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Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

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Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

pirate said:
I think there is a lot of accuracy to what you have said above, maybe a bit of hyperbole here or there but I don't think that changes your point.

I would ask you to consider that groups like the one you mention exist in many facets of the political parties and government. The next group is just as committed to their ambitions and believe their view of the 'world' is correct.

Righties are less likely to notice the group you mention as being out of touch or misguided or will more closely align with it such that they will defend it against "liberal hand-wringers". There are groups that approach other issues, be it taxes, unions, education, govt programs, justice, etc. that demonstrate many of the same traits you describe...but maybe, just maybe, some of them are 'ok' in your book because their core mision doesn't differ that much from your core beliefs.

My point is that you, albeit elequently, often imply that only the right has narrow-minded, misguided people pursuing things that may not be in the best interest of the country in the long-term (if at all) and doing it in a manner that is neither accurate nor responsible.

I won't do the FYP version of this but I dare say that you have described a behavior that is consistent across both parties and the AARP is as zealous about SS as hawks are about military spending.
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You're absolutely right about all of this (especially the "eloquency" part. Please say that again. ;) ) Hyperbole tends to be an unavoidable byproduct of wading through the sea of OP's marmalade posturing to return to the shores of honesty and sense.

The left's constant drumbeat that people who want to put restrictions on the rise of social security and medicare "want to kill grandpa" has the same flavor. Both sides use thought-terminating cliches. And, for that matter, the demagogues for the warfare state don't always come exclusively from the right -- principled conservatism is after all opposed to imperialism. That lately it's been their peculiar infection is just one of the reasons the guys who currently style themselves "conservative" are just another cult of authoritarians trying, in William F. Buckley's (and Robert Anton Wilson's) words, to "immanentize the Eschaton."
 
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Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Kepler said:
You're absolutely right about all of this (especially the "eloquency" part. Please say that again. ;) ) Hyperbole tends to be an unavoidable byproduct of wading through the sea of OP's marmalade posturing to return to the shores of honesty and sense.

The left's constant drumbeat that people who want to put restrictions on the rise of social security and medicare "want to kill grandpa" has the same flavor. Both sides use thought-terminating cliches. And, for that matter, the demagogues for the warfare state don't always come exclusively from the right -- principled conservatism is after all opposed to imperialism. That lately it's been their peculiar infection is just one of the reasons the guys who currently style themselves "conservative" are just another cult of authoritarians trying, in William F. Buckley's (and Robert Anton Wilson's) words, to "immanentize the Eschaton."
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See, you be way more eloquent than me.

As for killing grandpa, I like to use the term "frozen grannies"...not only does it cover a variety of healthcare scenarios but also the heating oil subsidy. It also makes for a great intramural team or punk band name. In the chronology of things, it follows "dog food-eating grannies".
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

pirate said:
As for killing grandpa, I like to use the term "frozen grannies"...not only does it cover a variety of healthcare scenarios but also the heating oil subsidy. It also makes for a great intramural team or punk band name. In the chronology of things, it follows "dog food-eating grannies".
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This is important. DO NOT Google Frozen Grannies. I assumed there would actually be a punk band and so I went to look. What has been seen cannot be unseen. I am trying to do everyone a favor here. It's too late for me. Save yourselves.
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Kepler said:
Right, whereas when you are lacking in introspection and thought, you're also not even clever.

There+is+a+difference.jpg


For the adults: the point, of course, is that a particular group (in this case, not even the right, but a warped subsection) has always wrapped itself in the flag and dipped itself in soldiers' blood whenever war spending is on the table, to protect its profits or to cloak its obsession with unending global expansion. Every empire has had these types, and America is no exception. Our resident Exhibit A didn't disappoint, proving the point by immediately retreating under the militarists' skirts and equating the logical evaluation of the development of weapons or the weighing of grand strategies as retreat, naivete, treason, the usual.

If the defense budget was 98% of the national budget, the army would still be lobbying for more and defense contractors would still be sponsoring think tanks articles about how we had a hollow navy or were emboldening our enemies. The fact that they do those things means, literally, nothing substantive: they are bureaucracies defending their rice bowls. The bottom line is this is unsustainable if we want to compete in the world:

military_spending_big.png


There will be an immense push back because this imbalance represents an enormous redistribution of wealth from the American taxpayer to a very small, very aggressive and politically savvy class of investors. But it's not about defense; it's about pork, and the political symbolism of military power that activates one slice of the ultra conservative base.

When we were rich we could afford to fob off a trillion here or there on them. We just can't afford that any more.
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Until this post, I had always assumed you enjoyed sharing with the rest of us your ag school cleverness. And that you really weren't the text book anti-American of your posts. I was wrong. So in Keplerworld we can't afford defense spending at current levels any more. But we CAN afford dropping a trillion dollars on a "stimulus" plan that will keep unemployment below 8% and provide "shovel ready" jobs for your candidate's union goon allies?
 
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Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

ScoobyDoo said:
I keep hearing that we are a nation of laws. Can you honestly believe that is true anymore given what has been going on the last 10 years? Everything is decided in a court of law nowadays. Everything. We can't even get an appointment through Congress without using or manipulating or citing some sort of law precedence.
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Hold on... how does the fact that lots of things are decided in court or based on court precedent disprove the idea that we're a nation of laws? Don't those ideas sort of go hand in hand?
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

jmh said:
Hold on... how does the fact that lots of things are decided in court or based on court precedent disprove the idea that we're a nation of laws? Don't those ideas sort of go hand in hand?
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Good point. I'm not sure I was exactly arguing that but if you take me literally I suppose so. How would you assess the gamemanship going on with our government?
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Kepler said:
It's actually the opposite: bad politics but good governance. Bad politics because it plays into the Imperial Presidency meme. The GOP would use that meme no matter what he did, but in this instance they actually have a point so he's giving them ammunition. Good governance because the GOP was using obstruction to prevent the staffing of agencies which were legal and which they couldn't stop using legitimate legislative means, but which they don't happen to like ideologically.

