I was digging through some old websites that I created, easily 3-4 years before I discovered blogging, when putting opinion on the web involved a lot of futzing around with HTML, FTP and various badly-designed “web editing” tools.
And I stumbled across a 1998 edition of the “DFL Dictionary”.
…who, among the wave of Democrat/Media “revulsion” about right-wing “anger” and “violence” at Town Hall meetings, express shock, shock at this story…:
An act of vandalism at Colorado Democratic headquarters that shattered windows next to signs about health care reform took a strange turn Wednesday when it was revealed that one of the suspects was a Democratic activist.
Democratic leaders initially said that the window shattering was an act of political vandalism, possibly by opponents of health care reform.
[Not to mention racists, white supremacists and militiamen!]
But the political leanings of suspect Maurice Schwenkler raised the prospect that one of the party’s own might have vandalized its building to make a statement.
…but they’re just people who don’t know Berg’s Seventh Law.
The Obama administration has been without a clue as to economic policy and in the vacuum they have fallen back on tried-but-failed liberal policies such as “spending our way” out of The Great Recession.
Yesterday Brack O’Bomba interrupted his uninterruptable vacation to re-appoint Ben Bernanke.
Despite word from the White House that “nobody is looking to make any news” this week, President Obama on Tuesday took a break from vacationing to announce his plans to nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve.
While it is not unprecedented for a US President to reappoint the former office-holder’s Federal Reserve head, the fact that Obama didn’t announce this before or after his “off-limits” vacation, coupled with his inability to fill out his cabinet, are subtle clues to his cluelessness and may indicate that he simply has no one of his ilk that will take the job under his watch.
Or maybe he just spaced it? Either way, I’m not going to get all “wee-weed” up about it.
In reading Doug Grow’s account of A-Klo’s “Tele-Town Hall” “meeting”, it occurs to me…
One caller tried hard to pin her down.
“Do you support a public (health insurance) option?” he asked.
That seemed to call for a “yes” or “no” answer.
The caller got neither.
Sen. Amy KlobucharInstead, here’s what he got: “I will tell you this,” the senator said. “I’m open to a competitive option. You need to put pressure on the insurance companies. One way to do that [is allow the public to join] the federal health care plan or one just like it. The government does administer it, but it’s a private plan. That’s one way. And then there’s this co-op plan proposal [in the Senate]. That really hasn’t been formed yet. Those are some of the ideas. I want to make sure whatever option we choose works for our state. Make sure it makes it easier for small businesses and the self-employed.”
…that in the wake of Minnesota’s eight-month recount ordeal, that Minnesota has gone from having one Senataor in DC…
…to none.
So after writing about the apparent bollix-up with Senator Klobuchar’s “Tele-Town Hall”, I figured that in the interest of presenting a balanced picture of the news I’d invite the Senator to appear on the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the Fair next week.
So I went to the Senator’s “Press” page, and noted the contact name and phone number…:
…and called.
The guy on the phone had never heard of a Linden Zakula. “Anyone in the Senator’s press operation at all named Zakula?” I prodded.
“I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of her…”
So I took whomever I could get. I told the non-Zakula staffer who took the message that our Senator would have her choice of times, from Monday the 31st through Saturday the 5th of September (Friday the 28th and Saturday the 29th are booked solid), and stressed that Ed and I do the most civil, respectful interviews in town; indeed, we’ll put anything we do up against anything MPR or NPR do in terms of overall tone and quality, and if they doubted it they should ask A-Klo’s former boss, RT Rybak. We’ve got tough, legitimate questions, but it’s not going to be a Jerry Springer show (provided the SEIU stays home).
Sometimes, I wonder what things that we accept as normal today, that would have been considered paranoia a few years ago?
Why?
In “A Parliament of Whores”, P.J. O’Rourke famously calculated that if we had taken the money he Fed had spent on eradicating poverty since 1964, and simply given it, in cash, to people below the poverty line to raise them to the poverty line, we’d have at least legally eradicated poverty (you’ll note that trillions in spending over three generations have not managed that) and saved billions of dollars back when “billion” was still a very big number.
