Byron York, Washington Examiner:
Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it.“How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?†a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn’t have one.
GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call “insensitivity to scope.†It affects us all; we can understand something on a small scale but have a difficult time comprehending the same thing on a massive scale.
Insensitivity to scope is a major obstacle to understanding the Obama administration’s $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. People simply have trouble understanding a number so big. A recent poll asked Americans how many million are in a trillion. Twenty-one percent of respondents got the answer right — it’s a million million. Most people thought it was a lot less.
Republicans are facing that obstacle as they try to explain the dimensions of Obama’s spending plan. The GOP pollster told me he tries to explain it by asking people to think of a dollar as a second — one dollar, one brief tick of your watch. A million seconds, the pollster explained, equals eleven days. A billion seconds equals 31 years. And a trillion seconds equals 310 centuries.
The task of educating voters got a little more urgent Monday, when the government announced the not-terribly-surprising news that federal tax revenues will be smaller this year than previously thought. After a review of the Obama budget’s numbers before formal submission to Congress, Budget Director Peter Orszag said this year’s deficit will be $1.841 trillion — $89 billion more than previously estimated. If you’re listening to the ticks of your watch, that’s about 570 centuries.
You may remember last week that Obama proposed, with much fanfare, $17 billion in budget cuts. Now, his budget director announces that the deficit will go up by $89 billion. “A paperwork change increased the size of the deficit more than five times greater than the savings they proposed last week,†one key Republican Senate aide told me. The deficit will likely grow again in a few months when the budget office does a routine midyear review.
[...]
Meanwhile, the president is taking every opportunity to argue that real recovery won’t be possible unless we spend hundreds of billions of dollars to enact his so-far-unspecified health care reform plan. “I’ve said repeatedly that getting health care costs under control is essential to reducing budget deficits, restoring fiscal discipline, and putting our economy on a path towards sustainable growth and shared prosperity,†Obama said at the White House on Monday.
In the Obama scenario, health care reform equals recovery, an argument that leaves some Republican critics shaking their heads. Think back to last fall and the economic crash. There was a lot of talk about an overleveraged society, about Fannie Mae, about credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Amid the emergency, was anyone saying, “We will never recover from this downturn unless we enact universal health care� Obama is pulling off the world’s biggest change-of-subject.
In the end, it is becoming clearer and clearer that, as the deficit projections rise, the president is betting the fiscal health of the nation on his ability to enact universal, or near-universal, health care and, in the process of extending expensive health coverage to millions of currently uninsured Americans, actually save money for the taxpayers. It’s the biggest bet in generations, and its outcome will determine not only the fate of Obama’s presidency, but the nation’s fiscal future as well.
Unlike York, I don’t have sources inside the beltway, but nevertheless I’m going to disagree with him and say that it is unlikely Obama is betting an economic recovery on the passage of universal health care. Instead, I’m guessing that Obama — always one to take advantage of historic symbolism — simply wants to be the one who brings about the total overhaul of the US economic system, to be the man responsible for pushing (or forcing, depending on your point of view) anti-capitalist progressive policy into the political mainstream, where it will become difficult to roll back.
If Obama is counting on anything, it is the failure of our educational system, which has produced a substantial swing vote of pliant, politically correct voters with very little knowledge of their own government (and an ostentatious inability to reason beyond the most superficial set of pre-digested factors) — but with an amazing capacity to follow a manufactured narrative and assign blame to those scapegoats whom the popular culture works to demonize.
In this case, corporate fat cats and their extremist conservative puppets will be painted as responsible for every last bit of financial misery — and the legacy media will do its share to propagate this falsehood, justifying its actions as advocacy for the “social justice” platform of progressive politics.
In the meantime, Obama and his administration will continue to force through as many progressive policy changes as they can, safe in the knowledge that they have propelled progressivism and soft European-style social democracy into the mainstream, where — inasmuch as it creates “client voters” — it will perforce remain.
This is Obama’s bet; a collapsing US economy that it will tie to “too much capitalism” is really but icing on the cake.
Comment by dicentra on 5/12 @ 1:18 pm #
He’s using a technique similar to The Big Lie: make it outrageous enough and it won’t even register. You could also call it “shock and awe,” which is how it seems to have affected the GOP.
And those of us on the ’sphere are also suffering from the shock of the magnitude of this overhaul. It’s coming so fast and furious, and so MUCH at a time, that we don’t even know where to start to oppose it.
I suppose that to oppose his healthcare reforms, “HEALTHCARE RATIONING” might make an impression, but even before such a concept seeps into the public consciousness, they’ll have passed it. Where are the howls of protest from the AMA, AARP, etc.? Someone Rush quoted this morning says that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
Anyone know how to start one of those viral e-mails that the folks at Snopes spend their lives debunking? Maybe if you start it off saying that your cell phone can pop corn it will make an impression.
