Lest there be any misunderstanding of the what "right" means, it is LESS GOVERNMENT, meaning MORE FREEDOM. Note that this is clearly not "Fascist" or "Nazi", both of which refer to completely oppressive to totalitarian government.
Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.
Dionne is refreshingly honest and clear that the "right-wing is anti-government" -- which is honest and factual for a change. Therefore, we see that even the left fully recognizes that the right is NOT Fascist or Nazi. They just love to use those terms to scare everyone.
So what about "government haters"? Does wanting LESS government equate to wanting NO government? I'd think only in a world where "government lovers" -- certainly a reasonable name for the forces of the left given Dionne's rhetoric would want TOTAL government, in other words TOTALITARIAN government. If Dionne admits that is his goal, then I'll give some credence to the idea that anyone that wants any sort of limit at all on government wants NO government!
Dionne strongly praises the electoral win worked out by the opponents of the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" which was based on the idea that such bills would CUT government programs. What the bill's would do is limit the GROWTH in government to a rate tied to inflation, income growth and population growth. Government could still grow, it just couldn't grow without any restriction.
In the haste to pile on restriction after restriction on business and individuals, the left finds ANY restriction on government to be entirely unpalatable. No question that proponents of reasonable measures to control the growth of government have a lot of work to do -- the MSM forces of misrepresentation won this one!
And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America
And there you have it! California is in deep deep trouble. Why? Well, it is because of that teeny tiny rump Republican party! Certainly not due to the vast numbers of Democrats spending, taxing and borrowing as if there were no limits on what sort of fruitcake programs ought to be funded in lala land. Nope, it is those pesky Republicans. Damn!
Just think for one second here. The Democrats have a filibuster proof Senate and a huge majority in the house, but Republicans complaining at all is "paranoid"? Let's wind the clock back to just after the election in '04 when Republicans were like 6 votes SHORT of filibuster proof, and one would have thought the world had ended. Now Nobel Prize Krugman is afraid of there being ANY Republicans? That sounds BEYOND "paranoid" to me, it sounds borderline genocidal!
As a regular MPR/NPR listener, I'm well versed on the horror of the NY 23rd district. The "sad facts" (but then why do they sound so happy on the air?) are that Republicans are absolutely killing themselves in a "safe district". The local "reasonable Republicans" selected a "suitable moderate" -- pro-abortion, pro-BO stimulus, etc. The kind of "electable Republican" that is the ONLY HOPE for ANY gains in '10. Now, as per usual, those stupid ideologues on the right have created a "classic no win" -- especially since the endorsed Republican candidate dropped out and endorsed ... the Democrat! (thus proving how reasonable she is!)
If the Democrat wins, obviously that means that Republicans are in far worse shape than they thought! Losing a seat that was "safe". If the conservative candidate wins, it might give the national Republicans FALSE IDEAS! (and we know how much the MSM and the Democrats want to avoid THAT happening!!). Why everyone knows that conservatives are "unelectable", especially in fairly liberal districts that have traditionally swung Republican like NY 23! If a conservative gets elected there, it is PROOF that ... er? ah yes, that "conservatives are UNELECTABLE"!!! Simple!!
Now, without even looking at the attached top secret piece of information -- seen nowhere in the MSM, one could just think of Joe Lieberman. Did the fact that he stood up for his own principles and was thrown out of the Democrat party somehow destroy the Democrats in '08? Was there a lot of coverage of old Joe at all? AFAIK, the Democrat VP candidate in '04 might be vacationing on Mars for all the attention he gets.
But DO go read the article. Why is it that the MSM isn't concerned at all -- the the level of not even reporting it, that MoveOn is raising millions of dollars to defeat moderate Democrats?
I think we know. To the MSM, the "moderate Democrats" are BO, Nancy, Harry, John Kerry and all the rest of what they see as "decent Democrats". Any Democrat that would even CONSIDER voting against BOcare is some sort of a "reactionary right wing ideologue that may as well be Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck!! BTW, any media outlet that might have an alternate view of that is so biased that one must question their right to broadcast!
This article covers a number of the BO Bush bashes, in some detail. I find this to be just another example in differential treatment between Democrat and Republican presidents taking over. Can you imagine the press cutting Reagan any slack for complainin he had to deal with hostages in Iran upon taking office? They were released the day he took office, that MUST have been because Iranians like Republicans! ... or maybe actors. How about Reagan complaining that the economy was bad, deficits were huge, unemployment was high and rising? Nope. The economy sucked when Reagan took office, and it still sucked in '82 when there was an off-year election and "the failure of Reaganomics" was one of the issues. As Reagan said in '83, he really knew his programs were working when the media stopped talking about Reaganomics!
How about Bush taking over in a recession in '01 with the stock market already sharply lower from it's highs in 2000? Did he get to complain about the "hangover from Slick Willie"? Not that I know of. How about Bush complaining about the security situation left over from Clinton when 9-11 happened? Can you imagine how THAT would have gone over? The MSM was all excited to somehow "blame Bush" even though terrorism was a rising tide all through the '90s. The idea that the MSM would allow any blame to fall on the previous Democrat administration is patently nuts. We know that no matter how many women Slick was groping and fondling in the oval office, his focus was never moved from the weighty issues of his office!
Considering the length of the terms, I'd say that the MSM treats the REPUBLICANS correctly!! After all, what job did BO think he was running for? When a CEO takes over a company, do they get a lot of slack because "the other guy was bad"? How about when a new coach takes over a sports team? Do they get to be surprised by the job they took? How in the world COULD they be? That would mean that they didn't do a careful assessment of the job they were taking before they took it, which would indicate that they were someone that should NOT be in any leadership position at all!! Leaders are HIRED to take positions of RESPONSIBILITY -- that is one of the cores of what it means to be a leader. Why hire a new guy if he is just going to bitch and whine about the old guy?
But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.
I think the sad part is that they DO know. Afghanistan went to pot shortly after BO came in because I think everyone really knows the answer. Sure, he is tenacious in the destruction of America -- he will not rest until he has licked the boots of every tin-pot dictator on the planet and tearfully apologized to nations like the Russians, French, Germans and Japanese that only exist because of our largess following WWII. We won't have any industries or capacity to create new ones once BO is through with his reign of error.
The experts I spoke with describe a vacuum at the heart of the war effort — a determination vacuum. And if these experts do not know the state of President Obama’s resolve, neither do the Afghan villagers. They are now hedging their bets, refusing to inform on Taliban force movements because they are aware that these Taliban fighters would be their masters if the U.S. withdraws. Nor does President Hamid Karzai know. He’s cutting deals with the Afghan warlords he would need if NATO leaves his country.
