Rep. Ed Markey, member of the large political party that never resorts to boorish demonizing, recently explained at a progressive shindig that fiscal conservatives have a desire to “destroy the whole wide world.” (Yikes!) And when you believe morality springs from the wisdom of technocrats and Washington spurs prosperity and taxpayers have an ethical obligation to pay for the abortions and highbrow radio networks of their more enlightened neighbors, it probably seems as if the whole wide world is crashing around you. The rest of us can only dream.
Markey went on to claim that Republicans wanted to “shut down the Internet” when they had voted to strip censors at the Federal Communications Commission of the power to regulate the Internet. Conservatives wanted to padlock the Web by keeping it open? As devious plots go, this one is as counterintuitive as it is dastardly. No, the Web has never been regulated, and it seems — to the untrained eye, at least — to function more efficiently and freely than any industry overseen by a three-letter acronym. But that’s probably the problem.
The irascible Markey, author of the cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, also groused about Republicans (he must have forgotten to mention the Democrats) who are attempting to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate carbon dioxide — or, in other words, everything. Asserting that this is a tad too much authority for unelected bureaucrats to have is — and I’m loosely paraphrasing here — analogous to repeatedly shivving Mother Earth in the back, according to Markey. Democracy, you see, is vital in free society except when the issue is too vital for democracy.
And so it goes. The Democratic mayor of Washington, Vincent Gray, called on citizens to “fight back against oppression.” What oppression, you ask? Riders to the 2011 federal budget would end taxpayer funding for abortions and allow a handful of poor kids in D.C. to once again escape public schools. (Talk about fighting oppression.) Choice, as you know, is tyranny. Sometimes.
[…]
Forget cuts. We just need to tax more. It’s patriotic, noted former Secretary of Labor, professor, political commentator but nonexpert on American history Robert Reich. And if you complain about taxes, interim Democratic National Chairwoman Donna Brazile will tell you it’s driven by racism — which makes complete sense when you’re plum out of rational arguments.
These are the allegedly reasonable, the self-styled moderates and the grown-ups. And that should make any “extremist” proud.
Well, I try to be, David. But then I get into trouble with the editors of certain conservative websites, and that never seems to end well for me.
Which is why, in a fit of despair over my dying intellectual reach, I broke down (appropriately, as it turns out!) and got me that elephant tattoo with the legend “My Boehner is bigger than yours” I’ve been dreaming about since the first time I saw the great leader’s orange face streaked with patriotic tears.
I’m a GOP establishment believer. I want to believe.
Save me, jungle cats! Save us all!
the great leader’s orange face streaked with patriotic tears.
My Gaia… if you hose down John Boehner you get… Charlie Crist?
certain conservative websites, and that never seems to end well for me
I’m guessing the C&D letter didn’t arrive yet? Damn, and I had “April 13th” in the pool…
Sarcasm is unhelpful.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/07/the_rights_war_on_moderation_109474.html
Sigh. Humans don’t deserve liberty.
Can I like defect to the Martians or something? Arm the gorrillas?
No, no letter. But that was actually more a Moranic reference.
I used to be very smart and interesting. But then I didn’t agree with him and I became dumb and extreme.
That Dionne piece is an excellent example of how absurd leftist speech has gotten. Fifty years ago he would have been considered literally incomprehensible.
Jennifer Rubin phones to say Boehner’s historic budget deal has coerced massive concessions out of Obama, like keeping his speeches less than three hours long and not accusing the Republicans of speaking Austrian and gathering in beer halls. She also notes realism demands conservatives wait a little longer before expecting the President to admit the GOP doesn’t eat children and drink the blood of senior citizens.
Extremists are more fun to hang with anyway; and have eccentric tattoos, I’ve heard…
That Dionne piece is an excellent example of how absurd leftist speech has gotten. Fifty years ago he would have been considered literally incomprehensible.
“Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'”
from the novel “1984”
Moranic? Maybe Moronic might be a better charachterization.
Apologies for my spelling typo.
It’s still mindless drivel and stale 1980s talking points, B Moe.
E.J. Dionne is one of Limbaugh’s favorite media targets, and E.J. makes it all sooo damn easy.
Apologies for my spelling typo[sic].
It’s called a ‘typographical error’ habibi.
I’m a GOP establishment believer. I want to believe.
They pulled out the Glorious Ninth, didn’t they? Bastards. It’s a sin, using Ludwig Van like that.
The man should be ashamed of himself. Although he gets paid to be that way, so…
Seriously. Overdue.
War on Humanity.
They suck. Kill ’em all.
Embrace your inner German Nihilist. We have ferrets and shit, and we don’t care about anything.