The ultra libs left Obama long ago. His coalition for 2012 is pragmatic libs, the center, and any leaning conservatives who are freaked out / disgusted by the GOP field. (He loses the latter group if Romney wins the nomination, which is why an early winnowing of the ultra con field is better for the WH.)
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When you refer to "legitimate legislative means," you're doubtless referring to the Cornhusker kickback, right?
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Kepler said:
You misspelled the Congressional Review Act.
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Tu Quoque? You're as much of a hopeless partisan, perhaps more so, as anyone who posts here, including me. But you're the only one who consistently masquerades as being above it all, so you can show off and deliver more of your clever, obscure, animal husbandry wisdom. Your sputtering, blustering, typically pompous post (so reminiscent of pillow talk in a Greenwich Village weather underground bomb factory) hauled out every tired "anti-war" shibboleth and proves my point. You're sounding more like Ron Paul every day. "Dipped itself in soldiers' blood?" Secret manipulations of "a politically savvy class of investors?" "obsession with never ending global expansion?" "retreat, naivte, treason?" Really?

In your rush to get your new left obsessions on the record, you completely missed the point I was trying to make. Or am I being too "political?"
 
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Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

This is probably the most important "inside baseball" story of the last 6 months, and it's getting almost no coverage.

Daley was an awful choice for COS, he didn't get along with anybody in the administration (which is bad since he's, you know, chief of staff), or anybody of either party in Congress (which was worse because it directly led to Obama getting screwed by the debt ceiling hostage crisis), or in the business community (which was actually funny, since that was the whole point in the first place). The guy had a dictatorial personality *and* knew nothing about DC politics, so he was sort of the worst of both worlds -- the opposite of the guy who came directly before him, Pete Rouse, who's respected by everybody who's ever worked with him.

I don't know the replacement, Lew. He's coming from OMB and he's supposed to be one of those freaky smart people you dig up at CalTech or MIT, but unlike most wonks he actually has some political savvy (OMB is as much of a snake pit as say DOD or the CIA, and by all reports he thrived there). He can't possibly be worse than Daley. It also signals that Obama's going to concentrate on the budget and deficit in 2012 and that he's probably going to do most of it through the EOP and ignore the TPers and let the GOP take out the trash (or, failing that, the electorate in November). So maybe he's a one trial learner.

Edit: oh, one fun thing about Lew. He's a member of the CFR, for all the Illuminati conspiracy theorists out there. Ewige Blumenkraft und ewige Schlangenkraft! :)
 
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Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Old Pio said:
Yet when he wanted to steal Florida after the voting in 2000, the first person Gore called was Billy Daley. Go figure.
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You mean when Gore tried to save the country from the most vile and corrupt regime in our lifetimes? Super Al even knew that after the vile nature of those Republicans was exposed, we'd have to suffer through at least one or two Dem presidents and their policies. Gore stealing Florida in '00 would have allowed a conservative to win office in '04 and '08. A true shame that FL result.
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

sagard said:
You mean when Gore tried to save the country from the most vile and corrupt regime in our lifetimes? Super Al even knew that after the vile nature of those Republicans was exposed, we'd have to suffer through at least one or two Dem presidents and their policies. Gore stealing Florida in '00 would have allowed a conservative to win office in '04 and '08. A true shame that FL result.
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I'll tell you what vile is. Vile is dispatching a battalion of lawyers to disenfranchise GI's trying to vote absentee. And that bald spot. And claiming he didn't have the time to run for president in '92 because his alcoholic son was recovering from injuries he sustained in a crash. Later, however, he did have the time to run for Vice President (the drunken kid evidently having visited Lourdes). Presidents are very hard to turn out of office, no matter how bad for the country, as I fear we may learn in November.
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

Andrew Sullivan praises Obama in Newsweek.
For all the leg-tingling adoration, and in spite of misleading statements of fact (there are misleading "facts" and highly suspect conclusions cleverly inserted in pretty good numbers), I like this column because I think he gets something essential right about Obama's approach to the presidency and politics, and what he gets right ("the long view") also explains why Obama will be re-elected.
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

geezer said:
Andrew Sullivan praises Obama in Newsweek.
For all the leg-tingling adoration, and in spite of misleading statements of fact (there are misleading "facts" and highly suspect conclusions cleverly inserted in pretty good numbers), I like this column because I think he gets something essential right about Obama's approach to the presidency and politics, and what he gets right ("the long view") also explains why Obama will be re-elected.
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I think Sullivan also nails what's so insane about the vast majority of both conservatives and liberals in this country. The use of rhetoric to just complain, complain, complain, and make wild assertions is astonishing, more so in this election cycle than I can ever remember. It's even worse than 2004. I get that it's a way for people to appeal to the casual Wal-Mart idiot, but it's gotten to the point where the opinion is more important to people than the reasoning behind it.
 
Re: Obama XXII: Occupy the White House

sagard said:
You mean when Gore tried to save the country from the most vile and corrupt regime in our lifetimes? Super Al even knew that after the vile nature of those Republicans was exposed, we'd have to suffer through at least one or two Dem presidents and their policies. Gore stealing Florida in '00 would have allowed a conservative to win office in '04 and '08. A true shame that FL result.
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If Bushiewushie got re-elected in 2004, there is no way Gore would have lost. He could not have possibly screwed up the country as bad as Dumbya. The only problem I would have had is if Lieberman got elected in 2008.
 
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