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."

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Obama and Kennedy, Which One?


Sit this one out and meet your new masters, The New Dream Team

Channeling the Wrong Kennedy (hat tip: Trish)

Though he eschews the harsh language of former candidate John Edwards, Obama nonetheless embraces the same class warfare, attacking big business, big oil, big pharma and so on.

JFK reduced the burden of the state on society and unleashed the creative potential of Americans everywhere. At every opportunity in his career, Sen. Ted Kennedy has voted to expand the power, size and scope of government. He sees government as the answer to every problem.


by Michael D. Tanner CATO


This article appeared in the Orange County Register on February 6, 2008.


Perhaps nothing so symbolizes the promise and peril of Barack Obama's presidential campaign as his claim to the mantle of John F. Kennedy.

Obama's recent endorsement by Sen. Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy's glowing op/ed about him in the New York Times hearken back to the glory days of the 1960s.

Obama has repeatedly compared himself to JFK, and his campaign casts itself as the second coming of Camelot. Obama's supporters see in him the same youthful optimism that made JFK an iconic symbol in the decade.

It was an era when anything seemed possible.

In his appetite for big government, Obama is quite unlike JFK.


But the surviving Kennedys are also symbols of the darker side of 1960s liberalism: The bloated, bureaucratic welfare state. Teddy Kennedy's liberalism gave us welfare as we knew it and spent $11 trillion on federal programs fighting poverty without reducing it. It raised taxes until they discouraged work, investment and innovation. It created an ethic of entitlement and dependence on government. In his policy positions, as opposed to his bipartisan rhetoric, Barack Obama calls to mind this side of 1960s liberalism as well.

Indeed, in his appetite for big government, Obama is quite unlike JFK.

JFK called for cutting taxes. "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low," Jack Kennedy said, long before the advent of Supply Side Economics, "and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now."

The increases in government spending during JFK's term were modest. (It was LBJ, not JFK, who launched the Great Society.) And JFK's fiscal policies spurred substantial economic growth.

In contrast, there is little in Obama's policy pronouncements beyond traditional tax and spend liberalism. According to the respected and nonpartisan National Journal, Obama is actually the most liberal U.S. senator, with a voting record actually to the left of Bernie Sanders, Vermont's self-proclaimed socialist. He has received perfect 100 percent voting records from groups like Americans for Democratic Action, the National Organization for Women and the National Education Association, giving him a slightly more left-wing record than well-known liberals such as Pat Leahy, D-Vt., John Kerry, D-Mass., and . . . Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

One searches in vain for a new idea among Obama's policies. Personal accounts for Social Security? Entitlement reform? School choice? Tax cuts? Obama rejects them all, calling such proposals "Social Darwinism." Instead, Obama offers a traditional laundry list of liberalism: national health insurance, a "living wage" mandate, restrictions on executive pay, taxes on oil companies, more spending on just about everything.

Though he eschews the harsh language of former candidate John Edwards, Obama nonetheless embraces the same class warfare, attacking big business, big oil, big pharma and so on.

JFK reduced the burden of the state on society and unleashed the creative potential of Americans everywhere. At every opportunity in his career, Sen. Ted Kennedy has voted to expand the power, size and scope of government. He sees government as the answer to every problem.

Barack Obama's language is full of Jack, but his policies are pure Teddy.



Michael D. Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute.

84 comments:

  1. Gypsy, Gypsy please tell me
    What my fortune's going to be
    Rich-man, Poor-man, Beggar-man, Thief
    Doc-tor, Law-yer, In-di-an Chief

    ReplyDelete
  2. Murdoch Inc deep for Hillary
    .
    .
    According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a non-profit organisation in Washington that researches the donor lists, News Corporation is now Senator Clinton's 20th largest supporter, having contributed more than $US93,000 to her presidential campaign so far.
    .
    .

    ReplyDelete
  3. The war on terror

    Turned into a political marketing tool, and soon not even that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the article for its simplicity in framing.

    Sad but true, my knowledge of JFKs presidency barely rose to cursory: Ask not what your country can do for you; that tragic little affair in Cuba; and an assassination that gave rise to endless speculation and Grassy Knoll jokes.