Comment by AJB on 5/12 @ 1:26 pm #
…and they aren’t?
Comment by nawoods on 5/12 @ 1:29 pm #
And right off the bat AJB offers us a glimpse into the abyss.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/12 @ 1:29 pm #
Well, Obama tells me so. But I don’t believe him.
TRUTH TO POWER!
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 1:32 pm #
No.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 1:38 pm #
rapacious budget works better I think
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 1:40 pm #
The thing is, what can we do about it?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 1:41 pm #
Also I think the GOP would be at a lot less loss for words if they had nominated someone responsible and intelligent for president instead of Meghan’s coward daddy. Meghan’s coward daddy is the gift that keeps on giving to Mr. Soros and the hungarian muppet dirty socialist tool what he elected I think. My friends.
Comment by BJT-FREE! on 5/12 @ 1:42 pm #
It’s important to remember that Republicans helped build the walls to this rhetoric trap by … well … acting more like Democrats when it came to fiscal restraint. It makes it awfully difficult to now argue deficits and bloated budgets when you’ve just participated in doing exactly the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale.
The argument of “well of course we spent like a sloop of drunken sailors but now Obama wants to spend like a carrier full!” is somewhat less than compelling.
Comment by Pablo on 5/12 @ 1:47 pm #
Keep an eye on Rick Scott. All the right people hate him.
Comment by dicentra on 5/12 @ 1:47 pm #
AJB:
You think this is the first time we’ve been down this road? Think again. This is the fourth time in the last 100 years that the government, eager to promote home ownership, has pushed banks to engage in risky lending practices, and then learns exactly NOTHING when yet again, foreclosures blossom and tip the economy into a hole.
And already we’re gearing up for the fifth iteration. Crazy, huh?
Comment by Pablo on 5/12 @ 1:47 pm #
See you next time, AJB!
Comment by dicentra on 5/12 @ 1:49 pm #
Whoa! This is the right linky for #11.
Comment by DarthRove on 5/12 @ 1:55 pm #
For $3.6 trillion, you could buy 3,600 Dallas Cowboy football teams.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 1:58 pm #
BJT — OK, Republicans fucked up, too.
So what do we about it? How do we stay free?
Comment by Ric Locke on 5/12 @ 2:02 pm #
Rob — at this point there’s only one way.
But you can’t say it out loud.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 2:06 pm #
One thing we can do Rob is to buy black. That ought to be a given for us in Barack Obama’s America I think.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 2:07 pm #
Really, Ric? You think that would work?
I don’t.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 2:09 pm #
That’s yet another scary story, ‘feets.
Comment by JHoward on 5/12 @ 2:10 pm #
I could bury you with hard data indicating that fiat currency and monetary policy is the underlying cause, meaning a runaway system and decades of ramping up to 2009’s crisis time. “Monetary policy” as in nine trillion paper dollars gone unaccounted for at the Fed.
The rest of this epic fail is, yes, Keynesian horseshit from DC, which is to say spend what you don’t have because you simply don’t care. Yeah: Obama. And NancyBarneyHarry. They’re in office and they’re pandering to the mob.
Your call.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 5/12 @ 2:12 pm #
In response to hf’s link at 17.
Uh can someone explain to me how that is NOT blatant racism?
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 2:17 pm #
They’re black. Blacks can’t be racist.
Comment by George Orwell on 5/12 @ 2:19 pm #
It sadly reminds me of a scene in Welles’s “Touch of Evil,” where innocent, naive Janet Leigh gets railroaded into a seedy motel in the middle of nowhere. The villain sends in a pack of hooligans to assault, restrain and dope up Leigh, getting here deliberately hooked on a noxious drug against her will. Your hapless average citizen is Janet Leigh in this analogy, and the noxious poison is nationalized healthcare. Once we’re hooked, there is no going back. You will recall Charleton Heston, coming to the rescue, was rather implausible playing a Mexican national. Equally implausible is any hero or epiphany coming to the rescue of our republic. To stretch the analogy to greater lengths, I suppose the GOP is hotel night manager Dennis Weaver, a dimwitted, panicked boob incapable of helping anyone or fixing anything, screaming “It stinks in here! If they think I’m gonna fix this for them, they gotta ‘nother thing coming!”
Comment by Ric Locke on 5/12 @ 2:23 pm #
#18 Rob: p < 5%, 95% confidence.
