Do As I Say—Not As I Do?
I confess I did not believe Barack Obama entirely during the campaign when he bragged on working across the aisle and championing bipartisanship.
You see, as in the case of any other politician, one must look to what he does—and has done—not what he says for election advantage.
And in the case of Sen. Obama, in his nascent career in the Senate, he had already compiled the most partisan record of any Democratic Senator. He had attended religiously one of the most racially divisive and extremist churches in the country. His Chicago friends were not moderates. His campaigns for state legislature, the House and the Senate were hard-ball, no-prisoner affairs of personal destruction, even by Chicago standards. Campaign references to reparations, gun- and bible-clingers, and Rev. Wright’s wisdom were not words of healing.
In short, while the rhetoric was often inspirational, I found no real reason then—or now—to believe that Barack Obama wishes to be a uniter. And nothing in his first five weeks of governance has disabused me of that first tough impression.
Nevertheless, here are five modest recommendations that he might adopt if he were really interested in bringing the country together.
1) Forget talk radio. During the campaign, President Obama, you went after Sean Hannity on numerous occasions—which are recycled ad nauseam almost daily as sound-bites on his radio program. Once in office, both you and your staff have zeroed in on Rush Limbaugh by name. But Presidential candidates and elected Presidents must seem above the fray, and not descend into tit-for-tat with media celebrities. There is a reason why even your closest associates have ceased calling you Barack and now quite properly address you as “Mr. President”—and it is not due to your persistence in demonizing talk radio.
Did George Bush go after Bill Maher or Air American or Keith Olbermann when almost daily they slandered his character? Did he serially evoke Michael Moore? To have done so by name, would have demeaned his office. Worry about refuting conservative ideas, and governing the country, rather than dueling over the airways with those who get paid for only that. The country wanted a Lincoln, not another Nixon going after Dan Rather at a press conference. So far your administration resembles the latter, not the former.
2) Forget about George Bush. We got the message already that he is near satanic, you angelic. Yet even in your inauguration speech, you could not leave well enough alone, and so once again went after a predecessor who won two elections, and so far has been circumspect in his criticism of your own brief tenure. Even ex-Presidents—cf. Jimmy Carter’s self-serving ankle-biting and Bill Clinton contorted snipes—reduce the office when they engage in schoolyard “they did it, not me” finger-pointing.
Again, in your first address to the nation, you went out swinging: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” But President Bush never set up such a Manichean either/or situation, as you yourself must accept, when you embraced his protocols on FISA, the Patriotic Act, the Bush-Petraeus Iraq withdrawal plan, and kept rendition, and so far have not quite closed Guantanamo.
Thanks Dr.
We’re not alone out here.
VDH: generally I agree with your analysis above and feel you’re right on regarding your suggestions to President Obama. However, our new president has great hubris and will not see the error of his way or will blame errors on his predecessor!
My question is how far down will our society go before it hits bottom? Also, will our country be able to climb out even after his 4-years of pushing us into a Socialist state? All we can do now is to caution, counsel, and argue against his proposals and pray his efforts are sub-optimal.
They say. What they say. Let them say. Don’t get into an argument with a man with a barrel of ink or three hours of workday air time…
We can hope he fails, or we will all suffer the consequences of his success. Unless he somehow can shape up soon. But it’s hard to believe the fellow who would scratch his face with his middle finger and grin when speaking of his opponents during the campaign has the wit or the character to change.
Spot on Doc,
Thanks for articulating what so many of us are thinking.
I recently read how Obama’s approval numbers are dropping in the polls. That gave me some small hope that the public is beginning to see the light. But, then today I read this on Michelle Malkin http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/02/a-note-to-michael-steele/
How on earth are we ever going to defeat this reincarnation of Stalin when the opposition leader claims the 2008 GOP convention was like Nazi Germany?
As you have pointed out, wasn’t it the Dems who created a Leni Riefenstahl event in Los Angeles?
Doc, I’m afraid we are in deep doo doo. We are either going to have to get Steele to step down or begin organizing a party to replace the Republicans.
It’s interesting that Hope mongering 24/7 was replaced by gloom and doom without any protest from MSM.
Markets interpret reality by reacting to objective reality and to perceptions, creating their own specific perception of reality (that is hard to predict). We’ve seen markets shrug off large events and panic on small ones. The bubbles replacing each other were less reflections of reality but more of perceptions. Such as oil prices were less reflection of the supply and demand and more of fear of uncertainty in the volatile oil-reach middle east and perception (speculation) that this makes it a good target for investments.
I think that the only slight preference by the markets for McCain over Obama in the months leading to elections was a result of a perception that The Hope Master will instill Hope and optimism into the falling markets as well.
Reality begged to differ. And it appears that The Hope Master had no interest in talking the markets up. Bush was criticized for talking the markets down by pointing out that Clinton’s exuberant years weaned down already in the 2000 and he was inheriting a slump. Whatever Bush said then is no match to the gloom and doom coming out from Obama now. It feels that Obama is afraid to say anything optimistic now, BEFORE he had implemented his ambitious plans for restructuring America, acting out what Rahm Emanuel gave away in: “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”.
VDH:
You have sorely misconstrued why those of us who voted for Obama did so. Do you really think we are interested in bipartisanship, in a government that accords a voice to the losers? What purpose would that serve? It is contrary to all we have learned in life.
Understand, since childhood we have been denied a suitable outlet for individual competition. On the playgrounds at school there was never a “king of the hill”. Too much pushing and shoving and other displays of violence. In our classrooms in high school (and later in college) we learned to sit well, complacently and uncritically admiring the teacher’s abilities to prepare us for that big cubicle later in life. Those who did not comply were medicated. Academic achievement was a group activity — together we all became smarter than the average student. Our only outlet for individual distinction was in how we dressed. The more outlandish the better. Granted, this was understood as a superficial form of “uniqueness” , cloaking our adherence to the new norms of group behavior.
Foreswearing individualism did not preclude competition, however. That was just reserved for group efforts, like team sports or anti-corporate activism. There was always a clear winner, and a clear loser. The winners were the ones allowed to showboat and and make fun of the losers. Opposing sports teams never join together do they? Politics is no different. It is the ultimate blood sport they say, like an M rated video game writ large with team players. So you see, we understand the new rules at play here, and now the older generations, including you VDH, must learn them as well. The new world order is: vero possumus beat e pluribus unum. We won. Get used to it.
Despite all the affectations of glamour and the hagiographic media coverage, Obama scolding his critics by name made me recall Kennedy’s indictment of Nixon:
No class.
When one reads this sort of thing from as sober a commentator as VDH, and one sees the situation in the markets, one begins to wonder if the 45% of the American people to whom all of this is anathema will let it happen. I mean, serious, massive resistance, civil disobedience, maybe even secession, let it happen. Will the military stand still for what is essentially a coup transforming the country?
While growing up in ‘his city’ I witnessed first hand the ways by which succesful business owners ‘beat’ taxes. Among the insiders, it is a well known, finely honed skill and passed down from generation to generation. Remember they fled an oppressive tax system in Europe. Survival depended on an acute knowledge of this system of which we were forced to submit. When the owners sucessfully pulled it off, they quickly moved away to a more amicable climate and bragged about how easily and cunningly they ‘beat the system’. We all have met them. I meet with them often now as they live well, but not ‘too’ well, it atracts unwanted attention. They obviously are not ignorant. Obama always being a ‘government employee’ and not having to actually survive in that environment, knows not it’s ways. Only the blindly voting ‘Victims’ of Payroll Deduction pay taxes. DaFlikkers
I am increasingly convinced that our President is incapable of intellectual honesty. I am not sure whether or not he is dishonest (understanding the difference between truth and mistruth and choosing the lie) or a Bulls_itter (where truth is irrelevent and only the story line is important). In either case I do not believe honesty to be part of his value system.
Barring a Republican tsunami in 2010, I fear we are in for a rather disasterous ride. I would consider the tremendously negative impact on the retiring Boomer generation to be just deserts were I not among them.
While the President is possibly as talented a politician as FDR, 24 hour cable, talk radio and the internet are huge obstacles to perpetuating a false direction. If his policies prove to be close to as horrendous as I think they will be, his will be a one term debacle and we will then “return” to the politics of polarization.
Obama is a Marxist and intellectually gravitates toward communism. I hope he fails but the Republic survives his lawlessness and reckless and fantastic ideas.
I finished reading Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s remarkable study, “Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939.” Remarkable findings from dusty achivies. In the case of Obama, he is seeking to outdo FDR and bring liberation theology in the form of communism to America.
His willing Democratic Party pals and the Chicago crime lords and the lock-step media and academics will soon be in his foot locker, too.
Obama is a danger to America and for the world. God save the Republic.
All very insightful, as usual. Thanks, professor. The final note I find melancholy, because even VDH doesn’t seem to realize the catastrophic nature of the “winning” and “losing” we will experience under state socialism. It is impossible to pasteurize or homogenize. It can’t be domesticated or mixed peacefully with the liberties we have today.
Whether it is his intention or not, Obama’s program of extending government control of the economy will make activities that today are economic become political. This includes our most basic livelihoods. Our smallest daily choices will increasingly be subject to political approval.
The cap-and-trade legislation working its way through Congress encapsulates this principle perfectly. Analysts have predicted that it will increase our electric and gas bills by 160% per household, and automatically increase the price of motor fuel and heating oil by $1.50-2.00 a gallon. Can you afford to take those combined financial hits? And of course, with the same utility and commodity prices increasing for business as well, the price of, literally, everything you buy will also go up dramatically. Even at WalMart.
This impact is about the BEST we can hope for. Measures like taxing motorists for how much they drive are also under consideration. Even if you decide to be a citizen of unparalleled Soviet socialist virtue, and give up your car, will commercial transportation — long-haul trucking, delivery businesses — be exempt? How much more would such a measure make consumer prices go up?
Police and fire are big consumers of motor fuel. Hospitals are enormous users of power and fuel. Will we start having to trade individual conveniences and opportunity off to keep community services?
Who will bear the brunt of cap-and-trade? The poorest of us. The middle class, in spite of the hits it has already taken, can still tighten its belt further: keep the kids warm and fed in the winter, even if it has to buy their next pairs of shoes at the Salvation Army thrift store, and subsist on day-old bread and potato soup, as we did when I was a kid. But with the middle class losing more of its income discretion to disruptive price increases, it will have nothing to spend on the economic activities that offer employment and business opportunities to the poor.
It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether Obama and the Democratic leftists WANT this outcome. This is, objectively, what cap-and-trade will do. The inflationary impact of surreal deficit spending will produce similar consequences, it will just take a bit longer.
What may be unintentional is not therefore unforeseeable. The inflationary impact of our spiraling debt is on a long fuse, but cap-and-trade is an economic thermonuclear warhead being set to go off in our daily lives. We had better pray that it is stopped somehow.
I don’t think Obama cares about how he appears. The means justifies the ends. The brilliance of his strategy of putting through so many debilitating programs so quickly lies in his reliance of the glow of his campaign and the continuing distractions like Rush, like demonizing “the rich.” Its all just to prevent any real discussion of what is going on until it is too late. It will take a real revolution to undue what he and the liberal congress are doing, and national health care, like Social Security, will never be undone. The legislation being passed right now will control our national agenda and prevent real economic opportunity for working class people for years after Obama is gone.