    So here is a serious contender for the WH who is a Ted Kennedy liberal but with a persuasive style and personal appeal Ted long since lost if he at any time possessed in any quantity at all - that liberalism itself long since lost. And it is unfortunately from my point of view most, though by no means solely, appealing to young Americans who are still in the process of forming their political opinions - who are in their politically formative years, as it were. Growing up entirely under Bush-Clinton-Bush, Obama has in contrast New! Young! Fresh! Hopeful! Energetic! Idealistic! written all over him. Never underestimate the amount of substance you can smuggle in under disarming style alone. For good or for ill.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Billionaire financier George Soros is contributing $2.5 million to a new political organization that promotes Democratic causes in the 2008 elections. A year-end campaign report filed with the IRS and uncovered by The New York Times confirmed an earlier Newsmax report disclosing that the group, Fund for America, was organized by Taco Bell heir Rob McKay, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, and Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union. The SEIU matched Soros’ contribution. Newsmax reported in November that the liberal activists had joined forces to form the so-called 527 group — named for a section of the tax code that allows such an organization to attempt to influence elections as long as it discloses donors and expenses. Fund for America is expected to air television ads and take other political action designed to help Democrats win the White House and retain control of Congress, Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times reported. The organization will also focus on direct mail and door-to-door canvassing._NEWSMAX

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gypsy, Gypsy please
    tell me
    What my fortune's going to be
    Not a rich, not a poor man
    And not a thief
    Please make me an
    Indian Chief

    bobal

    ReplyDelete
  7. dangit!

    Gypsy, Gypsy please tell me
    What my Fortune's going to be
    Not a rich man, not a poor man
    And not a thief
    Please make me
    An Indian Chief

    bobal

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm with William F. Buckley on this--we'd do just as well to have the country run by the first 535 names in the phone book. Not that that would insure it was well run, just that it would be as well run, or ill run.

    ReplyDelete
  9. SEIU - Somebody's Gotta Take a Stand for Illegals.

    ReplyDelete
  10. With the proviso that a new 535 names is lotteried up every two years. Which medeival religious group was it--"Never reformed, because never deformed"--the Carthusians?--they used to put up a new head boy every year, and it worked good.

    ReplyDelete
  11. With all due respect to WFB, that is NOT a helpful attitude, bob. And if you reach for the Mencken or Rogers, we're surely sunk. So don't even think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. It was inappropriate, out of place, and thoughtless, I admit. I feel ashamed of myself. :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is how we pass our winter days out here.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The presidential candidates have plenty of surrogates and a palace guard to protect them from some of the buffeting. The superdelegates will be on their own in an unforgiving arena. They can seek favors or positions in return for their votes. They can package themselves with others and get a better deal. There will be promises to raise money, invitations to events and deals for jobs.
    ----------

    I wanna be a superdelegate.

    ReplyDelete
  15. With all due respect to WFB, that is NOT a helpful attitude, bob.

    If I was a superdelegate I'd get a little due respect myself!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Too late for a change of careers?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Being a superdelegate is all about timing. You got to hold back, to get the best deal for yourself, but certainly not too long, cause once the magic number is reached, your vote ain't squat anymore. It's all about timing, and intelligence. You got to board the sailing ship just at the last moment, getting yourself a first class cabin, and free access to the shuffle board court, but you can't let that ship get away from the pier without you, or you're sunk.

    But, yes, alas, it's way too late for a career change for me :(

    ReplyDelete
  18. In other words, bob, it's a potentially unsavory though not necessarily ignoble business at either end. And it is possible that neither candidate will pull far enough out ahead to make for a clean and satisfying convention. (Kevin Drum had an interesting thread on that yesterday.)

    Meanwhile on the right...

    ReplyDelete
  19. But I first thought when you said that McCain looks fit for embalming, you were speaking politically.

    Tuesday will tell.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Really, wouldn't it be wonderful if the Elephant Bar could bring back Twain, Whitman, Mencken and Rogers as our reporters at the Democratic National Convention this year. If we could at least channel them...

    ReplyDelete
  21. I think the Kennedy's endorsement of Obama is more anti-Clinton than pro-Obama.

    For the good of the Dem party, they have been mum on the Clintons for a long time. Until now.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I think I posted this once before, but--

    Walt Whitman Describes the Democratic Convention

    "'The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.'"

    ReplyDelete
  23. Sun Feb 10, 05:17:00 PM EST

    Yes. It would.

    ReplyDelete
  24. And Mencken--

    Ah, but to have Mencken weighing in daily about the Bush Administration. How much fun would he have skewering The Patriot Act? And what would he say about the sanitized reporting of the War on Terror? Mencken described journalists working for the early 1940s pro-war propaganda machine as a profession of "public office seekers, title hunters, social pushers, dollar diddlers, mountebanks and cads." Things haven't changed.