Which is no dumber than what we have been doing for the past 45 years.
About a year ago, my radio colleague Ed Morrissey and I interviewed a pair of experts on Minnesota’s heath insurance system, with an aim toward deflating the notion that Minnesota is bursting at the seams with uninsured people. When you count Minnesotans who are not already eligible for some other kind of existing public or private health insurance, it turns out that around eight percent of Minnesotans lack coverage.
Which is a problem, but one that can be dealt with without drastic, revolutionary, economy-changing measures.
“But”, I thought, “the rest of the US can’t possibly be doing as well as Minnesota is, right?”
Via Ed, Jazz Shaw at The ModVoice notes that no – but it’s s not nearly as far off as some would have you believe.
Of course, nobody believes it straight from conservative sources – but Shaw is taking his info from the Census Bureau:
Next, we need to go back to the Census Bureau report and turn to page 31 where we are informed that their total number includes the category of those who are listed as “non-citizens” (which are carefully broken out from naturalized citizens vs. native born citizens.) The non-citizen rate of uninsured individuals clocked in at 43.8%, or roughly 9.4 million non-Americans. Since these people are not here legally and not paying into the system, that portion of the crisis is better addressed in a debate on immigration issues, but taxpaying Americans don’t need to be on the hook for that segment of the total.
While the number continues to drop, it’s also worth noting that we’re not talking exclusively about the abject poor who can’t afford insurance. As this Business and Media report informs us, that same Census Bureau summary includes the following:
But according to the same Census report, there are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326.
Once you do some fairly basic math, you come up with the same figure that the Kaiser Family Foundation arrived at.
The liberal Kaiser Family Foundation puts the number of uninsured Americans who don’t qualify for government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 8.2 million and 13.9 million.
As Ed notes, to buy each of these people private insurance would cost about 50 billion a year.
Since we’re talking a government program, let’s double it just to be safe. 100 billion dollars a year. Which is less than half of what Obama is talking about taking from the economy (which is itself almost certainly a hopelessly low estimate).
But the real story is this; according to the Census Bureau, the very problem that we’re supposedly threatening to dump our entire healthcare system over – the supposed 47 million uninsured Americans – is actually less than a third of that number, under 14 million.
Kermit was there.
Well, he tried, anway, once he got the “invite”:
Friday came and went. Naught but crickets. No “reminder” call. Sunday at 7:00? Silence. 7:15? Nada. 7:30? Ronery, I’m so ronery.
Other people got the call. I’ve read some details already at places like Powerline. I think I have now experienced what national healthcare will really be like. I have been subjected to Health Care Town Hall Rationing. And I’m not the only one. Even though I was invited, gosh darn it, there just was not enough resources to serve everyone.
Death panel? No, town hall access panel. Amy pulled the plug on me.
Without even a painkiller?
That’s cold.
I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a while: issue a call to the MOB.
MOB bloggers – of all political persuasions – did you get an “invite” to Amy Klobuchar’s “tele-town-hall?”
Did you get the “callback” from A-Klo’s office to join the meeting? Did you actually get to “attend” the meeting?
And presuming you got the “callback” – did you attend? How did the meeting go? Was there a balanced set of questions?
I plan on trying to listen to the audio later today.
If you have a blog, write about it and either leave a link in my comment section, or email me. If you do not have a blog, leave your story in my comment section. I will update this post as needed.
I wanna see if there’s a story here.
Joe Lieberman on Alec Baldwin:
Asked Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union about Baldwin’s recent comments that he might move to Connecticut and mount a challenge to Lieberman because, as Baldwin told Playboy magazine, “I have no use for [Lieberman],”
What a coincidence. Washington has no use for Baldwin.
the Independent senator responded, “You know, make my day.”
Joe Lieberman reminds me of Rick Moranis’ Darth Helmet (mocking Darth Vader) in Spaceballs. The “You know,” preamble really brings shivers.
Clint Eastwood’s pinkie finger could not be reached for comment.
Obama says ” Republicans oppose my policies”:
I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ’94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,” the president said.
Gosh, who’da thunk it? An opposition party actually opposing?