He’s a neophyte, especially when it comes to “bi-partisanship”.
First; let me say: Wise words.
Second; Blogengeezer so true about the European back flips to avoid being taxed (still true today)
Third; TLM< as far I can read in this article, VDH doesn’t ask That One to be bipartisan, he wrote that he never believed That One would be bipartisan. Another thing is, in the rest of your rant, you write that you were never allowed to be competitive, well TLM, that is the fault of the left, the liberal adgenda, not the right, that is STILL their agenda: It’s not fair that the other guy has more than me!!
I now find that having passed the 45 mark, I can say when I was a kid, and so: When I was a kid you still had competition. I noticed in my cousins’ children, whom are all now in their early twenties, that they were very worried about fair number of turns with the ball when playing soccer, or group thinking to learn the Presidents…all from very socially liberal families. For me, you have definitely given your age away, with your written raspberry. Please re-read this THOUGHTFULLY (emphasis, not screaming) and many other articles by VDH, maybe you may grow up quicker than you are now. He is in no way dissin’ your guy, VDH is actually giving wise council (counsel, too much French, I can’t remember).
If you are older than early twenties, you leave one feeling very sorry for you.
Why should he stop doing the things you have listed Mr. Hanson? They work.
But there will come a time, when you will rue the politics of class warfare and the rhetoric of the demagogue—and may find the very intensities that you are unleashing for political advantage now, later on will be precisely those that you most regret that even you cannot control.
So a little less ‘Bush did it’ or Rush this and Sean that, and a little more of the need of all Americans to debate in calm and respect dissension in these times of uncertainty in which no one has all the answers.
Unfortunately, this is only true, VDH…when we are not trapped in an information vacuum.
Our own Azhi Dahaka, a three-headed dragon associated with deceit and mendacity (Hollywood, academia, and the entrenched media) come armed with sword and shield to do battle against the truth. Blind in the left eye and myopic in the right, they provide cover for leftism with a shield that deflects facts from penetrating even skin deep.
And the sword they wield against dissent is tipped in venom and slashes even moderates and, alarmingly…even classic liberals who dare to raise a voice in mild rebuke.
No, my esteemed and valued VDH…..there will be no future day to rue for those who live upon a stolen truth. Not here, anyway.
The three-headed dragon now roars “We won”. And truth is a distant memory.
Obama is taking revenge for his hatred of white folks and the rich who dont think like he does. He is basically a one man OJ jury. He is doing exactly what he wants with the expected result. We will be France if this guy makes two terms.
I mean how else do you redistribute wealth better then destroying the stock market. You force investors to hold onto cash while those with nothing can sit back and laugh at all the 401ks and diversified stock portfolios that are destroyed because of no investment and selling to beat the latest down day.
He has to be somewhat careful on how he taxes people so this is the next best thing. Obama is brilliant in acheiving his goals and he is more loyal to a race then a nation. Cant we get Vanilla Ice or someone to make a record that sells and then he can speak about how Obama hates white people?
Instead of giving him advice, we need to figure out who can be put up to run against him in four years and begin the campaign immediately. We need to match him at his marketing game.
The country made a mistake electing this guy and we have to minimize the damage while convincing just enough Obama supporters who now see, too late albeit, that their hope and change candidate was nothing more then Jimmy Carter with a suntan, to vote for the Republican.
VDH, please use your intelligece to tell us how we can minimize the financial damage as individuals until the next election cycle. That is more important then giving Obama advice, albeit done not expecting him to listen.
view from afar:
The italics didn’t transmit. When writing about the Leftist mentality, I have to remember that a sarcastic attempt at parody may come off as sounding all too real. Truly sad.
In the battleground of ideas and ideology,
It doesn’t anymore pay to think,
It’s more akin to a battle of protcology,
Everything just begins to stink.
Doc., I am glad that you are climbing out of that depression that your last articles reflected. It sounded like you were under too much of the urban California influence and less time in the soil.
I too easily mistake my wishful thinking for this presidency with the in-your-face reality that was promised in campaigns and written into the budgets and reflected into the economic indicators.
What is hard to grasp is the asymmetrical warfare nature of the social democrats. One side wants to play fair by the rules with serious debate and one side wants to hord the national check book, start class warfare, and mistdirect public attention by continuing the “blame game.” Here that one side is trying to fix the blame and not the problem. The blame game in that venue can go back to Adam and Eve and correct nothing. Bipartisanship is the phoneyist flag ever waved when the rules of engagement are not equal. I am stuck on the Lenin quote, “What is bad for the nation is good for my cause.” I learned the hard way that wishful thinking does not pay the bills or till the soil.
Only by Obama continuing to rail on George W. Bush will we be able to measure the extent of the psychosis Bush haters possess. We’ve all worked with people who blame problems and mistakes on others and it’s hard to stomach that type. It’s typical of the narcissist. The hate may have legs.
The last 8 years were some of the best in my life. Instead of bankers, Wall Street big shots, or others, I suspect the people who sold out big in Mid September – who gave that sucker punch to capitalism.
Who are those guys?
Essential vdh
I believe what needs to happen now is to get off of the trees and start seeing the forest.
The US is now undergoing a bloodless revolution with the constitution being openly disregarded and we have people sniping on being nice.
If the USSR, currently Russia was still a power and not done in by the same social policies that BHO is espousing they would have declared victory over America by now.
Russia did not even have to invade. We are lead by a bunch of idiots both Republicans and we know the Dems are not only idiots but anti American.
The only difference now as then is when Stalin converted Russia to Socialism is was not as now in the US due to voter ignorance and stupidity that has mushroomed due to Unionized and subversive Schools—He simply killed the opposition—by the millions.
George Best: “taking revenge for his hatred of white folks and the rich” and “Jimmy Carter with a suntan”
Who are you trying to kid? You’re a lefty right? trying to stir up the pot?
Six weeks and the first apostate Obamaphiles are starting to appear, most notably David Brooks of the NYT. Obama is apparently not the president Brooks thought he would be. I guess all those Ivy league degrees held by Team Obama, and previously extolled by Brooks as a welcome change, now seem to matter naught. If you bought on to the best and brightest meme, you now conclude that such brainpower put to the wrong use turns out to be, uh, worrisome. But then, some of us dumb hicks never drank the Kool-Ade.
It has struck me since Obama arrived on the scene,stage left, that the heat of his political sun has driven many of the boutique accouterments away from the core of principles that the so called conservative is supposed to believe in strongly enough to practice. There now is a Mason-Dixon line cast into the political ether that may fall to earth as a geographical feature. I wonder if ever the red state governors would validate their bold claim to not want the Federal “stimulus” by telling the entire nation that not only did they believe it wrong to take monies derived in other states who could better spend those funds within their respective borders but they also believe that resources produced in their own states could be better spent at home without the intervening act of the Washington legislative wolfpack tearing at the carcass of the treasury; and then announce a plan of action that would make a constitutional showdown inevitable. Would Republican Senators ever eschew the acceptance of other states’ collective monies in pork grants (using embarrassing weasel-word logic to paper over the hypocrisy of having complained about the practice just before engaging in it) and instead represent the interests of their states by actually defending them against the Federal looting of the majority of wealth creation ongoing within their borders.It certainly is about the numbers and it’s not the numbers of the majorities in the Federal legislature. It’s the numbers that will appear in the demographics of the red and blue states when the economic strain from this ongoing political train wreck reaches a point where dislocation of people between red and blue will be more desirable than the status quo (another redistribution of wealth albeit a lateral one). Absent an intervening act of terrible consequence by a foreign government the upside down structure of this society and its economics cannot stand on its own: a minority imbued with a culture of hard work, achievement and respect of others won’t suffer the insult of paying the bills of a majority steeped in a culture of sinecure and the habits of sloth. This is not going to be like Europe regardless of the similarities in goals and rhetoric of the “progressives” in the lead. Correlation and causation are not the same. The profound starkness of the philosophical divide in this nation is probative encouragement to me that there is still an America that I can believe in.
Obama could care less who he hurts or how much pain and misery he can inflict on the middle class, as long as his ideological agenda of social,political and economic re-engineering is implemented. I do not understand how otherwise intelligent writers and “conservative” pundits such as David Brooks were taken in by his rhetoric. All you had to do was read Obama’s books, listen to his speeches and look at his close relationships with so many miscreants and scoundrels to understand exactly where he was coming from. You did not have to be a Rhodes scholar to figure this one out.
TLM~
And please don’t forget the way Brooks humiliated Sarah Palin during the campaign, simply because she was bereft of an Ivy League education, and she insulted his pedigree. He should be ashamed of himself. He used to write brilliant essays http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/102gwtnf.asp when he was with the Weekly Standard. Not any more with the NYT.
I love that point about those who believe that income belongs first to the government, and second to the individual – indeed, this perception is at the heart of the ideological divide in this country – and Obama would do well to recall that there are millions of voters who do not buy into it, lofty rhetoric notwithstanding.
Say what you will about George W. Bush’s policies, he was always a gentleman who displayed good humor, and who did not disparage his political enemies, no matter how unfairly or violently they attacked him. But to liberals (and the media, but I repeat myself), one of his greatest offenses was that he was an adult in the White House. He honored it’s traditions, respected the office, and demanded that all who worked there behaved as equally respectful adults. He did, in fact, reach out to Democrats, who accepted his honors with one hand and spat on him as soon as his back was turned, yet he did not respond in kind. That’s class.
Compare that to the juveniles who inhabited the White House before and after him. Not class.
“you are beginning to create an ‘us/them’ climate ”
Spot on VDH. One of your best columns.
You are onto a great line of attack/defense against anti-American’s who are RADICALLY changing the country WITHOUT anything close to a mandate. They bought the election and tanked the economy deliberately.
They have to be stopped.
view from afar at #16 — TLM’s #7 is a parody. Obviously a very effective one. We could dispute whether the best parodies are more self-evident or less, I guess. I confess to having been tipped by the trend of TLM’s previous comments on VDH.
If character is destiny–and I think it is–the man is going to destroy himself.
Has anyone noticed that the word “hubris” has come back into increasing usage of late? Not entirely coincidental IMHO.
As usual, VDH, a well-thought column. I second the comments from others on this board that conservatives (and Republicans, to the extent their interests and values converge) must recognize that asymmetric warfare has come to domestic politics. Political control in 2000s America is Darwinian: what works, gets used, what does not get discarded – and rules of the game be damned. Convservatives, by temperament, respect process, the rules of the game, and law-and-order; the radical left who have seized power via the appealing “Trojan Horse” candidate that is Barack Obama believe increasingly that the radical ends justify whatever means are used to attain them. Poitics used to stop at the water’s edge, when the nation was at war. The irresponsible left has demonstrated this is no longer true, during the Iraq war, when they so desired a political defeat for George Bush that they were willing to lose a war to attain it.
In the language of fourth generation warfare theory, Team Obama got inside of the GOP OODA Loop.
