanks before the invasion of Normandy.
I also would like to see the esteemed professor paint the picture of America in 2020 if this agenda is not stopped in its tracks, particularly emphasizing the impact on people who are 18 to 30 today.
Thank you doctor for seeing through the hall of mirrors into what is really happening to our country.
Completely agree, however the mainstream media has a complete choke hold on the truth. We need to inform the young people, by ways they communicate today, and hopefully the message will be heard.
PJM has brilliant film makers that could do a series of short videos illustrating VDH’s themes. If done well, some might go viral. And surely that isn’t the only means of publicity available.
But essentially, I agree with your point. Codevilla’ brilliant insights have been buried. Young people and most Americans do not read American Spectator or PJM. Other delivery channels are required. But with such riveting messages, it doesn’t have to be. If groups with mastery of new media beyond the conservative blogosphere would combine their forces behind some simple central messages, the truth could break out even though the MBM would do its best to bury it. (btw, one of the things I find appealing about this particular piece is that it isn’t over the top in attacking little lenin. VDH could probably even tune it up in that regard if he cottons to the idea of expanding the piece.)
good point.
Interesting discussion. You should post your viewpoints about this on http://www.whitehousevoice.com!
How do you get this into the hands of those who need to read it? Specifics if you can.
Those that should read this will not read it. Hold a gun at their head and they will not read it. They are blinded by the light.
You are absolutely right. They are not interested in anything that conflicts with their view, and bitterly cling to the Bush caused the deficit theme among others. Even if you put things in pragmatic terms that a rational thinking human should understand, the default is blame not corrective measures. It’s sad but I think we are doomed to 4 more years of this blithering idiot, without some indisputable revelation of his lack of character/malevolent intent. Someone from his own team that breaks from the pack maybe?
We need to put the blame where it belongs, on the Obama Administration, and keep it there through 2012 and beyond.
True, the lamestream media are mostly ignoring us, but we have the Internet. Here is one effective way to get the message out:
Gas Pump Activism: Print This Poster!
I agree, a well written and laid out article. I might add, a follow-up from another author (in this piece) who says the following:
1) Obama and his programs are NOT stealth socialism.
2) Obama is a far radial fringe, acting as a Leninist, not a socialist.
3) Obama is making proto-statist structures, characteristic of fascist politics.
4) Better yet, Obama is encouraging social service political organizations, operating extra electorally (but), capable of electoral engagement.
5) Obama is creating party-state systems. Where the Party is the State. This is being done with Unions, ACORN, and New Black Panthers type organizations.
If 2012 meant anything to any American, this should raise the hair on the nape of ones neck. Get engaged, and get out the vote. Four more years of Obama will seal the fate of USA and our Constitution.
45% is all Obama needs for re-election.
Well, maybe, but the dependent classes tend to vote in much lower proportions than their self-reliant counterparts do. This is a statistical fact. They are generally too busy going nowhere to be bothered with making the effort to vote. African Americans turned out in record numbers in 2008, true enough, but I don’t see that happening in 2012. America will not re-elect Obama. I am positive of it.
Doctor, I sincerely hope that you are right. However (with the help of 270towin.com), I calculate that 0 starts with 125 electoral votes in his pocket (HI, CA, IL, NY, VT, MA, DC).
Barring a San Francisco earthquake-type seismic shift, he does not have to set foot in these states to gain their electoral votes.
He needs 270 to win.
However, at this time, I see him with an absolute maximum of 303 (adding WA, OR, NV, CO, Nm, MN, IA, WI, MI, OH, PA, VA, MD, DE, NJ, CT, RI, NH, and ME to the aforementioned). This is far short of the 365 he got in 2008.
I believe it will go to the wire.
(One more item – the Republicans have never won the White House without winning Ohio.)
You are definately wrong about IA, VA, and probably wrong about OH, and NH. WI, MI will be toss ups.
You have too many undecideds. WA & OR will vote for him, especially OR. IN is purely Red. So, is OH now. Kasich has the governorship, and both chambers are thoroughly Red. Go back to the site. Look at the house races. A crimson tide. NH is out for him. FL is out. NM went Red.
The battlegrounds are MN, WI, WI, PA, CO, IA, ME, NV. These usually Blue States are now the battlegrounds. This is a very bad sign for the Dems. If they think they can capture OH and IN this time, they are dreaming.
The Dems only get NE, except NH and maybe ME. PA, MI, WI, MN, and IA are up for grabs. Obama gets IL, of course. He also gets the Left Coast, as well as maybe CO. That’s all. He simply cannot get to 270 against even a generic Republican.
The polls showing him ahead of the Pubs in the race are skewed a bit and they do not reflect electoral college realities. If he were to get polled State by State, you would see the reality, and it is very bad for him. He is gonna lose big. Huge. Epic.
IA is red. WI is tending red after 2010 and the aftermath. And PA is leaning red in the polls.
Your point about a generic Republican is well taken.
Most of the current field would do worse than generic. For example, I love Trump because he is taking the fight to the criminals, but as it stands at the moment, the Donald would lose big.
The most important thing anyone opposing obama can do is to defend the entire field and not become too emotionally invested in any candidate. The eventual winner of the Republican nomination will probably not be a current PJM fan favorite.
Also there is no way he is going to carry Virginia a second time, ditto NC. IN is solid red, I suspect OH and FL as well. PA may be a toss up. I assume he will carry CO,NM and NV unless there is an outbreak of realism among the locals. I figure 272 Republican.
Even if he does loss it is a sad commentary on the US electorate that someone as rotten as Obama could be considered for the Presidency by anyone but a dedicated America hater.
WHO CARES?
It doesn’t matter if the republicans win. IT WON’T HELP.
Ryan’s $6T deficit reduction over 10 years was pure political theatre – $4T is unspecified, and the debt would STILL grow by $5T-$10T over that decade, to reach $20T – $25T. And that’s NOT counting the $64T in off balance sheet SS and Medicare costs.
The Republican Party is IN ON THE DEAL.
The Tea Party rising to the challenge? Pipe Dream. Notice how after the first week, Atlas Shrugged tanked at the box office?
NOBODY CARES.
This is not the Republic my great grandad, my grandfather and my father built.
It’s Over.
No it ain’t over Stallion..
not till they shovel the dirt in your hole.
You fight, you work, you push and you damn well do it till they drop before you do. You never, never NEVER quit. You may go down, but at least you’ll know they had to loose some of their own to get there. Make the b*stards sweat for it, and then…
push even harder.. somethings are destined.. but I doubt America’s time is near it’s end.
You take a break, then back to filling sandbags and if they breach the wire..
,
,
you fix bayonets, and charge.
it’s that simple.
I’m sorry if that seems overdone, but it ain’t in the DNA of us to quit. Not while there’s a round or a blade left to use.
I speak metaphorically of course. I was a cold warrior and still am inside, and that war was 60 years long. Don’t be so quick to run to the rear, we aren’t done as long as some of us won’t give up.
Marc,
New Mexico didn’t really go red. We have a conservative Republican governor because of two things; our previous governor, Bill Richardson, was openly corrupt and Susana Martinez was the perfect Hispanic candidate. Any variation in that scenario and we would have had a Democrat for governor. As it happened the Republicans made gains in the state legislature but not enough to help Martinez get through some of her desired legislation including anti corruption measures.
The basic facts of political life here in the Land of Enchantment is that the one large population center in the state, Albuquerque, has become very left wing. I predict that Obama will win New Mexico unless something like very high gas prices take the economy into another tail spin. I hope I am wrong.
As much as I hate to say it, since I have lived in MD for 30 years, there is little liklihood of Obama losing MD. The last election was a landslide for all the normal Democratic hacks while the rest of the country was showing all the liberal politicans the door we were giving them a standing O.
CA might be in play. CA has a 30 billion dollar budget short fall and the Democrats are ignoring it. The democarts can’t cut the budge. The gold-plated welfare system and gold-plate public employee benifits are the life blood of the party.
In September the budget is due and California will start issuing IOU’s. By the 2012 spring primary we will have a 12% sales tax and a 15-20% state income tax. Otherwise the K-12 system and 3 university systems will colapse.
The problem is that there is very little overlap between the 25% who get their paychecks from the government and the 47% who pay no taxes. As a group this is probably two thirds of the total population who would have to have awfully poor voting attendance for the “progressives” to lose an election. You can also add in those who fear that social conservatism comes along with financial conservatism, those who fall for the “Bush-did-it”, “evil capitalism” and “save the planet” tactics of the left. All in all, we are so hosed. When I first started to follow all of this several years ago, I felt that the only thing that would work would be civil disobedience. Nothing has changed my mind. Tens of millions of us have to refuse to pay beyond a fair share of taxes. If they borrow or print money, then we withhold even more to make up for the inflation affect. They can’t put us all in jail, can they?