Nor do the Pakistanis or the Iranians or the Russians know. They are maintaining ties with the Taliban elements that would represent their interests in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.
The determination vacuum affects the debate in this country, too. Every argument about troop levels is really a proxy argument for whether the U.S. should stay or go. The administration is so divided because the fundamental issue of commitment has not been settled.
"A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals", by Saul Alinsky.
This book is considered the "bible" for the Community Organizer, which is of course the only non-governmental position of any stature ever held by BO, and has been regularly in the news with the ACORN scandals.
The book is quite well written and very (surprisingly) honest. Alinsky is not only highly intelligent, but I'd assert he portrays the outlook of the modern "liberal" as directly and well as anyone that I have read. The key points here are PRAGMATIC and REALISTIC -- while many liberals (Lakoff being a great example) are highly intelligent, they often never get down to what it is that they are really trying to get done and how they are going to accomplish it. Alinsky does, and everyone that doesn't share the liberal class warfare view ought to be warned through actually reading this.
On the cover notes, you will find:
"Lest we forget at lest an over the shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."
Everyone that believes they share the "progressive" view would be well served to get down to brass tacks and understand what it is that they are signing up for!
Page 31, last paragraph:
Those that would be critical of the ethics of Lincoln's reversal of positions have a strangely unreal picture of static unchanging world, where one remains firm and committed to certain so-called principles or positions. In the politics of human life, consistency is not a virtue.
There, stated with clarity is what I have long observed as the only core and unchanging liberal position. "Consistency is not a virtue". In fact, I'd argue that it isn't even "an issue" -- their view of reality is such that it is a concept that simply doesn't register. Before you sign up, realize that true "liberals" and "progressives" eschew any idea of fixed thought on anything but what they want --**power**!!! EVERYTHING else is completely fungible if it leads to a centralized totalitarian state where they have total and absolute control. "Women's rights", "Income Equality", "Climate Change' ... all just means to the end of totalitarian control.
The second element of liberalism that I believe this book shows with clarity is that of "ends and means" -- we often know the CLAIMED ends of liberals. "Peace, harmony, removal of want, dignity for all, equality of everything, etc", but what they are often lacking in just what MEANS must be employed to achieve their goals. Not Alinsky. Page 142 and 143 cover a good example of a tactic he was extremely proud of, although just the threat got what he wanted. The "shit in".
I'm not going to quote a lot, essentially it is the realization that when people get off a plane, they often have to use the restroom. So Alinsky and company had a plan to have blacks fill all the stalls at all the bathrooms at O'Hare and then have a set of roving black men to fill the urinals in the area of the airport where flights were coming in. Here he is enjoying what this would entail:
One can see children yelling at their parents, "Mommy I've got to go", and desperate mothers surrendering, "All right then, Do it right here". O'Hare would soon become a shambles.
It turned out that this tactic was "leaked" (and Alinsky takes great joy in that "Freudian slip"), so the Alisky demands were met without them having to actually do this, but the willingness was not in question.
The need for use of bathroom facilities for ourselves and our children is something that humanity all shares. I remind you that this book is THE BIBLE for Community organizers!! They, and our current president see Saul Alinsky as a GREAT MAN! I'd say there is a good deal of difference between the founder of Christianity, Jesus, healing and holding the children and feeding the masses, and the founder of ACORN and BOism taking glee in the denial of the most basic of human needs to children. Not really surprising if you see no problem with killing them in their mother's womb I guess.
That is because I foolishly believe in a level of morality that transcends simply getting what I want through taking it from others by any means -- and often find it hard to believe that there are those like Alinsky and his acolytes, Hildebeast and BO, that do not share that form of morality.
Page 43, near the bottom.
Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection of the use of ends or means. Machiavelli's blindness to the necessity for moral clothing to all actions and motives -- he said "politics has no relation to morals"--was his major weakness.
All great leaders, including Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln and Jefferson, always invoked "moral principles" to cover naked self-interest in the clothing of "freedom" "equality" of mankind, "a law higher than man-made law", and so on. This even held under circumstances of national crisis when it was universally assumed that the end justified any means. All effective actions require the passport of morality.
More accurately than "the passport of morality" would be the "cloak of morality". As you read Alinsky, you realize that the ends always justify the means!
Why does "progressivism" (certainly the theft of this term from those who believe in actual human liberty and dignity ought to be abhorrent to any reader of this blog by now!) still live on? Because when you couple "consistency is not a virtue" with joy at the prospect of the most basic denial of human dignity to even children, with the underlying essence that there IS NO MORALITY, yet one must "fake it for the masses", you have something "powerful". (as one often says of BO, "powerful, but power isn't everything"!)
In reading this book, I'm reminded of Luke's question to Yoda in Star Wars, "Is the Dark Side stronger?". Yoda says "no", but one wonders. In this universe, those that believe are assured that Christ is already victorious, but day to day I find that question is always a challenge to my faith. As the Psalmist often says -- how much must we endure Lord?
Page 194:
The middle classes are numbed, bewildered, scared into silence. They don't know what, if anything, they can do. This is the job for today's radical-- to fan the embers of hopelessness into a flame to fight. To say, "You cannot cop out as have many of my generation!" "You cannot turn away--look at it--let us change it together!". ...
It is a job first of bringing hope and doing what every organizer must do with all people, all classes, places and times --communicate the means or tactics whereby the people can feel that they have the power to do this and that and on.
Hope and change, for "this and that and on". What is the "it" that is being changed? To the organizer , it doesn't really matter -- the system, the corporation, capitalism, America, the Constitution, society, white folks thinking, ending Christianity --- "hope, change and action", that is what is important. Revolution, movement, CHANGE!! This was written in 1971, but until the US has becomes a totalitarian leftist state, the battle cry will be the same. BO is just more direct about it than recent liberals.
I could go on and on. He does actually cover "the rules", there are like 12 of them. I love the 5th rule -- "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule."
I strongly suspect that many of our media friends are well aware of this one. Immediately during the Bush administration from the media to the late night talk shows, the ridicule of Bush and Cheney became universal. Sometimes it had some basis in truth, most times it was simply a caricature that was used to denigrate them. It worked extremely well with 80%+ of the population, the dark side IS very strong at a minimum.
Note the difference with BO. It is HARD to find him being ridiculed -- in fact, based on the most recent "hate speech" bill signed into law, is it even LEGAL to ridicule him? He is a black man after all. We know that BO read and used the tactics in this book with regularity. He venerated Alinsky. Is it out of character for him to limit speech such that one of the tactics that he knows like a Christian knows Prayer would be illegal to be used against him?
