Category: Politics

“If we should default on our debt, terrible things will ensue.” But if “we continue to move toward more and more spending cuts, we will literally disadvantage the poor…”
about an hour ago and working families of America to the advantage of those who are well off.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois

1.) It is not a matter of “if” but only “when,” in terms of the issue of default. The longer we pile up the debt the worse the “when” is going to be when the “when” finally arrives. See,

http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/vega4.1.1.html

2.) We haven’t embraced any spending cuts. Only in the DC world with the way they do base line budgeting can anybody use the word “cut.” We are increasing our debt 7 trillion over ten years. When DC says “cut” they merely mean a decrease in the normal increase. They do not really mean decrease. See,

http://paul.senate.gov/?p=​press_release&id=280

3.) The poor are kept in their poverty through the subsidy of their behavior. We disadvantage and even create the poor through entitlement programs.

4.) The idea that wealth is a set amount so if some are advantaged others are disadvantaged is a Marxist myth. Durbin like all Democrats and most Republicans is a Marxist of one flavor or another.

1.) Having been part of my share of Memorial services it was kind of weird to see somebody speaking at a Memorial service to be cheered like they were being introduced on the “American Idol.”

2.) Brilliant political move by Obama to introduce his quoting of the Bible by saying …” Scripture tells us …” This repeated naked appeal to Scripture, politically speaking, helps Obama get away from the wide American suspicion that he is Muslim. I seriously doubt that Obama himself believes that Scripture is unique in its authority and yet the way he quotes it, it allows himself to represent himself as a “true believer.”

3.) I must admit that I don’t understand the National Catharsis that these types of things represent. I acknowledge that this likely speaks to something deficient in my character. It seems for many people this kind of event heals something in their souls. All I see is the unseemly parading of people’s grief by the people who are both grieving and parading. Perhaps it is because, as a Minister, I see a Memorial service as being a sending off ceremony, where that which is spoken of is the God who gave and the God who takes as well as a word regarding the person who had been given and was most recently taken. The Memorial service is not about those grieving, except to offer them comfort.

4.) Another shrewd Obama move to mention the medical community. Obama has been seen, with the whole Health Care debate, to be a man who repeatedly attacked the Medical community. By directly mentioning the medical community he subtly heals those old wounds.

5.) I don’t agree with the premise that is automatically assumed by everybody now that the National discourse is any more ragged than it has ever been. I’m old enough to remember the 60’s and the Vietnam protests. I’m old enough to remember the 70’s and the Watergate Scandals. I’m here to tell you that political discourse doesn’t get any rougher than that era. I am familiar enough with history to know of the jagged political discourse that existed during our founding. (Take a look at the history surrounding the Alien and Sedition acts.) I am familiar with the history of political discourse in the 1850’s – 1870’s. I remember the political discourse of Ted Kennedy when Robert Bork was appointed to the Supreme Court. I remember the political discourse surrounding the Clarence Thomas hearings. Bottom line …. American political discourse has always been rugged and it is no more rugged now then it has ever been.

When Obama calls for “speaking to each other in ways the heal and not wound,” he is giving sanction to the left’s unfounded insistence that the National discourse has somehow gone off the rails. It just is not true.

Now, having said all that, I am glad to embrace the ideal of dispassionate rhetoric while at the same time being realistic enough in my understanding of human nature to know that just isn’t going to happen.

6.) There was a brief reference to “being willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospect of such violence in the future.” To my ears this sounds like a tee up to more legislative assaults on the second amendment.

7.) After the damage being done of several days of the mainstream media turning on Americans, Obama gets the credit for calling on Americans to not allow this event to cause us to turn on one another. That is pretty convenient and once again it is good politics. After his shock troops have done all the pillorying the President gets to look like the reasonable peacemaker in his plea for empathy and understanding.

8.) After his peacemaker routine Obama went into a extended Hallmark spiel. Be nice to your loved ones. In the end life is about how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better. (I must admit that it is difficult to take this seriously given that I know how large a part Obama has played in making people’s lives worse.)

9.) Obama sought to cast a vision of America as one big family. A tip of the hat to this effort.