The others are worse.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 2:23 pm #
Let’s see…
X = the budget deficit Il Douche inherited from the previous administration (aided and abetted by a Democrat controlled Congress of which Il Douche was, ostensibly, a member).
All right minded people can agree the inherited deficit (which Il Douche incessantly reminds us WASN’T HIS FAULT!) was horribly misguided, profligate, reckless, and clearly ruinous.
So what is his solution? Hey let’s multiply that horribly misguided, profligate, reckless, and clearly ruinous deficit by four! Problem solved!
To recap:
X really, really bad.
4X really, really good!
This is know as Il Douche’s Bullshit Multiplier Theorem. It will comprise 60% of your final, class.
Comment by David R. Block on 5/12 @ 2:25 pm #
Redo Carl Sagan with “Trillions and Trillions” instead of “Billions and Billions.”
Hey, it’s a start!
Comment by N. O'Brain on 5/12 @ 2:25 pm #
“#Comment by DarthRove on 5/12 @ 1:55 pm #
For $3.6 trillion, you could buy 3,600 Dallas Cowboy football teams.”
But who would want to?
Comment by The Decimal Place on 5/12 @ 2:32 pm #
I’m starting to think none of you people take me seriously.
Comment by Mike on 5/12 @ 2:40 pm #
Actually, Jeff, I’d suggest it isn’t the failure of the educational system, but the success of the indoctrination system that the God-Emperor is counting on. With good reason, too.
Comment by geoffb on 5/12 @ 2:40 pm #
Compare this,
to this from The Chronicle of Higher Education April 2, 2004, A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics
By ALAN WOLFE
. Four years previously they laid out what they would do by a description, a claim. a false claim, of what the conservatives were doing to them. It happens all the time.
Comment by PMain on 5/12 @ 2:41 pm #
Even if Obama’s Health care or Cap-n-trade go down, he gets to run for re-election claiming that the other side created this financial mess, are against lower the costs of Health care & don’t care about the environment. He can use his the keeping of Gates as example of his “moderate” tendencies, all-the-while counting on his media cheerleaders to press the “narrative”… leaving the Republicans in a defensive campaign mode.
Given Republicans’ inability to call him a liar or argue from demonstrably held principles – can someone say John McCain’s Presidential bid – Obama sets the agenda both in terms of the government currently as well as the 2012 Presidential Election.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 2:45 pm #
John Cornyn is teh gay. Like almost as gay as Jeff Immelt. Republicans nominated Meghan’s coward daddy. For president no less. The diseased whore what is the “GOP” needs to know only two words I think: primary challenge. Either that or maybe “self-abasement” but I think that’s just one word.
Comment by eaglewingz08 on 5/12 @ 2:53 pm #
With Obama’s democrap passed taxes, we may look at 10 percent unemployment as the good old days.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 2:55 pm #
No Socialist country in history has ever been successful. Ever.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 2:55 pm #
He even looks like a homosexual douching implement. It’s not good for a minority party to elevate homosexual douching implements to leadership positions. That’s like an axiom or something.
Comment by bastiches on 5/12 @ 2:57 pm #
Republicans nominated Meghan’s coward daddy.
As much as i though McCain was a poor choice for the Presidential candidacy, the idea that he was a ‘coward’ never crossed my mind. To call him a coward, my friend, is bullshit.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 2:57 pm #
I’d like to remind you all that 95% of you are getting jumbo-tron tax cuts. This fake stimulus giveaway to liberals is nothing. Look away, nothing to see here.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 2:57 pm #
What we are up against.
As if ya’ll didn’t know.
If only it were slow…like if that McCain fellow had got elected.
Oh well, what was the last thing Jesus said to Judas?
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 2:58 pm #
Oh, I forgot to mention…..free TECHNICOLOR UNICORNS for everyone.
After the SuperBowl I heard Ben Rothlisberger say…. I”m going to Obamaland!!
Comment by geoffb on 5/12 @ 3:00 pm #
Sorry, link in #30 H/T Sdferr in a previous thread.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:01 pm #
I’d like to weigh in on the McCain coward comment.
While John McCain was having his balls kicked his broken arms and legs tortured and his teeth knocked out in Hanoi N.Viet Nam. Opie was trying to make his first Cocaine score and Opies mother was trolling Honolulu for more Muslim men to rut with.
Did someone mention cowards?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:02 pm #
nopers. Meghan’s coward daddy was scared scared quivering scared of articulating actual principles and of telling the truth about his dirty socialist opponent. Lying coward is how Meghan’s coward daddy should be remembered. Enduringly. Unless he’s remembered for his slutty fat-assed media whore daughter. I’ll have to think on that.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:06 pm #
My friends.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:07 pm #
Yeah, McCain may have had his moments, but throwing his own VP pick under the bus to avoid getting splattered by the medias turd bombs doesn’t spell hero to me either.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:11 pm #
I agree you guys are heroes he’s a coward. Get a fucking grip. Because you don’t like his politics does not make him a coward. Is Colin Powell a coward too??