READ THIS BOOK!!! If you are a "liberal" read it and decide if the tenets laid out here are really what you have in mind. Don't believe me on how important this book is to your own movement. LOOK IT UP YOURSELF!!! This is the BIBLE of our current "messiah" BO! This book is dedicated to Lucifer -- are you?
If you consider yourself conservative, moderate or Christian (and note, in reading this book, there is NO WAY that any Christian can be a Community Organizer and venerate Saul Alinsky), then READ IT to know your enemy!
Read the subject book by Mark A. Knoll for a Church book club. Very well done and somewhat surprising book. I grew up in a fairly far-out fundamentalist Baptist church that occasionally brought in people from Wheaton College in Chicago. Since that church was so fire-breathing anti-Catholic (the Catholic church was "the Harlot" of Revelation, "the woman that sits on seven hills") I expected something of that view here. Noll is a professor at Wheaton, but either Wheaton has changed, or Noll is quite the liberal for that school.
The biggest impression that hits me is the same one that happens every time I read about church history -- one has to be fairly "liberal minded" in one way relative to Christianity to NOT be a Catholic. The story of the Christian church for most of it's history is very much the story of the Catholic Church.
The biggest thing I learned about was "The Great Schism" in 1000 to 1100, where the Orthodox and Roman church split. The disaster of the 4th crusade of 1202 sacking Constantinople was also a revelation to me.
The "turning points" picked were the following:
The Fall of Jerusalem (70) -- the church pushed out of it's cradle.
The Council of Nicea (325) -- The origin of the creed most Christians agree with.
The Council of Chalcedon (451) -- Politics and the Church
Foundation of the Benedictines (530) -- The importanc e of monks to the church
The Coronation of Charlemagne (800) -- Church and State rule Europe
The Great Schism (1054) -- East and West divide.
The Diet of Worms (1521) -- Martin Luther and the Reformation
The English Church Splits (1534) -- The state splits from Rome
The Founding of the Jesuits (1540) -- The great Catholic missionary movement
The Conversion of the Wesleys (1738) -- Religion as personal piety
The French Revolution (1789) -- Secularism turns on religion
Edinburgh Missionary Conference (1910) -- Roots of ecumenicalism
Further turning points in the 20th century
I rather enjoyed the book, but it is one that most folks would find quite dense and overly detailed -- for "the masses" I would suggest something lighter, but then without all the detail, it is very hard to see the reality of the importance of the church to western civilization.
Love the CNN headline, even the BO administration only lies with "saved or created", but CNN has to trump it up to "CREATED"! NPR takes the highest figure stated "saved or created" a MILLION jobs and reports it as gospel.
Ah yes, I can remember after 9-11 when the economy had turned around but the MSM was trying to mute it -- it was ALWAYS called a "jobless recovery" and a typical headline would go "Job's Fall 20,000 Short" ... when you read the article you found out that 250K jobs had been "expected" by somebody (the guy writing the article?), but ONLY 230K were actually created, so "The Bush policies had failed again". Those were the days!
The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.
It is a story in two parts. The first: "They do not think they can make it better.
I agree. I was around in '78-'82 and I think Peggy calls it perfectly:
I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call "the drug companies" until we decided that didn't sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early '80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope. Here's why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, "If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!" Others said, "If we follow Reagan, he'll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we'll be America again, we'll be acting like Americans again." Everyone had a path through.
I think I had a special seat, because I voted for Carter, listened to the "malaise", started reading about this thing called "conservatism" that my schooling had never exposed me to and then hoped that Reagan was right. I also got to watch while in '80-'82 the country was in worse shape than now and the majority of my college friends and even many of the people at were were "sure we had made a mistake with Reagan". BUT, BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats were "sure they had an answer that could return the country to prosperity". Now we don't. I really don't know anyone other than maybe BO himself that truly believes in BOnomics. We are going to borrow prosperity from the Chinese? Seems pretty doubtful to even the most optimistic.
I talked with an executive this week with what we still call "the insurance companies" and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.'" He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."
He felt government doesn't understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they're human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they're all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)
Peggy doesn't know the half of it. The left could care less about any thoughts of "motivation", I believe that many more of them than anyone realizes would just as soon put the "tax cows" in big concentration work camps right now. Why can't the "disenfranchised" just be awarded what they want? Isn't it "selfish" of someone that studied hard, built skills and is marketable to not make as much money as possible so it can be handed to those that didn't develop any skills and have no intention of doing so?
Sowell has another good one. Not that there was an awful lot of America left after Lincoln, TR, FDR and LBJ ... but it seems that BO may well apply the Coup De Grace.
Not that anyone that isn't completely blind didn't see that BO was a disaster before he was ever elected, but it never hurts to look reality in the maw. I like his closing:
I hope I am wrong about all of the above, and that human nature really has magically changed in the era of Obama. So close your eyes, listen to the Messiah’s voice, and repeat: “Debts will be forgiven by creditors; inflation will not follow from massive borrowing; breakthroughs in solar and wind will power our cars and heat our homes; enemies will admire our compassion and join us to achieve world peace; and terrorists are either misunderstood or provoked needlessly by our bellicosity that alone stands in the way of peace.”
Believe all that and you can lay back and enjoy the age of Obama.
Maybe some folks outside of the 40% of people that are conservative and Fox news will finally realize just how stupid a "created or saved" statistic is.
This is a nice little point not covered in the MSM that might make your stomach drop a bit if you know anything about business:
No wonder capital spending plans were at an all-time low in the third quarter, according to the NFIB monthly survey.
All-time low? Oh my god! It makes sense, it is just about as sobering as the two wars that are now falling apart under the mismanagement and dithering of his royal BOness.
Old cartoon, but it is a problem that never goes away. "Let me sell you something that is too good to be true" -- retirement without savings, "free" medical care, guaranteed wages, "freedom" from personal responsibility. The ranks of the gullible are always significant.
Rather interesting little writeup on Ayn Rand by Mark Sanford, yes, THAT Mark Sanford. Interesting how Slick Willie was a far worse womanizer, and Teddy K even managed to kill his young lover, yet they are still just fine. My gut reaction to Mark Sanford is the same as it is to Slick and Teddy -- however I suspect that neither of them either are or would have been writing anything in praise of the ideals of Ayn.