Think of how many other wars addressing this real root cause will bring to a satisfactory end.
The Afghan war, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the right’s war on moderation, the PC/Apple war, the class war… global war-ming.
No people, no problems.
Re: the Dionne piece
Saw a comment somewhere that suggested that the R’s should scrap the Ryan plan, and propose a 2012 budget that reduces spending by $1.6T (ie, balances it right the fuck now). They’re already a bunch of baby-raping, granny-killing racists for ‘cutting’ $38B out of the budget, so hell, go for broke. What would the D’s say then?
I mean, the rhetoric doesn’t really scale up much higher. If you’re “worse than Hitler” for jaywalking, there really aren’t any words left to describe a run-of-the-mill murderer… let alone, you know, Hitler.
And at the very least, perhaps it would encourage the creative minds of the Left to invent some exciting new, hither-to uninimaginably vile New Rhetoric. And that’d be entertaining.
From the intrepid “Extra Jeenius” Dionne:
What’s striking is that Ryan is pushing moderates to stand up for a government that will have enough money to perform the functions now seen as basic in the 21st century.
Not the functions granted to it by the Constitution. Not the functions that are necessary and proper for the federal government to perform. Not the functions that can’t be filled better and cheaper by private charity or voluntary associations.
None of that. What’s important is that they’re “seen as basic in the 21st century.”
Is it any wonder that the people explaining how these things came to be “seen as basic” — and who promulgated that narrative, and to what end — need to be shunned and silenced? Heaven forfend that anyone learn how we actually came to this juncture!
That would require them to have balls and principles. 0-2.
Really, anyone even arguing about anything of substance at this point is missing the point. Forrest > trees.
It’s more like 0-3. They also lack any capacity for comprehension of what’s being done to them, or how to play the meta-game.
The Monkees – I’m a Believer
“How did it come to this?” — King Theoden
What’s important is that they’re “seen as basic in the 21st century.”
Once communist, always communist. Once Islamic, always islamic. Once voted correctly upon in the EU, no more votes. Etc. etc. etc. Once decided correctly, stare decisis.
Basic in the 21st century, progress in the 22nd. It does not actually matter. If I say we have to raise taxes because Chewbacca was born on Tattooine, and you object that Chewbacca was born on Endor, you’ve missed the point.
All that’s really important is – they win. The game they are playing is called “I win”.
It goes like this:
I win.
Then all the poor moron rino congressrats and mushy pragmatists go “Oh, but how do we beat them at this game? Let’s play again, and pay more attention this time, look for an opening!”
I win.
Fuck.
I win.
Dammit.
I win.
OK, next time!
I win.
I think a good first step would be to explain to people that making a list of what you want and waiting until later to figure out how you are going to pay for it isn’t a fucking budget.
OK man. Since it is well known that progressives cloak what they are going to do by projecting their actions onto their political
enemiesscapegoats, this piece is going to take a few more kittehs to settle my now disturbed, harshed mellow state. Call it a 10 on the need for cute-kitteh scale.“Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War“
Positioning that elephant/Boehner tattoo for maximum effect sounds like an extremely painful sacrifice.
Sometimes it’s a lot more entertaining to read the comment section of articles like EJ Dionne.
This one was no exception.
I think it would be awesome if the Republicans refuse to vote in favor of Boner’s capitulation. Shut ‘er Down! Then, cut the fuck out of the budget until we can afford it. Yeah, there will be a shock to the system, but it’s required. A huge chunk of that spending is so new it cannot have been entrenched yet, and even if it were, tough.
Yeah, I know it won’t happen.
He has such compassion for the “disadvantaged.”
A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t find any of your countries’ “disadvantaged” up and awake before 11:00 A.M., they’re not really all that “disadvantaged” to begin with.
To have a point is to miss the point.
It is like Jeet Kune Do. Having no point as point. Flow like liquid assertion monkey.
It’s naked force, shameless deceit, mercyless and unrelenting manipulation. The hamster in the cage has nothing else to do all day long except plot his daring escape.
Like “We will bury you!” and slamming a shoe on the table. Tautological inevitability of progress.
What water can’t go through, it goes around. What it cannot go around, it wears down. Carves straight through rock. From Wiki:
“Lee believed that martial systems should be as flexible as possible. He often used water as an analogy for describing why flexibility is a desired trait in martial arts. Water is infinitely flexible. It can be seen through, and yet at other times it can obscure things from sight. It can split and go around things, rejoining on the other side, or it can crash through things. It can erode the hardest rocks by gently lapping away at them or it can flow past the tiniest pebble. Lee believed that a martial system should have these attributes. JKD students reject traditional systems of training, fighting styles and the Confucian pedagogy used in traditional kung fu schools because of this lack of flexibility. JKD is claimed to be a dynamic concept that is forever changing, thus being extremely flexible. “Absorb what is useful; Disregard that which is useless” is an often quoted Bruce Lee maxim”
Most relevant parts bolded. That’s his “fighting system”, in other words, the study and application of the most literal force.