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:12 pm #
I agree with you, gus. What McCain endured for years was gut-wrenchingly horrible. I will always be in debt to his fortitude and bravery as I am with all our military. For my part, I feel I can hardly repay them in general and McCain in particular.
Just put me down as one of those that wished he could have displayed the same fortitude and fight during the election. He never took the gloves off on this punk and for that he acted cowardly.
Cut hf some slack. He’s a bit of an savant icon here. FTR, I can hardly repay ‘feets for some of his comments that left me gasping for air I was laughing so hard.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:15 pm #
no. Not so much. Colin Powell is mostly a dirty socialist pansy I think.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:16 pm #
no slack for me but thank you. This is very serious. We’ve seen the consequences of not repudiating. They’re horrible and better late than never.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:17 pm #
Hmm. Try predictably opportunistic and maybe the quintissential RINO.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 3:17 pm #
McCain was a hero in Vietnam.
But something happened in the decades since. For some reason, he cannot stand not receiving media accolades. That addiction has caused him to act in ways that are, frankly, cowardly.
Campaign Finance “Reform” — the coward’s approach to dealing with criticism
Crapping on Palin after the election — the coward’s approach to dealing with his own failure
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:17 pm #
Colin Powell is a Negroe first and foremost.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 3:19 pm #
And with comment #51, gus goes under the bus.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:19 pm #
This isn’t sports it’s about freedom. Freedom what is waning. The ones responsible for raising the alarm are failing failing failing. I call it cowardice. You can call it something else. But it needs to be noticed.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:21 pm #
Jamaican, actually, gus. Well, half, anyway.
Comment by LTC John on 5/12 @ 3:24 pm #
Perhaps you could amend to “political coward”? Problem with physical bravery and steadfast resistance to a despicable enemy not translating into the political realm…
Comment by JHoward on 5/12 @ 3:25 pm #
I’m much less inclined than Rob in #50 to chalk McCain’s campaign spinelessness up to media p3nage. I don’t think he cared any more for the place than O! obviously
didn’tdoesn’t. Considering what he sired I think that’s a plausible explanation.Yeah, this is very serious. Power corrupts absolutely. Time we remembered that.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:29 pm #
What LTC John said.
Comment by Obamessiah on 5/12 @ 3:30 pm #
I seriously doubt Powell would have endorsed Obama, all things being equal, if Obama was a white guy.
Can anyone show me anything that Powell shared with Obama, political position wise, before 2007?
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:30 pm #
Oops, let me get that sock off my hand…
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:31 pm #
I will defer to LTC John there. Except that’s not as provocatively and a lot less likely to provoke a debate about the exact precise nature of McCain’s cowardice but instead I’ll just drop it I think. The last two paragraphs of the post, I think people avoid the implications of that. This is GAME OVER in a lot of ways I think, barring something miraculous in 2010. Our little country is being defiled rapidly and ineluctably. There are but a few men positioned to say or do anything to ameliorate the damage or even to alert people as to its scope and gravity. They are a lot failing to do so. They should be remembered.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:32 pm #
I’m not disparaging General Powell nor his race. I’m pointing out that Mr.Powell relates to color in politics more than competancy.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 3:33 pm #
Both opposed conservatism. And removing Saddam Hussein.
Oh, and both believe Scooter Libby got what he deserved.
Comment by dicentra on 5/12 @ 3:36 pm #
The following quote from Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore applies, I think, to Senator McCain:
“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
I would amend that to say that it takes more courage.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:36 pm #
oh. I meant not as *provocatively formulated* … but that doesn’t matter as much as whether or not you agree with the they have propelled progressivism and soft European-style social democracy into the mainstream, where — inasmuch as it creates “client voters†— it will perforce remain part is really a lot more important than if you agree about anything what is said about McCain or the GOP or what have you.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:36 pm #
At the risk of beating a dead horse: Obama would be virtually unknown if he were another white guy. Besides there already is a white Obama. His name is Bill Ayers.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 3:38 pm #
I’m having trouble with the English today and also I’m fatalistic and I want some licorice.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:38 pm #
Humm, wasn’t Powell Sec Defense when Hussein was removed?
Powell opposed conservatism? How do you mean?
I didn’t think of the Libby thing as a political position, but I’ll give you that one.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:38 pm #
Can anyone tell me of a policy or military strategy that Colin Powell successfully fulfilled post Viet Nam?