Trying to provide an alternative? Dissenting?
What kind of country does he think this is?
“Russians don’t take a dump without a plain…” – Admiral Painter (Fred Thompson), Hunt for Red October.
“Democrats don’t protest “Astroturf” unless some major organization tells them where and when to show up, and trained on when and how to cheer” – Mitch Berg, Hunt for Red November
Hyperbolic? Maybe. But I never let the chance for a good line pass me by.
Either, it seems, can whomever writes press releases for Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison:
As Minnesotans, we know we need health insurance reform.
(Actually, smart Minnesotans know we need it vastly less than most people – about 8% of Minnesotans lack any form of health insurance – but then, “smart people” is not who this announcement was aimed at. I digress).
We are sick of a few loud people dominating this debate.
(So much better to have a few people speaking into microphones in hearing rooms in Washington going unquestioned).
Please join us for a rally in support of reform.
I’d love to get video of the “Minnesotans For Higher Taxes and Eternal Deficits In Exchange For Crappy, Unsustainable Health Insurance” rally.
The rally will be followed by a canvass, where we will hit the streets and talk to you friends and neighbors about the need for reform this year!
Be careful when Democrat “canvassers” “talk“.
Featured speakers include:
Congresswoman Betty McCollum
Congressman Keith Ellison
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
State Representative Erin Murphy
I wonder what ugly names Ellison will call anyone who opposes Obamacare?
Oh, there’ll be at least one.
Let me know if you plan on attending.
GeeEmInEm makes Tthe first call of election night, 2010:
In an atomosphere that is growing increasingly amenable to Republicans, I would wager that Rep. Eric Massa’s loss will be one of the early calls on election night 2010.Massa, it seems, told the Netroots he would “vote adamantly against the interests of my district”, a district he called a “right wing Republican district”.
T-shirt makers! Warm up your silkscreens!
Passing all that “fishy” dissent about Obamacare. Dishing all those facts at all those kool-aid-sotted neo-socs. All those blog posts, talk shows, tea parties. All that dissent.
All for nothing, as the White House shuts down “flag@whitehous.gov”:
E-mails to that address now bounce back with the message: “The e-mail address you just sent a message to is no longer in service. We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.”The “flag” service was introduced Aug. 4, with a White House blog post saying: “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
Well, at least America’s party informers still have an outlet.
…when the “convential wisdom” among the not-conventionally-wise was that “Dick Cheney ran the Bush administration?”
As in all things – remember Berg’s Seventh Law.
Because Rahm Emanuel would seem to be the real thing:
The caricature of Mr. Emanuel as a profanity-spewing operative has given way to a more nuanced view: as a profanity-spewing operative with a keen understanding of how to employ power on behalf of a new president with relatively little experience in Washington.
Although relentlessly deferential to the president, Mr. Emanuel is clearly more chief than staff. While some predecessors husbanded their authority, lest it be diluted, friends said he believed the more someone used power, the more power that person had.
He knows how to pull all the levers of influence in Washington — raising money, mobilizing interest groups and harvesting the latest policy ideas from research groups. At the same time, his relentless campaign-style approach sometimes leaves some colleagues worried they spend too much time reacting to events.
The whole thing is worth a read.
For eight years during the Bush Administration, we saw an endless parade of left-leaning pundits decrying the “incivility” in American politics – especially the “hate” hiding in the rhetorical bushes on talk radio.
Now, I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those people who whinges about how “politics is the nastiest it’s ever been”; the 1824 election pretty well takes that cake, and 1928 and 1932 were no walks in the park.
And it’s not like casual defamation has never cropped up its ugly head; Hillary Clinton famously wrote all opposition to her husband off to a shadowy “vast, right wing conspiracy”. It was a dumb, clumsy, incoherent effort that ended up backfiring, albeit not in a big way.
But I’m not aware of a sitting administration that has ever tried to systematically portray its entire opposition as depraved and anti-American – indeed, anti-human – ever.
And for a movement that spent eight years wetting its pants about “civility”, it’s an interesting switch.
