28 thoughts on “Greatly Exaggerated

  1. This woke everyone in DC up today, people are actually speechless.

  2. “Cantor apparently didn’t read the pulse of conservatives”……..”His confidence, his arrogance, his smugness cost him his seat,”………..”The real problem that the (tea party) base had with Cantor is that they got to where they didn’t trust him,”

    I’m thinking of the slogan….CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW??

  3. Perhaps the US Chamber of Commerce will learn a lesson. They may have the money, but the Tea Party has the voters. If Romney had spent fewer words praising American entrepreneurs and more words praising American workers, he would be president today.

  4. He also declined outside help and was in DC not the district on election day. Whoever advised him should be fired and blacklisted from ever helping out another politician.

  5. POD, ALL of the current GOP “Advisers,” “Consultants,” “Pollsters” and “Analysts,” should be fired and blacklisted! Those morons are driving the party to be RINOs!

  6. Funniest thing that I read last night were a number of comments posted on various message boards trying to plant the idea that the reason Eric Cantor lost may have been because of anti-Semitism.

    That’s right after ten years of sending him to Congress and ten years before that of electing him to the Virginia State Assembly, the people in his district suddenly realized “whoah, you mean this guy is Jewish”?

    You really can’t make this stuff up.

  7. I heard Brat on the Levin show on Monday night and he sounded like he knew he was going to win. Wonder what Cantor’s geniuses were telling him?

  8. thorley; yea, I’m lmao over that observation, too. That said, you know that’s what the left would trot out if Chucky Shumer, Carl Levin or Debbie Wasserman Schulz lost their seats.

  9. If I may just make another observation regarding this rift within the GOP over immigration. There is this perception that Wall Street / Chamber of Commerce are pushing for “comprehensive immigration reform” because they want amnesty. I don’t believe that’s the case at all.

    What big businesses want in terms of immigration is to be able to hire more HB-1 visa workers and unfortunately with Democrats controlling the Senate, the Senate has taken the position that the only immigration bill they will consider is one that includes a “pathway to citizenship” for the eleven million or so illegal aliens. Obama may have taken a similar position.

    So basically in order for business to get more qualified STEM employees, they’ve been forced to make common cause with the amnesty crowd as part of the price to get what they want. But in reality, they don’t care about whether eleven million comparatively unskilled and uneducated illegal aliens are able to “come out of the shadows” because they’re not the workers they’re looking for.

    The smart thing for Republicans to do on immigration to buy themselves some time until after the 2016 elections (anyone who signs on to any “comprehensive reform” bill on any important issue with this administration needs to be taken to the Senate cloakroom and beaten) would be for Republicans after they retake the Senate to draft a bill that deals just with the HB-1 visa issue. No border control issues. No amnesty or “pathway to citizenship.” Just the one issue that business really cares about.

    Send it to Obama’s desk and force him to either sign it or veto it. If he signs it (as his advisors who are all big money guys would likely implore him to do), he’s essentially thrown the amnesty crowd under the bus. If he vetoes it, he’s sent a signal to the business community that if they work with Republicans, they can get what they need in terms of high skilled workers without being tied to the “amnesty” crowd and maybe their support for the 2016 elections would be better directed in a different direction.

  10. Let’s let the US Chamber of Commerce speak for itself:

    Immigration
    America has had the opportunity to grow and thrive because we have attracted and welcomed the most talented and the hardest working people to our shores. The U.S. Chamber has collaborated with a variety of odd bedfellows including faith organizations, law enforcement, and ethnic groups to build a movement for commonsense immigration reform that strengthens border security, expands the number of visas for high- and lesser-skilled workers, makes improvements to the federal employment verification system, and provides an earned lawful status for the undocumented with no future bar to citizenship. The door to the American dream must always remain open.

    Take a look at the comments to any Slashdot post regarding H1-B visas and you will quickly see that endorsing an increase in H1-B’s will cost the GOP any chance of getting the votes of American high tech workers. On the other hand, they will get the support of H1-B workers who can’t vote.

  11. By forcing people to remain within an arbitrary political boundary we create economic hardships and inequality that would be totally unacceptable if those people were fellow citizens. When rich countries enforce strong borders and prevent economic migration they create economic ghettos beyond those borders, poorly run by corrupt leaders with little respect for their people but with quiet support from their rich neighbors to prevent total breakdown of order. How is that morally different from the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa?

    Let them all come — the inadequate governments of Central America and North Africa will not be exposed for what they are and changed for the better until their people have a chance to vote with their feet. The USA and Europe will survive and in fact thrive. We don’t offer these economic migrants schooling and health care in their home countries today, and we needn’t offer subsidized social services to them if they come to work here, just the chance to work. This will help the people of those poor countries more than any foreign aid or free trade deal.

    All it takes is a revolution of rich world liberal thinking that recognizes that the rights of man do not differ based on which side of a border they were born on. The right of free migration towers over all other human rights issues; how can I oppress a man who can pack his bags and leave?

  12. By forcing people to remain within an arbitrary political boundary
    Beginning with a falsehood is not a good start, Emery.

    And I’ll ask you the question I’d like to act every fan of open borders.
    What are you going to do with the Americans who won’t bother trying to compete for wages with the lowest common denominator? Pay them to lay around doing nothing? Put them in camps? Shoot them?

    I don’t care who you are there is always someone in the world who will do your job for far, far less money than you are being paid. This includes doctors and other professionals. Capitalism is a solvent. It destroys everything it touches. People like Emery want to expose everyone in the world to it — except themselves.