Colin Powell was an excellent soldier and an excellent career staff Officer. As Secretary of State he was a man without an Army. HE sucked.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:39 pm #
Yeah, Powell acted pretty cowardly during L’affaire Plame.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:39 pm #
Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense when Saddam was ousted.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 3:39 pm #
There’s some truth to that comment, dicentra, but there’s a danger in standing up to your friends for the appearance of being brave, which is what I think McCain does.
Unless you’re saying that it sure as hell would be braver for McCain to stand against the press for a change…
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:40 pm #
There was no Plame affair. It was a canard made up by the media. Plame was not a covert super duper secret agent and to assert that she is an honest woman or that her husband Wilson has any character is funnier than Obama’s ginormous ears.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:41 pm #
You mean Obama is braver standing up to the Israelis than Bush was standing up to the Islamofascists?
Huh.
Comment by LTC John on 5/12 @ 3:44 pm #
I suppose it is somewhat a vain hope to think I will suffer a bit less quickly under the rapidly nationalizing US economy, since I work for the Swiss?
I think I will have to find someone around here to vote for that thinks this corporatists-socialism is CRAP.
Comment by Makewi on 5/12 @ 3:44 pm #
Republicans are cowards in the political arena. They won’t put up much of a fight when it comes to Obamas USSC pick, which will allow their opponents to claim in the future that the picks weren’t partisan. OTOH, since the Democrats made huge stinks about Roberts and Alito they are de facto partisan choices. The media, for their part will help to amplify this.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:45 pm #
Obviously you weren’t loitering around these environs during the Plame Flame, gus.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:47 pm #
I’m not worried about the next SCOTUS pick. I’m worried about the one or two after that.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:48 pm #
No I wasn’t interested in the non-story. Can you fill me in again on what happened and why I should give a fiddlers fart about some aging former CIA paper shuffler?
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:49 pm #
By the way, here is a fun illustration of what trillion dollars looks like. I think it was JHoward that linked to it a while back.
Comment by Makewi on 5/12 @ 3:50 pm #
kelly
The Democrats worry about every single pick. Is there some need for the GOP to give them a handicap which I am missing?
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 3:50 pm #
Really? Not a political position?
He let the administration he was serving in get slimed. He let one of its members be fucking railroaded for having a different recollection than a goddamned reporter while he knew damned well the original source was Armitage.
He could have used his reputation, position, and knowledge of what really the fuck happened to shut the whole mess down. He could have come to Libby’s defense.
But that would have required him to cash in some of the regard The Right People have for him, and that was too high a cost for him to pay.
He let a ginned-up, phony scandal go on rather than confront it. He placed his own image above putting a stop to the Democrat/media phony-scandal generation schemes.
He’s always been one of those “big tent” types who, somehow, never find room in that big tent for anyone who doesn’t toe the line on Washington conventional wisdom.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 3:55 pm #
Gus, the important thing is that Powell bravely decided Libby should indeed go to prison for his dastardly deeds regarding the outing of the important CIA, deep undercover, holding the fate of civilization in the palm of her hand, hero of America, Mz. Plame.
Or something like that.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 3:56 pm #
Let me synopsize the Whore Plame and the non-story. Plame suggested to her superiors that her husband would be a good fit to go to Niger and find out whether or not S.Hussien (not Obama) was trying to obtain yellow cake uranium. CIA bureaucrats agreed and sent the LIBERAL JOSEPH WILSON to investigate. He came back and wrote a LIBERAL OP ED PIECE for the WAPO is I recall correctly. It was biased and a political hack job. People within the administration got pissed off and it was discussed with Robert Novak that Plame, a CIA employee was involved in getting Jospeh (piece of shit) Wilson the Niger gig. She denied it and lied about it. The left shit their pants and pissed all over themselves saying that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney outed a CIA OPERATIVE. Wrong wrong and wrong. Rove nor Cheney outed anyone and Plame was not a COVERT OPERATIVE. NO crime no harm no foul.
So it turns out that Richard Armitage who worked for COLIN POWELL was the one who told Novak. BFD.
Now Plame and her shithead husband are rich and part of the liberal cocktail circuit. WHAT A SURPRISE!!!
Comment by Sdferr on 5/12 @ 3:57 pm #
Dick Cheney has the requisite political courage to speak out and is speaking, everywhere he can. His daughter Liz seems to be cut from the same cloth, no surprise really, and is likewise, speaking out. These two, however, can’t be loud enough to be heard everywhere they need to be heard.