It’s a predictable one, of course. The Obama Campaign, trained as it was in the Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” school of campaigning, has absorbed most of the biggest, ugliest lessons from its radical forebears: make it personal, do whatever it takes to separate the target from their supporters, and don’t let little things like facts get in the way of sliming the opposition. And I certainly don’t recall a conservative doing any such thing to a Democrat.
(“But wait! What about Limbaugh? He makes everything personal!” Well, no – Limbaugh’s an entertainer, not the voice of the GOP. And I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claims to get the vapors over Limbaugh but is fine with Keith Olbermann or James Carville).
(“But what about the Swiftboaters!” Look – you can believe them or you can disbelieve them – I happen to believe them, obviously, and for good reason – but if you can’t see the difference between attackign a candidate over a point of fact, rightly or wrongly, and attacking an entire class of people, then you truly belong in the Dem party).
Still, over this past week it sorta came home here in the Twin Cities.
If you believe that the Obama campaign administration, and especially its tactical brain trust, are taking their cues from Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, it makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is that they seem to believe people are going to sit still and take that kind of mass defamation lying down.
Do they believe that people are going to sit back and let the “elites” call all of us racists? That we’re going to take “swastika” and “nazi” references in exchange for exercising our God-given right to participate in Democracy? That we’re all going to get labelled with the dumbest conspiracy meme since “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?”
That we’ll not spend a few years showing the American people about the real, abiding racism that drives the Dems’ approach to education and social welfare? Or the whole “Royalty Vs. Peasants” nature of Obamacare, the Education system and so many of the left’s other sacred cows? How the left systematically attacks things like charter schools and vouchers – minority parents’ only escape valves from the current, broken system? The number of Dems who believe that 9/11 was an inside job? The ones who still furtively grump that Bill Burkett was right, and Dan Rather wronged?
The number of Democrats who put their kids in private schools while voting against school choice? The Democrats’ custom-built escape hatch from socialized medicine for them and their union benefactors?
Are you sure you wanna tie your politics to casual group defamation?
Good grief, I hope not. It’s getting old.
Monday: “If they punch, punch back twice as hard!”
Friday: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Trying to lower the temperature of the health care fight, President Barack Obama on Friday denounced news media emphasis on angry protesters at town-hall meetings.
Obama ventured west for the latest of his own town hall-style events, fielding polite but occasionally tough questions — one man declaring the president couldn’t pay for his plan without raising taxes. Tieless and rolling up his sleeves in campaign mode, Obama pitched his overhaul plan to a crowd in an airport hangar near Bozeman.
The president didn’t deny that there have been angry outbursts by foes of his plan at town halls featuring Democratic lawmakers this month. But he said that was hardly the whole story.
“TV loves a ruckus,” Obama said. “What you haven’t seen on TV and what makes me proud are the many constructive meetings going on all over the country.”
If you fight by Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, don’t be suprise if Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals get used against you.
Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives is in the Goober race.
The Entenza campaign has tried very hard to develop an air of inevitablity — that he is going to be the DFL candidate for Governor.
MAK’s candidacy is a bowling ball off an overpass for the Enetenza 18-wheeler and right now I’d have to speculate that she will be the DFL endorsed candidate for Governor(catch the edit at the end) [in which Broom fudges his prediction a bit].With the entrance of the Speaker and the expected entrances of the mayors in the next few months, the long summer Entenza has had to develop momentum and image will be quickly coming to a close.It’s game time.
Please, Democrats, I beg of you – nominate her. Nominate a hard-line tax and spender. Nominate a woman who put Cy Thao’s classic dictum, “when you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money” into action with every breath she took on Capitol Hill.
Endorse a woman who couldn’t compromise enough to squeedge a budget past a governor that was outnumbered two houses to none.
Endorse someone whose main qualification for office is “she’s less mind-warpingly camera-hostile than Larry Pogemiller”.
I beg of you. Endorse her.
That is all.
I’ve been grappling with a theological conundrum. Perhaps you can help me.
Is God so omnipotent that he could invent a phrase so stupid that even Fast Eddie Schultz wouldn’t say it?