Quite true Iscariot Obambi’s numbers stack up like this 13% the Racist Blacks who vote for him because well they are RACISTS then you have the 20-25% of the population who are irredeemable left wing moonbats add to that 10-15% who are just plain stupid giving him a MINIMUM of 43% and a near certainty of 53%. Numbers born out by Rasmussens Polls where his approval rating has never dropped below 43%. So you can see with the ‘Entitlement Junkies’ forming 45% of the population and only the top 10% of the population paying 97% of all the taxes that the USA is just one big moonbat Social Security enterprise run by a Racist Black USURPER and his placements.
Gasoline, gasoline, gasoline. Many union members as well as non-unioners must drive to work, so must teachers and other federal, state, and local government employees. It is essential to keep before them how it is Obama’s policies (his failed policies, as libruls would have it) that cause the high gas prices. The high cost of fuel is due to his printing money, thereby devaluing the dollar, and his prevention of new drilling in the U.S. but supporting it overseas. It is his unshakable desire to foist global warming off on us. To do so he needs to drive gas prices way up, as Victor points out above.
When people are raped by unnecessarily high gas prices, they will not support those who they believe responsible. Obama is trying to hide behind the oil companies. It didn’t work for Jimmah, it won’t work for Obambi.
Excellent summation of the depth and breadth of Obama’s vision of fundamental transformation magnified by the devastating effects wraught in just the first two years of his reign.
Obama and his czars have ensured/are working to ensure no sector of our country and our lives are untouched or untouchable by the sticky fingers of government.
Like Proreason-#1,I’d like to see VDH’s description of our country and our lives in the future, if Obama continues on his chosen path. Can you envision how this country will look, feel, function in 2015? 2020? 2025?
Frankly, I can. The possibility terrifies me.
My dear cyberfriend, VDH…if 45% of our countrymen embrace this death spiral, then we are going down without as much as a whisper of a prayer.
I once wrote a comment to a Roger Kimball article, defining the differences I saw between a liberal and a leftist. In that 45% estimate of yours, I’m hoping there are enough non-leftists that if we gave them the truth …worked past the intentional fraud and deceit of our propagandist machine media…they would help us pull out of this death spiral.
What you describe in this essay is nothing short of a blended soft/hard coup, basically an overthrow of our free market/capitalist governance. An abandonment of traditional allies. A crushing of the windpipe of principled dissent. A building of an armory filled with weapons for race and class warfare.
This land of ours, VDH, is being torn asunder. Right under our very noses.
And, if the battlefield is drawn…45% vs. 45%…with 10% staying neutral…we won’t survive. The overthrow in that scenario is a foregone conclusion. The plotters have two branches of government, control over our resources, are ignoring our Constitution and all of our votes, have the mass communication outlets, the halls of academia and the pop culture world in their pockets already.
By the time we wrest control back, Pandora will have opened her box.
This 45% meme drives me crazy.
It may be 45% of the heads, though I doubt it.
It certainly isn’t 45% of the brains, the broad shoulders, the strong backs, the innovators, the soldiers, the peace keepers, the doers, the thinkers and the people who won’t let adversary stop them.
Why do we whine about millions of people who depend on us. And don’t tell me about voting. They don’t vote like WE do. They don’t organize like WE can. And they are only fired up about their next handout or out of jealousy. WE are fired up about the future of our children and the world our parents built that revolutionized human potential in just 230 years; not revolutionary in the sense of angry anarchists trying to grab everything for themselves, but in the sense of determined and courageous people who settled a continent and invented the technologies that are the basis of the modern world.
So enough of the 45% whining.
And btw, it’s no different than our great country, now dominated by a 20% minority of marxists who salivate to pull us down, shrinking away from Iraq with our tails between our legs. Those were our neighbors and our kids who died there. It’s our trillion dollars that was spent there. Trump is wrong about a lot, but he sure has a point that we would be fools to walk away from 4,000 heroes and hand the treasure to insane fanatics from Iran who would rather kill us than live themselves.
And while we are on the topic, why is the country that can control the seas, the country with the greatest military of any country in any era, the country that still has the strongest economy in the world by far, the country that still has the most free markets and innovation in the world…why should that country shrivel into a ball and accept a vision of gradual decline into feeble oblivion.
Because the marxists scream louder than us?
It’s insane. I can be as cynical as the next guy, but for God’s sake, let’s not allow ourselves to be persuaded that a tiny group of arrogant effete ideological twits and a few million losers whose greatest strength is throwing no-risk temper tantrums can steal the heritage built by our ancestors while overcoming 6 major wars, exploring and taming an entire continent, and overthrowing the master-serf political system that had been in place for 9.770 years.
Enough with the whining.
I agree with the rallying cry, proreason. I agree with the call to arms. I agree for whom the bell tolls.
But, this is not a time for rose-colored glasses. We are being torn apart as a nation. We are being destroyed from the inside…this is now an inside job.
And EVERY time we offer a solution…the propaganda machine is cranked up and it is demonized…and let us not be fooled by how powerful that weapon is and has been for nearly forty years.
What has made the FAR LEFT absolutely furious with Obama…was that he had us pinned down and was strangling the life out of us…and he didn’t finish the job. He moved too slowly for their tastes….and they still smell blood in the water.
It is unwise to underestimate what the end game is and how determined they are to achieve it. And, it is even more unwise to not let people know just how close we are and what weapons they have at their disposal and how effective they have been.
45% of people do not know this or are on the other side. We need to separate out the former from the latter in that group. That is not whining, that is reality.
You’re a very smart guy, centerfield, and many of your posts are among the best on any site anywhere.
But you would do well for yourself if you mixed some more optimism in with the pessimism (and I confess that I spend a lot of time myself on the pessimistic side). You have a unique and interesting writing gift; I could easily see you becoming a minor (or major) determined and optimistic Patrick Henry for people looking for voices to keep them inspired to resist the marxists.
Cheers.
I take your words to heart, proreason.
And I will endeavor to mix in the brilliance I see in my countrymen, why I believe I have been blessed to have been born a son of this land…and as I draw breath why I will continue to defend her against all comers.
But, I freely admit that I have never been so concerned for her, my beautiful and wondrous homeland. I have never feared so greatly for the well being of my wonderful countrymen. We have traitors among us and we have ceased to be able to recognize them. We are not even permitted to openly utter the word.
I will do better, proreason. If I can stir any souls to rise up to protect her, to recognize the danger, to bear witness to her greatness…then whatever I can contribute, I will.
But we live in perilous times. And I am sad for our children.
It is the heart of night in Ohio. Proreason and Cfbleachers and dear Victor, my gratitude. Wherever you rest in this darkness, may your hearts take some ease knowing that your words and courage have reached others and,that alone, has stiffened resolve and left at least one night-journeying soul – less alone.
The mass media is the gunners’ nest. To effectively fight the enemy, we must put on our thinking caps and figure out a way to take it out of the fight. The Internet is probably the way, but O has already worked that for the young vote now with the Facebook king and even in 08. Anyone remember the Obama ad that showed an attractive couple in bed, apparently after a satisfactory sexual encounter? The girl slips out of bed and picks up her clothes on the dresser when what to her horrified eyes should appear but a picture of Bush. She screams and rushes out of the apt. not even bothering to put on her clothes.
Effective use of the Internet and securing the youth vote.
We must figure out how to (1) increase control of the media message through an Internet blitzkrieg and (2) attract young people to be attractive cool “revolutionaries” who can influence the young vote. One starting point might be finding a way to draw the youth to tea parties ( or a cooler spin-off). The young love to criticize the status quo which they must be made to see as the left.
Good post. What I have been wanting for some time to bring debating into popularity. If we could make debating the new rap, it may become a popular movement. I remember hearing about the 19th and early 20th century orators, how people would travel miles to hear the great debates between Lincoln; Douglas; William Howe; Clarence Darrow; and William Jennings Bryan. Their battles were as legendary as the knights of old.
Growing up in L.A. in the sixties I witnessed the smooth talking street rappers. Each neighborhood had someone they could pit against the next neighborhood’s “rapper” and they would meet in the school playground, or on a street corner, or a park. They would perform these raw recitals of verbal attacks and insults which excited the groups that gathered to hear them. Despite the sometime vulgarity it was special to hear the contestants live up to their billings. This was the fore-runner to todays “rap” music, but back then it was just a way of life.
If we could bring back the excitment of hearing talented orators using extempt as art, we may get the message out. Because nothing can beat the objectivist’s message of logic and truth. Of course we first have to train the modern-liberal radical how to debate rationally, they only know how to yell, curse, and use violence to get their point across.
But Cf, can you agree that the bullhorn mouth of the propaganda machine is none other than TV media supported by a cancer known as “the advertising industry”? Is not advertising expense still an encouraged deduction on business IRS forms with any tax balance owed simply spread over the consumer costs of products and services advertised?
Boards of directors may determine when and where their ad money lubricates the works of political agenda corrupted TV but consumers hold the cuffs and shackles that financially bind all that support biased ad based media. Apply all the percentages being tossed around to dollars lost through declining sales anchored to boycott directed by their own prevalent agenda bias whether “fair and balanced” or undeniable sewer dregs. Total media spectrum content in question can only be properly tuned through the application of a shrinking bottom line void of any party branding. There’s more than one way to skin a cat in this shrunken economy.