Colin Powell has had the dubious distinction to be wrong on almost every major issue the nation has faced for the last 20 years. Good riddance to bad advice.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 3:58 pm #
“Is there some need for the GOP to give them a handicap which I am missing?”
No, it’s just that Souter’s replacement couldn’t possibly be any more liberal than he is so net-net it doesn’t make much difference. A Kennedy replacement? Stevens? Uh oh.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:01 pm #
Uh, gus? We know. Trust me, we know. Try Jeff’s search engine with “Plame.”
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:02 pm #
Colin Powell although a brave and honorable soldier, will forever be a minor footnote in history. His accomplishments as Secretary of State are as follows….
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:03 pm #
Thanks kelly. Did I get it right?
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 4:04 pm #
Rob, yeah, that’s how I remember it too.
It was definitely a political football, but I still maintain it wasn’t a political policy position.
The point I was making is, other than sharing an approximate amount of melatonin, Powell, declaring himself a Republican, had no reason to endorse the most liberal senator in Washington for President.
I mean, where was the common ground, policy wise?
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:07 pm #
Spot on, gus.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 4:07 pm #
Jesus, gus, you’re stupid. That’s the whole point — goddamned Powell could have shut the whole thing down. He didn’t. An innocent man was punished for having a memory that didn’t quite gibe with that of a reporter.
Powell’s inaction caused political damage to the administration he was (supposedly) serving. It damaged the party he was (nominally) a member of.
He could also stomp on all the “Bush Lied” crap, but prefers to stay within the liberal orthodoxy. He knows damned well there was no attempt to mislead — they had bad information, but Saddam’s own generals had the same bad information.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:08 pm #
Well, close enough. The op-ed was in the NYT but that’s just picking nits, huh?
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:09 pm #
Like I said the common ground is being a Negroe. That trumps anything else.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 4:11 pm #
Dick Cheney is the MAN!
The spineless GOP should be rallying around him, instead of telling him to shut up.
The man never spent a day in uniform, but if you put McCain and Powell side by side, heads together, you would have a representation of Cheney’s ball sack.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:12 pm #
Kelly, I was shaky on that. I knew it was one or the other. Do I still pass the audition?
Comment by Matt on 5/12 @ 4:12 pm #
I think you also have to understand where happy is coming from re McCain. He is exactly a coward politically. I’ll go to the mat to support his reputation as a hero outside of politics- I have more respect for soldiers who protect our asses in hostile places, away from their families, more than any other people on earth. I feel the same way about Powell – as a military leader, well I think he could have done better but he served his country with honor and distinction. However BOTH men are simply poor policians, one of which is obsessed with reaching across the aisle when that is not and has never been necessary and the other voted against everything his party believes in because he’s black and so was Obama.
HF is right and nuanced when it comes to McCain. And throwing Palin under the bus like he did instead of standing up for her, was incredibly cowardly- Palin was the reason many many people actually voted for McCain. I understand where happy’s coming from- McCain, the candidate, the politician, not the soldier, is why we’re in this socialist mess, led by a community organizer and his corrupt administration.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 4:13 pm #
No, the common ground is that they’re both not conservatives.
And, frankly, if it was on the basis of race, then Powell most decidedly is not a conservative!
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:13 pm #
Do Community Organizers where a military uniform? Opie has pictures in a basketball uniform but otherwise he hasn’t EVER been part of a team.
Comment by Matt on 5/12 @ 4:13 pm #
Oh and Kerry “served” but he WAS a coward and an opportunist. Soldiers are people – most are honorable, loyal, decent people. Some are not.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:15 pm #
I actually–if mistakenly–had some respect for Powell before Plame. Once he endorced Il Douche, I realized he had no integrity. I place a fair amount of blame on Bush.
Comment by B Moe on 5/12 @ 4:15 pm #
Here is the fucking problem.
We have let Bill Ayers and the NEA turn us into a nation of complete fucking idiots and all we ever do is argue about teaching fucking evolution.
I would say if we don’t get control of the schools back we are doomed, but I honestly think it is too late.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/12 @ 4:15 pm #
The odd thing is, the people I hear saying Cheney should shut up are Democrats and the press. Oh, they say “some Republicans say…” but the whole “some say” formulation is just how they get their own words out without taking responsibility for them.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 4:15 pm #
Powell thought it reasonable that Mr. Libby should lose his freedom to where he would be in a room with a door what had a handle only on the other side to where Scooter couldn’t reach it. Powell is not cool beans. He’s something of a fascist, really.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:15 pm #
Kerry much like Opie keeps alot of his personal records secret. You see liberals like to create images of themselves but really don’t like to be scrutinized as to the legitimacy of who they really are.
