Politics

Neo-neocon is musing about the debate over the role of regulation in our financial turmoil:

Conservatives and libertarians tend to be on the “it’s the fault of too much regulation” side of the question. Liberals tend to be on the “it’s the fault of too little regulation” side.

I’ve long been annoyed by lazy perceptions about stem cell research. Rhetoric and reporting tend to leave out important details. There are vital distinctions between embryonic cells and other stem cells. Taxpayer-funded research must be held to different standards than private research. Neo-neocon confronts the misperceptions in light of current events:

Last Friday, the New York Times asked President Klink if he was a socialist. On Sunday, the Times ran a follow-up:

On a flight from Ohio to Washington on Friday, Mr. Obama was asked whether his domestic policies suggested that he was a socialist, as some conservatives have implied.

Remember during the campaign how Sarah Palin was always referring to “the Great State of Alaska”? I think nearly everyone heard that like an air-headed cheerleader at a pep rally waving her poms and yelling, “Yay! for Alaska! It's so great! Give me an A…”.

She wasn’t being a cheerleader any more than Governor Pawlenty when he talks about Minnesota’s lakes. Or when Governor Doyle mentions Wisconsin’s fine cheese.

Libertarians may be getting a version of the smaller government they desire. Barry has failed to fill 94 percent of the top spots in his administration:

The current US government is proposing and enacting a raft of new policies. When opposition is raised, a common retort goes something like, “So, you would rather have more of the same policies that got us into this mess?!”

Well, let’s pretend the people who respond with that vacuous non-argument understand the mechanics of policies they’re complaining about. Perhaps it is not the structure of those policies that created the problem. Maybe it is the scale.

Texas Congressman and failed Republican Presidential contender, Ron Paul, heard last week’s  hubbub about radio’s top blowhard and the GOP. Paul has challenged Limbaugh to a debate, just as Rush challenged Barry:

In repsonse to tough times, Congress is stimulating itself:

We all need to sacrifice.
Well, everyone but those lucky enough to be a member of the Pelosi-Reid Congress.

They gave themselves a raise last month.
They now make $174,000 a year for their 3 day work week.

Investment guru and entertaining TV hothead Jim Cramer appears to have joined Rush Limbaugh on the Failed Obama Administration™’s enemies list. Cramer, on his Monday show, told viewers that Barry’s budget, “is the most, greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a president.”

Listening to the talking heads defend, explain and justify the policies of the Failed Obama Administration™, I realize who the leader of the GOP really is: George W. Bush.

The lefties have all the power. They respond to every challenge against their use of that power by looking in the rear-view mirror. Barry says all his problems are inherited. So, the man commanding all this Democrat energy is actually the previous President.

Yesterday was NRR’s weekly stop for Bar Night. I overheard one of the regulars lamenting that Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric of wanting Obama to fail would incite violence from groups like the KKK. I don’t think racists wackjobs need any help building their fury. Further, I do not see Limbaugh as an opinion leader. He gives voice and clarity to what his audience already believes, rather than feeding them beliefs to cling to.

It isn’t Limbaugh’s rhetoric at the root of our imminent civil unrest. Barry is the one inciting violence with inflammatory speech:

Other presidents have been accused of using "enemies" as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the "evil empire" and "axis of evil"). Obama is the first president "in my adult life" to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.

Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.

Last Tuesday I listened to the current President fog his way through a non-State-of-the-Union speech. At this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, an opposing blowhard orator had the podium. In the interest of fairness and balance, I would like to hear how these words were delivered:

I want everyone in this room and every one of you around the country to succeed. I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. I want you to succeed.

Sounds like change I can believe in.

Obama’s budget proposal is a declaration of war.

The porkulus bill was ordinary leftyism, or ordinary politics, taken to the next level. I estimate the productive elements of the US economy could have paid for it. Remember, we do get some value out of the $787B. The money is not all set on fire, just put to less productive uses.

Neo-neocon senses a hunger for class warfare:

The feeling has been fed by decades of maceration in the idea that life is supposed to be fair and that fairness equals equality; that people are entitled to do well financially; that it’s a zero-sum game in which, if your neighbor is doing better than you are, then he/she is taking something away from you; that economic downturns are always the fault of the rich doing something underhanded and crooked; and that taking it out on the rich will benefit the rest of us.

Since TJIC is abstaining for Lent, I’ll try to step in:

"Otherwise, freedom will be sacrificed" is not a phrase that some of us will ever accept. I'll take to the streets, back alleys, and the like, to physically fight what is easily a Marxist attempt at extinguishing our freedoms.

So I die fighting for what was fought for by Washington, Hamilton, Knox, et. al., hell, I'll die for a good cause and in good company.

I realize many, many of our citizens have never even held a gun and cannot imagine doing any harm to another but that's ok, they can simply pass the ammo.

A Vermont lefty—and Obama voter—awakens [emphasis in original]:

I looked so forward to not having to listen to that stupid, smug son-of-a-bitch "W" Bush. I was really excited about the prospects of having a smart, eloquent, level-headed leader speaking in plain truths and common sense. I am such an asshole! What I have come to realize is that even though I found Bush-the-dumber virtually impossible to listen to, I always thought it was because he was such a self-congratulatory moron. But what I have quickly come to understand is that it was NOT his insipid, shit-assed grin, or his quasi-literate references to Noooquoooler Weaponsssssssssss that made me nutso, it was his lying. And the reason I know that now is because I feel THE EXACT SAME WAY about our new President.

My political views were not so long ago described by a fellow community activist as, “to the left of libertarian.” I took it as a compliment. Contradictory to the common stereotype that libertarians are conservatives who like to get high, lefties and libertarians share much common ground. Or they used to. Leftyism used to be about personal freedom, non-violence, and making sure government “keeps its laws off my body”.

The current President last night told Congress:

Because of this [porkulus] plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Health care professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.

Corporations and their executives are often harangued for focusing on short-term profits over long-term profitability. Greed is seen as the core of evil, responsible for every lost job and every foreclosed house.

Focusing on the short-term is bad management. At least if the immediate goals jeopardize or sacrifice distant and enduring goals. But this myopic affliction of greed is not limited to the boardroom or the trading floor:

Higher education is remedial education, and the affliction it remedies is an American upbringing.

Quoted from: William Voegeli

Via: Maggie’s Farm