Excellent as usual, VDH! 45% of the country slumbers on. The Obama reign has to pinch/bite before the people will awaken to do anything. Other than gas prices and food inflation, his stupid policies have not pinched or bitten deeply enough. Carter did bite hard with, inter alia, high interest (21%), Iranian hostages, Afghanistan, painful inflation, national malaise; as yet Obama,IMHO, has only nibbled around the edges. If history is any guide, just wait until next year! But still the people may sleep, as I would have thought that 3000 dead on 9/11 would have been noticed and immunized the voters against Leftist lies. But the difference between 1980 and now is that we have not as yet any viable leader visible on the Right. BTW, I do believe that Limbaugh is correct when he says that the idea that Obama is invincible is promulgated by the Left to demoralize the Right.
Not to worry – the door is about to hit Obama in the ass. Interest rates may well stay low for the remainder of his reign thanks to that crook Bernake – but fuel and food prices are already on the rise and it seems there is nothing he is willing to do about it. He’s too busy vacationing in places like Rio – golfing – and picking his Final Four favs.
In other words he’s just doin what Nero was doin…
When there is a fork in the road and an argument is occuring between the driver and his passenger, sometimes an accident happens before the turn, sometimes after the turn, and sometimes down the road after the turn.
Unless the passenger gives up.
Obama is our driver, we elected this idiot because we were idiots at the time(majority rules).
As mom used to say; “You made your bed, now lie in it!”
The fight is coming, at least from my position, with me! Time to get out of this bed, change the sheets and look for a new bedmate!
Excellent take on the ugly realities of b.o. by VDH. The noise from the white house is so very reminiscent of Caesar Chavez-Dolores Huerta and the street activist nee farmworker organizers of thje 1970′s in their unsuccessful attempts to take down intensive agriculture. They failed to gain the support of the workers [the elites have replaced them now], and the”movement” died a most deserved death! We now need an American Spring to borrow a casual mainline media term. The Obama cabal needs to be returned to the “trash heap of history”. m.i.
Recent polls show 85% of blacks thinks Pres. Obama is doing a good job. That’s down from 90%.
If Mitt Rommney was President and he had the same record of failure as Barack Obama, I’m sure that 85% of all Mormons would support him.
The numbers show that Barack Obama has failed and he must be defeated.
I disagree. For Mormons, being a Mormon isn’t everything and they don’t base their judgment of a presidential candidate solely that fact. For blacks, being black is everything and nothing else matters.
You are quite right but yet if Allen West was the GOP candidate he would be execrated as an “Uncle Tom.” I am not a Mormon. I find Mormonism rather unpalatable as a religion however I recognize they are an exemplary group with strong morals and family values. The same cannot be said of other groups who believe the rest of the world owes them a life. We have more than one of those groups in our society.
Harry Reid is a Mormon, but very, very few Mormons support him. That’s because most of us hold principles higher than we do individuals, and Reid fails in that respect. To the great majority of Mormons, ideology and right/wrong are more important than who we sit next to on Sunday.
As above, so below.
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that what is so is what is so.
Given the growing litany of Obama abominations, as always so ably provided by VDH, isn’t it obvious that “So what?” is the deeply felt attitude by most people?
The vast FAT-WING of Americans of all political persuasions, one person at a time, is proving by eating a crappy diet, one bite at a time—or, actually, one swallow at a time of the worst poison, high fructose corn syrup—that they’ve given up.
So, all the pissing and moaning about “hope” for a good “change” from all things Obama is useless.
I can picture many of the angriest Tea Party types, right NOW, as they spend time typing their informed judgment of the deficit, etc, while they happily drink a soda—thereby, expanding their own health “deficit”.
Perhaps the civilized world of humans, led by Americans, are subconsciously getting fat to prepare for a coming time of “winter”—like bears, piling up the stored calories, for when the food runs out?
What else can it be?
Yesterday, while soaking in a therapy pool at the YMCA, a fat mother and her morose tubby son, about 200 pounds as a ten year old, entered the water.
Before long, I couldn’t resist asking, like a nice polite guy—
“What’s your favorite soft drink?”
His mother brightly answered, “Coca cola. And, he LOVES chocolate milk”.
I smiled sweetly back, and said,
”Keep it up, and you can keep on getting bigger.”
As can be expected, mother “bear” got instantly defensive, and claimed he drinks mostly WATER.
I just smiled and left them alone.
That’s AMERICA, folks.
Drinking the physical “Kool aid”, AND the BS promulgated by progressives and socialists.
Enjoy the coming crash!
VDH: You’re documenting our history while we live it. Unfortunately, we’ll never know whether our Shining City on a Hill will live on beyond us but the future will recognize that. Maybe, however, that critical moment when that question was answered will be obvious then.
Still, our condition is most perilous and we are headed for a major fail unless our situation is fixed. My strong feeling is that if we re-elect Obama in 2012, we’re done for as a country and the scavengers will come calling. One small hope is that many of those who voted for Obama thought he was what MLK, Jr. foreseen, and that 2008 was the time to fulfill King’s concept. They were wrong about their choice of Obama but not about what King wanted to see come true.
God Bless you, professor, and keep on writing. Good stuff.
Has anyone considered the fact that if this administration wins another election in November 2012 NO ONE in the whole world will buy our debt. That is if by that time anyone is still buying US Bonds. Once we crash our VISAs and Mastercards where are we going to get the 42 cents on the dollar to fill the social welfare gravy train? Do you think we can just turn around and start building great products just like in the good old times? How do you teach Fatso to work hard and be productive?
The course we are in is crazy and suicidal but it makes all the sense in the world to a Manchurian candidate.
Agitation based on race, class, and gender are a simple reality in this country and need to be projected into the future as being a growing problem due to immigration and a continued addiction to political correctness; it’s always possible someone will pay attention however unlikely.
Ironically, the only place PC cultural relativism does not apply is to the culture that is the most obviously front and center on just about everything under the sun because a candidate in this country could never call on European Americans to vote. Nor would I want to be called on to vote by skin color or gender but rather with the greater good in mind.
The only culture within America that has physically put in place a culture based on the greater good are European males if you wish to put a name on it. In return, those who most benefit from their new equality continue to lambaste those same European males from head to toe as racists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, as if nothing has changed in America. In return, those who benefited most from the idea of the greater good give none in return but continue to agitate from their own peculiar views of the world as if that world and its history revolves around each of their special interests.
The meek are inheriting the earth because those who agitate the most in this early 21st century are those who contribute the least and yet expect some kind of standing ovation for just existing. Those who do deserve a standing ovation, which is why half the world is barging in, are relegated to the sidelines, hapless observers of their own demise and with it, the most sophisticated culture that ever existed on this earth.
I’ll say this right out: when things are so bad that many Americans are at least covertly glancing over their shoulders at the days when these special groups occupied a completely different social space, then you know things are bad. Greater good – who were the bad old days bad for?
The “Obama Dream” is a Marxist United States of America, with Obama granted credit for accomplishing it.
President Reagan – morning in America. President Obama – ‘progressive’ America.
Everything described by VDH is the ‘progressive’ way of doing things. Personally, I detest the ‘progressive’ mind and it’s way of doing things but a huge number of people think the ‘progressive’ way is just dandy.
It is necessary that consequences of and counterpoints to ‘progressive’ thinking are clearly articulated – VDH is as good as anyone at doing this. By so doing, there is a chance that ‘progressive’ disasters may be prevented or softened. Even if everything goes over the ‘progressive’ cliff it will be important for people to see some alternative, non-‘progressive’, non-totalitarian way of doing things as they peer through the subsequent smoke and ruins.
If the free alternatives to a ‘progressive’ world are not constantly articulated, their disappearance is guaranteed.
“President Reagan – morning in America. President Obama – ‘progressive’ America.”
President Reagan – morning in America. President Obama – mourning in America!
Go to http://spectator.org/archives/2011/04/21/dont-let-alinsky-win
This article is reason for hope, maybe these Republicans ain’t so dumb afterall?
The economy may be marginally better next year, but unemployment amongst key voting groups (young people, white men and blacks) is not forecasted to improve much.
Our financial situation precludes more bailouts and / or stimulus initiatives.
Obama may foster the demise of progressives in ways we have yet to envision.
Dr Hanson:
I seldom see you comment after a post, but I hope that you read your comments. There are some outstanding ideas at the top of the hread
Dr. Hanson is a defeatist, and he is echoed here by almost every comment.
no one asked you.
Hardly.
A defeatist would pretend the situation is not dire, and tell comforting lies.
To know how to fight, you first define the situation.
Alright then If you ask me, what’s your optimistic take on things in the USA at this moment?
If I may answer, without speaking out of turn – it is that I hear increasing numbers of people who say “I voted for 0 in 2008, but I will not vote for him again.”
That is a double loss for him. If enough people realize that we are approaching the abyss, we can yet turn around.
Might it be that it is you who is living in dreamland?
My defeatism does not take place in an anonymous dreamland. How defeatist is it to be afraid to even use your name on the ‘evil’ internet’?
What’s the idea? That you’re hiding from anonymous criminals and viruses or is it hackers or assassins? What is it? ‘Somebody’ will do ‘something’?