Substantive rebuttals of democrats are like complaining about dirty boxing in no-holds barred MMA. You’re missing the point. They have no substance.
Today, it’s “basic in the 21st”, tommorow, it’s “progress in the 21st”, the next day, “history of forever”. None of it matters. Like punching water.
It’s whatever serves the opportunity of the moment. Knock something away, beat it back, then they drop it for something else. No point in knocking it out of their hands, they were going to drop it on their own in a moment anyway, out of expediency.
The only meaningful attack, the only battle, is the one that attacks it directly and exposes it for what it is, and seeks to eliminate it entirely, and understands there is no compromise with it.
It’s unstoppable force vs. immovable object. Our object keeps moving.
“No” has to mean “Shoot me, bitch”. Molon labe. No. Shut the government down forever. Starve the babies. No. At any price. No. Liberty or death. No.
Anything you won’t get shot over is inevitable, may as well give it to them now.
A great line.
Isn’t it remarkable that the “conversation” the left thinks is meaningful is the utter hokum going on now? When did such hogwash earn the status of equivalency in a land that has spent itself into insolvency and that depends on milking the last remaining vestiges of it’s clearly collapsing unit of currency to support itself another week or month?
Everything we have is doubled down on the last gasping groans of a decrepit socialist State. We will drain it bone dry, by God we will, and then we’ll deny we did so. It’s a stunning commentary on the state of contemporary man and mind.
I told ya the Beltway Repubs would try and look “tough on spending” for about 6 months, didn’t I? But they didn’t even make 4…
Useless. Absolutely useless. I think I’ll go dig a hole and lie down in it.
I like Paul Ryan, but the president was not dramatically inaccurate, he was lying through his teeth.
Useless. Absolutely useless. I think I’ll go dig a hole and lie down in it.
Don’t dig a whole and lie down in it.
Dig a whole and bury canned goods and ammo. It’s all peachy if the republicans or the tea party save us. But if they don’t (and they almost certainly won’t), you should begin preparing for civil resistance.
No means no. I will quit and you may put me on welfare, or else you can let me keep my money, or else you can throw me in political prison. But I won’t be a slave.
I’m sure as hell not going to buy government mandated health insurance. I’ll take the free government cheese health insurance, if they’ll give it to me. If they won’t, they can shoot me, but they can’t make me buy health insurance.
If 40 million productive Americans did that, this shit would stop. Dead in it’s tracks. No, you may not.
Not because of precedent, not because of a court decision, not because of parlimentary rules, not because of a basic understanding in the 21st century, not for the children, not because of anything. Not contingent. Not “no” on substance. Just plain no.
Entropy, the first few thousand to adopt that strategy will have to be prepared to lose everything, including their lives.
People need to be aware, this isn’t going to be resistance; it’s going to be Warre as Hobbes defined it.
SDN, it’s the only strategy. It’s the final strategy.
Any talk of ‘rights’ is BS until you grab the gun.
“Hey, I have a right to my private property, get off you!”
“No”
“Well ok then”
You ain’t got shit.
They will take everything you give them until you stop giving it to them, and then you will fight over whatever is left. Assuming, that is, you’ll fight over anything.
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
As I’ve said before..
All the liberty that was ever won, was won by the hands of men who successfully employed such a strategy.
Never has the democratic mob awarded liberty of it’s own volition.
If the prospect of winning back what we have lost through mob concensus seems daunting or even impossible, it’s because what we lost wasn’t won that way in the first place, and there’s no historical precedent for it being done that way, and a lot to suggest it’s contrary to it’s own systematic nature.
The mob is lazy, though. Apathetic, disinterested, conflict-avoiding similar in nature to pacifists. It wants bread and circuses, American Idol, and easy victims to gang up on. It does not mess with a target that makes itself look too uninviting.
The willingness to risk everything for liberty has always been the cost of liberty.
Want it or not?
We may not be at the point where we have to risk everything. Life is still pretty good. But we should know whether or not we are willing. Because it will come to that.
They won’t stop taking until you say no, and then they will fight you for the rest.
All our politics at this moment is negotiatating over Czechoslovakia.
WTF to do? I’m buying beans ($20 per 50 lb bag from a place in Greeley) and gold. Based on the pound of beans i ate so far, home heating won’t be a problem.