We would prefer to keep politics a decent, if rough, contest – but Obama and Co. have upped the ante. They are using everything from voter fraud (ACORN) to race-baiting (Reverend Wright) to recycled 19060s radicals (William Ayers et al.) to financial warfare (MoveOn.org and George Soros), you name it. The fair-play ethic versus the sucker punch mentality of the GOP and the Dems was nowhere better illustrated than in the fall Presidential campaign when John McCain, a gentleman of the old school, refused to discuss Obama’s past and unsavory associations with Wright, Ayers, and all the rest. A class act, but ultimately a weak one that all but assured a GOP loss.
If we are not prepared to roll up our sleeves and get down-and-dirty in this battle for what remains of our nation, its traditions, and its values, we will be run over and left for dead, or its political equivalent. Obama and his comrades hale from Chicago, where you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. If we aren’t prepared to show up armed to the political teeth, we’d be better off staying home.
Obama himself is the ultimate in smooth, and is too canny to dirty his hands dispatching political opponents. Want to see a better prototype? Look no further than Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a master of hardball, dirty tricks-done-in-the-dead-of-night politics and raw power. Proof? Some years ago, Daley decided that Meigs Field adjacent to Lake Michigan would be better used for something other than a private airstrip. He engaged in apparently sincere debate with those who opposed closing the field, but this was a facade. One morning, Chicagoans awoke and found bulldozers razing the field. Daley had grown tired of due process, and preemptively ordered that the airfield be leveled. He later repeated the process, writ large, by expanding O’Hare Field over the objections of surrounding communities, the airlines themselves, and others. In so doing, Daley showed the true colors of his party and Obama’s – the raw exercise of power outside due political process, unilateral action not subject to political checks and balances, and destruction of opponents. Today, Meigs Field is a park, and O’Hare Field is expanding after Daley abused emminent domain laws to evict thousands of families from their homes.
This is the party of Obama, make no mistake. Obama dresses in the finest suits, speaks in the measured tones of Harvard and University of Chicago, and gives an air of unforced sophistication, but his elbows are every bit as sharp as Daley’s, and his will to power every bit as great. That’s what we’re up against.
You guys are overplaying the “Obama is a socialist-communist radical Marxist-Leninist who wants to destroy all things American” angle.
Even if one puts aside the substantive questions regarding labeling him socialist (20% cap. gains is socialist but 15% is not?; 39% top marginal rate like the 90s is socialist but 35% is not?; his health care plan is socialist but Bush’s drug benefit was not?; did the last 8 years represent non-socialist fiscal discipline?).the socialism argument is still lacking symbolically and contextually.
Calling someone socialist (or its more extreme corollary communist) resonates less each day as the cold war becomes a tiny speck in the rear view mirror. “Run for your lives, he’s a socialist” was a winning argument in a previous generation; now it just draws shrugs from most people under 40, as well as anyone who doesn’t have a raging ideological hard-on for laissez-faire free markets.
No offense, but this line of attack comes off as hysterical, hyperbolic and anachronistic. And, given the changes in America’s demographics, there just aren’t enough bitter old VDH’s to resurrect the GOP without charting a new, non-Rush direction, both substantively and rhetorically, for the party.
#35 Pete – Excellent post. Clear. Conceptually dense. Valuable.
Dr Hanson,
Allow me to cast a dissenting vote as to this column.
Oh, it is up to your impeccable standards and, to be sure, an interesting read. But I for one, am growing extremely weary of perusing all of these posts about how Obama can help himself by altering his or his administration’s behavior.
Somewhere between a floppy shoe, Bozo-wig wearing clown replete with water-squirting lapel flower and some evil genius lies the true nature of this egotistical, Ivy League elitist. To hell with him; he has, through his incautious mumblings, caused the majority of our life savings to vaporize, cast a pall over our continued prospects of gainful employment, and shows no signs of his getting a clue any time soon.
..may I suggest, perhaps, a column or two on how we should deal with this Abomination and its outfall for the next two-to-four years.
Sorry TLM, I see it now.
Very true Pete, but in conscience, we can’t give up our principles, that the right is hoping to appeal to a greater more noble instinct, while trying to adhere to the new rules of the game(that there are no rules). We’ll end up torn in two and that is what the left is hoping for…destroy the right by exploding the differing factions into uncompromising groups that refuse to work together and thus keep their power intact, knowing full well there is no cohesive (spelling) opposition. We need to be cohesive and look at the bottom line, not are conservatives right but that there has to be a clear and battle ready opposition to Obama et al.
Obama doesn’t have the background to manage people and situations. He’s hobbled together a cabinet of tax cheats, former lobbyist’s and partisan hacks all as incompetent as he is. His idea of fixing something is to throw more money at it, call it a day, fly out on his jet somewhere for a candlelit dinner with his wife and mother in law. Priority is to stabilize the business community, pay our bills, tighten the belt. Sort through the banking and mortgage mess. Why should speculators who bought homes to flip them and never lived in them be bailed out? Their properties should be seized and bulldozed over. One thing is for sure, it’s not the time for national healthcare, Co2 junk science, pork spending and more taxes. He has no clue and I hope he does fail so we get people with some competence in the WH, Senate and Congress. 2010, we need a drastic change, turnover all these bums, I don’t care Dem or Repub. Why does a Porkulous bill go from 100 pages to 1100 pages? Because it’s full of earmarks. Cut Congresses pay in half and make it a part time job. Throw out all the lobbyist’s and make that profession illegal.
When I think of the Obama administration I am reminded of an infamous comedian.
He would have loved that comment. RIP
I always thought he was talking about the Republicans stealing our retirement-
Now we find out its the Demorats.
#35 Pete – Adding to some of your points, we need to ditch the pusilanimous types running GOP campaigns. The Rick Davises and Steve Schmidts, I’m sure meant well, are not what’s needed to battle aggressive socialist takeover. We need a reincarnation of the late, great Lee Atwater. Civility no more!!
With all due respect to Dr. Hanson, I agree with others who have said that BHO is not interested in ideas on how we hope he will change. He is committed to implementing his view of social justice, at all our expenses. When we have the opportunity to vote him and his type out–and yes we will–where will that leave the people who have benefitted from his handouts? Weaker and less able to compete in the global economy?
Sadly, I am not surprised by the person we elected. What Karl Rove (more) politely refers to as his over-reliance on the use of straw man arguments, I more simply think of as lying. I would be very concerned for the future of our country if it were not for the boards like this one, and others, filled with the views of others who see him for what he is.
Sorry, Hanson, but I don’t think the President will be taking the advice of a political hack working for the other side.
Besides, isn’t there a Tea Party you should be at? Pick up a sign and put down the lap top.
I’d would guess that 80 to 90 percent of the independent electorate who voted for McCain KNEW he would be a divider.
Nice piece VJH. For some of us it is a quick read.
In addition to Dr. Hanson’s excellent observations, I would add that Mr. Obama should stop trying to frighten everyone into supporting his plans. His complaint yesterday that people were “panicking” about Wall Street and should just “ignore it” instead, is genuinely bizarre in view of his constant harping on the theory that our financial institutions are headed for self-destruction…unless we do exactly as he says, of course.
Increasingly, President Obama reminds me of the H.Beam Piper story, “Day of the Moron” (online at Project Gutenberg). In that story, Piper was concerned with people who invariably act without thinking, or as two of his (equally concerned) characters defined them;
“…people who push buttons to see what’ll happen, or turn valves and twiddle with dial-knobs because they have nothing else to do with their hands… People who don’t know it’s loaded. People who think warning signs are purely ornamental. People who play practical jokes. People who—”
“I know what you mean. Just day-before-yesterday, I saw a woman toss a cocktail into an electric heater. She didn’t want to drink it, and she thought it would just go up in steam. The result was slightly spectacular.”
“Next time, she won’t do that. She’ll probably throw her drink into a lead-ladle, if there’s one around.”
If President Obama wants Wall Street to stop burning itself up, or out, he might want to consider that throwing gasoline on a fire generally isn’t a practical proposition if you’re trying to extinguish same.
The fact that he seems unable to grasp this concept makes me wonder exactly what else he may do… just to see what happens.
clear ether
eon
re Pete:
spot on…spot on…Chicago nuclear hardball politics all the way…the nice neophytes in the flyover states who hope and wish this will all go away if we just write more vapid treatises on how we should stick to our sacred conservative “principles” are totally clueless…he is a Marxist/Thugocrat…the total looting of our national bank has begun….write all damm day long….it won’t change a thing..not one iota…nada..nyet..zip…nil…write away ye stewards of conservative principles…LMAO…Obama is a PROFESSIONAL…you are mere babes in the woods…it’s time to get down and dirty and NASTY….BUCK UP..RUB SOME DIRT ON IT..it’s only a flesh wound now….call in a Arclight strike with your pens…NOW…RIGHT FRICKING NOW….attack…no prisoners..they aren’t taking any..the ROE are lifted
Why does the deficit spending and insistance on transferring wealth remind me less of Abe Lincoln and more of Robert Mugabe?
It has amazed me that pundits are not talking about the the impact of the 2011 tax rates reset. January 1, 2011 the income tax rates will reset to the 2001 rates; 15%, 27.5%, 30.5%, 35.5% and 39.6%. President Obama said he in the past that he would allow them to reset; I have not heard that he will retain the more middle class lower tax rates. Presently they are 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35%. And why isn’t anyone talking about the impact on the working poor if all of the rates will be reset; the special low 10 percent bracket is eliminated. So, if I am correct, while those who earn more than $250,000 will pay more because of their loss of some portion of mortgage deduction, charity deductions and the increased tax rates proposed for them next year or beyond, ALL Americans who pay taxes will be impacted by this return to the 2001 tax rates as well as indirectly by the proposed carbon cap taxes. I also imagine that some of those not now paying taxes, again the poorest Americans, will have to pay taxes since the Bush tax cuts raised the amount earned exempt from taxation. Plus they, I assume, would not receive money from the “negative income tax” program.
… and add here his latest manifestatios:
a) worldview-wise: his secret letter to Medvedev, promising as a quid-pro-quo for their getting tough with Iran in exchange for dropping the missile system based in Eastern Europe (thing that scared, and rightfully so, the bejesus of Eastern Europeans, seeing it like a new Ialta accord proposition). How on the earth you can expect Nato to help you in Afghanistan when you appear willing to dump half of it at the first opportunity? Idiocy or simplemindedness, the move shows that the Chicago community activist has no world affairs understanding – a few weeks in the office and he did it big time. Expect more.
b) the unnecessary, shabby treatment of Gordon Brown: not that I love Brown, and I found bizzare his offering Obama the Downing #10 photo-op during Obama’s hopenchange Europe tour, yet Britain is a major – MAJOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL – ally of America. He could have done things differently – spending less time with Brown than with Stevie Wonder is another sign of Obama’s latent inclinations.
Had mister W done these, we would have herd from media … any village has an idiot, Crawford TX has faxed him in the White House – but for Obama, expect the Nobel prize. After all, with Baradei he makes a nice couple.