If one listens to the MSM, music, and watches movies, it seems that conservatism is some fringe viewpoint shared by only a very few folks of lower intelligence, lack of education and most likely "clinging to their guns and religion". How strange that Gallup has kept track, and since '92, self-identified conservatives are always around 40% of the population, and self-identified liberals are always around 20%.
I like to read both sides. The defense is essentially:
Fox news really IS biased -- with a list of folks that work there that have connections to Republicans. What isn't mentioned is that in poll after poll 90+ % of the mass media are Democrats and many people in the current MSM once worked for Democrats. Whose kettle is the most black? It is very hard to tell, but since Fox stands pretty much alone on the conservative side other than talk radio, it isn't hard to see how they may have some degree of a "bunker mentality".
Nixon was a lot worse than BO. Probably true -- I really think Hitler was a lot worse than W as well, but that didn't stop a lot of people from trying to make the association. I'd like to think that given the CONTEXT, where Nixon had essentially zero media friends and BO has a bunch, Nixon had very little party power in congress and BO has a bunch, Nixon inherited a war in which 10's of thousands had died and we had 500K in the field, while BO inherited 2 wars which we were winning, and are still winning on one of them --- etc, etc. The point is, Nixon had it just a teeny weeny bit tougher than BO. I don't recall multiple assassinations and riots last year as I do from '68. Watergate and the enemies list also didn't occurr in Nixon's first year of his first term -- BO is in a different time when I think we all thought that anything like the Fox attacks was past us, he has near absolute media power, wanting to get to absolute power ought given any thinking person pause and last I recall, Nixon didn't run as "the messiah of openness and light". Given CONTEXT, I find the BO-Nixon comparison to have far more merit as something to consider relative to a "dangerous direction" than W-Hitler. Hey, Bush didn't even had a symbol -- BO does. The swastika wasn't bad prior to Hitler -- what might the future of the "rainbow O" be?
It is interesting to watch a far left outlet rise up in defense of attacks on a free press. When your guy is in power and your ethics are all situational by design, the world looks MUCH different.
Since the '80s, the left has howled in anger and laughter at "trickle down economics" -- the idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats". They have worked hard statistically and rhetorically to claim the the rich have gotten richer, but the poor are no better off. Much like thinking of global warming while the snow piles up in MN on the 23rd of October, they have managed to do this while the "poor" have cell phones, flat panel tvs, high speed internet and their most prevalent health problem is obesity.
Shrinking the "wealth gap" by making everyone worse off is a cynical way to "champion the middle class".
To some, Paul Krugman is a champion of the middle and lower classes given his desire to shrink the gap between those with and without money. But for his views on the dollar alone, it's apparent that his reputation lacks merit.
Krugman's support of weak currency policies erode the earnings of those who can afford it least, reduce the investment necessary to create jobs and wages, and drive down the very investment returns necessary to lift the fortunes of those seeking to increase their wealth. Far from a champion of the middle and lower classes, Krugman's views correlate with wealth destruction, and if implemented, his ideas will only shrink the wealth gap insofar as all of us will become worse off.
At first, there was little reaction from other media. Then on Thursday, the administration tried to make them complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House "pool" news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down.
As Charles does a great job of pointing out, this administration is going where none has gone before with heavy handed authoritarianism. Sure, Nixon had his "enemies list", but since it was published and laughed at, it is clear that it had no real meaning. This is different. BO and company is singling out and making direct attempts to destroy Fox news. It is time for Americans to start to get the message that there are plenty of issues that go beyond politics, because if we don't, we will all be towing the line to one view "or else". Where "or else" means people that dissent being investigated, taxed, regulated and boycotted -- BY THE GOVERNMENT! Wake up and smell the BO!
The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.
So 250K doctors and med students split up $250 Billion in money?
Would you support BOcare for a MILLION DOLLARS??? So BO and the Democrats are bribing Doctors a million bucks EACH to support BOcare!! How does that grab you for corruption?
Now the bill's supporters are making a play to lock in the American Medical Association, the organization that says it represents 250,000 doctors and medical students in every state and congressional district. The principal enticement, a $247 billion measure making its way to the Senate floor, aims to wipe out a scheduled 21 percent rate cut for doctors treating Medicare patients and replace it with a permanent, predictable system for future fee increases.
This is worth a read for folks that have trouble supporting Republicans because "they are far from perfect". I maintain that anyone that STILL doesn't understand that the primary choice here is ALWAYS "lesser of two evils" and there is NO DOUBT that Democrats are for MUCH larger Government than Republicans!
Nice little article. Remember when the "House Un-American Activities Committee" was a bad big deal? How about any time any Republican claims that anything from burning the flag to having the government pay for GM or a crucifix in a jar of urine is "un-American". It is usually "chilling and divisive".
See, all the US media besides Fox is without bias. Don't believe it? Just read the article -- certainly you can trust Newspeak to be unbiased. Oddly he even admits that Fox leans right primarily because "that is where the ratings are". Gee, why would that be? I mean if the rest of the MSM is playing it right down the middle, why would more people want to watch right-biased news? He doesn't explain that one.
George Lakoff, author of the subject book is a noted linguist, professor at Berkley and a very far left atheist world view. One often hears from the left how "simplistic" the "right" is. Try this on for size:
In this book, I analyze the unconscious values behind what I call "progressive" thought: empathy, responsibility (for oneself and others) and an ethic of excellence (making ones self and the world better). I point out how these political values are tied, metaphorically, to a nuturant conception of the family.
Sounds like some good folks doesn't it? And what evil is it that they are up against?:
You need a strict father because kids are born bad, in the sense that they do what they want to do, and don't know right from wrong.
Imagine that? Kids that need training in order to become productive adults! Pretty evil and strange concept isn't it?
In a strict father family, it is assumed that the father merits his authority, and indeed, throughout conservatism, heirarchies of power and wealth are justified on "merit". Why should CEOs make so much more money than other employees? They deserve it.
Competition is crucial. It builds discipline. Without competition, without the desire to win, no one would have the incentive to be disciplined, and morality would suffer, as well as prosperity. Not everyone can win in a competition, only the most disciplined people, who are also the most morally worthy. Winning is thus a sign of being deserving, of being a good person. It is important to be number one! Strict father families often promote competitive sports and take them very seriously.
Naturally, a lot of these bad Strict Father folks are bad because they believe in an all powerful and all moral God that they can somehow reach through religion -- that is of course another wrong concept. Progressives understand that people are born good, discipline isn't necessary for "excellence" (see, excellence is one of their fundamental values, but there is no need for discipline). Competition is bad, and there isn't any such thing as "merit".