10.) Obama admits that a lack of civility did not cause the shooting incident but insists that we should be civil in our conversation in order to make the dead people proud. If the shooting didn’t cause the incident how does civility make the dead people proud? “Look Gabe, we died, and isn’t it wonderful, and can’t we be proud of how civil they are to one another in their conversation?”

11.) Obama ends the speech by calling Americans to be a good Democracy the way the 9 year old who died would have imagined it. The country must live up to our children’s expectations. Doing it for the “children” is pretty standard political fare, right up there with kissing babies.

12.) The final close is with Obama connecting the patriotism that was hoped for, for the child as expressed in signatures surrounding her birth photos with the necessity for American patriotism, even gesturing with his hand over his heart. REMEMBER, that this also has been an issue for Obama. Remember the photos from the campaign days where he is the only person on the dais without his hand over his heart during the Star Spangled banner. This closing and the gesture accompanying it helps to erase those concerns that have showed up in polling data.

It was a very clever speech for Obama, subtly addressing some key concerns that polling data reveals is on American minds. The speech helps erase the questions about his “Christianity.” The speech helps erase the questions about his patriotism. The speech shows him compassionate towards health professionals that have questioned that compassion. He wraps it all loosely around the deceased and tightly around the deceased nine year old. The door is left open for efforts on more gun control. He gets to take the high road on the outrageous slander that has come from his ideological compatriots while at the same time subtly affirming that the current political discourse is a problem.

Clever, clever, clever.

Doing a brief analysis of Obama’s post midterm election 2010 press conference it becomes painfully obvious that Obama is doing a couple things. First, in that press conference he sought to put on his “humble face.” However, it is almost impossible for narcissist of the caliber of Obama to be humble. His words belied his mien. Second, people need to realize that as Obama is a Marxist that any concession that is offered or that appears to be offered is a dialectical concession. B. Hussein Obama thinks dialectically. Try to imagine a hammer driving in a nail. When the hammer is lifted from the nail after the first blow the nail might possible think …“Ahh … I see my resistance has discouraged the hammer and so the hammer is retreating.” Of course the hammer’s retreat is a tactical move with the intent of delivering another blow to the nail. Obama’s press conference revealed that Obama is the hammer and the American public is the nail that the Marxist hammer intends to drive into submission. Obama was not retreating in the press conference as a close look at his words reveal. Obama is merely preparing himself for another strike.

The American people have to learn that Marxists do not retreat. Never. They maneuver dialectically … which is to say that any appearance of retreat is only for the purpose of being better able to strike to their advantage in the future.

With that in mind we turn to the B. Hussein Obama press conference.

B. Hussein Obama,

“What yesterday also told us is that no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here, that we must find common ground in order to set — in order to make progress on some uncommonly difficult challenges.”

Obama is being duplicitous here. What election day told us is that the electorate did not desire the Marxist-Democratic party to be the party that arrogantly dictates where the nation goes. It is only on the day after election that we have to live with the fact that no one election can completely turn out the pukes that we want silenced. Because of that reality no one party will be able to dictate where we go from here.

Second, this theme of “finding common ground” is one that Obama kept returning to and banging away at during his press conference. However, this is a lie. The voters yesterday were not saying that they desire common ground to be found. The voters were screaming …

STOP THE MARXIST DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Really, there is very little common ground to be found with these people. For example, even if both parties desire to balance the budge the Marxists want to balance it by tax increases while the Constitutionalists want to balance it by cutting the budget. Each side will be opposed to the other sides idea, and as such there is no place for common ground.

B. Hussein Obama

“And with so much at stake, what the American people don’t want from us, especially here in Washington, is to spend the next two years refighting the political battles of the last two.”

This is clever. Obama cloaks his defiance in a call for unity. By saying that we ought not to re-fight the political battles of the last two years Obama is seeking to undermine the very reason why the voters voted the way they did. As the mid-term election was nationalized over the policy of the Obama administration of the last two years it is clearly the case that what the voters exactly desire is a re-fighting of the political battles of the last two years. This statement is proof that Obama remains defiant and intent on pushing his agenda.

Through the press conference Obama made it clear that health care legislation was not a mistake in policy and that he had no intent to reverse course on his signature legislation.