Is that the confident and assured vision you wish to portray, fear? Is it the cleverness of making up really ‘cool’ monikers that are never nearly as clever and funny as the people using them think? It’s like rock bands and science fiction novel titles and tattoos; none of it is clever and really, is very tiresome.
Clever is as clever does and it’s not something you wear on a chain around your neck and defeatist is as defeatist does.
Don’t mess with me; I was raised by apes and have the tattoo to prove it and the confidence that goes along with such provenance.
My real name is Korak but don’t tell anybody cuz they might steal my identity and use it to infiltrate Hamas and then I’d get the blame and there’d be muslim ninjas after me and then wouldn’t that be a pretty pickle?
Sheesh, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Lighten up captain.
I did Mr. T. Criminal, you just couldn’t parse it.
Criminal… is that a Estonian name? Maybe Silesian?
Dr. Hanson makes a fundamental mistakes in this article. 45% do NOT embrace Obama’s administration.
43% seems to be his floor, as demonstrated time and again by polls. These 43%, however, are not necessarily approving of how he is performing as President. They just like HIM. This is pretty much a constant, one which is very slowly declining… basically declining whenever he gives another speech. His job approval numbers, by contrast, vary quite a bit.
The important thing to remember is that he has a favorable Press on his side. Lately, even they have been criticizing him. Furthermore, once the Presidential campaign is in full swing, he will come under withering criticism. He has not had to face much criticism that reaches the majority of voters. Once the ads start, look out! His numbers will start to plummet, as people are presented with things that have been hidden from them by a compliant Press. Right now is as good as it gets for him. It is all downhill from here.
Here’s how you know the truth of what I say. Obama has been courting the Left in order to shore up his base. WTF? He has no primary opponent. He should be courting the Center. Why is he courting the Left? He needs the money, and he needs them to turn out for him. They are not doing it automatically. He’s just not popular enough, even with them!
Try to imagine a Conservative Republican in his shoes trying to shore up his Conservative base. Really? Let’s say Brownback had won the election, and had to compromise here and there with the Dems. Would the Conservatives really have to be wooed? Really? Or would he just say to them, “Okay, time to run for re-election. Let’s go to work.” He would just work it through the Party machinery, while working on the Independents.
Btw, Obama’s numbers with Indies are 2:1 against him. He’s in real trouble. Jimmy-Carter-like trouble. Carter 2.0. I have seen this movie before. Carter looked competitive throughout the campaign… and got totally crushed.
Doom(ed)! Doom(ed)! Doom(ed)!
Obama has been courting the Left in order to shore up his base. WTF? He has no primary opponent. He should be courting the Center.
An excellent point. He has the nomination in his pocket (no sitting President who wanted the nomination has been denied it since Martin Van Buren). He is forgetting what Clinton did, moving to the center, and making Bob Dole almost seem irrelevant.
Even if he did start trolling for the center, who in their right mind would believe him?
b o’reilly
If Dr VDH is correct in his analysis, and he usually is, then the trend is toward even more aggressive socialism (central planning, state control and economic slavery). Eventually what is left between Individual liberty vs the State? For the Individual there is the 2nd ammendment, or leaving the country. The wealthy will leave and the rest of us will be left to fight it out. How long will it take ? 2012 is the thread by which we all hang. Perhaps Dr VDH is actually more optimistic than is called for. Of course the “takers” and the lay-abouts (40-50 %) will vote for BO – and he counts on it. An Obama 2nd term with nothing to lose will make the first term seem like a sunday school picnic.
By the way #1 Proreason you make some exellent suggestions although past similar appeals have been ignored. He talks – he doesn’t do. Pity.
I have a good question to pose that is , Can America afford to reelect Obama without it shredding this country to pieces. Rome died because it fell from within before it fell to invaders. Rome is an exact example of a super power rotting to the point where it implodes. I pose that another four years of Obama will destroy this country. We are already divided. This country hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. I think that Obama is so unprincipled that he would push this country to a rebellion. He already sees himself as Lincoln. However, Lincoln never created the circumstances that tore this country apart. The circumstances were in place by themselves. On the other hand, Obama creates his own circumstances. He rules by executive decree. Damn anyones approval. He coddles the enemies of this country within its borders. Is ruining the value of our dollar. Stifling economic growth. He has already shown that he would use the military without Congressional approval. Will he follow the example of his mentors, Assad, Gaddafi, and Ahamandenajad and turn his military lose on the population?
i agree
we are obviously divided but we are also in that no man’s land between soft tyranny and despotism; there are only a couple more election cycles (where the right NEEDS to win) before the proverbial caca hits the fan
when push comes to shove, which i hope doesnt happen, i do not think the military will support obama (they are sworn to defend the constitution) and the result will be civil war 2 and a reconstruction that will take a couple hundred years
Daxypoo. Civil War 2? If military does not support Obama but constitution (I agree 100%), who does Obama get to fight for him? Code Pink/New Black Panthers/UAW vs. flyover states’ patriots armed to the teeth? That one’s over before it even starts. Who fights who in your civil war?
im thinking obama will spread our military so thin (all middle east plus asia)
that it will end up being something akin to criminals (all released from prisons, mexican/south american drug cartels given carte blanche, and obama’s loyalists– unions, black panthers, local police, etc… versus the citizenry and any u.s. military elements left in the country)
perhaps, there might even be some kind of mass layoff of our military to circumvent their role in the matter
daxypoo: There will be no large scale civil conflict in the future. We will go the way of great countries and empires that proceeded us,with a wimper. Think Britain today, only we will fall much further,like maybe Argentina.
Obama may imagine himself to be Lincoln, just as he imagines himself to be Reagan. He is, as usual, wrong on both counts.
He is most like Jefferson Davis. Davis went from U.S. Secretary of War to President of the Confederate States of America solely based on his determination to force the entire United States to accept slavery as legal, moral, and most importantly permanent. The Dred Scott decision, which extended slavery into the Western territories irrespective of local plebiscites, wasn’t good enough for him; he wanted every state and territory in the union to accept Southern slave laws and customs. And forcing it down everyone else’s throats at bayonet point was just fine by him.
Davis genuinely believed that whites were superior to blacks, and that the “elite’” like himself were superior to everyone else irrespective of ethnicity, and so were “entitled” to tell everyone else how to live. I have no opinion on Obama’s position on the former, but he absolutely agrees with Davis on the latter.
Both Davis and Obama were, and are, supremacists, just of different stripes. Obama couches his demands for power, and his threats, in terms of “fairness” and “egalitarianism”- neither of which he actually believes in, as an egotistical narcissist. He is, like Davis, consumed by his disdain for those he sees as inferior to himself, which is pretty much the rest of the human race. And he is convinced of both his own righteousness and the inevitability of his “triumph”. (The day after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Davis was still sending out enciphered messages demanding that “offensive operations be resumed immediately”.)
Fortunately for us, Obama has something else in common with Davis. He is as incompetent as he is arrogant. And that, I strongly suspect, will be his downfall.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
clear ether
eon
EON: Great point about Jefferson Davis…
“We cannot continue to rely only on our military, in order to achieve the national security objectives we have set, we have got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded…” – BO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx2PP4pYGno&feature=player_embedded
THIS “security force” is actually already in existence. It it WHY OBAMA WON. It is the Socialist/Marxist culture of media, education, politicians and special interest groups like ACORN-reborn. THIS “security force” can tweak elections through gerrymandering, through ACORN-like corrupt community organizing, through not requiring voter IDs, through Chicago-style corruption… and I ask all this question:
Will this “security force” continue to win? Continue to destroy Natural Law? Continue to eat liberty?
Obama’s words were spiritual and entirely correct.
And, isn’t Obama proving that HIS “SECURITY FORCE”… is, in ALL TRUTH, more powerful than the US Military?
Our US Military has proven, it CAN BE DEFEATED. (i.e. Vietnam, through a disfranchised and spirit-killed public)
Isn’t Obama PROVING NOW, that HIS “security force” is about the only thing on earth currently unstoppable?
He and his “security force” will win, then later he and his “security force” and its enemies (us) will all lose.
Is this going to be the path of history?
Or can his Machiavellian “security force” be defeated first in 2012, so that its inevitable self-destruction doesn’t consume the world in the second decade of our century?
P.S. One would suppose Obama’s quote above would be a top Google Search find, but NOT SURPRISINGLY… it is more than a little hard to find (I had to transcribe it first from the video.) Hm… “security force” indeed…
Professor Hanson wrote: “We are living the Obama dream — one that about 45% of the population more or less embraces.”
This nation is one sick puppy! Under the right circumstances, I am not at all convinced Americans would not elect an Adolf Hitler. So much for American exceptionalism. America has seen her better days.