Luckily, George has read a few brain books just as I have, and he has come to a marvelous conclusion.
Yet those Democrats who believe in Enlightenment reason don't thing of themselves as whimpy at all. They see themselves as upholding the Enlightenment democratic ideal as committed to facts, truth, and logic, and to informing those ignorant of the facts. They see facts as nonpartisan and the basis for bipartisan agreement."
Republicans operate under no such constraints and have a better sense of how brains and minds work.
See, the intelligent and excellent Democrats are somehow lacking in an "natural understanding" of how the human brain works -- Democrats are all facts and logic, while Republicans are always appealing to the "emotional side"! Simple! Those darned touch feely Republicans with their "framing the issues", while those intellectual giant Democrats just stick completely to the facts!!
Why do Democratic candidates come out with a list of detailed programs, while Republicans don't?
I'd say that is pretty clear, right? I mean in '94 the Republicans had that long but I guess not "detailed" Contract With America, where in both '06 and '08 the Democrats had a very detailed program of "Change", and in '08 they even included "Hope" and the highly specific "Yes we can!". One doesn't get much more detailed and factual than that, the difference is clear!
Nobody makes a dime in this country without being empowered by our government. There are no self made men or women. It's a myth!
The role of a progressive government is to maximize our freedom--and protection and empowerment do just that. Protection is there to gaurentee freedom from harm, from want and from fear. Empowerment is there to maximize freedom to achieve your goals.
"Freedom from harm, want and fear"! Sort of heaven on earth. Folks have been known to want an awful lot! Since for George, there is no God above, the Government takes that place -- the Government is all powerful, it gives and takes as it sees fit -- Corporations and "the rich" pay whatever it takes for "progressives" and those that they see as deserving to get that "freedom from harm, want and fear." Those that are not fit, pay the freight!
We can see that George clearly has his head locked on straight, consider how he proves his point on the brain science. People are "risk averse" -- they don't want to lock in a loss, they tend to "throw good money after bad". Republicans, being evil, naturally take advantage of this:
This tendency shows up in Iraq policy, where Bush and the Republicans refuse to cut their losses and get out now, instead clinging to the unlikely hope that if we stay longer things will get better, though staying longer would involve greater losses. The framing is, "We can't lose and we shouldn't cut and run -- attributing to liberal's cowardice rather than a rational choice to cut our losses."
See, this book was written in 2008 when the Surge was already clearly a success. By the general election, the Iraq war wasn't even a major issue and all the candidates were on the same strategy including BO. This makes no difference to Lakoff. A liberal is "intelligent enough" to "courageously run away" at any point -- even when victory is firmly in grasp. "Commitment" is one of those "strict father ideas" that is simply not present in the liberal "nurturant view" -- to spouses, children, soldiers, friends and allies, one can always count on a progressive to "do what they want to do today". Things like "discipline" or "commitment" are for those stodgy "strict Father types". In a world in which you are free from "harm, want and fear", the only thing that makes sense is to do whatever you want on a day by day basis!
Lakoff has it all figured out in a way that I'm not even sure the most fundamentalist Christian thinks they do -- they at least have to count on some room for the actions of a soverign and all mighty God that is not in their control. Lakoff has no such "higher power". As he says as he talks about how it would all be if we could just get everything turned the liberal way.
A New Enlightenment would not be a utopia. It would be understood that conservatives are not going to go away, nor are biconceptual "partial conservatives".
There you have it, even the liberals have their version of Satan -- it is us nasty old conservatives. It is nice of George to say that "we wouldn't go away", but the left has ALWAYS been very good at figuring ways to get rid of the opposition -- gas chambers in Germany, concentration camps and mass starvation under Stalin in the USSR, mass killings and other "cleansing operations" in China under Mao and in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
When the door to paradise is blocked only by the unwillingness of conservatives to "go away", the temptation of even the most "nurturant" to take that step into utopia becomes very strong.
Interesting to look at actual data. Seems like things were working pretty darned well until 2008. I wonder, did anyone run on "Change" in 2006? How did they come out?
Remember when the Republicans took over Congress in '94? One would have thought that the world had come to an end to listen to the media -- why it was almost as bad as Reagan winning '80.
For those that aren't complete slaves to the MSM, it is interesting to go out and look at what actually happens to the economy after the "horror" of Republican takeovers and the "welcome change" of the Democrat version.
The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.
From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap-and-trade bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the undead health-care "reform" act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.
2008? 2009? Nope ... according to that bastion of conservative global warming deniers, the BBC -- 1998. Good article -- it actually sounds like SCIENCE -- not "settled science" which is an oxymoron. Does it say that Global Warming is over? No, it just says we may have 20-30 years of global cooling or maybe more. Even if we do, it MIGHT be that those years won't cool as much as they otherwise would have and that even greater warming may start at the end of that.
The point is that the global warming models did not predict cooling -- not since '98, and certainly not 20-30 more years. In science, prediction and repetition of the predictions are what takes one at least in the direction of "settled science" -- while NEVER getting there!
However, when your models predict WARMING, and you get "a pause", any sort of "science" says it is time for a new model!
BO finds the US to be a very flawed nation, so we are in retreat militarily, economically, in space, and in world stature. BO thinks that is great -- no nation "can" be dominant according to him. He must have missed the Reagan years!!
So what does it mean to be an international loser? Poorer, sadder, and most likely eventually beaten in ways that are hard for us to even imagine now. Who will defend this flawed and defeated husk of a ones great nation destroyed by the stench of BO?
Certainly not the God which we have chosen to disdain.
Of symbolic but also more concrete importance is the status of the dollar. The social democratic vision necessarily involves huge increases in domestic expenditures, most immediately for expanded health care. The plans currently under consideration will cost in the range of $1 trillion. And once the budget gimmicks are discounted (such as promises of $500 billion cuts in Medicare which will never eventuate), that means hundreds of billions of dollars added to the monstrous budgetary deficits that the Congressional Budget Office projects conservatively at $7 trillion over the next decade.
The effect on the dollar is already being felt and could ultimately lead to a catastrophic collapse and/or hyperinflation. Having control of the world's reserve currency is an irreplaceable national asset. Yet with every new and growing estimate of the explosion of the national debt, there are more voices calling for replacement of the dollar as the world currency--not just adversaries like Russia and China, Iran and Venezuela, which one would expect, but just last month the head of the World Bank.
There is no free lunch. Social democracy and its attendant goods may be highly desirable, but they have their price--a price that will be exacted on the dollar, on our primacy in space, on missile defense, on energy security, and on our military capacities and future power projection.