Doc, Obamabi’s political skills are terrible; he attacks Rush and Hannity because would-be empereors do not believe “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. In the end, he will preside over a disaster in which much of the American people will be united, but against him. And don’t call him “our” President. He is THE President (God help us all), not yours, mine, theirs, hers, his, it’s, or anyone else’s. So was Clinton, the Bushes, and anyone else you care to mention.
FDR flim-flammed the country, as well. He attenuated the Depression with his “Tax, Tax, Tax; Spend, Spend, Spend; Elect, Elect, Elect” policies that only WWII curtailed and a full fifty years was needed for the reversal of most of it. The last vestige of that mess, Social Security, will collapse on Obambi’s watch.
47. eon: “I would add that Mr. Obama should stop trying to frighten everyone into supporting his plans.”
Tell that to my Dad, who foreclosed on his house after his wife became disabled.
Tell that to my Uncle Jim, who declared bankruptcy due to massive amounts of debt.
Tell that to my Uncle Henry, whose underwater on his house and he lost his job.
Tell that to my friend Ginger, who lost her job.
Everyone I know is suffering real consequences of a real recession that exists outside of Obama’s presidential proclamations.
I don’t hear Hanson offering any solutions to financial crisis. Just criticisms of the guy who is. Knowing the people I know and the situations they are in, that just doesn’t impress me all that much.
Smithee:
“Calling someone socialist (or its more extreme corollary communist) resonates less each day as the cold war becomes a tiny speck in the rear view mirror.”
In part, I agree. Relying on the “socialist” tag to constrain Obama politically is a bit like grasping at straws. Most people who would respond negatively to that characterization have been aware of his socialist leanings since the election.
Unfortunately, the other charges leveled at Obama — breaking campaign promises, lack of transparency, tax cheat/dirty politics appointees, hypocrisy, etc — don’t resonate either. Obama was supposedly elected to change the same ol’ same ol’ way of doing things in Washington. He did. Now there are no rules.
A large segment of the electorate now seems to think that politics is some sort of game. Our team won, and it’s a zero sum game, baby. That’s what the Big “O” on all Obama’s logos stands for. That mindset prevails during an election, but it should be put aside now. We won’t make any headway in this fight until we convince some of them that they are losers too. And some of them think socialism is just fine.
BO is engaging in the worst type of tactic, hatred. He is using the same tactic to unite his base as Hitler used. Hitler targeted the Jews saying they controlled all the money and were to blame for Germany’s economic problems. BO is targeting the bankers and businessmen using the same logic. Nothing unites more quickly than hating a common enemy. The worse the economy gets the more people will look for leadership and believe whatever his band of mental midgets and tax cheats say.
Tony Blair was elected in the UK in large part due to his remarkable ability to say one thing and do the opposite, yet still convince people that what he said held true.
I admire the man for nothin except standing firmly by the US but will admit to his powers of persuasion.
Obama, unfortunately, is similarly gifted at this.
To a large proportion of the electorate over here, tt simply does not matter what he, or his party, does:
http://trackacrat.com
“Nothin” should obviously have a “g” on the end of it, very careless of me…
Aargh! And “tt” should be “it”, that’ll teach me to be obsessive and rush typing.
I agree with VDH on all points but one:
“The country wanted a Lincoln, not another Nixon going after Dan Rather at a press conference.”
At the rate Obama is polarizing this nation, he may indeed be the next Lincoln, presiding over the next Civil War.
What do you expect from a Jeremiah Wright soldier?
I have never understood “he gives a good speech”. What is that?
His mere presence is evil, never mind that sounds that come out of his mouth!
Great points but you are way too polite!
Another excellent piece.
That Obama reflects (reflected?) the majority perspective in this country ought to be even more frightening than these actions fulfilling his campaign promises. That anyone gives these stupid little boys fussing in their sandbox the time of day instead of engaging in serious debate about the repeated attempts to eliminate our basic rights speaks volumes about the overall lack of personal responsibility that pervades American society. ( http://smokebreak.blogshevik.com/2009/03/03/the-pied-piper/ )
That scares me more than anything. For if Americans fail to rediscover their inner cajones, there is no doubt we will end up in utter ruin.
Through his actions Obama is laughing in the face of and giving the finger to all of those well off suburbanites who in their weakness and naivete voted for him.
I sincerely believe that the Obama psyche one in which he :
1. Truly hates America and its traditions and ideals
2. Is on a binge to get even with white America. The REAL “day of reckoning” that he as referred too.
3. Is truly a marxist and elitist that is on a scorched earth policy to “remake” America in that image.
Phrases that he has uttered such as, “day of reckoning,” and “remake America” are not empty and should be chilling.
His lousy treatment of the Brits so far further confirms my suspicions that he is also a TOTAL RACIST that HATES American traditions!
Victor Davis Hanson as usual shows great insight. The only problem with his “to do” list for Obama not to be so divisive is that it would mean Obama would stop being Obama. Obama is a radical.
Obama must maintain the scolding on the economic crisis. Only demogoguery can protect him from those very serious scandals that are (not) rocking his party. He needs that emotional intensity to keep people from looking at the crisis factually.
It’s also a side effect of the rhetoric that’s been in Washington for decades. We conservatives have been scolding democrats for years, calling them socialist and radical. But the key truth is that when a really fringe radical came along and somehow won the nomination, the public assumed that we were still crying wolf, especially when the mass media supported Obama so ardently. By electing him, there is a serious risk that a working majority of 50%+1 can (at least, in the short run) get their bread and circuses from the 50%-1, and give the democrats a permanent majority.
The ray of hope here is this: the mainstream media’s strength is waning, and the public is getting a lesson they’re not likely to ever forget in the consequences of statism. By raising spending so much, the fiscal collapse that wasn’t likely for another decade or more looms ever closer, precisely at a time when people are coming to terms with their own, personal irresponsibility, and perhaps at a time when we can find the political will to avert it.
Also, a generation of conservatives are realizing that we can do the same thing Pelosi and Obama have done: if we’re to be castigated every election for pushing “deep, irresponsible cuts in social security and medicare”, then we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb and actually cut something.
There is music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.
Obamamatuer should never have been President. He’s totally incompetent. Too bad he wasn’t properly vetted by the media. In America’s time of need, we have JFK Jr. flying the plane instead of pilot Chesley Sullenberger(Romney). The next 4 years will be very painful.
Prof Hanson’s sobering thoughts are much more frightening than Obama’s Kleinesqeue/Kleinoid shock and awe tactics.
47. eon: “I would add that Mr. Obama should stop trying to frighten everyone into supporting his plans.”
Tell that to my Dad, who foreclosed on his house after his wife became disabled.
Tell that to my Uncle Jim, who declared bankruptcy due to massive amounts of debt.
Tell that to my Uncle Henry, whose underwater on his house and he lost his job.
…
I am sorry for the pain of your family. I am jobless too. We are all in pain. Recessions bring pain, but this one is different because of political tactics. But fear is new. Fear mongering is a tactic of evil people. These hints of personality and ideology are to help us see what is coming.
History has shown that the ideology and methods of Obamma will bring a quantum leap in pain.
#35 – Pete – you are showing us a way ahead and out of this mess. Keep posting!
The Democrat party leadership is much more adept at the Observe – Orient – decide – Act (OODA) loop than is the Republican party – witness Steele’s recent performance. He was destroyed in less than one television interview.
IMO – (1) we need to think and act inside the Democrat’s OODA Loop (2) we need to understand, viscerally, that we cannot win playing the Democrat’s game (3) we need to identify the consequential forums and engage as an “Army of Davids”, and (4) we need bold national leadership NOW.
Our nation and it’s culture of E Pluribus Unum and individual responsibility for one’s actions literally hang in the balance.
1. It’s pointless to write this, because the entire administration is drunk with power.
2. I don’t want anyone in this administration to read this. I’m with rush. I want this administration to be such a colossal failure that the next generation will know what happened, and not have to repeat this learning exercise. We’re here now because the boomer generation didn’t learn from Carter. I want the kids in diapers now to know what happens when you follow a plastic messiah. I want them to grow up knowing that when a radical tells you that he intends to take your freedoms away, that you take him at his word.
The Obama thug team routinely slaps down those who oppose them particularly if they are in the media. Limbaugh, Hannity, Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli, etc. The policy of the United States government is now to stifle speech by using the White House Press Secretary to target those who speak ill of Obama. Obama doesn’t care what you think Mr. Hansen & I think you just made his list.
I think you’re mistaken. Obama does indeed want to unite us; he just wants us to unite in agreement with him.
damn…
and then I got the -esque suffix wrong. Thought it had an intellectual ring to it.
“Did George Bush go after Bill Maher or Air American or Keith Olbermann when almost daily they slandered his character? Did he serially evoke Michael Moore? To have done so by name, would have demeaned his office.”
No, he invited Rush and Sean et al to the Oval Office to tell them how to do it for him.
“Forget George Bush”
There is nothing conservatives and Republicans would like more than for the country to forget about George Bush. Consider the difference at CPAC this year (George who?) and last year (Four more years!) Well, we’re not going to forget George Bush, and we’re not going to let you forget either, because his 8 years had much more to do with this mess than Obama’s 6 weeks.
“Nancy Pelosi’s private jet is as worrisome . . . ”
Really? This really gets to the heart of the disingenuous Right. The talking point, usually offered by Newt via Hannity, is that “Newt, you didn’t have a private jet as speaker, did you?” And Newt dutifully says, “No, I did not.” But they never mention that a jet for use by the Speaker of the House was a security decision after 9/11. Republican Speaker Hastert used it until his retirement. When elected to be Speaker, Pelosi offered to fly commercial but was told that it was not an option.
But you obfuscationists never mention that. Why not? Because it doesn’t help you catapult the propaganda. (sound familiar?) There’s a phrase we all know – the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth – which was devised to address exactly your sort of nonsense. Either you are willing to stand for what’s right and truthful or you’re not. It doesn’t matter that “Well they did it so I’m going to do it even though I said it was wrong when they did it, but if I don’t do it then they will have gotten away with it.”
Try writing something AFTER you graduate the eighth grade.
His inexperience to hold the Office Of President caould not be more evident as his last few weeks have shown us. The print media who refused to look at his past-example, voting present, just touches his ineffectiveness to lead. Because of his inability to take action on core standards, we as a nation, will truly suffer!
Mr. Hanson, Obama is doing exactly what he said he was going to do if he were elected. He said he was going to raise taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the poor, and invest massively on infrastructure and education. As he said in his recent address, he’s not growing the government just for the sake of it. He’s growing the government because he understands that in a time of crisis, working people will need government assistance and only a robust federal government will be effective in providing aid. It’s very simple to understand, and I know that you are an intelligent person and do understand the logic behind this strategy, despite your ideological disagreement with it. But apparently, you’d rather just stoke more anger by throwing around the same stupid socialism/communism/fascism rhetoric that the tin foil crowd on this site happily eats up. Like Limbaugh, you’re just catering to the lowest common denominator of cynicism and contempt for working people.
“But there will come a time, when you will rue the politics of class warfare and the rhetoric of the demagogue—and may find the very intensities that you are unleashing for political advantage now, later on will be precisely those that you most regret that even you cannot control.”