Opie is a Marxist piece of shit. Kerry is just a piece of shit.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:18 pm #
endorced?? he asked?
Comment by dicentra on 5/12 @ 4:18 pm #
I want some licorice.
Licorice tea is supposed to be good for the adrenal glands. Or so I heard.
Comment by Makewi on 5/12 @ 4:19 pm #
No, it’s just that Souter’s replacement couldn’t possibly be any more liberal than he is so net-net it doesn’t make much difference. A Kennedy replacement? Stevens? Uh oh.
Except of course failure to fight will give them cover to claim that the choice is just another example of how Democrats choose moderates and the GOP wants picks who will try to legalize raping your daughter. Other than that, sure, no worries.
Comment by Matt on 5/12 @ 4:21 pm #
Im still waiting on Kerry to release his records, as promised. If there is a bigger scumbag politician in this country, I’m not sure who it would be. Maybe Harry Reid.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 4:22 pm #
The last thing about McCain I will say is that outside of who he is politically, I don’t care. He’s not of any import to me in any other capacity. There was a fleeting moment when he might could have blunted Mr. Soros’s dirty socialist ascendancy but he FAILED. And in fact for much of his career he worked to achieve the same ends near enough. He sort of just flat out disgusts me to tell you the truth.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:22 pm #
If were going to start in on JF’n Kerry, I’ll have to excuse myself from the thread. I detest the guy with the intensity of a trillion white hot stars.
A trillion is, like, uh, a lot, right? Like can Meghan twitter about it?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 4:23 pm #
I hadn’t thought of tea. Good idea. For some reason the licorice helps me with the not smoking.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 4:25 pm #
Sorry Rob, I’m with Gus on this one.
McCain was the obvious choice for Powell, being everything he is now saying the GOP should be, and a fellow soldier to boot, but the DIShonorable fuck decided brothers in arms (for Commander in Chief for fucks sake!) wasn’t as important as just plain old bro’s.
Comment by kelly on 5/12 @ 4:26 pm #
I didn’t say I don’t think the GOP shouldn’t put up a fight, Makewi. I hope against hope that they do.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 5/12 @ 4:30 pm #
‘feets,
Benedict Arnold was pretty much a hero until he wasn’t. IMO, you have the right of it. The question of whether freedom is being lost due to the indoctrination system is rather secondary when freedom has come to mean license to so many. Reading champions of license argue over pottage while failing to defend property in other than the abstract has lost much of its entertainment value since the ascension of the (D)irty fascists to control.
I have to applaud the “buy black” concept. It allows anyone wishing to apply the corollary to do so without even a minor twinge.
Comment by JHoward on 5/12 @ 4:34 pm #
The Federal Reserve cannot now account for NINE acres like that, an amount equal to last year’s entire accumulated national debt level going back the entire history of the country. Nine trillion dollars printed off and then, like the wind, they just flew away.
See, here’s how the world works: They print money, they enrich themselves, they grab power, and they leave us as slaves. Broke slaves. Same as it ever was, you simpering, brain-dead, lying leftist idiots. Clinton was a hero when the Republican Congress of the time caught a whiff of balanced budgeting. Today Obie’s a hero for spending us completely beyond comprehension.
Because, you know, it’s someone else’s problem. Because a half-billion a year in interest isn’t much. What’s on teevee tonite, honey? The Simpsons, was it? And at eleven, isn’t that Obama a great speaker, hon?
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 4:34 pm #
“How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?†a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn’t have one.
I’m pretty sure that le mot juste exists. It’s just that they’re afraid to use it.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:34 pm #
Rick I bought black a couple years ago. I get about 26 MPG in my black Mercury.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 4:44 pm #
Thanks, Rick. Mostly I think it’s not at all surprising that the feeble self-styled defenders of freedom might justly be held in greater contempt than the dirty socialists themselves. It’s not like Meghan or Meghan’s daddy is gonna be writing the history books, anyway.
Comment by gus on 5/12 @ 4:48 pm #
My youngest brother is former Military and he is currently a body guard for the Secretary of State. He is assigned to Ms.Rice until May 26, then he will be assigned to Rodham. He used to love Colin Powell.
Until he met him.
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 4:49 pm #
HF, I think we’re about at the stage where it’s time to stop using the “s” word and start using the “c” word.
For real.
Comment by B Moe on 5/12 @ 4:51 pm #
Nah, SBP, they lack the commitment to be true commies.
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 4:55 pm #
O just wants to get his dullwitted mug on the tube and have people cheering him, B Moe.
