COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
I like Keyes. One of those guys that starts answering the question before the question is fully out of the asker's mouth. And very forcefully too. Rat a tat tat. Seems much more substantial than, say, a Ron Paul to me.
ReplyDeleteWas just listening to an Australian scientist attending the climate get together in New York. Says a shift is occuring among many scientists about the current hysteria, just as it is among the general population. Seems a resistance to this cap 'n trade 'n tax you to death is occuring among some democrats as well----
ReplyDelete“Anybody who thinks it will be easy to get the votes on the budget in the conditions that we face is smoking something,” Conrad said.
Conrad joined Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Budget Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in criticizing the administration’s cap-and-trade proposal for not doing enough to counterbalance increases in energy costs that will be felt by consumers and companies, especially those in energy states such as North Dakota.
Budget Votes Lacking
Keyes is right, left to himself Obama will destroy the country.
Amazing isn't it? In a huff and a puff to elect a black President, we elect probably the worst black in the entire country, and he's probably not even qualified to be President.
Shit, I can't over it.
Not only that, I can't get over it.
ReplyDeleteThe Austrian Terminated, Beheaded
ReplyDeleteAlan Keyes is a major reason why Obama is president.
ReplyDeleteah heck, posting is slow and confined to the brilliant *cough* *cough* ramblings of the mattie and bobbie show so I'll copy the whole rant for y'all to enjoy"
ReplyDelete"Reviving the Dream
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 9, 2009
Working families were in deep trouble long before this megarecession hit. But too many of the public officials who should have been looking out for the middle class and the poor were part of the reckless and shockingly shortsighted alliance of conservatives and corporate leaders that rigged the economy in favor of the rich and ultimately brought it down completely.
As Jared Bernstein, now the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, wrote in the preface to his book, “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)”:
“Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us.”
Working people were not just abandoned by big business and their ideological henchmen in government, they were exploited and humiliated. They were denied the productivity gains that should have rightfully accrued to them. They were treated ruthlessly whenever they tried to organize. They were never reasonably protected against the savage dislocations caused by revolutions in technology and global trade.
Working people were told that all of this was good for them, and whether out of ignorance or fear or prejudice or, as my grandfather might have said, damned foolishness, many bought into it. They signed onto tax policies that worked like a three-card monte game. And they were sold a snake oil concoction called “trickle down” that so addled their brains that they thought it was a wonderful idea to hand over their share of the nation’s wealth to those who were already fabulously rich.
America used to be better than this.
The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)
But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.
As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.
Men have done particularly poorly. Men who are now in their 30s — the prime age for raising families — earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age.
It may seem like ancient history, but in the first few decades following World War II, the United States, despite many serious flaws, established the model of a highly productive society that shared its prosperity widely and made investments that were geared toward a more prosperous, more fulfilling future.
The American dream was alive and well and seemingly unassailable. But somehow, following the oil shocks, the hyperinflation and other traumas of the 1970s, Americans allowed the right-wingers to get a toehold — and they began the serious work of smothering the dream.
Ronald Reagan saw Medicare as a giant step on the road to socialism. Newt Gingrich, apparently referring to the original fee-for-service version of Medicare, which was cherished by the elderly, cracked, “We don’t get rid of it in Round One because we don’t think it’s politically smart.”
The right-wingers were crafty: You smother the dream by crippling the programs that support it, by starving the government of money to pay for them, by funneling the government’s revenues to the rich through tax cuts and other benefits, by looting the government the way gangsters loot legitimate businesses and then pleading poverty when it comes time to fund the services required by the people.
The anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist summed the matter up nicely when he famously said, “Our goal is to shrink the government to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub.” Only they didn’t shrink the government, they enlarged it and turned its bounty over to the rich.
Now, with the economy in free fall and likely to get worse, Americans — despite their suffering — have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then to move it in a fairer, smarter and ultimately more productive direction. That is the only way to revive the dream, but it will take a long time and require great courage and sacrifice.
The right-wingers do not want that to happen, which is why they are rooting so hard for President Obama’s initiatives to fail. They like the direction that the country took over the past 30 years. They’d love to do it all again. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/opinion/10herbert.html?_r=1
I don't have my magical bolding wand easily handy so I'll highlight this turd of a statistic"
ReplyDelete"rom 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)
But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. "
off topic...
ReplyDeleteIf by chance Charles Freeman Jr reads this, or they know Charles Freeman Jr...
Dear Charles...
KISS MY ASS you c**ksucker....
dont let the doorknob hit ya on the ass out the door...
you may now return to the topic at hand
They brought Keyes in on a Greyhound Bus. He never stood a chance and everyone knew it. Blame Ryan, not Keyes.
ReplyDeleteThe Illinois Republican State Central Committee then assembled to choose a replacement candidate. Much early speculation predicted that former Chicago Bears' coaching legend Mike Ditka would be selected. However, six weeks after Ryan's withdrawal, on August 4, 2004, the Illinois Republican State Central Committee asked Alan Keyes of Maryland to replace Ryan as the Republican candidate. Keyes accepted four days later and moved into an apartment in Illinois four days after that, less than 3 months before the general election. The election was the first in which both major party candidates were African Americans, and the 43% margin was the largest in Illinois history in a U.S. Senate election.
Dodd in Connecticut may have a tough time getting elected in 2010. Current polls show him sagging badly.
I believe it's This to which WiO refers.
ReplyDeleteah heck, posting is slow and confined to the brilliant *cough* *cough* ramblings of the mattie and bobbie show so I'll copy the whole rant for y'all to enjoy
ReplyDelete==
Here we again with another gusher of pent-up stupidity. Only a moron like you would still try to pin this on partizan politics, when in fact every objective observer can easily see that both parties have been captured by the corporate mafia.
reagan=bush1=clinton=bush2=obama
=same shit
Amalakites, Mat, remember you taught me about the Amalakites.
ReplyDeleteGot to disagree with your equation at the extremes though. Reagan doesn't = Obama, not by a long shot.
I agree, Bob. But Reagan was a tool of the Corporates just as much as Obama is. And that's what the equation stands for.
ReplyDelete