Well said. Obama’s base consists of pencil-pushing ivory-tower lotus-eaters at the high end, and the utterly dependent urban welfare chiselers at the low end. If the showdown between them and the rest of us moves into the streets, it will not go well for them at all.
We of the broad middle class don’t need community organizers because we are well-organized, hard-working, orderly people ourselves. Right now our talents are applied to making money and putting food in the mouths of the parasites, rich and poor alike, who voted for Obama in overwhelming numbers.
If the social contract breaks down, if the hard Left tries to rig the game against us, if we begin to feel that we have nothing to lose, then we will turn our attention to the removal of all impediments to free enterprise and limited government — and we have the means to do it if we so choose.
There is an election that starts in a year or less. With inflation at 15% it will be hard to pin on Bush. Think of this as Gettysburg; the Dems are Pickett’s charge across the wheat field. They are easily identified. Let our children look back and shudder at this administration and congress.
Good article, as usual. I always thought it ironic that Obama purportedly likes to think of himself as in the Lincoln mold. Home schooled, Lincoln grew up in a backwoods cabin and was not the beneficiary of a Harvard law school education. Today we’re all socialists without knowing it. The Civil War started because of the south’s fear of Lincoln’s intentions, not any overt Union acts. To date, the Civil War was the bloodiest American war. Lincoln did not win that war, U.S. Grant did, as most eighth graders used to know. There was also military conscription and packing a gun was second nature for most everyone in those pre-historic times, unlike our current chicken hawks in power today. Revolutions never turn out the way you expect.
So typical and why conservatism is reeling. We’re so scared that we extend olive branches and “suggest” ways to get along. They don’t want to get along. Get in the game! They want to destroy and crush everything conservative. And they’re winning. Liberals are so fat with victory that they can afford to go after talk radio to squash that, too. And we conservatives are still wondering why they won’t like us. We can’t even run one candidate who isn’t a corpse and can articulate why their positions are laughable at best, ruinious at worst.
But let’s keep trying to make them like us. Let’s keep being afraid and defensive and reactionary. Let’s let them continue to define the terms. We are doomed and the country is too if somebody doesn’t grow some stones pretty fast.
#50 Al Reasin: ” I also imagine that some of those not now paying taxes, again the poorest Americans, will have to pay taxes since the Bush tax cuts raised the amount earned exempt from taxation. ”
Excellent. Bush’s biggest mistake was removing all taxation from close to 50% of the public. I want them thinking they have some skin in the game too, even if it’s only a token amount. No representation without taxation.
Yeah Ike, sorry about Aunt Beulah and cousin Joe Bob, but that is not grounds for sitting mutely by while this ego driven ideologue grinds our freedom into the ground because he can. No doubt all the campus commies and underclass malcontents will love the rich guys getting theirs, but if the ship sinks everybody drowns.
I love mediocre minds like yours calling the erudite Dr. Hanson a “political hack”. It only makes you look like a dope.
Obama has no conscience. Period.
Mr. Hanson, please stop reading my thoughts and publishing them.
It’s interesting that Hope mongering 24/7 was replaced by gloom and doom without any protest from MSM.
What’s interesting is that someone should act surprised at that lack of MSM protest.
Those in the drivers seat of all MSM organs came through the ‘revolutionary’ 60s in lockstep, and their student mantra was ‘Amerikka is f**ked’.
They’ve just come off of a 6-year negative campaign which successfully spread hatred against President Bush, and a 2-year positive campaign for the slick-talking PC divisive nonexecutive Obama. They are in hock to his success to their eyeballs, and unless it becomes plain to them that his policies are seriously damaging the lives of most Americans, nothing that he does will cost him much MSM support.
Guard your remaining valuables, and prepare the tar and feathers.
if he were really interested in bringing the country together
Still don’t get it, do you?
Pops in Vienna
Doc, I’m afraid we are in deep doo doo. We are either going to have to get Steele to step down or begin organizing a party to replace the Republicans.
I tried to get you all to vote Independent, Third Party (i.e. Ralph Nader)..
FLASH: STATES RIGHTS GAIN SOME GROUND
GOING TO POT MAY BE AN OPPORTUNITY
This actually could end up being something good for states.
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/states-going-to-pot-opportunity.html
I miss the point: why give recommendations to a person who is clearly not interested in them, not inclined to follow any of them and has his own opposite agenda? Is it a kind of group therapy by counting impossible “what ifs”?
The only recommendations that are worth time to think through them should be for wavering Republicans in Senate and for Rush and other folks who have to bear a brunt of this assault.
DUH! It was obvious that this was always a racist marxoid thug,pumped up by a cabal of left wing bankers,and other elites,to wage racial and economic warfare on the euro american middle class, impoverish it,disarm it,destroy its free speech rights,and once rendered politically impotent, ,submerge it under a tide of indigent immigrants. The goal of a globalized USA which the plutocracy can exploit at leisure,under their affirmsative-action puppet will be achieved. The Ohole, is a Castro wannabee, temporarily encumbered by a constitution, he means to subvert and destroy.Let’s organize and fight this take over! Obama is the greatest threat to freedom this country has faced since the Soviet Union.
one of my own,
Why is Obama keeping EVERY bad Bush policy – Bernanke, Petraeus Iraq timetable, profligate spending, PAtriotAct,FISa, rendition, and discarding EVERY effective one – record revenue from taxcuts, pro-Israel diplomacy?
Why do you think you are so much smarter than the rest of us? Is it because you are a lefty? What degree do you hold that makes this so? I will be curious to see the idolatry and partisanship over the next 4 years from the Obamabots when they get to sample their cooking. In the words of Gunnery Sargent Hartmann, “Your days of finger-b@#$ing old Mary Jane Rottencrotch through her pretty pink panties are over!”
#75
“There is nothing conservatives and Republicans would like more than for the country to forget about George Bush. Consider the difference at CPAC this year (George who?) and last year (Four more years!) Well, we’re not going to forget George Bush, and we’re not going to let you forget either, because his 8 years had much more to do with this mess than Obama’s 6 weeks.”
I do remember. I remember this time last year, when our nation had a grown-up for a President.
History will be a lot kinder to Dubya than current public opinion may tend to suggest. Remember Harry Truman.
Please, Victor, do keep bringing up Obama’s old church. That worked so well for us during the election.
Smithee at #36 — the problem with your analysis is that “socialism” not resonating with the under-40 demographic is a function of ignorance. Catering to ignorance is not what conservatives should be doing, now or at any other time.
(I agree with you, BTW, that mere differences in proposed capital gains tax levels do not constitute the difference between socialism and free market advocacy. But the levels of taxes function as placeholders in a more fundamental argument whose terms DO matter. That we have not educated the under-40 to understand this is a serious indictment of our education system.)
Socialism, as implemented throughout the 20th century, is what Obama’s policies amount to. Socialism has not been defanged, because it CANNOT be. Wherever it is implemented, it will eliminate economic opportunity and eventually political freedom. Perhaps those under 40 are not aware that the biggest political-economic problem for WESTERN Europe today is the effect of decades of “soft socialism” on individual initiative and opportunity. Besides unemployment rates chronically above 10% (25% in the under-25 age group), almost all of Europe is facing an inevitable demographic demise because, even with the fertility of Muslim immigrants figured in, the populations are not reproducing themselves at replacement level. Europe is where the West is politically prostrate before its Islamic immigrants, willing to curtail its own freedom of speech and thought to avoid the threat of homicidal retaliation for religious offense.
But Europe is not the only continent affected by socialism. Much of Latin America, from Mexico south, has lived under a paternal socialism since the 1910s. Socialist concepts antithetical to property ownership have combined with the legacy of the colonial period to keep millions of people landless, and with no hope of owning and improving property. The independent yeoman-farmer paradigm that VDH has made his own, in terms of historical and political analysis, has never obtained in most of Latin America — and for the last century, the reason for that has been the sway of socialism.
I urge you to read F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, if you have not. It was published in 1944, widely read by the people who are now OVER 40, and presents a line of thought you almost certainly have never heard in school, if you are under 40 today. One thing it brings into focus is how much socialism there already is in the US economy. What we see today, in 2009, is the result not of “capitalism” or “free markets,” but of socialist and statist regulation, gradually overlaid on a handful of creaky old market mechanisms for the last 100 years. That’s how long we have been at this.
We have accumulated socialism more slowly in America than anywhere else, but a case can be made that we have reached the limit of our economy’s ability to continue functioning productively under it. The under-40 can’t see that the socialism and regulatory statism we already have are what is doing us in.
In 1909, hardly any Americans would have stood for something appalling like government demanding that their banks — the banks where they kept their money, and did their own borrowing — make loans to high-risk borrowers. Yet we passed this concept into law in 1977, and have enforced it vigilantly, with the threat of lawsuit, since the mid-1990s. The reason alarm bells didn’t go off for us when we let government start demanding that banks OPERATE UNSOUNDLY is that we were so conditioned, through the previous seven decades of public risk mitigation — Social Security, Medicare, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, federal AFDC and food stamps, even the acceptance of persistent collective national debt — to collectivization of risk. A program here, a mandate there, and eventually we were talking real state control: government telling banks they had to lend to high-risk borrowers — and supervising joint lending projects with ACORN.
What we have done in the past — in the 1960s, 1980s, 2000s — is PRODUCE our way out of government overload. Instead of the state controlling and regulating less, and spending less, we enlarged GDP, until the financial and economic burden of government was back down to a smaller percentage of it. It may be that we can do that again, but the only way to do it is to lower taxes — or, at the very least, not raise them, as we inevitably will with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2011, and with cap-and-trade measures.
But it’s the fact that 13% of your income goes to Social Security and Medicare before you even see it (and that it will all be spent long before YOU retire), that has brought us to where we are today. It’s the fact that government already mandates health care cost-shifting, from non-paying to paying patients, that makes your health insurance and co-pays cost so much. The economy has to grow more to generate one more job today than it used to, 40 years ago, because government mandates and regulation make it so expensive to employ people. We already have elements of socialism mandated and regulated into our economy, and they impose heavy costs on us. Even more socialism is not what we need.
Believing that more state control of our economic lives is compatible with intellectual, political, or religious freedom is an untutored idea that merits no respect, regardless of who holds it. History demonstrates that this idea is wrong, and plenty of thinkers have analyzed why. The under-40 need to know more about their world and its history before others, like conservatives, are obliged to let their rhetorical banners be governed by what resonates with them.
Thank you, Dr. Hanson. You are becoming America’s voice of reason. Too bad the ones who need to read your words and consider their meaning would never consider doing so. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” -Proverbs 16:18
It’s kind of pitiful to hear people accuse Obama of deeds that do not match his campaign rhetoric. Like hearing a 16 year old girl accuse an older man of not loving her after the fact. I think to charge someone with hypocrisy implies that you thought they believed what they were saying — in Obama’s case all you are saying is ‘I am naive’. Obama’s facility for dissembling exceeds Bill Clinton’s — he will be tough to expose.
Cindy Sue, God love you girl, but if Ralph Nader is the answer it must be a really stupid question.
75. one of my own
77. SteveP.:
Your anger and your insults will not help if you hope to persuade anyone of anything.