Liberal radio talk show host says right-wing talkers and conservatives want to see Obama “get shot.”
I’m a person of faith, but if God’s limits could possibly be tested, this is it.
Because if “Stupid” were a church and a theology, Schultz would be its doctinally-infallible pope.
…and makes the case for privatizing health care.
It good to know I’m not the only one drawing this conclusion these days….
What we’re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II.
Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy.
His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion — a significant amount in the 1970s.
Ah, those were the days. Elitist liberal miscreants like Obama pissed away mere billions instead of trillions.
Obama is losing momentum and spending political capital as fast as stimulus dollars. Will he change course?
In April of his first year in office, Carter finally threw up his hands and scrapped the whole idea. He had dithered for four months. He had nothing to show for the effort. By then he was fatally diminished, his authority substantially eroded.
With the Obama administration, a similar unraveling is well under way and gathering momentum. Voters are increasingly restive. The country is souring on Obama’s gargantuan policy ambitions. The sense is growing that he has grossly overplayed his hand.
Regrettably, I think Obama is more committed than Carter was to government engorgement of the private sector. Let’s not underestimate of the damage Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their posse are prepared to perpetrate on America.
Like Carter, Obama looks increasingly like a president out of step with the times. Like Carter, there is a large gap between what voters expected based on the measured and moderate tone of his campaign and what began unfolding after his inauguration. Obama ran as a centrist, but he is governing from the left.
Surprise! (not)
In an NPR poll, a plurality of Americans opposed Obama’s health care efforts. In a recent Rasmussen poll, those who strongly disapproved of the president’s performance outnumbered those who strongly supported him by 11 percentage points.
Immaterial. Obama is smarter than we are and knows what’s best for us. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Many legitimately fear that if not stopped, Obama and the Democratic Congress will take this country well beyond the point where the public sector starts to “squeeze the life” out of the economy.
Too late. I believe we’re calling it the Great Recession.
It’s not too late for Obama to make a major adjustment. Bill Clinton’s initial months were equally turbulent. He was savvy enough to make a mid-course correction — but it came only after the election of a Republican Congress. On his present course, Obama is making that eventuality increasingly likely.
Then again, Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative, compared to Obama and Bush.
To: Service Employees Internation Union
CC: President Barack Obama
From: Mitch Berg Nazi mobster part of immense conspiracy insurance company hack Citizen
Dear SEIU:
I’ll be attending quite a number of events related to “Obamacare” for the duration of this administration. I will be speaking out.
I dare you to try to mix it up with me.
Just so you have no excuse, I’m this guy:
Try to get in my face.
I dare you.
That is all.
With no due respect,
Mitch Berg
Twelve years ago, Clinton Derangement Syndrone swept many reaches of the American right. Fringe-y conservative pundits claimed Clinton had done everything from murdering Vince Foster to giving prisoners AIDS-tainted blood to (I’m getting a little foggy on the story) make money from the hike in blood prices (?).
Over the past eight or so years, the debt was repaid with loan-shark interest; Bush Derangement Syndrome (he brought down the Twin Towers, doncha know) spawned at least two broadast radio networks and most of MSNBC’s current lineup.
But this pathology is evolving into an uglier, more virulent pathology. Because while distrusting the government is normal (and to a certain degree healthy), when the government and its attendant “elites” start assuming the people are some sort of mass of depraved animals, it’s a very bad thing.
Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winner, is shocked – shocked – that people are upset about Obamacare.
And he just can’t find a historical precedent for the anger he thinks he’s seeing:
That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.
(Because members of Congress, especially those who support Obama, just can’t get heard in this day and age, can they?)
Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.
And, Paul Krugman, you can’t find any examples of union goons beating up dissenters in 2005, either, can you?
What possible difference is there between now and then? Between the Social Security debate and Obamacare? I’ll let you take a moment and turn that keen, Princeton-trained mind on solving that little riddle as we move on?
And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.
Paul Krugman: you seriously claim you can’t find any expression of anger in the past, say, eight and a half years, any expression of rage that overtopped the banks of sanity?