  13. ” . . . the rights of man do not differ based on which side of a border they were born on. ”
    So you were a supporter of the Iraq War?
    I hope that you do not believe that you are making intelligent arguments, here, Emery.

  14. Illegal workers leave soon after the jobs disappear, despite the difficulty and expense of getting back in. If they were here on legal work visas, they’d react to the job market even quicker. Let them in, keep track of where they work, make them pay a tax for the burden they put on social services, and stop making the USA into a police state. Boost the earned income credit if you’re afraid extra workers will keep wages down.

    The fact that they are not Americans does not allow us to treat Mexican workers like dogs in a pen. They are people, entitled to the same human rights as any of us, including the right to contract to work with whoever wants to hire them. I’m not prepared to see us create a 21st century apartheid system just because somebody doesn’t want a Mexican competing for ‘their’ job.

  15. When NAFTA passed, we opened the borders for capital to move to the cheapest location, which is why businesses relocated manufacturing to Mexico, then China undercut Mexico and Vietnam undercut China . . . race to the bottom.

    Opening the borders for people to move would force American wages to the bottom except we have artificially interfered with economics: we have minimum wage and welfare laws that feeling, caring, compassionate Liberals will not allow us to repeal. Bringing in 7 billion immigrants won’t make the rest of the world richer, it’ll make our wealthy enclave called “USA” poorer.

    I don’t want to be poorer. I don’t want my grandkids to grow up poorer. “Greedy” and “selfish” are religious concepts – don’t impose your values on me. The rest of the world sucks for a reason and until you figure out what it is and how to avoid doing it in America, don’t bring those people here to ruin the last best place on Earth.

  16. Some leave but some have anchor babies which entitles them to stay and their babies are entitled to welfare, at which point no compassionate Liberal will force the parents to leave. Once they’re here, they’ll stay.

    And we’re not keeping Mexican workers as dogs IN a pen, we want to keep Mexican workers OUT of our pen. They can have the entire rest of the world in which to contract with whoever wants to hire them; we only want this one little corner to ourselves.

  17. Emery whinged:”By forcing people to remain within an arbitrary political boundary ….

    same communist clap trap they were peddling back in Whitaker Chambers time – this stuff never gets old for you commies does it?

  18. It’s useful to stop thinking in terms of “our people and their people”, and “our jobs and their jobs”, which is simply racist xenophobic tribalism. We are all people; we each deserve the opportunity to offer our services in exchange for a wage, wherever we want. That is the basis of freedom and the only hope for mutual prosperity. We can’t hope to solve the world’s problems of population, disease, scarce resources, and environmental concerns if we don’t treat all people equally.

    The established rich world is not in competition with the emerging economies. We will arrive at our joint future together, as winners or losers. Like it or not, in the 21st century, we’re all in this together. So open up the borders, trade and migrate freely, and try to look at the upside. The world economy is growing faster than it ever has; opportunities abound. If we grow rich enough together, the world might just make it to the 22nd century with a stable or declining population, a rational approach to the environment, and with most people having the freedom and means to live as they choose, where they choose.

    So work to get some skills, get a job, and stop complaining. Most of the other 6 billion would be happy to trade places with you.

  19. So work to get some skills, get a job, and stop complaining.

    Easier said than done when the left is making it so difficult to do this, and encouraging millions of people to do the exact opposite of this.

  20. ‘ So open up the borders, trade and migrate freely, and try to look at the upside.’

    Yes because that has worked so well for us and and especially the EU now…

  21. Emery is just being silly.
    If a nation is an arbitrary concept, how much more so is money? A nation is actually a place with people living it. Money is just a number on a deposit slip. The people who want to take away something the plebes value — their citizenship — would never allow their money to be taken away. It’s the source of their status.
    Lenin said the most important questions in politics are “who?” and “whom?”, meaning the policy is less important than who is able to decide it for whom. In this case, open borders is not about economics or compassion for the poor, its about the elites’ ability to reduce the value something that gives the non-elites status.

  22. “The Tea Party’s dead. The Tea Party’s dead….”

    Clearly the Republicans haven’t lost enough yet to see the folly of this path.

    The Republican party should embrace California-style open primaries before they find themselves in a permanent minority, with rock solid 35% support and no chance of power. The Republican establishment needs to defend its turf better. The old white Tea Party will eventually die off, just as the Populists did in the early 1900s, but eventually could be 20 years.

  23. The Republican party should embrace California-style open primaries before they find themselves in a permanent minority, with rock solid 35% support and no chance of power.
    In open primaries the majority chooses both the the D and R candidate. This is madness. The Democrat candidate should be chosen by the democrats, and the Republican candidate by the republicans. Emery, you have demonstrated that you are as ignorant of basic poli-sci as you are of basic economics.

  24. Look, Emery, making a Democracy work is very difficult. Hamilton and Madison wrote in depth on the topic of democracy and factionalism in Federalist Papers 9 &10. They saw that the problem with pure democracy was not a dictatorship of the majority, but that it would be unstable. A republic subject to pure democracy would dissolve into factionalism as groups tried to form a coalition of 50% +1 to control all of the other factions. The more important the policy, the closer you get to a fifty-fifty split, with each side becoming more radical as the benefits of being on the winning side and the costs of being on the losing side increase.
    Democracy is not a holy thing. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. fifty percent plus one has no more moral authority to rule than fifty percent less one.

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