What I wonder is Obama’s game plan for the next presidential election? He is smart enough to know his plans will hurt the economy while increasing the Dems power. Does he think he will be able to finesse the economic numbers 4 years from now? Or does he have a plan whereby he will never have to give a damn about popular opinion ever again? I really wonder with ACORN, the census, etc. This guy and his minions must be very closely watched.
“…there will come a time, when you will rue the politics of class warfare and the rhetoric of the demagogue—and may find the very intensities that you are unleashing for political advantage now, later on will be precisely those that you most regret that even you cannot control.”
Money.
@ #100 Ron Kean
I don’t get them.
What do these people hope/think they will gain out of a ‘destroyed’ America? They won’t be in the drivers’ seat, anyway. (Otherwise, they won’t have time to troll each and every blog posting.)
Is it just impeded emotionally, psychologically, or what?
Steve P @ 77: How do you “lower taxes on the poor” when they already pay no income taxes? I think we already know the answer, and it’s called taking from those who work and giving it to those who won’t….or in common terms, income redistribution.
Obama killed the American middle. Now it is the Left against the Right. Nothing good will come of this.
Obama showed his true character when he dissed Pres. Bush during his convention acceptance speech and during his inaugural. He has no grace or class and will never admit that he is wrong.
Let’s not forget that Zero is the most pro abortion president in the history of the USA. He is destroying the conscience clauses for doctors who do not want to perform abortions.
RE: 75. one of my own:
Well, you do NOT have your facts straight. The SAM Mission for the SOH was on an 15 PAX C-11 or preciously a 8-10 PAX Jetstar. Pelosi complained because it required a fuel stop to SF. So she demanded a B-757/C32A, a plane that can carry hundreds of passengers. And it costs about $50-60K to the Left Coast (it deadheads back). Then picks her up. The USAF would do the nation a favor if they failed to pick her up in SF!! That would also give her time to work on that Field Mice problem. (Question: Does she support marriage between gay mice? Can people marry Cows?)
Yep. Ms Sringbutt wastes taxpayer dollars and makes CEO’s in Private Jets look frugal!!
Ahh, and earmarks! Those earmarks. The ones that ARE not in the Stimulus Bill? Or the ones that ARE in President Obama’s Budget?
“The Republicans did it!”
“I’ll cut them out NEXT TIME!”
“As President, I will eliminate earmarks!”
So I guess POTUS will Veto the Current Budget Bill, eh??? Or satate that he lied to get elected? That Campaign Promises were more of the same? And that changing up his mind was “The Change” he promised?
Like not Appointing Lobbyists? Or honesty in government with Tax Cheats? Sad! Very Sad! Thankfully, the American people will soon turn against such poor policies. Then against Himself!
Yes, our Mr. President is a thin skinned, petty little man.
alice L. says: “Let’s not forget that Zero is the most pro abortion president in the history of the USA. He is destroying the conscience clauses for doctors who do not want to perform abortions.”
Yeah, and it’s about time. If I refuse to do a part of my job based on arbitrary ethics, I should rightly be fired. If a doctor won’t perform a legal procedure because of his/or her personal feelings, kick ‘em out and hire a doctor who will.
#75: ? I’m not worried about a jet…And what is it you’re not going to forget about Bush exactly….the war? what else? As someone who has to observe the precision of ones use of language in everyday dealings, I ask, do you ever analyze Obama responses that are not scripted? I’m not sure who you are addressing in your post but surely you can come up with a better complaint. Especially when dealing with eighth graders.
I would also submit to you that you probably aren’t qualified to lecture on the use of propaganda.
Saltherring says: “Steve P @ 77: How do you “lower taxes on the poor” when they already pay no income taxes? I think we already know the answer, and it’s called taking from those who work and giving it to those who won’t….or in common terms, income redistribution.”
Firstly, you are incorrrectly assuming that poor people don’t work, which is part of the whole reason that working Americans, i.e., the majority, hate your party. Secondly, don’t be a simpleton – income distribution is how this country operates. We collect a big pool of tax money, and we redistribute it to programs and services that Americans need. Where were you complaining about income redistribution when billions of tax dollars were disappearing into the Iraqi desert in the form of no-bid contracts for KBR and Blackwater? Where were you when billions more were being redistributed in the form of tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans? Where have you been the last hundred or so years when blue states like New York and California are forced to have portions of their tax dollars redistributed to red states like Louisiana and Alabama? You were silent, of course, because you’re a hypocrite.
Victor: Nothing in this clown’s resume demonstrates that he has been anything other that a hard-core Marxist. He only masquerades as a uniter when he is looking for votes from the “public-screw-educated” ignoramuses who elected him and who know more about polar bears than they do about American and World history. I used to think people who questioned his U.S. citizenship were part of the black helicopter crowd, but I’m starting to wonder. He won’t produce his college transcripts, because they will show that he didn’t deserve to be admitted to Harvard on his merits. Has anyone seen a certified birth certicate indicating his fullness of excrement was born in this country. If not, let the impeachment proceedings begin.
Nice work Mr. Hanson. Too bad The President can’t hear such reasonable commentary, he’s deaf to it for sure. Even a 2×4 would not not wake him up to it. I agree that Mr. Obama is is angelic but not of the good kind, more like the ones that came down from heaven and had relations with the daughters of men who then gave birth to the men of renown who were so evil that God felt it necessary to destroy all but one family of mankind.
One thing we can all be sure of right now is that if it’s a good thing someone in the current administration will try to destroy it.
Take care and keep up the good work.
1) Why did Dr. Hanson address these comments as recommendations to Obama? It’s a rhetorical device. You could look it up. (That’s one, too.)
2) Can the Chicago Democrat, student of Ayers, and acolyte of Wright actually take Dr. Hanson’s advice? I would like to say all people can reform, but — I don’t think so. Why should he? After all, he won. 3) I had hoped for so much more from Michael Steele. Those of us who love our country have been denied help at every turn and are going to have to figure out how to take back America on our own and in a harsh environment, with no leadership from our “leadership.” May God help us.
:77 Steve P. You bought the strategy without reviewing the tactics. I’m all for Infrastructure spending. That’s mousenuts compared to the sum of the spending. And it’s as much of a thought out plan as the original Bush war plan that took years to fine tune, all after the fact…same old same old. Grow up and use your brain.
Response to: 112. Steve P.:
Oh Please, Steve. Give it a rest!!
“Where were you when billions more were being redistributed in the form of tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans? ”
NOTHING was REDISTRIBUTED! NADA! Sero! Zip! Zero!
It was THEIR money to start with. NOTHING was redistributed! Hello, NOTHING!!! NO REDISTRIBUTION OCCURRED!!! YOU, and your kind, gave them NOTHING!!!
The government just took LESS MONEY from them! Nice, eh? Should the government “redistribute” your money? Should you get 2 jobs so that you have enough money to redistribute? Overtime for you?
I paid $2M+ in taxes to My Country in Tax Years ’05-08. How about you? Did YOU do YOUR FAIR SHARE?
Somehow I doubt it! Sad!
PS What Taxes did YOU pay to support this Great Country last year?? How much will we be REDISTRIBUTING to you this year and next? And WHY?
Response: 77. Steve P.:
“Mr. Hanson, Obama is doing exactly what he said he was going to do if he were elected.”
Is he? He said “As President, I will eliminate ALL earmarks”!
OK. He’s President! The Stimulous Bill is full of earmarks or similarly named pork. The Budget is chock-a-block earmarks!!
Are Pelosi’s Field Mice something else than earmarks? Or Reed’s Train to LV? Or is Grape Research going to stimulate anything other than a good buzz! Or that odorous Pig Odor Research (Save the money. I’ll tell you that Pig’s stink. Trust me on this. And Hogs! So do Cows, so no Cow Odor Researc earmark, please, Pelosi!)? Or honeybees and termites? Or an on-line Encyclopedia in Nevada (HINT: Send them a link to Google, Wikepedia or Brittanica!! Save a lot of money!! DUH!)? Or so many other non-stimulation wasteful spending. Targeted, Timely, Transparent, yada yada. Just more pap for the citizenry?
Our President LIED? Can you explain it any other way??
Regarding “doing exactly what he said he was going to do if he were elected”, does that include “no Lobbyists will be allowed in the Administration”? Or that “honesty in government” includes a coterie of Tax Cheats being nominated to BO Administration positions? Or that “transparency” thingie includes a $410B Budget that was released in the dark of night for vote the next morning!
Yes indeed! Doing what he promised!! NOT!
bear says: “Grow up and use your brain.”
I am, and my brain keeps telling me that when you try to fix an economic crisis with just tax cuts, minimal spending on infrastructure and a reduction on capital gains tax, the end result is a lot of rich peoples’ heads in guillotines and a lot of poor people pro-activelly solving the housing crisis by invading gated communities. Thousands of years of history supports my reasoning on this. What supports yours?
SteveP at #114 — actually, Saltherring didn’t say the poor don’t work, he said they don’t pay taxes. By that he meant they don’t pay net federal income taxes. Which they don’t. It is a simple fact that, after the Bush tax cuts, the poorest 50% of tax filers don’t pay federal income taxes at all. In other words, they get back everything that was withheld for income tax — “FITW” on your wage statement — in a tax year.
They do pay into Social Security and Medicare, of course, which is 13% of the income of anyone on a payroll.
But you can’t give an income tax break to someone who doesn’t pay net income tax. You can only give him a subsidy.
I am sorry to see that our education system works so poorly as to have produced this sentence from you:
“…income distribution is how this country operates. We collect a big pool of tax money, and we redistribute it to programs and services that Americans need.”
Setting aside that this is merely a theoretical description of how some political groups wish or demand that GOVERNMENT operated — as opposed to how the country itself operates — I wonder if you can answer a question for me.
It is another simple fact that the top 2% of income earners pay 40% of the income taxes. Many in the poorest income quintile, including those who work, receive net subsidies (e.g., from the Earned Income Credit) that are funded by the taxes paid by the top 2%. Setting aside whether this is “right” or not, here is my question. If those in the top 2% decide — for whatever reason — that it is no longer worth earning what they have been earning, and curtail their taxable economic activities, where will the money come from to continue the subsidies to the bottom 20% of earners? (In truth, the subsidies reach into the next quintile up, so it’s really some in the bottom 40% who receive them.)
How does your model subsidize the bottom 40% if the top 2%, or 5%, or even 20% lose their motivation to earn what we are taxing them on today?
To my senses, it seems you’d have to be pretty naive not to comprehend nor recognize the association between the Hollywood industry’s primary resources (I.e. Immature Perceptions) and the advanced emphasis American Business places on Market Analysis, Development and Risk Management. In theory the end game is to eliminate a competitor completely…thus no evidence of risk. To do so you have to engage in a revisionist strategy to erase even the memory of that competitor. Fascism was too blatant in these regards; perhaps that was the only lesson learned there. Now the US has a subversive contingent comprehending the converse strategy of “persuasion” and “peaceful” invasiveness… (The cuckoo’s egg) to benefit of its effect. Bait and switch. African’s have coined the phrase, “Dead White Man’s Clothes” from the charitable efforts of the Americans.Therein’s the folly and foibles of Shelf-space Socialism. Notice how the conspicuous wealth of “peoples” celebrities (the harvesters of hot air) remains exempt from regulations (“Banned in the USA”)…and all they do is give to food banks when the moment serves the public’s attention. Talk about feudalism.