For a much more balanced approach, check out David Stockman’s column in today’s NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/opinion/24stockman.html?_r=1
My take is that he agrees with me that in order to reduce the deficit, you have to BOTH cut spending and raise taxes. Hell, I think that even VDH acknowledges this in his piece, but he, as always, wants to spend his time frying anti-Obama fish. The top 1% own more than they ever have at any time in our history. Is it so shocking that they should pay higher taxes? No tax increases becomes a mindless mantra. You have to do both; gore both oxes and just maybe the country will feel like it is working TOGETHER just a little bit to accomplish something. Partisan red meat is not working for either side. We need an Obama-Boehner deal. Would the country have been better off if Clinton and Gingrich had never been able to work out a compromise?
Oops, can’t have that because it might help Obama get elected, the WORST (supposedly) of all possible outcomes. Some people here claim that Obama wants to wreck the country to achieve what he wants; it seems to me that much of the right wants to wreck Obama and if the country gets wrecked in the process, well, sobeit.
By the way, a lot of VDH is the usual boilerplate hissy-fit against the cultural side of the left. It gets you guys nodding your heads immediately, even genuflectiong, but it is not the kind of thing that will sway centrists.
Most centrists want the rich to pay more, and Stockman says that EVERYONE has to pay more. If you followed the logic of many folks here (all the moaning and groaning about the people who pay no net Fed. Income tax), the bottom 50% should pay more Federal tax, and the top 50% should stay where they are. Does that make sense?
“The top 1% own more than they ever have at any time in our history.” No they don’t. It’s another BIG LIE. The opposite is more likely the truth. As a matter of fact, and you would have to agree with this if you spent as much as 1 minute thinking about it, for 98% of the history of civilization, 99% of “wealth” was owned by a tiny fraction of the aristocracy. The United States is the polar opposite of the model for virtually the entire history of civilization. But that won’t stop your marxist screeching. And even in the United States, capital assets have always been concentrated in a few hands. That’s OUR SYTEM Dwight…you know, the one that converted the world from the same lifestyle the Romans had to what even a whiner like you enjoys today.
First of all, there is no good data on asset ownership. I know because I’ve spend a lot of time looking. There are no regular or reliable surveys of assets in the United States, and even if there was a survey, it wouldn’t be close to accurate because a person who makes and spends $200,000 per year may have no assets whatsover, whereas someone who lives on $50,000 per year may have millions in illiquid assets. Who is wealthy? Moreover, the value of property, as many learned in 2008, can be wildly under or overstated, not to speak of stocks or bonds, gold or almost everything else.
The myth of the bloated 1% is based on the French (of all things) study that has been totally discredited many times but robotic fools like Dwight never stop referencing it. That study is based on INCOME, not assets / wealth. Among other things, the study deliberately ignored income transfers (SS, welfare, medicade, unemployment, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc). It also deliberately ignored what ever economist knows…which is that wealthy people have the ability to allow income to be taxed or not, since they have legal teams to game the tax code and diversified asset bases that give them the flexibility nobody else has. So the years of that marxist study were deliberately selected to “prove” wealth growth, by proxy from income growth, with a formula that is simply utterly bogus. The study also ignored the underground economy that constitutes a large part of the income of the Obama base. And those are just three of too many flaws to point out.
This is about the fifth time this brainless tool has tried to build his moronic case on the same discredited study.
I suggest, Dwight, that instead of worshipping at your Stalin shrine, you take a look at how many cars the typical “below the poverty line” household owns (hint, it’s TWO), and their plama tv’s, cell phone plans, cable movie channels and sets of special-edition sneakers.
At NO time in the HISTORY OF MANKIND has ANY COUNTRY or ANY SOCIETY had less poverty than the United States of America in the 21st century, and AT NO TIME in the entire HISTORY OF THE WORLD has real wealth (not the made up fun with number wealth you cite) been more spread than in America, right now. As a matter of fact…the spread is accelerating and is THE BIGGEST PROBLEM we now face, because far too much of the wealth of this country is CONSUMED by people who do nothing but CONSUME. They create nothing. They add nothing. They are not capable of inventing anthing. All they, like you, do is suck the country dry.
Just for the record, nothing you say makes sense.
you were replying to dwight after all.
he wont get it.
You’re right. I don’t usually even read his nonsense, but he keeps hammering on the wealth meme, so I thought I’d bust it for the benefit of people who haven’t seen it debunked. A Cato guy named Alan Reynolds has all the details if people are interested in them. He’s easy to find on the net.
And as a follow-up, any time you hear a libwit “proving” something, always remember that there are as many ways to lie with data as there is to tell the truth.
Sometimes, you just have to step away, and trust your eyes instead of their nonsense. That’s why I pointed out that in many respects “the poor” today live better than kings did a few generations ago. The biggest problem “the poor” have in this country is obesity. Imagine, obesity. And they even turn that into a reason to hate achievers, as if 95% of them don’t bring it on themselves.
And for any readers who are struggling to make ends meet, I’m not unsympathetic to honest people who play by the rules and still struggle. But many of “the poor”, as you probably know, don’t play by the rules, and many are far from poor as well.
Milton Friedman, the renowned economist, said, “Today’s poverty was yesterday’s plenty.” Why, oh why, don’t people read history? The world economy was, for thousands and thousands of years, a flat line of poverty and misery for most people until the rise of capitalism in the early 1800′s (before the Industrial Revolution). More people around the world now live longer, more prosperous lives than any of the billions and billions of people who preceded us. And yet, there are millions of socialists, communists, environmentalists, and loony left-wing liberals all over the globe who want to take us back to that stinking poverty and misery. I simply do not understand the left-wing mindset.
Instead of responding to the core of the Stockman article, you go off on a tirade implying that we have no real poverty in this country (Did I say we did? On the other hand, we obviously DO have more than enough, between the homeless, the foreclosed, the working and non-working poor.) Do you deny Stockman’s figures below? It compares current figures to 1979, NOT the history of the WORLD, which you use as your base. Is that the “French study” you mention? Since you do not reply AT ALL to the Stockman article, you DO remember Stockman, don’t you, I will supply a little for you:
“Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of entitlement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.
This lamentable prospect is deeply grounded in the policy-driven transformation of the economy during recent decades that has shifted income and wealth to the top of the economic ladder. While not the stated objective of policy, this reverse Robin Hood outcome cannot be gainsaid: the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent of households has risen to 35 percent from 21 percent since 1979, while their share of income has more than doubled to around 20 percent.
The culprit here was the combination of ultralow rates of interest at the Federal Reserve and ultralow rates of taxation on capital gains. The former destroyed the nation’s capital markets, fueling huge growth in household and business debt, serial asset bubbles and endless leveraged speculation in equities, commodities, currencies and other assets.
At the same time, the nearly untaxed windfall gains accrued to pure financial speculators, not the backyard inventors envisioned by the Republican-inspired capital-gains tax revolution of 1978. And they happened in an environment of essentially zero inflation, the opposite of the double-digit inflation that justified a lower tax rate on capital gains back then — but which is now simply an obsolete tax subsidy to the rich.
In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit. The larger purpose is to assure the vast bulk of Americans left behind that they will be spared higher taxes — even though entitlements make a tax increase unavoidable. Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt — surpassing Harry S. Truman or John F. Kennedy when they attacked big business or Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter when they posed as champions of the little guy.”
——————
Do you have enough sense to understand the simple concept of raising taxes and cutting spending at the same time, in order to shrink a deficit?
Rather than understanding that we have two major POSITIVE values pushing up against each other: Individuality and Society, you have to frame it all in terms of good and evil. Obviously, both elements have the full range of human goodness and badness WITHIN them, but both are cornerstones of our way of life. What do you think society is?
Show me one time in the last century that an increase in taxes has actually been used to pay down debt without an increase in government spending. I’m waiting, but I won’t hold my breath.
Therein lies the crux of the problem. I would gladly pay more in taxes (and the odds are very good, Dwight, that I pay more in taxes in one quarter than you pay in a decade) if I thought that the monies would be used to reduce the deficit and provide our children with a financially sound country. The problem is, that won’t happen. More programs will be created only insuring further deficit spending.
The real problem is that social “security” and Medicare are Ponzi schemes. Until they are eliminated, there will be no balanced budget.
Well, I have paid roughly $100,000 in Federal taxes in the last decade, so if you pay more than that in a quarter, God bless you! Social Security needs to be tweaked, not eliminated. Medicaid is the budget breaker for which we will all have to pay more in one form or another.
Ok, 2 quarters. I don’t consider myself a rich fat cat. I come from a relatively humble background and I’ve worked my off to get where I am. As a small business owner I can attest first hand as to the detrimental effects of higher taxes. Even worse is the uncertainty of the tax code. That makes it very hard to plan long term investments. It’s the planning of long term development that grows a company and hence our country. Do you know why the unemployment rate hasn’t changed much (or at least or a major reason)? It’s because people like myself have lost confidence in the future.
I think a lot of folks would be willing to consider alternate tax regimes if there were some slight evidence that the government has its fiscal act together. Needless to say, such evidence is absent.
This reminds me of a true story a friend of mine told me last week.
He has a friend who is a pastor. His church was always in the red. Not terribly so, but they could never get caught up. One day an anonymous donor gave them a donation for the exact amount of the debt… to the penny. The pastor’s argument was that it was clearly meant to pay off the debt and that they should honor the intent. Instead, the board was thinking of ways to spend it on other things. It was burning a hole in their pockets. He quit being the Pastor there over this.