B. Hussein Obama,

“I think that there are some areas where it’s going to be very difficult for us to agree on, but I think there are going to be a whole bunch of areas where we can agree on. I don’t think there’s anybody in America who thinks that we’ve got an energy policy that works the way it needs to; that thinks that we shouldn’t be working on energy independence. And that gives opportunities for Democrats and Republicans to come together and think about, whether it’s natural gas or energy efficiency or how we can build electric cars in this country, how do we move forward on that agenda.

I think everybody in this country thinks that we’ve got to make sure our kids are equipped in terms of their education, their science background, their math backgrounds, to compete in this new global economy. And that’s going to be an area where I think there’s potential common ground.”

The common ground that Republicans are being called to here is common ground staked out by the Marxists. Both of these (energy and education) are Democratic Trojan horses in order to advance a Marxist control agenda.

B. Hussein Obama,

“I think that over the last two years, we have made a series of very tough decisions, but decisions that were right in terms of moving the country forward in an emergency situation where we had the risk of slipping into a second Great Depression.

But what is absolutely true is that with all that stuff coming at folks fast and furious — a recovery package, what we had to do with respect to the banks, what we had to do with respect to the auto companies — I think people started looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people’s lives than they were accustomed to.”

Note, Obama insists that his policy decisions were right. This assertion comes in the face that the voters told him Tuesday that his policy decisions were wrong.

Second, the whole crap about us “falling into a second Great Depression” is merely an assertion. There is no one who knows for a fact that this is true. This is just more hyperbole in order to justify his reckless Marxist policy.

Third, Obama is pinning the problem of the election results on the stupidity of the American people. The government was doing the right thing but the public felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people’s lives than they were accustomed to.” The implication here is that the government, according to Obama, wasn’t really getting much more intrusive but it merely felt that way to the stupid American public.

“Q Would you still resist the notion that voters rejected the policy choices you made?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Savannah, I think that what I think is absolutely true is voters are not satisfied with the outcomes. If right now we had 5 percent unemployment instead of 9.6 percent unemployment, then people would have more confidence in those policy choices.”

Here Obama suggests that nobody would have objected to his socialist policies if unemployment hadn’t been so high. This bodes for a future Obama who continues to pursue his Marxist policy.

Elsewhere in the press conference what we saw is that Obama won’t move on the principle behind cap and tax (trade), and does not rule out the possibility of implementing cap and tax through the EPA bureaucracy. Further Obama, hasn’t moved on “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Clearly, what we got from this press conference is a belligerent Obama wrapped in a humble facade.

The next two years ought to be interesting.

In undergraduate school I learned that there are three ways of turning out the party in power. Those three ways are, an economic downturn, a major foreign policy blunder, or monumental corruption. Last night’s election returns are primarily the result of our current economic downturn.

Clearly, Americans are looking to the Republicans to right the economic ship of state. In the election last night the Democrats were repudiated at Federal level, the State level, and the local level. Not only did the US House of Representative change hands but Republicans also picked up to 10 Gubernatorial seats as well taking control of at least 18 state chambers from Democrats. Republicans now control 54 state legislative chambers seeing a net gain of at least 680 seats in state legislatures. Last night confirmed the perception that America is a center-right country.

Or maybe we should say that the Center of the country is perceived as a center-right right country. One aspect of the election that is fascinating is that the Country looks like a sandwich with blue bread covering the red filling. The Democrats own the West and East Coast as well as major metropolitan areas in between while the Republicans own the larger part of flyover country. Any inroads the Democrats made into flyover country between 2006-2010 were almost completely wiped out last night. America is a divided country with fewer and fewer issues over which to find common ground.

Part of this division is augmented by the reality that Red Americans are divided with themselves. While Blue American true believers have no doubt about their progressive nature, Red Americans are a self-divided people. On one hand Red Americans desire want all the advantages of big government while on the other hand they say they want their individual liberty. On one hand Red Americans want all the perks of the welfare state while on the other hand they are angered at being taxed at the level it takes to run a welfare state. Americans are schizophrenic. I offer proof of this in the observation that the same voters who voted Republican in order to reign in spending are people who would instantly put Democrats back in office if Republicans actually began cutting entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, Government Schools, Educational grants, and other like programs. If one desires to balance the budget, it simply is the case that this is where one must go to cut.