Steve P.:
“If I refuse to do a part of my job based on arbitrary ethics…” blah blah blah.
I take it your job involves making ethical decisions regarding life and death. Physicians who disagree with abortion will not perform the procedure regardless of what the government says.
BTW, “arbitrary ethics” is a two-way street.
“Dueling over the Airways”?
Rush has 0bama well beaten there. Rush owns and pays for his own personal jet, 0bama spends exhorbitant amounts of our money to fly snywhere..
Oh ! Did you mean “dueling over the airwaves”, Victor?
Hmm, Rush would have well beaten there too!
Dr. Hansen should not give Obama such sound advice. Imagine if Obama actually took some of these seriously and was able to keep a majority of the American people bamboozled while he went merrily about the radical socialist transformation that he’s begun? I don’t want Obama to succeed. I want him and his policies to to fail miserably so that the freedoms this country was built upon might have a chance to be preserved. Getting the oh so mesmerized American to sit up and take notice is going to require a monumental failure of Obama. I don’t want anyone to help him along with any sound advice on how he might make this socialist transformation more palatable or less disgusting. It needs to be seen for what it is. I’m way past being calm and respectful to the man who would be king!
#40 Flipside: I’m with you!!!
Steve P @ 114:
The programs your idol has funded and is proposing would effect a greater monetary outlay than the United States government has spent in its entire 232 year history. If you’re fine with that, you’re an even bigger idiot than you’ve already proven to be, given your almost daily ridiculous comments.
To all the Socialists/Marxists/Communists out there, I’m in the process of “sippin” my evening medicine, double shots of Tennessee “sippin” whiskey on the rocks, and I don’t want to be bothered by all your Fidel Castro, Leninist, Obama bullshit. Yes, they have “free” medical care in Cuba, that island paradise where Cubans get on intertubes and risk their lives to escape. But they also have free medical care at the Menard Federal Penitentary in southern Illinois. If you America-haters want to join Fidel, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out of this country. God Bless America!
One more: Awesome NRO piece (“Triumph of Banality”) today, professor. Just awesome. Extremely well written. Whaled that one with a sharp crack of the bat over left field and into the berm behind the Jumbotron.
OK, I’ll go back in my hole.
I used to think people who questioned his U.S. citizenship were part of the black helicopter crowd, but I’m starting to wonder.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+
Still Bill, I am with you on this one. I used to think the “birthers” were paranoid but I sense there is a reason his O-ness is refusing to release his birth certificate. What is he hiding? Were his parents never married? Is another man listed as his father or is no one listed? Was he born in a manger in Hawaii or in Kenya? I hope The National Enquirer is working on this. (yup, I’m serious)
Steve P # 121:
That’s the problem with a president winning an election on the promise of ‘hope and change’. Obviously, nobody, including Mr. Obama, has any idea what he is trying to do. Your vision of starving Americans storming rich houses to loot them for ever more scarce resources is of course your invented justification for him having dumb economic policies (such as spreading the wealth around in a recession).
In reality Mr. Obama feels the priority of the day is to shun Canada for dirty oil and make silly demands on their most significant and friendly trading partner. I don’t think he’s as worried about securing resources for the country as you are. Maybe you should ask him to explain his policies. Better late than never eh?
This is what we get when ideas are successfully divorced from their necessary consequences. We were asked to give intellectual assent to the absurd proposition that President Obama’s 20 year radical past and sitting in the pew of a Marxist preaching pastor has not seriously effected his world view. Now America may be “Changed” beyond recognition.
” … This really gets to the heart of the disingenuous Right.”
And your rote recitation of talking points gets to the heart of the disingenuous left.
VDH:
“Instead, you are beginning to create an ‘us/them’ climate of increasing passionate intensity, and unleashing zeal that cannot be healthy for the country. So far your soaring rhetoric, untraditional background, and the good will of the American people have mitigated such extremism as your Attorney General calling the nation collective “cowards” or your own serial invective again “the rich,” “bankers” and Rush Limbaugh.
But there will come a time, when you will rue the politics of class warfare and the rhetoric of the demagogue—and may find the very intensities that you are unleashing for political advantage now, later on will be precisely those that you most regret that even you cannot control.”
That’s as about as clearly as it can be put and still remain polite and within the law.
I hope someone spray-paints these two paragraphs in 6 foot high letters,on every wall that faces the White House.
Hussein is a Muslim foreign national Marxist Racist with dictatorial ambitions
#131 LeighB – The state of Hawaii released a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but the state is prevented by law from releasing the original copy. Personally – I think Mr Obama is smarter than you give him credit, this insane paranoid chatter only serves as a tool he can use of discrediting legitimate criticism of his policies.
We have seen these types of politics before and we will again. Ladies and Gentlemen, I suggest we don’t hand our enemy bullets.
Obama is a left wing tyrant pure and simple. And he is viciously grinding his boot into the face of America. It’s about time Americans started fighting back.
Marzipan: Barry Obama can settle his origin of birth controversy very easily, just like he can settle his college transcript issue very easily. All he has to do is consent to the release of the relevant documents so that the few non-public screw educated scientists still out there can authenticate them. Why doesn’t he, unless he has something to hide? Henry Waxman and John Conyers: Where are you when the country needs a full-fledged Congressional investigation? Oh, I forgot. You’re Democrat party shills.
Obama and the other Democrat a$$holes are bringing about the quick demise of America. I fear that only secession or revolution will save the Republic.
Off topic:
Has anyone else noticed that Obama always speaks of the government and his office’s items in the possesive? It is “his Secretary of the Treasury”, his policy, his budget, etc. It seems to me that previous presidents spoke of “THE budget”, THE Secratary of the Treasury, THE office of the President. Am I wrong? I think that there is something wrong in a psychiatric sort of way. But, I have no traing in this area so I will not try to determine what. Maybe someone else in the Works and Days family can hazard a guess?
What type of mentality does this speak of?
Forget talk radio
The freedom of dissent of talk radio sticks in the socialist craw of Barack, Nancy, Rahm, Carville, Soros…the whole crowd.
The Plan (aka the agenda) is to spend (Soros-like) millions/billions to attempt to discredit “right wing” talk radio.
Thid President and his surrogates (and/or his sponsors) is not anything about “unity” but, rather, is about destruction of any and all opposition that still survives to thwart their (very slim) mandate to remake America into something never envisioned as possible at the founding of this country.
135 Bilgeman . . . Great . . . more veiled threats of violence against the president from the Right. That’s quite a mini-manifesto you’re cooking up. Way to reach for the stars, boys. You’re great Americans. Hail to Rush.
Agree with you Marzipan. He uses “distractions” to further his ugly agenda. Keep the hammer on the issues daily.
#49 dotconnector hit it right on the head. I have been endlessly commenting that same obvious fact ever since I saw “the hanwriting on the wall” last year. No one even remembers RHODESIA and the fact it was a prosperous nation that exported produce and product. ROBERT MUGABE and the leftists with the endearing journalistic reporting of Newsweek and TIME, turned it into fair and equal poverty for all (except the leaders), ‘ZIMBABWE’. I see the exact same threat for the USA. The rule book is in the hands of ‘The Winner’. Bible Prophesy never looked possible in my early life. Now it is more on track than ever.
Steve P.:
I know you. I even know where you live – appoximately. You are a moron.
Let’s talk about those people that you love so much who “work”. Never was it said that they did not work. It was only said that they do not pay taxes. Strawman #1 destroyed.
Secondly, let’s talk about those “no bid” contracts. How much would you charge to drive a truck filled with diesel or jet fuel through the Iraqi desert while small unit action was being used to blow up the truck you were driving? Do you have a company in YOUR hometown that would bid to take this opportunity? I thought not. Most other towns lack such a bidder as well. However, bidders or not, the fuel must be delivered.
You are a skanky little lib who thinks that he knows more than other people. You are addicted to a philosophy and you don’t have the experience or the intellect to back up. Stop lecturing your betters. They can smell your fear a mile away. Prepare for the even more miserable life that your messiah has in mind for you.
36. Smithee:
You’re right, in a sense. Socialist doesn’t resonate with a large portion of this country:
My goodness, given the tenor of today’s comments, one would believe that we’ve just started the Romanian Revolt all over again. Well, at least it’s not yet Christmas Day, although perhaps Easter would be an appropriate substitute.
I do hope it doesn’t come to that.
However, our president is running down the path to Socialism and getting much help from the majority leaders in Congress. Also, his Treasury Secretary sounded like a raving Marxist today with his rant about taxing those terrible natural energy producers. Plus his Secretary of State just unloaded a bucket load of nasty stuff on Israel today.
Those events, along with the debacle of the note to Russia regarding Iran lead me to wonder if we’re going to reap a whirlwind and soon. His hopenchange seem more like gloomendoom.
Oh would that it were true that 52% of luv struck America voted for “Jimmy Carter with a suntan”, then at least there’d be a chance of getting rid of him. What you guys have actually bought yourselves is “Hugo Chavez on crystal meth” and like the “Chav” ObIwon ain’t gonna be shuffling out of the White House any time soon (Michelle likes it too much and is planning to paint it black).
Worried about your retirement pension? My tip: put a sizeable bet on Obama to win the Presidency for a third term in 2016 and then take your winnings and emigrate to the independent republic of Alaska (if Putin hasn’t already nabbed it, that is).
And yes it’s true, the word “socialist” doesn’t cut it. It’s been sanitised by decades of KGB funded academic and media unintellectuals. Throw the commie manure back and call them what they are; FASCISTS! Shout it from the rooftops, never let up, it’ll drive ‘em crazy (I mean, even crazier if that’s possible).
Ciao, see you in Hell.
Barack Obama could have been a great President.
He’s the first African American to be elected commander in chief. Something we should all be proud of. He’s highly intelligent. Very likable. Handsome. Sounds like a beautifully toned Stradivarius when he speaks.
Yes, sir, he’s all of that. And more.
He’s also a con artist.
Someone who gets what he wants (usually money and power) through trickery and deceit.
Part and parcel to being a con artist, of course, is his practiced ability to lie through his teeth.
An easy example.
During his campaign for President, Obama repeatedly promised that, as President, he’d go through bills line by line to exise the pork.
Now, though, he promises to sign the largest pork bill in the history of this country the minute it’s put on his desk.
A bill stuffed with 9,000 pieces of the most expensive pork the American taxpayer ever had to swallow.
The pork is part of a bill that’s part of a budget that’s part of an administration that’s destined to bankrupt us.
At which point, we’ll literally depend on the government to survive. At which point, his scheme to fully socialize the United States will be almost impossible to stop. If we don’t act now, we’ll be like 183 Texans trying to defend an Alamo against 3,000 troops. All of whom died trying.
And what’s with trying to destroy Rush Limbaugh? What’s that all about?
To answer, I have to use language that generally takes away a writer’s credibility.
President Obama is using the playbook of Adolph Hitler.