The spenders are in debt, because they are spenders. Give them the money, or pay off their debt, and they will see themselves as rich and look to spend money. You can only stop them by actually stopping them. Remove them from their positions. Cut off their credit. Wealthy people are wealthy, because they understand money, and broke people are broke, because they do not understand money.
And broke people vote. Wealthy people vote too, and in greater percentage. It’s just that broke people far outnumber wealthy people. If we do not teach folks the reality of money and how it works, we will never fix this.
Dwight, above, fits this description. He is not stupid. He reads, too. However, Reagan described him. “It’s not that Liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
Dwight, raising taxes does not solve the problem. Ever. The terminology is wrong. Raising the tax RATE is not the same as raising tax REVENUES. Lowering the tax rate increases revenues. Proven fact. Raising taxes interferes with capital formation. Less spare capital means less business enterprises. The government keeps eating our seed corn, capital.
This is how we do it, folks. We have to correct the inexact and distorted lexicon of the Left, the abuse of the language. Correct the definitions, and you correct the thinking.
Sometimes, when you lower the tax rate, you take in more money, but you guys try to pass this off as some kind of absolute truth.
You are all conveniently ignoring the fact that I am also saying that spending should be cut. I sympathize with the skepticism of folks who doubt that spending will ever be cut…but of course, they push for it anyway.
My way is more more practical and also more likely to actually get agreed to because it gives both sides something. I am supposed to be the fuzzy-minded one here, but I defy someone to make the case that some other option is more likely to happen.
While we are at it, fair-minded people can take note as to who does the name-calling, who does the sneering, who does the exaggeration in these little discussions of ours. Hey, I am capable of stooping to that level, but people like Proreason, Mr Lucky, and the General LIVE in that neighborhood. And golly, no one has YET addressed the Stockman piece. Why? Because it is much easier to go on yet another VDH anti-Obama stroll.
IMHO, we don’t have nearly as much of a taxation problem, as we do a spending problem.
the problem with the “tax thing” is that the lowering of taxes, in the current economic environment, only keeps our head above water
repubs are falling into the trap of saying lowering taxes will create jobs.
this is only true when you are in a free market economy that is unburdened from the regulatory sleeper hold that is asphyxiating the country
the entire tax code needs to be addressed. negotiating the tax code itself must cost this country billions upon billions (carl sagan) of dollars every year
the key to our current fiasco is to CUT FEDERAL SPENDING. until this happens, you could tax the wealthiest people 100% and still not plug the holes
Please allow me to weigh in on this open fraud, calling for greater and greater and greater “taxation”…especially on “the rich”.
Let me explain how this long con works. Marxists invade the pantry and steal more and more stuff…for their buddies, their “created victim class” and for their bagmen and thugs.
In order to REPLACE all that they steal, they then go on the propaganda rampage against….”race and class oppressors”, against whom they always have “evidence” that they own too much, they have no heart for the “poor”, they are racist and that’s the ONLY reason why the “have nots”…have an empty pantry.
So, in order to “fix” the “problem”…they create more “programs” that feed their buddies, throw crumbs at their “created victim class” and for their bagmen and thugs.
The “created victim class” NEVER completely gets out of the hole, because to actually do THAT…would eliminate the voting logs on this fiscal pyre.
Now, let me snap every lying leftist back into a place they avoid like the plague…reality. The “rich” have been carrying this country on their backs fiscally for the last 50 years. All the lying and propaganda in the world is not going to change the FACTS that they pay MORE than their fair SHARE…or PERCENTAGE of the burden.
We have wayyyyyyy too many useless “programs”, inefficiently run, poorly managed, with barely an ounce of oversight. The “rich” are not this problem’s issue, nor how much more to squeeze out of them…or how far down the economic ladder to start demonizing people as being “the rich”.
The problem is Marxists want to destroy capitalism and will stop at no lie, no deceit, no fraud, no hoax…to accomplish this task. The LOVE race and class warfare and will NEVER lift a finger to heal it…only to fuel it.
Fix our “Marxist traitors” problem…and you will have fixed our fiscal, foreign policy, racial, class, gender, creed, religion, and unity problems…in one fell swoop.
If you want your leftist equivalent view, read the comments section of the Stockman article . The are many leftists there, making their case how the rich have gamed the system, which forms a nice equal and opposite position to your view.
As far as I can tell, the wealthiest folks really ARE wealthier, but much more difficult to quantify “adjustments” are taking place in deciles 6-9. Just for the hell of it, try to address the issues in ways that involve a possible governmental approach, and “possible” almost always involves compromise.
Allow me to point out that, absent a balanced budget amendment (which I would like to see enacted) we are dependent on the politicians in D. C. to spend our tax money wisely, so as not to make a habit out of spending money we don’t have.
Somehow, the recent results of our government spending, the small cuts in the budgets, and the ever-increasing deficit we face, do not inspire my confidence. Go figure.
If i MAY USE AN ANALOGY – If you WERE TO NOTICE THAT YOUR car has a hole in the radiator, the pertinent issue is PROBABLY not how much water you should have access to.
Dwight, at times you seem like a right guy who just has bought into the lies of the Left. Compromise? The Left does not compromise, except temporarily. For example, DADT WAS the compromise.
The problem with trying to compromise is, it works on the assumption that both sides have the same goal, but differ as to how to achieve it. This is not the case.
Some of the Right honestly want to do what is best for their country above all.
Some on the Right want what is best for them personaly, then what is best for the country after. Some on the Left are like this too.
Those on the Far Left, however, do NOT want what is best for the country. Some do not even want what is best for themselves personally. They are committed revolutionaries… and they control the Democratic Party!
These last are not honest about their objectives. They cannot be, or they lose immediately. So, they proffer some trope, some noble-sounding concept. They claim that it is what they want, but it is NOT what they want.
It is just like with the Palestinians. They want to destroy Israel. Period. It is in their Constitution. It is not just a goal, but a requirement! So, they offer noble-sounding concepts, reasons why Palestinians should be allowed to return, but they want the Right of Return solely as another way to overwhelm Israel from within. It is dishonest.
You cannot compromise with a lie. You cannot compromise with someone who seeks your destruction. The lamb cannot compromise with the wolf. There is a term for such efforts… Appeasement! It is folly.
You may honestly believe that your different approach will do some good, but the people who created the trope in the first place know it won’t. It is intended to have exactly the opposite effect. It is meant to destroy, not to do good.
People compromise because they HAVE to. Did Clinton compromise? Obama has already “compromised” by letting the GWB tax cuts stand. Your view does not really get us anywhere; it seems that you are trying to convince yourself that compromise is not possible, whereas, this being America, compromise, the two-party system etc is what WILL solve the problem/
Then we have folks like Proreason with the (not literally, of course) proclaiming of the need to burn their (liberals?) houses down “as we did with the Nazis and the Japanese psychopaths” Emotional stability is not the coin of the realm around here, eh? ;-)
Maybe it’s not so much that I have “bought into the lies of the left” but that I realize instability and extremism when I see it, whether it be of the right or the left. From my point of view, your only possible defense would have to be, “since the left is crazy, we have to be crazy too!”
Well, mission accomplished.
Note to Energy Secretary Chu: US gasoline prices can never rise to the level of Europe. Gasoline costs essentially the same to produce here and in Europe. The pump price difference is the massive European fuel tax. As the rising price of oil drives gasoline up here, their production costs will also rise, keeping their costs to the user continuously higher than ours. I don’t think the House will consider upping our fuel tax to the level of European countries, but President Obama might try to do something like that by Executive Order.
Where is the Malibu outrage in the tradition of Matthew Shepard?
Leftists in America are cowards. If there’s a beating being handed out, they’re going to keep quiet and not make eye contact.
GDI, #3,
“Like Proreason, I’d like to see VDH’s description of our country and our lives in the future, if Obama continues on his chosen path. Can you envision how this country will look, feel, function in 2015? 2020? 2025?
Frankly, I can. The possibility terrifies me.”
In fact GDI, you don’t need VDH to describe what it will be. We are there. The carnage is everywhere you look. Nothing is going to change for the better. The damage done by the communist takeover of the government in 2008 cannot be repaired unless they are stopped right now.
Concerned and terrified people such as yourself should encourage everyone you can get to listen to you to rally around a presidential candidate immediately who would take the fight to the communists. The Republican charade of winnowing out the wannabees is a game for fools who continue to follow the script written by the big dogs in the GOP.
Time to get to it. Sarah Palin, Donald Trump or Mitt Romney. The others in the game are bought and paid for by Professor Codevilla’s Ruling Class. At this point, talk is the cheapest commodity in the nation. We don’t need more of it, we need A Candidate, now.
Where’s the petition? I don’t think Dr. Hanson is going to circulate one.
Also important, to me, is that whoever opposes 0 must have both Republican, Independent (like me), and any third-party (here I am thinking of the TEa Party) support. We must find someone who can even pull “Reagan Democrats” onto his team.