Unfortunately, for America, turning the Democrats out of power and placing power in the hands of Republicans is like taking the keys from someone who was convicted for driving while intoxicated and giving them to someone recently convicted of hit and run. Republicans have never shown the will power to do what American have said, by their vote, that they want accomplished. Republicans, like those who voted them into office, are schizophrenic. On one hand they talk about fiscal responsibility but on the other hand they pass things like the prescription drug law for seniors as they did during the Bush administration.

All of this is part of the reason why I can say that the country is perceived as center-right. If the country was really center right it would demand the end to not only the new health care law but also the end to programs like Social Security, Medicare, Corporate Welfare, and government schools. If the country was really center-right it would demand the end to the Federal Reserve.

As such, I expect that Republican hegemony will be short lived as voters become frustrated with both their inability to turn the economy around as well as being aggravated at any genuine attempt to turn the economy around.

Pivoting slightly, another interesting result of the 2010 election is the increasing racial dynamic that is making up electoral politics. The 2010 election revealed white flight to the Republican party. This is significant given the fact that the Democratic party has long received the lion’s share of the Black and Latino vote. The harsh truth is that this also breaks down between the producers (largely, though not exclusively whites) increasingly coalescing in one party (Republican) while the profiteers of the American welfare redistribution system (largely, though not exclusively minorities) remain coalesced in the Democratic party. If this dynamic hardens it could make for some interesting political governance and campaigns in the near future.

For more details on this theme see,

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/11/03/exit_polls_unprecedented_white_flight_from_democrats__107824.html

One more thing that needs to be said before we close. As long as Ben Shalom Bernanke can massively inflate the money supply as he has done we see revealed why elections don’t matter and why the FED must be ended. As long as this kind of thing can be done, quite apart from legislative oversight, elections are largely a dog and pony show. If the FED can not be shut down then it really is not possible to correct the American economic affairs.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/09/21/obama_mexicans_were_here_long_before_america_was_even_an_idea.html

There is so much wrong with this 85 second clip it is difficult to detail it all.

1.) Notice the pronoun “We,” and the way Obama uses this pronoun. The “We” has Obama identifying with the pre-American Indians, Mexicans, and Colonial Europeans over against Americans. Obama has embraced a narrative where he identifies more closely with the pre-American inhabitants of this country than he does those people who actually were Americans. The inhabitants that Obama is identifying with in his “We” statements are the inhabitants that the Americans had to contend against in order to become a nation and in order to keep their nation.

2.) When Obama finally turns his pronouns to America (“What made ‘us’ all Americans …) the usage is to identify the pre-American inhabitants as the true America. (Remember … Obama is speaking before a Hispanic organization.) The true America is the outgrowth of the original America that existed before the idea of America.

3.) Obama mentions that all these groups … “Shared the same land.” Knowing Obama’s lean I can’ t help but wonder if this is a swipe at the European understanding of owning land. Before the mean evil Europeans showed up with ideas of land ownership the original peoples shared the land. Certainly, Obama’s convictions are that private property is counter-productive.

4.) Obama says that before America was even an idea that this was the shared land of Mexicans. Before America was an idea would have had to be some time before 1776. Mexico became a country in 1810. You do the math, because Obama clearly cannot.

5.) Obama insists on the idea that America is a proposition nation. Obama says that America was made because of shared values that we (the pre-America “We”) hold so dear. Here is the problem. I am willing to bet that I don’t share any values with this man or with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. As such, either they aren’t Americans are I am not an American. I’m guessing that they think it is yours truly who is not an American since I don’t share their values.

6.) Obama then quotes from the Declaration of Independence (that same Declaration of Independence that referred to his earlier mentioned Indian tribes as “savages”) but he leaves out a key phrase in his quote. He leaves out the phrase … “Endowed by their Creator,” and quotes the Declaration of Independence as if it doesn’t make reference to a “Creator.” It is very difficult to believe that this was just an “oversight.” It is more in keeping with the little things this man does and says to show contempt for the country.

7.) Obama zeroes in on “equality.” But of course it is not the “equality” which the Founders believed, but it is the “equality” of the French Revolution. It is the equality of sameness.