Since Barack doesn’t want you to direct your anger at Barack, he’s created the Hitler template scapegoat; the rich.
Seventy years ago in Germany the scapegoat was the filthy Jews.
Who’ve been replaced by what Barack calls, “the filthy rich.
Barack implores you to hate them by implying they’re all flying on private planes a la Nancy Palosi, living like Kings and taking what rightfully should be shared with people who “work for a living”.
Barack also wants you to hate influencial people. In Germany, Hitler picked on teachers, writers, factory owners.
Here and now, Barack wants you to hate certain media types like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.
Hypocrite that he is, Barack lies and tells America to hate people who tell the truth.
To combat this deceit, it’s my heartfelt hope that, we, the American people, have, passed down by generations, an innate sense of right and wrong, truth and falsity, honesty and corruption.
The time is now to call Barack the mad man he is by shouting it from the rooftops, in the classrooms, in newspapers, on radio and TV.
What we have is a President who is trying to destroy the ideals on which this country was founded.
It’s time to fight back because our President in effect has declared war on you and me.
Well, I declare this.
I declare that under all that smooth talk, scapegoating rhetoric and taxpayer robbery, is a scared little man. I may be just a girl, but I think Barack Obama is nothing more than a coward.
On January 20th, Obama pledged to protect and defend this country. But this con artist is trying to turn the nation into something unrecognizable. Every day, he paints by the numbers a picture of hate and fear on a canvas of hope which he plans to surround by a frame of socialism.
This is as close as I can pull a Paul Revere. Living in the White House is a black man who’s not our friend.
On the alter of freedom, I pledge my life, my duty and my sacred honor. And ask you to join me. Because this is something I can’t do alone. We’re fighting not just for our families. We’re fighting for our country.
Thank you for displaying some understanding of how dishonest Obama’s persecution of the “rich” really is.
As you so deftly explained, a family making $250,000 a year (both people working long hours and reporting every penny to the IRS to be taxed) is not in the same mega-rich devil-may-care territory as Obama and his rich friends.
Upper middle income earners have lost over half of their retirement savings in their 401Ks. If they were near retirement, well, they are not near it now because they will have to work many more years to try to stay afloat during the coming inflation that Obama’s spending will engender. That is, if they are lucky enough not to lose their jobs. Meanwhile, just as they are feeling the poorest they’ve been in years, Obama will punish them with higher income and energy taxes.
And the rest of us, at every income level will pay punishing additional taxes in skyrocketing energy costs due to Obama’s execrable cap and trade program on CO2.
Much of the additional spending will go to huge new welfare and entitlement programs. And we need to be plain speaking. This not a “transfer of wealth from the greedy rich to the working poor.” No, a large part of this transfer is REPARATIONS. Obama knows he can never get reparations for slavery passed, but he can sure as hell punish successful people with taxes and transfer their money to social programs which benefit minorities in disproportionate percentages.
Obama is a racist, classist radical whose spending isn’t designed to restart the economy, but to break the strong middle class in order to make everyone dependent on Obama’s Brave New World.
Taxes will be increased until moral improves.
Calling the 0 adminstration a bunch of bozos, clowns, clueless whatevers is underestimating OUR problem.
Please hit RESET: The Left intends to happen, everything that is happening and that’s going to happen, get it?
Please hit RESET: They are very good at it! The Left has managed to kill more than 200 MILLION humans beings, so far, including nearly everyone who objected…in just the last 150 years.
Let’s do a thought experiment: If I was the socialist-in-chief. First, I’d surround myself with people who had to “toe my line,” or face severe discomfort; ie, yes-men lackeys who fear losing their cushy positions and crooks who fear going to jail, because of their past misdeeds and associations. I could probably “get away with it, if they were all just tax-evaders. I’d be sure to put a tax-evader in charge of tax collection. This, just to show the sheeple I had a sense of humor. Mock. Mock.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, if I was the socialist-in-chief, I’d want the market to tank so the savings of the middle class evaporated. And, I’d do everything in my power to insure it did happen. Otherwise, I couldn’t enlist most of these heretofore independent producing class folks to become gov’t. entitlees; ie, move them onto the dole.
Coincidentially, I’d want my gov’t and my apparatciks to be able to aquire the “properties” of the productive class at “extremely distressed prices.” Hey down market would is good, as the value of these assets would be radically diminished – banks, autos, insurance, etc. would be my first targets…banks especially, cause that gives me direct access to the savings. Note to self: Don’t call it “nationlization,” because that would tip my hand prematurely. I’ll have my “media apparatus” trumpet it as something like a “bailout.” Nothing to see here. Move along. It’s all for the people and the public good. That has a great ring ot it, no? Note to self: Use that “public good” stuff constantly.
Next, to pay for my takeover, I’d want to slap an unsustainable debt load on the economy, basically to rapidly expand the size and areas of gov’t. control, and I’d use bullions to pay off my supporters and reward my cronies. I’ll make this debt load so large that the entire population, even in decades of good economic times, can’t pay it off for 50 years.
To keep my program on track, I’ll pro-actively divide the nation; split it into as many different “special interests” as I could. Have them war against each other, 24/7/365. I’ll use race-baiting, slander, (politics of personal destruction and anti-Americanism would be two of my most effective); essentially all the time-tested tools other socialists-in-chief have used to suppress free speech, confiscate private property, etc. Broadcast TV needs my licenses. Hah, I’ll call suppression of talk radio the “Fairness Doctrine.” I’ve got the print media under control. What about other means of communication? Note to self: Figure out what to call suppression of the Internet. Something about protecting the “children” will work.
Energy independence? Nah, that would be counterproductive to my long term goal. Let’s see, no-drilling anywhere, no nuclear power and I’ll have my press and academia promote lots of alternatives that all require a gov’t subsidy; that should work.
Of course, I’ll have to defund and downsize my military, dramatically reduce my nuclear arsenal and leave the borders open for my new constituents.
All you dupes are mine.
Wow, if I could just get those few things accomplished, they’d essentially be irreversable, and I’d be well on my way to enslaving the US citizenry. Then I could pass any kind of laws I wanted and would have no problem rewriting the Constitution (hell, I could abolish it – make it “illegal”), as I won’t want the next couple of generations to have any shared-memories of freedom. And, after a coupla years, I could pass the baton and retire. Full boat, 100% healthcare and the lifelong protection by my newly-established National Security Force. Note to self: I’ll have to think up some snazzy initals for that group.
Jeez by then, I could buy an island; no a whole country.
I’d want LOGOs too. And new flags. And a fleet of helicopters, each costing more than a 747.
Golly, I’m just being power-hungry, experiencing delusions of grandeur, and the country can’t be that ripe. Besides, for any of my programs to actually work, I’d have to get elected President first. I’d better get back to my day job, “orgainizing special interest groups.”
Thanks again VDH. But two points -first the Obama Administration is using Limbaugh as a ploy against the Republican party. The RNC needs to get a clue and stop taking the bait. Of course he does not matter, but until the flames stop getting fanned it won’t go away too easily.
Second, ugliness continues to brew abroad with Iran. We should ALL have our watchful eye focused on the Obama Foreign Policy. As Ahmadinejad and Khomenai call for a United Muslim Front against Israel, (and all zionist supporters) and North Korea continues its bad ways, as bad as the economy is, WORLD WAR would be worse.
Franklin Rains is Franklin Raines, as in
When it Raines, it poors.
tans@142,
never envisioned as possible at the founding of this country
Chrimey, I never believed this situation possible 1 year ago!.
150 Rachel Peepers
You say: “I may be just a girl…”, rather:
I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an’ pretend
’cause I’ve heard it all before
And I’ve been down there on the floor
No one’s ever gonna keep me down again
CHORUS
Oh yes I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman
You can bend but never break me
’cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
’cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul (probably referring to VDH)
:- )
Good luck with that.
Sorry, “good luck with that” was addressed to Hanson. I admire VDH tremendously, but I don’t think that he really belives that Fidel Obama will listen to a word he says.
Filibuster all the way into 2010. America’s only hope.
i read the comment, obama hates white people, oh yes you are so correct. he is not half white, and he was not raised by a white person. you are correct he wants to expand welfare which is disgusting but he does not HATE white people. just because hes half black doesnt mean that he is more horrible than any other liberal but like most republicans they wont give up on the race card and just like the uneducated blacks, they wont give up on the race card. its sad but true
You remind me of what Madeline L’Engle said to an interviewer who asked her if the Disney adaption of “A Wrinkle in Time” met her expectations: “Yes. I expected it to be terrible, and it was.”
REPLY
Barack implores you to hate them by implying they’re all flying on private planes a la Nancy Palosi, living like Kings and taking what rightfully should be shared with people who “work for a living”.
during barack’s address he stated that he wouldnt let the ceo’s and big boys get a bailout and then use it for their bonus’ and so on, that is true. you’re over analyzing it and saying that he wants you to hate them. NO he is saying that wont happen. that extreme wont happen, he is not talking about every person that makes 200,000 or more a year
You nailed it! Unfortunately Barack Obama is a small man. He’ll never get most of these points. And he is in WAAAAY over his head. Anyone who has never signed the FRONT of a paycheck can never truly understand the challenges and difficulty of owning a small business. His intellectual arrogance will never allow him to “get it”.
vdh is right on.The guy is attempting to turn us into the soviet union of america.No communist revolution has ever succeeded or stayed in place except at the point of a gun.He will play that card when he needs to, so be prepared.
the sooner we recognize this mini Lenin for what he is,the better.
We are on a slippery slope… What’s been happening is not short of the cult of personality that usually precedes a dictatorship. He (Obama) is preparing to take absolute power. Demonizing the rich, Wall Street Congress and the Senate is in process. He already made a mockery of Biden, his chosen?! VP, the rest is to come.
With all the shortcomings, USA is still the best there is in this world, every day people risk their life to get here but some of us wanted an unqualified “change” and they might just get it, a Castro or Chaves.
To bad the ones who love this country and want to keep it being the best in the world have to put up with the “changes”.
Jeez. T can’t believe how many of you are only just geddin’ it.
I mean, this is supposed to be a conservative website, init?
77. Steve P.:
Hanson is just earning his salary.
150. Rachel Peepers:
It looks like you ate your Cheerios this morning.
Winston Churchill famously said: “In War-Resoluiton, In Defeat-Defiance, In Victory-Magnanimity, In Peace-Goodwill.” He meant it. Churchill was not just a great leader but a humane and generous man. Would that we could find those qualities in our current leadership. The President seems committed to creating a continuous civic warfare whereby idealogical enemies must be targeted, hunted and in the name of “change.” The five recommendations above are excellent but it would take a real leader, not just an adept politician, to adopt them.
Winston Churchill famously said: “In War-Resoluiton, In Defeat-Defiance, In Victory-Magnanimity, In Peace-Goodwill.” He meant it. Churchill was not just a great leader but a humane and generous man. Would that we could find those qualities in our current leadership. The President and his team seem committed to creating a new form of civic warfare (the “Neverending Campaign”) where idealogical enemies are targeted, hunted and destroyed in the name of “change.” The five recommendations of VDH above are excellent but it would take a real leader, not just an adept politician, to adopt them.