It is also important for the country, IMHO, that all other candidates do not run. This must be a straight two-candidate race.
The more I look at the electoral vote map, and the more I read about the ballot-counting in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court (Judge Prosser) election, and thinking back to 2000 Florida,
the more I believe that any vote could be the one which decides the election.
We have gradually shifted from a rule of law to a de-facto dictatorship, over many decades. It was inevitable that a person would come along and take full advantage of the powers to rule that had been shifted to the presidency.
Recommended reading includes “The Modern History of Russia”, those chapters from Brezhnev through Gorbechev and Yeltzin. Russia was much like us, only more so, in centralized bureaucracy when Gorbechev started reforms. Yeltzin inherited a fiscal nightmare, but surrounded himself with people who did not seek a long-term power position, but were enthused about a market economy. Russians had lived under the communists for over 70 years, but the satellite countries had people who remembered freedom, and they were the first to opt out.
It seems to me that after our present regime is ended (and it will, eventually), Americans need to locate and elect people with the Yeltzin mind-set, rather than our old guard politicians who seek to remain in power. A president who will disband the various departments that have accumulated, combined with a Congress who supports a market economy, both aligned to a war on corruption , can un-do whatever damage is left after this Marxist regime is finished. It will not be easy to dis-mantle the corrupt central government, but it can be accomplished. Return the central government to a limitation of inter-state rulemaking, with welfare programs of all types (including farms and corporations) left to the states, and no laws which favor one company over another (including a flat tax without discrimination).
We will prevail, because we’ve all lived under a much freer form of governing. We know what to do; now instead of believing we’re finished, let’s get busy finding people who are more than politicians to fill the roles of governing.
Well we not only have to defeat Obama and his marxist/communist party, but also the “establishment” Republicans. For all their bluster in the last election, Boehner delivered at best a “punt” on the budget. So all the spending remains in place: funding for NPR, PBS, Nat’l Endowment for the Arts, Fannie & Freddie, myriads of training programs, the abortion mill, Planned Parenthood and ACORN. Can anyone really explain why its a good idea to borrow money to keep spending money on trivial things? So the Left wing marches on while we have “weinie”, mealy mouthed compromizers. They have fearless warriors. Say what you will about Miss Nancy, but she delivered for her Left Wing base. Can we ever say that about our Republicans? Just what giant programs have they ever managed to dismantle? Do they go to the mat for us — ever?
For me, I am waiting for the Republican to find a hill they can die on. Its wasn’t the implementation money for Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, NPR, PBS, Cowboy Poetry or much of anything that I could identify. Let’s see what they do with the debt celing. Any bets on the outcome?
PattyMor:
If I had any money left I’d offer you a bet. 1,000,000 to 1 the debt ceiling will be raised.
The reason I believe that is because I’ve spent more than 60 years watching this political conspiricy take shape and unfold. Somethings never change, they only fade until they die.
I’ve seen this play about presidential elections almost 20 times and the script has not been re-written in all those years.
For the sake of the children, the helpless elderly and victims from birth forward, we can’t let the nation go into default.
Comity, bipartisanship and adult leadership will fix all the problems the writer of the column and the commenters set forth. Keep the faith.
Sarah Palin, Donald Trump or Mitt Romney? Who might stop this madness? This might be the last best hope.
Even a six year old realises that if his mother sent him to the store for a quart of milk and some candy that if he spent more than the change on candy he had spent to much on the candy. Duh.
Blacks dont vote for blacks because they are black, they vote for them because they are liberal. You could run Allen West against Obama and the black vote going to Obama does not drop much. They vote for him because he makes them feel like victims which is the liberal mentality. They have been victims since slavery and the more they keep that mentality the more they can push for government handouts which probably is something 50% of the blacks in this country get. Why would a black vote for West when he does not want them to get government handouts. The black liberal in power is just even better for them because then they can cry racism when the black leader is criticized, which further divides this country, and makes some whites feel guilty, which leads to more government programs. When you have no ability or are too lazy to be anything other then a leech on society, you are not going to vote for anything that changes this set up. If you think it is bad now, wait until the producers in this country become even more outnumbered by the non producers. The USA is done simply because of the birth rate or lack thereof of certain kinds of people.
Indeed. The parasites do not care a whit about the health of the host.
…. the tax-cheating or tax-avoidance of Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and of Hilda Solis — and, let us not forget, of Tom Daschle and of Charles Rangel ….
Tax “avoidance?”
Nope.
Tax avoidance is legal — and rational men see it as their responsibility.
The lying, looting, thieving Messrs Geithner, Holder, Daschle and Rangel and Ms Solis are all prima facie guilty of tax evasion.
And that’s a criminal activity!
Regarding the fuel prices, we’d just returned from Barcelona. It’s sickening to see fuel prices (~1.40-1.50 Euros per liter around the city) ~the same in many areas around the U.S.A. !
Obama’s ‘..fundamentally transforming America..’ has taken what the Nuge/ Uncle Ted sings of in, ‘Stranglehold’ on our country.
Granted, it’s not solely his/his administration’s doing. But this intellectual know-nothing sure has sped up the process.
As for trying to provide necessary reading material, such as this poignant piece to those of differing minds, it won’t happen. at least anytime soon.
My mother-in-law is a late 60′s-early 70′s era flower child leftover and obtains ALL her, ahem, ‘news’ from NPR.
She commented when picking us up at the airport that fuel prices will more than likely decrease (?) this coming Summer. I’m to the point where I can no longer attempt to reason with this type of moronic commentary and just ‘agree to disagree’ with such illogical crapola.
Common sense, reasoning is replaced with counterproductive wishful thinking/doublespeak for the modern day illiberal/Obamabot.
-Independent voter who unfortunately didn’t get their dollar’s worth in the EU on vacation but loved the paella and patisseries..
We know about the things Obama does publicly. What about all the behind-the-scenes changes that he is enacting through executive orders and government agency regulations. I heard on TV on Friday that, since he took office in January 2009, over 3000 new regulations have gone into effect or will go into effect in the near future–214 of them in the health care law. Make no mistake. These regulations are freedom-robbing initiatives that will eventually give the federal government absolute control over you and me. He means to have a dictatorship, and he is succeeding spectacularly. If he is re-elected in 2012, I don’t think those four years will be his last years in office. I believe that, by the end of a second term, he will have successfully entrenched himself and so radically reshaped America that elections will be suspended, and we won’t be able to do anything about it. God help us.
BRAVO! Dr. Hanson. Splendid essay.
It seems to even take on a life of it’s own after you get it started. It feels, to me, that this has been simmering and coalescing for some time.
Needless to say, the Ritalin soaked sycophants of the Obama Mob, will condemn this article as pure racism.
As Christian Amanpour says; “What woud Jesus do?”; Well why don’t you just ask Obama? He’s the closest thing we have to Jesus at present.
And I laugh every time this dope says that “We must live within our means”! Then he hops in the most expensive limousine on the planet, goes straight to the airport and boards the most expensive 747 on the planet, and heads to a private residence in an exorbitant neighborhood, to host a $3500.00 a plate ‘dinner’. And rubs elbows and jokes with the same “rich” that he just finished excoriating.
And his fools believe every word about him taxing the rich into poverty.
In reality, the ‘poor’ are scraping off the scabs from crawling on their hands and knees for Obama for 4 years. Until they either wake up, or Obama’s gone, they will never heal.
The philosophical divide between leftist/collectivist thought and conservative/capitalist thought is an existential chasm with the deepest ramifications for our country and our society. One – leftism/collectivism – is foundationally rooted in the concept of envy and as such is destructive by its very nature. It’s primary purpose is to covet, to take away, to deprive and to destroy. The other – conservativism/capitalism – is founded on an understanding of man’s nature and man’s desire to expend effort in his own self interest. It is an understanding that one’s gain is directly correlated to one’s efforts and as such is, on balance, a creative, not a destructive force. The two philosophies are mutually incompatible and cannot coexist in the same space, or in this case, the same country. That is the existential question we face as a nation. And I fear that the forces of envy, championed by leaders who have nothing but malice toward the productive in society, are winning.
“an existential chasm ”
Which is why it does no good to debate them or to try to compromise with them.
They have to be defeated and their houses burned to the ground (figuratively). We have to treat them with the same kind of kindness we treated the Nazis and Japanese psychopaths…they can only live as we allow them to live, because they have demonstrated that left to their own devices, they will destroy the world.
Never again.
“They have to be defeated and their houses burned to the ground (figuratively)”.
I completely agree. One of our greatest vulnerabilities is that we (present company excepted, but there are many who do) think we are dealing with a fair-minded opponent, open to reason and debate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our enemies are intent on only one thing and that is not only winning but subjugating and eradicating us. William Ayers, for one, stated as much in Prarie Fire. I’ve long said that the only reason these bastards don’t actually kill Republicans is because it is not yet legal to do so. Give them time and they may well overcome that hurdle.