But, of course, if one's foreign policy is to reject the very notion of international primacy in the first place, a domestic agenda that takes away the resources to maintain such primacy is perfectly complementary. Indeed, the two are synergistic. Renunciation of primacy abroad provides the added resources for more social goods at home. To put it in the language of the 1990s, the expanded domestic agenda is fed by a peace dividend--except that in the absence of peace, it is a retreat dividend.
And there's the rub. For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.
So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink, and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?
"I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as 'the right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom," wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. "This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."
Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George Bush over Iraq -- while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the soft-on-defense stereotype.
Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the "Iraq War bad, Afghan War good" posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more pretense.
The reason that Democrats felt certain that "Bush lied" relative to Iraq is because that is what they had been doing all along, and expect everyone to do. When Billy C cynically called for a "regiem change" policy in Iraq, he never meant to really do anything, just that he could launch some cruise missles and planes whenever he needed to "do something presidential". Being a Democrat means that is "just fine", and it is just fine with the MSM as well (as long as you are a Democrat).
So now we know that yet again, BO just said a bunch of stuff to be elected, but he has no stomach for actually winning the war in Afghanistan either. His real motto is "cut and run", just like the typical Democrat. He only said some other stuff to look good during the campaign.
Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for victory, he'll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless counterterrorism success.
Against Emanuel and Biden stand David Petraeus, the world's foremost expert on counterinsurgency (he saved Iraq with it), and Stanley McChrystal, the world's foremost expert on counterterrorism. Whose recommendation on how to fight would you rely on?
Less than two months ago -- Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans -- the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause?
CNN thought that it needed to FACT CHECK a SNL skit. Isn't that precious? I'm gratified to see that SNL was at least able to see it's way clear to FINALLY poke a little fun at his worshipfulness, but the idea of the MSM navel gazing on "how could they" is nearly too much to take.
Recall any media navel gazing while Bush was savaged in every way possible? Nope.
"Progressivism" always requires "progress", so when there has been a major piece of "progress" in an area, one needs to look out for the next move. We seem to have defacto allowed gay marriage at this point, so while there will still be some "victories" to be had in that area, it is time for the progressives to start staking out the next goal in the "progress" of sexual "freedom".
My suspicion as long been that it will be in the area of sexual exploitation of children. Like homosexuality it has a long history of acceptance, with the Greeks and the Romans being prime examples. It also has a long history in literature and art "Lolita" and "American Beauty" come to immediate mind -- I'm sure the list is VERY long. How many rock songs have something about "little girl"? Most pedophiles, like homosexuals would say "they are born that way" -- and I'm sure they are at least somewhat right. Humans are born with all manner of desires that need to be trained away, transferred to something acceptable, dealt with "day by day with the help of a higher power" (like AA) or simply managed in the old fashioned will power way. While progressives have believe in the deity of man, and thus seek to remove all fetters, the obvious truth is that the only angels that humans resemble serve a master in a very dark yet fiery place.
What age will be pushed as "consensual"? Something in the 12 or thirteen age wouldn't be a bad guess.
Why are we supposed to care so deeply about Roman Polanski? Would the MSM and Hollywood view be the same if he were a Priest? How about an ex-Republican politician that had fled the country? How long do you have to think to come up with that answer?
Remember, the linked article isn't in some strange Bohemian rag -- it is the NYT, "The paper of record". The mainstream left is working hard to let everyone see that "see, sex with a 13 year old girl is REALLY not so bad -- she turned out fine!". What do YOU think their purposes for such a position are?
So the Democrats and the MSM declared the Surge a "failure" before a single extra soldier had been sent to Iraq. That was considered "fine".
BO predicted that we needed to spend $800 Billion to keep unemployment from going over 8%. Can you imagine the outcry if the Surge HADN'T actually worked??
Is it clear yet that this clown as absolutiely no idea what he is doing? HEEEELLLLOOOO !!!! is there anyone paying any attention, or are people such complete media sheep that they will just go with whatever they are told to think??
I think we all know that, he can talk / campaign. When the electorate is stupid enough to vote for "Hope and Change" I guess that works, but we have seen a lot of the limits to rhetoric this year.
There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.
Sorta sums it up -- pretty, but empty suit!
Mr Obama was greeted — as usual — like a rock star by the IOC delegates in Copenhagen — then humiliated by them. Perception is reality. A narrow defeat for Chicago would have been acceptable — but the sheer scale of the defeat was a bombshell, and is a major blow for Mr Obama at a time when questions are being asked about his style of governance.
Yup, the folks really like -- a loser, especially when the loser is the former greatest nation on earth. The PEOPLE overseas "really like him" -- the leadership realizes that he is an empty suit, and while the enemies no doubt love him, the allies are starting to get extremely worried. With good reason.
See Bush was NOT an empty suit. The media and the Democrats certainly tried to make him that, but any leader that could drive the Surge with 60% disapproval ratings of the action to success is a LEADER! Note that BO thought it was really bad that Bush hadn't gotten Bin Ladin -- now BO has taken over and is fast on his way to losing the whole deal in Afghanistan, and **HE** said it was a WAR OF NECESSITY!! Does that mean he should step down for a president that can get the job done?
So unemployment is up (a lot), the economy has not turned around, even with the biggest media cheering section we have ever had in the US, Afghanistan is falling apart and BO came in DEAD LAST in the Olympic sweepstakes. It was even a self-inflicted wound! He didn't need to associate himself with the effort.
If Bush's first year had been anything like this, the MSM would have been hard on the impeachment mantra by now -- of course the "Impeach Bush" bumper stickers were already out from the left. Naturally, those are the "civil folks".
Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran's nuclear program -- whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.
I work as a software systems architect, confusing ends with means is a constant danger often fallen into. Software is "infinitely pliable", it gives you the illusion that nearly anything can be accomplished, it is but "a small matter of programming". Sadly it is far from so.
Normal world leaders have long left behind such illusions about nations, politics, human nature, economies and the history of mankind. They have typically drunk deeply from the vast storehouse of human thought and experience that tells us that since when each of us looks in the mirror, at least beyond some hopefully young age, we see a flawed and mortal human. Those of us that will gain some small measure of "success" in this world choose to use that not as an excuse, but as just one more fact of life to be dealt with and improved upon in the best ways that we know possible.
By the time men get to the point of leading nations, they have usually led businesses, states, movements, political parties, cities, or some other form of real world training. To lead in the real world on even a relatively small scale is to learn the universality of human imperfection and the limitations of the real world very directly. That knowledge comes with the realization that too often, those that have never taken the mantle of leadership are still living with those same illusions thought to be left behind as the price of maturity.