OK – that’s two jobs for that keen, Nobel-prize-winning intellect to tackle.
We’ll take a detour through crummy journalism…:
So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.
But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
…because goodness knows a movement like Krugman’s, which depends on MoveOn.org, ACORN, the NEA and the SEIU to get crowds out for events can’t stand the thought of political action groups actually…organizing politics!
But with that out of the way, let’s move on to the casual class defamation:
That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship. Senator Dick Durbin has suggested that the birthers and the health care protesters are one and the same; we don’t know how many of the protesters are birthers, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it’s a substantial fraction.
Michael Savage told me that the only way Paul Krugman could win a Nobel Prize was by providing sexual favors to Nobel committee members. I think he just might be right.
“Wow”, you might say – “That’s defamatory”.
It would be, if I meant it. It’d take a bit of scabrous (and in this case fictional) libel from a “source” whose only motivation is hatred for Paul Krugman, and waters it down with just enough weasel words (“he just might be right”) to give myself some ethical wiggle room.
So let’s unpack Krugman’s last paragraph – which is easily the most cynical, stupid paragraph I have ever read in the Old, Gray, Increasingly Demented Lady.
What is the difference, precisely, between Krugman’s real paragraph and my made-up one?
Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites…But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.
And in Paul Krugman’s special little world, “right wing intensity” can only come from some depraved, immoral motive.
That is the legacy of the Obama administration, so far; dissent is worse than unpaatriotic; it is depraved.
They hate you.
(Via Mr. D @ TvM)
…and apparently failed out as well.
Ten Democrats, including our own embarrassment, Al Franken, are flirting with the idea of turning a near global economic collapse into a full economic collapse. In the name of what? An ever-evolving political land-grab called Global Warming Cooling Climate Change.
The Chinese have already grown in both their skepticism of our solvency as well as their ability to wreak havoc on a US economy that has only recently been moved from the ICU.
Ten Senate Democrats whose votes are pivotal to the success of climate legislation urged the Obama administration on Thursday to support levying tariffs on goods from countries that don’t limit their greenhouse-gas emissions.
…Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Carl Levin of Michigan, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Al Franken of Minnesota.
From a friend, mentor and founder of a successful money management firm, Peter R.:
“Let’s collect a carbon tariff on imports so we don’ t offshore our carbon production. I’m sure that a trade war with China won’t affect their desire to finance our deficits.”
Those deficits being the bi-products of the failed Bush/Obama “Stimulus” packages and the recently resuscitated CARS fiasco, among a myriad of other unfunded, wasteful and ineffective government expenditures.
The wars of the future may be fought on the internet and in the currency markets. We have allowed the Chinese to gain the upper hand via decades of arrant government fiscal policies. We have found ourselves in the unenviable position of relying on their goodwill.
This is no time to hug a tree.
It’s not exactly what The White House said:
…but it is the headline that Americans (and GOP strategists) will remember when the next terrorist attack occurs, here or abroad.
“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,'” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.
So its not the end of the war, just the end of calling it a war…on terrorism.
Are we trading in semantics here, or are these people really that effected by Academentia®?
What a beautiful setup for a campaign slogan – for the other guys: “Remember back in 2009 when the Obama administration said the War on Terrorism is over?”
I shan’t be surprised.
After all, this is an era when borrowing more money to fix a crisis caused by excessive borrowing can be called a “Stimulus Package” and where Success!!! is declared in the wake of a mismanaged program, using yet more borrowed monies to subsidize the purchase of new cars, mostly foreign, for rather marginal improvements in economy and emissions.
Mr. Brennan’s speech was aimed at outlining ways in which the Obama administration intends to undermine the “upstream” factors that create an environment in which terrorists are bred.
Translation: We intend to give them free health care.
As for the “war on terrorism,” Mr. Brennan said the administration is not going to say that “because ‘terrorism’ is but a tactic — a means to an end, which in al Qaedas case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate.”
“You can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself,” Mr. Brennan said.
…and yet we can “defeat” the equally abstruse Global Climate Change?
*Title courtesy of The Hives
You are currently browsing the archives for the Democrat Party category.