The Democrats possess great advantage from a combination of three factors – 1) their brand name from 50+ years ago still carries a great and misleading aura with a 2)largely mis-educated and unengaged population who have no earthly idea that today’s Democratic Party has more in common with the Bolshevik’s than with any of the leaders from their ‘glory’ days – Roosevelt, Truman…even JFK, combined with 3) a news reporting apparatus that nakedly acts as a Ministry of Propaganda for them, concealing their true agenda and viciously destroying anything or anyone that stands in their way. Joseph Goebbels would die of envy were he alive.
I don’t know how this turns out. I don’t know what spark it is that finally unleashes our side to say “ENOUGH!”. I do know that the left is playing with fire when they think that they can just shout us down and shut us down and shut us out and think that we will just slink quietly away into the night. I think that there is a white hot anger simmering out there and when it finally speaks, I pray that it will put an end to this collectivist madness, once and for all.
“I’ve long said that the only reason these bastards don’t actually kill Republicans is because it is not yet legal to do so. ”
Absolutely. The evidence for it is the history of the world. There has never been a benevolent dictatorship, and 99% of the political structures in the history of the world have been dictatorships of one form or another.
Why on earth would anyone think that our cuddly little marxists would be any different? Because they they lie about wanting “social justice” while they destroy the lives of their opponents? give me a f*king break. Unless I’m mistaken, cuddly Bill Ayers isn’t that way. Why would anybody think that Obama wouldn’t be as well.
It was pointed out to me long ago that the American model of leadership is “do as I do” whereas the European model is “do as I say.” Across the pond, elites are not expected to behave as they ask others to. Too bad that’s where we’re headed.
When more than 50% of Americans are stupid, the Ayers/Wright/Soros racist puppet will be elected. Oh, that already happened in 2008. America is now more than 50% stupid. I hate to be Gloomy Gus, but Nature’s law of Survival of the Fittest has selected us for extinction. The beautiful, simple, naive and strongly-principled America of my childhood in the 50s is gone. We have been told it was never beautiful and we didn’t fight back and now it is gone.
I do not recognize nor love what we anxious-to-please European descent Americans have allowed our country to become. All one has to do is recall the spectacle of those asinine WI teachers to see that grace and dignity have been replaced by mob mentality and foul language. These people are the guardians of our malleable young!
The only way any remnant of our way of life will remain is if the country is split into two countries via civil war. I do not think many of us have the stomach for that so as someone above posted, we will go out with a whimper and not a bang.
I
Fie! It is NOT over. In WI, a liberal nest, in an off-year election… for a judgeship(!)… the reactionaries rallied all their forces. They were completely motivated. They pulled out all the stops. And they lost. A portion of the Conservative majority quietly voted and beat them. Not by much, to be sure, but beat them they did, and the ramifications of that victory are far-reaching.
The gutting of their union power shall proceed in the courts. All they succeeeded in doing is alienating a judge who will be helping to decide their fate. Nice move, jackasses. They might’ve had a chance in court, but now, any non-liberal judge is going view this very poorly, indeed. Do they think that Prosser does not have friends on the bench with him? Payback is a b****! They sealed their own fate. Evil always bears the seed of its own defeat.
Take heart, people. The pushback against decades of subversion is underway. The Conservative just does it in a different manner.
@mark81150 #2 – I’m not going to quit…
________________________________________________
@proreason#1 – If the New Candidate were smart he/she might look to using PMJ to reach out to some young people in their ‘contemporary’ Innovative way… I hear Obumbles plans to do many TV snips and his ‘talking points’ to rally his base [Hopefully many have wised up by now and want nothing to do with him]. The Right has to ‘reach out more’ to young people in a way they can understand that the Right isn’t evil – and the left, in reality and by design is…
What a brilliant idea: Expose the young folks to a few of Proreason’s pleas for house burning and “they want to murder us” tropes, and they come flocking in.
“Truth hurts – not the searching after; the running from”
Did you ever notice, matthew, that the best thing anybody ever says about your “thoughts” are that you seem to read stuff.
There are other places where your adolescent rantings would be better received…the junior high abacus society, the lady’s knitting circle, Kos, and the the teacher’s smoking lounge.
Maybe you could bring your Stalin and Soros scrapbooks to get the dialogues started that you crave. It just isn’t happening here for you.
Your lack of substantive response is duly noted.
Oh, taking names, eh, Dwight? Like Dannaher in “The Quiet Man”? I don’t know about pro, but I am very frightened. Please don’t put me on your list. But since you are for compromise, how can one compromise with Obama, a very naughty and wayward adolescent liar?
This is from Real Clear Politics. You ought to read the whole thing to see what those who would compromise on government spending are up against:
“We aren’t having this debate, and President Obama is mainly to blame. His recent budget speech at George Washington University was a telling model of evasion, contradiction and deception. He warned that by 2025 present tax levels would suffice only to pay for “Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the interest we owe on our debt. … Every other national priority — education, transportation, even our national security — will (be paid) with borrowed money.” He noted that businesses may not invest in a country that seems “unable to balance its books.”
Fine. But Obama has no plan to balance the budget — ever. He asserted “every kind of spending (is) on the table.” But every kind of spending is not on the table. He virtually ruled out cutting Social Security, the government’s biggest program (2011 spending: $727 billion). For example, Social Security is excluded from a proposed “trigger” that would automatically reduce spending and raise taxes if certain deficit targets weren’t met. He also put Medicare (2011 spending: $572 billion) largely off-limits.”
Tell you what, Dwight, in the spirit of compromise, I’ll make it easy for you:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/25/the_first_adult_–_awol_109644.html
OK, I read it and the conclusion I come to is that difficult and unpopular choices are called for, which both sides approach very reluctantly. Did you read some of the first responses about how both sides are scared here?
Imagine how thrilled you would be by solution one: raise the gasoline tax a lot!
I see absolutely nothing which changes my mind that the solution has to be cutting costs AND raising taxes, BOTH of which are very unpopular to one side or the other. In fact, this article re-inforces my view. Because Obama is not jumping out front and proposing something which would allow you a chance to really go after him, just means that he is cagey. Now there’s a shocker. Both sides sit at a table and horse trade with the understanding that you give up something to get something, keeping one eye on the deficit and one eye on their re-election. That is how it works. If Obama/Reid says raise taxes x% on the rich and cut spending y% on defense, and Boehner/Ryan say cut spending x% on entitlements and create a nominal tax for deciles 5 and 6, then they all mill around, come up with something, and serve the sausage they have just made for brunch. Then we wait to see how we can digest it. Isn’t that how it will be done?
But the Dems have to finally agree to, even if they can’t admit it, to reduced spending and the Repubs have to finally agree to, even if they can’t admit it, higher taxes. Those of you who won’t finally agree to that, don’t want a solution, you want a VICTORY.
Really simple,,45% approval,,,,gov dole 43%/// actually sorta positive. only 2% idiots.
With all the obvious unlawful, unconstitional, devious, stupid things this president has done and is doing, why is he still in the white houseÉ
Bush have not been more silly than Obama is and he was ridiculed using lying films.
For a foreigner like me Obama was ridiculouse with his corporal`s and ape`s gesticulation from the very beginning and Americans laughed too.But today he is hated too much.I think he must be laughed at with his stupidity and hate.
I must say I am appalled at the deteriorated incoherence of this post. I haven’t been by in a while and, though I can’t recall ever agreeing with VDH about anything, I was used to reading a connected argument from him about something instead of a word salad of disconnected sentences about several dozen things, none of which are developed in any way from one another to come to a particular conclusion.
It’s a darn shame. It is not only preaching to the choir, it is preaching to the choir in Esperanto. VDH was PJM’s best, who you could always expect to write something that was interesting to disagree with. None of this is, because none of it is about anything in particular. Sigh.
It does not seem to be that far from the rest of PJM. You folks have all been talking only to yourselves for so long that it is simply impossible for an outsider with a different point of view to even figure out what you are all talking about, let alone challenge it.
So all I have to go by on this post is the title. Whatever dreaming is being done by VDH or anyone else, the following has happened, and it is not a dream. A Republican House of Representative has proposed, with a budget bill, a massive change in the American social contract between the Government and its citizens. Various exaggerations of this same change in the social contract are being undertaken in several different states.
It would be nice if someone would step up, clearly describe the goals of making these changes and argue why someone not in the charmed circle of the Esperanto Choir should assent to them.
It would not only be nice, it would probably be very expedient. Because from what I can see on the ground here in Ohio, a hefty majority of the voting public is not ready to assent to them in the least.
Until you all break out of the endlessly reiterated narrative about the Villainous Snidely Whiplash Obama and start talking about real things, there is really no chance of you persuading anybody outside of the Esperanto Choir about anything.
The only dreaming going on is your self-sustaining nightmare about a mixed race president who is a Democrat. It is pointless to disagree with it because dreams are only dreams.
“…your self-sustaining nightmare about a mixed race president…” But of course, leave it to a liberal to bring up race, as always…as always. You had credibility until you retreated into your own “endlessly reiterated narrative.” Tsk and ho-hum.
“…your self-sustaining nightmare about a mixed race president…” But of course, leave it to a liberal to bring up race, as always…as always. You had credibility until you retreated into your own “endlessly reiterated narrative.” Tsk and ho-hum.
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