We daily see that BO is not a leader. He doesn't understand the most basic aspects of leadership, and would nearly certainly have failed at any number of smaller leadership tasks had he ever have had those tasks. We would be in FAR better shape had he even served as a mayor in a small town in Alaska. There he would have discovered that there are always rivals, some folks that seem to be your friends are not once you take on leadership, getting agreement among even those who generally think like you is extremely difficult.
Most of all, there are often simply no means at all to reach what ever ends it is that we thought desirable. One wonders if BO ever put any toys or lawn furniture together? It seems almost impossible to imagine the stupidity of someone taking on tasks like running GM with the level of condescension and disdain he has displayed for people that clearly know far more than he has even imagined could be known!
It is hard to underestimate the ego of a man who would write two auto biographies before the age of 50. One because he thought being president of Harvard Law Revue was so cool, and the other after he had won a Senate seat after running essentially unopposed. (The Chicago political machine managed to take down a very strong Republican candidate named Jack Ryan by managing to open private documents from a divorce that asserted that he had tried to take his former wife to a sex club. His former wife was Gerry Ryan, "7 of 9" on Star Trek, that would have been better referred to as "11 of 10". That Ryan was able to utter any intelligible sentences other than "can we go to bed now" is a testament to his sexual restraint)
Charles whole column is eminently worthy of reading. The end is unfortunately way too true:
Bismarck is said to have said: "There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America." Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.
Ann does a great job of destroying the liberal shibboleth that "America has a poor infant mortality rate". Essentially it boils down to these basic facts:
Most countries don't count premature births below a certain weight, or in many cases even babies that live less than a day as "births" -- they call them "miscarriages".
Most infant problems are lifestyle problems, not medical problems -- smoking, drinking and drugging mothers. Teen mothers. The US leads in all these categories, THANKS LIBERALS!
Blacks have bad infant mortality rates and nobody really knows why.
The fact that it is the US that keeps pushing the envelope on saving premature babies earlier and earlier in fact ADDS to what the liberals refer to as our "infant mortality problem". By working harder to keep these tiny babies alive and counting them as "infant deaths", we end up looking worse in global statistics.
Imagine how quickly our infant morality rates would "improve" if ONLY we got "universal healthcare". Any baby that dies less than a day after birth is a "miscarriage". Why bother to try to save premature "babies"? It seems kind of weird that a nation that allows them to be partially birthed and have their brains sucked out to kill them in partial birth abortion would spend all that money trying to save them -- let them die and count them as miscarriages! Brilliant -- saves money, gives us better statistics, AND makes us more "morally consistent".
I read through Freidman's piece and despair that Americans can return to some semblance of reality based discourse. He seems to realize that Bush was also de-legitimatized, but seems to think it was only because his first election was close. True, the Republican's tried to impeach Billy C, but that was only after he clearly lied often and egregiously in a suit that would have cost any other male at least his job, if not jail time. He also certainly perjured himself, and the Democrat side was recently very pleased to see Scooter Libby be prosecuted on that charge.
It is clear that someone as smart as Friedman CAN utterly forget the CONSTANT calls of "Bush Lied", "Bush is Hitler", "Bush is tapping your phone" ... and indeed, whole movies, some of them shown in theatres to millions of people like "Fahrenheit 911", dedicated to any sort of shoestring insinuation and smear that could be trotted out, not only of Bush, but of American troops, and "Death of A President", a FILM about the assassination of Bush. The number of people that "Bush ought to be shot" got to be so high that it wasn't shocking to hear anymore.
It is very hard to believe that Friedman (and others of his ilk) is not just trying to "set the stage" so that **IF** anything should happen to BO, there can be maximum use of force against all who Tom is "holding responsible in advance". When Reagan was elected, I remember A LOT of folks saying "he is going to get us all blown up with his cowboy attitude". I personally knew a number of people that were actually building and stocking bomb shelters for the apocolypse -- and while I thought they were idiots, they were college educated folks working in good jobs at a major US corporation. If someone honestly believes that the president is going to "kill us all", isn't that MORE of a reason that someone might try to harm him than "he might be a socialist"?
Reagan of course WAS shot shortly after taking office and AFAIK, NOBODY tried to make it out that the rhetoric of the time "caused his death". People of course DID try to claim that "the hate filled climate in Dallas" got JFK shot, but the guy that shot him had gone to the USSR and Cuba and was a Communist -- not exactly the sort of "Southern angst" that the MSM was hoping for. How about today? It is certainly possible that any sort of a crackpot MIGHT take a shot at BO -- the Reagan would be assassin was trying to impress Jody Foster. You don't get a whole lot loonier than that -- unless of course you take Squeaky Fromme who was a drugged out Manson follower that tried to shoot Gerald Ford with a .45 ACP, but she had failed to chamber a round.
So ANY president COULD have an attempt made on his life at any time -- Saddam Hussein for example tried to have Bush 41 assassinated, but the MSM wasn't very worried about that other than they were concerned that W may have been trying to "get even". Were we missing ANYTHING of the "climate for violence against the president" when Reagan or Bush 43 were in office? I can't imagine what it would have been. Would it have been helpful for the media to assert that during Reagan, "people concerned that he was going to blow us all up" would be tempted to do him harm? or that during Bush 43, that "people who thought he was not legitimately elected, a liar, having soldiers killed for the corporate interests, or trying to harm lower income people for his rich friends" might have cause to do him harm?
Either Friedman is so far gone on bias that he utterly missed the 80's and the '00s, or he has his own rather nasty agenda. There is no way to know, we just have to guess.
But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far left has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.
What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Bush be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.
Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly.
The previous isn't really a quote -- replace "far left" with "far right" in the first paragraph and "Bush" with "Obama" in the second, THEN it is what Friedman said. BUT, unless the guy is especially evil (see above), we have to assume that he is so biased that he didn't have at all the same feeling in the years from '03 to '08 that Bush was demonized beyond ANY comparison with relatively mild criticism of BO today. Apparently, whose Ox is getting gored really DOES make all the difference.
Hey, these are the folks that take showers once a week! BO is a subject they know a good deal about.
Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).
"We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth," President Obama said.
What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn't call them on it.
‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.
"Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions," Mr. Sarkozy said. "North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993."
"What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?" he asked rhetorically. "More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe out a UN member state off the map."
