Happily for Obama and the Democrats, the GOP has done a wonderful job of presenting itself as protectors of “the rich” (rather than as champions of private property rights and individual liberty) — with the end result being that Obama’s campaign can continue to run against an obstructionist Congress, that supplier-side cuts will be made to Medicaid, that massive defense budget cuts are automatically triggered, and that the majority of barely informed Americans will tie the media-romanticized optics of the “Occupy Movement” to the recalcitrance of the Republicans in the SuperCommittee and conclude that it was the GOP’s refusal to force the rich to pay “their fair share” that sunk the entire enterprise.
While Boehner whines defensively in response.
— Just as we unsophisticated, extremist Hobbits predicted from the outset. This Boehner-negotiated bundle of fail will be both blamed on the GOP AND weaken us as a nation and as a Party. All so Boehner, McConnell and the boys could kick the can down the road on spending yet again — not having had the stones to really get behind CCB. The truth was never going to matter. This was political theater straight from the outset, and the GOP was always cast as the villainous clown.
We are a country whose leadership and media is actively working against we, the people.
What are we going to do about it, is the question?
Mitt Romney’s a man with a plan, so no worries….
After they’ve destroyed the country I guess we pick up the pieces. If we cannot clue in enough people about the GOP stalwarts being no different than the Dems, there isn’t much we can do except keep preaching to the remnant and hope it takes hold eventually.
People are listening, but apparently not enough are listening. Still, the elections are far enough away that there might still be time. Some days I’m optimistic, others not so much.
Oh, we know what’s going to happen to Mittens. They have enough dirt on him to bury him.
We are a country whose leadership and media is actively working against we, the people.
What are we going to do about it, is the question?
I suggest we all run the Touch Mudder in April. In preparation for what is to come.
“Take it like a big dog” – John Boehner
What are we going to do about it, is the question?
“When in the Course of Human Events….”
There’s no way that could be true, cranky-D.
After all, why would the news media sit on a negative story? Especially about a Republican!
I think we should defer to the superior judgement of Brooke Rubin and Meghan Frum. They’re smart, you know.
On the question what are we going to do about it, one problem we have to confront: sure the Republicans don’t espouse a firm reliance on natural right (if they even grasp its meaning, which has to be in doubt any more), but then we just as surely know that their constituents in the main don’t either, in any serious sense of the meaning of natural right. We are vastly outnumbered, we relative few who do insist on the natural right grounds of our governing order. That isn’t to say that the constituents of the Republican politicians (or the Democrats, for that matter) reject the natural right basis of our order out of hand, so much as they’re no more in possession of the concepts and their entailed consequences than the bulk of Republican politicians seem to be, and quite plausibly less.
Therefore, on the question “what to do?”, in general terms, it seems as though any such “doing” will necessarily be a relatively long term project of education and persuasion, no? And if that term be too long? If events eclipse the possibility? These are difficult questions indeed in such a case, at least in the light of any desire to preserve the order we prize.
On a tangential note, are there any teeth behind the automatic cuts claimed? None of them start until 2013, and there are precious few congresscrittters that have show an actual willingness to make cuts. Even the claimed cuts on amount to around $1.2 trillion over a decade, a tiny fraction of the projected increase in the debt over the same time frame.
JD, from what I just heard on Rush, the “cuts” are the usual cuts to the rate of growth rather than anything measurable in a real sense.
“Therefore, on the question “what to do?”, in general terms, it seems as though any such “doing” will necessarily be a relatively long term project of education and persuasion, no?”
No. We don’t have time. We need a short term project of education and persuasion.
How about a TEA Party occupation of Occupy Wall Street?
Tigerhawk says the baked-in expiration of the “Bush Tax cuts” levels amount to a sort of background teeth JD, though not addressed to budget cuts, at least insofar as he believes that foregoing that tax rise will be impossible unless the Republicans can capture a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, maintain control of the House and put a Republican in the White House. Higher taxes, in other words, are already written in. But of course, he also thinks with higher marginal taxes comes lower economic growth . . . so the deficit wouldn’t necessarily seem to be in jeopardy of decrease.
What do we do about it?
I’m cool with some version of going Galt, waiting for the idiots to collapse themselves, then starting over.
Man, I’m in a lousy mood today.
Man, I’m in a lousy mood today.
Yea, well, it’s a race to November 2012. Can we make it?
I’d welcome any effective short term program of education and persuasion Lee, sure. But to the Owwies as target? To my thinking, the Owwies are self-marginalized political actors, incoherent irrational bibble-babblers without any useful ideas at all, so making them a target runs the risk of raising their import beyond the risible state in which we find them today, prolonging their wispy hour on the national media stage.
Better, perhaps, to address the political office holders themselves again — in townhalls and the like — with serious questions as to the beliefs of those office holders, posing starkly the view of our natural rights order (to which the office holders give mere lip-service) over-against the progressive managerial state those same office holders desire. Let, or make, the people see the argument.
“making them a target runs the risk of raising their import beyond the risible state in which we find them today”
I wasn’t thinking so much making them the target, as taking advantage of media exposure to advance our argument against an easy contrast.
“Better, perhaps, to address the political office holders themselves again — in townhalls and the like — with serious questions as to the beliefs of those office holders”
Yeah, there too!
good news
Labor Dept. Approves $14.3 Million Aid Package for Former Solyndra Employees
America is become a sickeningly corrupt little country
As much as I despise the Cabal, but I have to acknowledge that they are very, very good at what they do. After, when they discard the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” in favor of the “Alinsky Memorial Language is Power Award”, the Cabal(Obama, Jarrett, Axelrod, and Plouffe) is a shoe-in.
Or should this be in the dispirited thread?
#occupybaracky
Woah!… Russian News Anchor “Flips the Bird” at Obama (Video)
Tea Party Debt Commission Shut Down by Chuck Schumer?