It’s the people behind him that I’m worried about.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 5/12 @ 5:03 pm #
B Moe,
Make some allowance for Hegelian synthesis. Socialist, communist and fascist are just descriptors for three facets of a monolithic pyramid with its base mired in the slime of Hegelian historicism. As far as describing the (D)irty enemies of freedom, they all function. It just depends upon the day of the week and the way you tilt your head when you look at the swinish slavers.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 5:06 pm #
Today where the ceo or whatever of GE came out and expressed unquestioning solidarity with the dirty socialist government makes me think communism for real might could be in the air. The waters are definitely being tested. And that disgusting Google thing JHoward found. And collectivizing the healthcare and automotive industries. And just the idea that government could “bail out” newspapers. It’s not a good situation.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 5:07 pm #
SBP,
Are you sure it isn’t the F word…the really dirty one?
Comment by happyfeet on 5/12 @ 5:09 pm #
I’m sort of leaning towards f … but it might could be something new is what I really think.
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 5:10 pm #
The f word has been stripped of its power by overuse.
The c word still has a bite, I think.
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 5:15 pm #
They like to use the p word because it makes them sound all modern and shit.
The s word, if people even know what it means, makes them think of Abba and Volvos.
The f word, while accurate, doesn’t resonate well with those who haven’t studied history. It’s like calling them Jacobins (which would also be appropriate).
The c word is also accurate, and has the advantage that self-described c governments still exist. Everyone knows about them. They don’t like them.
I’d argue for the c word, myself.
So… I’d argue for g
Comment by SBP on 5/12 @ 5:15 pm #
(pretend that last line isn’t there… thanks)
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 5:25 pm #
Dirty pinko commie fags it is then.
Comment by lee on 5/12 @ 5:45 pm #
Mark Steyn has some thoughts on Powell.
Comment by B Moe on 5/12 @ 6:04 pm #
We are too stupid to survive.
Comment by Zaphod on 5/12 @ 6:05 pm #
Republicans are going to “have a hard time describing” how disastrous Obama’s plans for America will be?
How about they just point out the Democrat’s historically horrific judgment?
Faced with the choice between viewing black Americans as people or property, Democrats naturally chose to view them as property.
Faced with the choice of ending slavery or perpetuating and expanding it, Democrats quite naturally chose to perpetuate and expand it.
Faced with the prospect of an Abolitionist President Lincoln and his anti-slavery Republicans coming into power, Democrats chose to secede from the MAerican Union, and started the Civil War.
Faced with defeat in the Civil War, and the prospect of newly-freed slaves excercising their newfound freedom, many Democrats banded together to form America’s oldest, vilest domestic terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan.
Let’s face it. Democrats gravitate toward whatever is morally reprehensible.
That’s why Democrats continue to loudly, lavishly support Planned Parenthood, an organization founded on racist principles for the purpose of exterminating America’s black population.
Were our Democrat friends right on Vietnam? They talked our nation into defeat even after our military won every battle. They allowed Communist death camps to spring up in Cambodia and Laos, as well as Vietnam. Their idiocy eventually resulted in the humanitarian crisis caused by Vietnamese and Cambodians fleeing the brutality in their homelands.
Are Democrats right on partial-birth abortion? Ordinary Americans citizens certainly don’t think so, as they’ve repeatedly made clear at the ballot box. That’s why the Democrats strip such matters out of the hands of voters, preferring instead to rely on activist judges to justify such barbarity.
Are our Democrat friends right on gun control? Overwhelmingly, voters say no.
were our Democrat friends right about the surge? NO. Still demanding US defeat.
Are our Democrat friends right on freeing terrorists, while prosecuting former Bush administration advisors? Clearly, they are not. If Democrats would pursue groups like al-Qaeda with even half the vigor they display in persecuting Bush, Dick Cheney, et. al., we’d be making valuable headway in the War on Terrorism. But Democrats can’t do that. They hate America too much to pursue our enemies.
Our Democrats have been wrong on every issue facing our country since slavery.
Isn’t it long past time that we called them on it?
Comment by B Moe on 5/12 @ 6:07 pm #
And wouldn’t you say that based on the above numbers 76% have no idea what cap-and-trade is?
Comment by Zaphod on 5/12 @ 6:08 pm #
By the way, I’d love to see someone shove those facts straight up Janeane Garafolo’s ass.
Comment by Makewi on 5/12 @ 6:11 pm #
I think Janeane G and Meghan M could be best buddies.
Comment by Foxwood on 5/12 @ 7:32 pm #
Obama’s budget is failure by design. Why?
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/12 @ 7:46 pm #
Obama’s budget is failure by design. Why?
It creates a crisis which will then be blamed on The One’s enemies, with further consolidtion of power in The One’s hands as the inevitable cure.