Golly, the cheese eating surrender monkeys are finding BO to be worthy of disdain. Our media used to CELBRATE any slight or perceived slight of Bush from any foreign power -- it was "evidence of how little respect the world had for Bush". But what is up here? Oh, wait -- the MSM LIKES BO, so when foreign leaders show that they think he is an idiot, they do their very best to ignore it, rather than to trumpet it from the mountaintops for days as they did with Bush. If they throw a shoe at him, I bet the MSM will demand that the US go to war over it -- just like we ought to do SOMETHING about those damned "tea bag protestors"!! (after there are so many they can't ignore them anymore).
One thing BO seems to want to very much be is "not Bush". Although implementation of that has been hard -- he announced last week that there isn't any way they are going to make the deadline he had set up in January for closing Gitmo -- my expectation is he may just have to rename it rather than close it. Imagine, the great and powerful BO has been unable to convince folks that they REALLY ought to take a couple hundred terrorists that the US deems as too dangerous to be housed on US soil. Might it have been just a BIT more intelligent to figure out a plan for closing it BEFORE you announced that you were closing it by a specific date? That is the way some of us mortals in business have to operate.
The press was certain it was BAD for Bush to be "The Decider", but how good is it now that BO clearly isn't? He is dithering around on Afghanistan while soldiers die -- for what? Things are certainly much worse since BO's last brilliant strategy. The Generals have asked for more troops, but now he isn't sure. While running, he was CERTAIN that Afghanistan was the "war of necessity" and Iraq was "the wrong war". So is it OK for BO to screw up and lose the war that he had declared the right one? Maybe he can cover that on Letterman the next time.
The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.
Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town ..." -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.
Well, actually there is a lot more trouble with BO than that, but it is a start.
How surprising. Super candidate without any leadership experience finds that being a leader is HARD -- especially when it is leader of a nation of 300 Million people. Candidate returns to what he knows, being a candidate!! That was much more fun, and he was successful at it! But wait, did those 300 million people hire him to prance around on TV everywhere and be "entertaining"? Not really.
The subject book by Ron Kessler is generally an easy and fun read. It gets way too preachy on the alleged shortcomings of SS management and funding shortages at times, but that stuff can be skimmed.
Generally a fun look behind the scenes at some of the Presidents and first families. Sounds like Jimmy Carter was an even bigger fake than it seemed -- he would carry an empty bag for the camera to make it seem like he carried his own bags, made a big deal out of having a "dry White House" and then liked Bloody Marys before church and treated the help and the SS like absolute crap.
LBJ was as nuts as he seemed -- very close to being a drunk, but kept it under control. Would whip it out and pee with press or staff around anytime he wanted outdoors and didn't mind calling a secretary to take notes while he was taking a big dump.
Reagan was what you would expect -- respectful of the guys, apologetic that they had to work holidays, always saying thanks and giving them food and inviting them and their families to parties. Nancy was as cold as you might expect.
They disliked most of the protectees that were womanizers -- JFK, LBJ, Spiro Agnew, but they sympathized with Slick Willie. They had to deal with Hillary too, and it seems that Billy was very easy to like in private. Apparently the infamous "Hillary throwing stuff at Billy" never happened, but he did get to spend the Martha's Vinyard vacation after the Monica "confession" in the doghouse.
In most ways the book makes the SS seem less invincible than one would like -- I'm not sure that it is doing their ability to protect the president any favors.
Oh, they like BO and family -- he is still smoking away, but that is OK -- he's a Democrat!!
Does this really make any more sense than "Birthers", "Truthers", or whatever zany idiots are braying at any moment? I think not, except this is the man who walked the halls of power with his pants around his knees, believe it or not, this particular zany idiot was once president.
What would the press have to say if Bush was on a show and talked about a "vast left wing conspiracy"?? From the lefty view, anyone who doesn't accept that the MSM in generally is completely unbiased, Fox is virtually a Nazi hotbed, and there is NO SUCH THING AS LEFT WING MEDIA is as bad a nutcase as someone that believes in hard work, individual responsibility and paying your bills. That kind of howl at the moon naked kind of stuff that really ought to get one locked up as a racist or worse these days ...
Naturally, the MSM finds this to be just fine. What could be wrong with singing praises to "the one"? Unless someone is a racist, don't they simply HAVE to support the great and powerful BO?
How would kids singing praises to Bush be? Suppose there would have been a Hitler comparison or two on that? Nah, Our press is UNBIASED!!
America abhors history. No wonder, given how many national crimes are lurking back there. But we’ve arrived at a time when a politician’s refusal to consider the past is a perverse testament to prudent leadership. And as a result, a statement as obvious as Carter’s—that the tea-baggers hate President Barack Obama because he’s black—can be passed off as controversy in 2009.
Yes indeed, America abhors history. Like how about the last 6 years? Did America hate Bush because he was white? How many times was he called liar, Hitler, idot, burned in effigy and generally maligned in every way possible? The left loved to carry a sign that said "A village in Texas is missing it's idiot" -- it was a pure scream. Now though, "A village in Kenya is missing it's idiot" is completely inappropriate. Strange.
For the leftys, the answer is simple -- Bush did everything wrong and BO does everything right. There is no possible reason to dislike BO other than he is black, end of story. The war in Afghanistan was worthy of protest with Bush in office, now it is fine -- even though it is going far worse under BO's policies. Being left means that ideology is the only answer -- hatred of folks with opposing views is reflexive. True, blacks are hated worse if they are conservative like Clarence Thomas, but leftys can never be racist. It is righteous to hate conservative views and the idea that blacks would have such views is so abhorrent, they are hated especially badly. Forcing blacks into a standard thought prison isn't racist at all if you are of the left.
So to the left, Carter is right -- criticism of the right is just inherently good. Racism is especially noxious, so hanging that placard on anyone that disagrees with BO is just fine. Everyone is free to agree with the left!!
Friedman is a smart guy. At one time he seemed to have a pretty good handle on what global competition means, but lately he seems to have decided that we are too much at peril from global warming to keep being competitive. He makes this rather straight forward statement relative to solar energy:
The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.
I'm always impressed at how quickly the leftward leaning fall into the force mode -- "has to"! They are all about "choice" as long as it is offing the unborn, same sex marriage, or paying taxes (as long as you are a Democrat), but for the stuff they get interested in, "has to" arrives very quickly. A few laws for public safety and preventing crime isn't enough for them -- they need to have a law for every aspect of your life, your companies life, and if possible, the lives of everyone in the "universe" (as in "universal" health care).
Businesses, markets and such are just not as smart as "the experts" ... although we find out over and over that they are.