    Mencken was a constant and outspoken defender of freedom of conscience and civil rights. He attacked America's preoccupation with fundamentalist Christianity and opposed the persecution and injustice that Puritanism imposed. "Puritanism," he wrote, is "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." Assailing the "Booboisie," his word for the ignorant middle classes, Mencken wrote: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American middle class."

    He heaped scorn not only upon self-serving public officials but the contemporary state of American democracy itself. "They realized the essential weakness of democracy," Mencken wrote of the founding fathers, "and predicted some of its worst excesses - now unhappy and inescapable realities. They warned that giving the vote to incompetent, despairing and envious people would breed demagogues to rouse and rally them, and that the whole democratic process would thus be converted into organized pillage and plunder."

    The Arkansas state legislature even passed a motion to pray for Mencken's soul in 1931, after he had raised that state to the "apex of moronia." "My only defense is that I didn't make Arkansas the butt of ridicule," Mencken said. "God did."

    Mencken stirred controversy at the 1948 Democratic convention when the Maryland progressive party made a motion to censure him after he described black keynote speaker Charles P. Howard as "a tall, full-bodied barrister of the color of a good ten-cent cigar" with "an African roll in his voice that is far from unpleasant." The motion was denied, which disappointed Mencken, but caused him to complain about "the growing sensitiveness of politicians. Nobody denounced me as a white-baiter when I wrote that Herbert Hoover had a complexion like unrisen dough."
    -------
    An equal opportunity debunker.

    ReplyDelete
  25. "The Arkansas state legislature even passed a motion to pray for Mencken's soul in 1931..."

    Priceless.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Literally.

    Surpasses a Visa commercial.

    ReplyDelete
  27. They warned that giving the vote to incompetent, despairing and envious people would breed demagogues to rouse and rally them, and that the whole democratic process would thus be converted into organized pillage and plunder.

    **************************************

    Now here I'm going to give my stock response. The surest way to curb this is to proscribe and eventually deny to the government the ability to either grant or withhold state favors to private entities.

    ReplyDelete
  28. You want to take away farm payments??!!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Farm paymenmts--that's different, that's a special case. You can't lump that in with politics.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Would I lose my last lukewarm friend at the bar?

    ReplyDelete
  31. There go half the jobs in Washington.

    As well as all the wannabe King Solomons and Robin Hoods.

    ReplyDelete
  32. There is no question that individual rights have become individual license. Responsibility and duty have been stripped from the social contract. Duty has been replaced with entitlement. What is left is a single dimension of a growing social class, demanding services and benefits and offering little in return.

    Herded by political opportunists, they are reaching a tipping point where their votes will be able to neutralize the educated, the responsible and the productive.

    Then we have the paid entertainers, the ego driven microphones that subscribe to the myopic view a surrender to an Obama or Hillary is preferable to a flawed candidate that subscribes to 85% of what they believe in. Delusion is catching.

    A delusion will vanish the afternoon of the inauguration of Obama or Hillary and the multi-millionaire mouthpieces will never accept one iota of responsibility.

    What do Sean Hannity, Sean Penn, Glenn Beck, Glenn Swift, Rush Limbaugh and George Clooney have in common? They are all paid entertainers driven by ratings. Nothing more, nothing less.

    ReplyDelete
  33. All I want is a little respect:)

    You're from a farm background Trish. You can't do this to us!

    Well, it is ridiculous at this point. It made sense in the depression and for awhile after. If the payments were really targeted to only the working farmer, that would be a good thing I have always felt. I'm in favor of widespread ownership, and that would help in that regard. There is too much--way too much--concentrated wealth in the United States, I agree with the democrats on that.

    Oddly enough, however, in the last few farm bills, it has been the dems rolling out the money to the farmers, the pubs have been more WSJourinal, and wanting to cut it off, or back.

    My wife told me Bush vetoed the Farm Bill, but I haven't been paying attention so I don't know what's up with it or if she is right.

    With the prices the way they are now there aren't any meaningful payments anyway, and shouldn't be.

    One thing I have noticed, the price of used farm machinery is really really soaring, at least around here. I pd I think it was about 64k for a John Deere 8440(new) and the used ones around are asking more than that.

    ReplyDelete
  34. I am really tiring of stupidity, individually and en-masse.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Hear hear Bob! All the bullshit from the Wall Street crowd and the demagogues on the left. Build the middles class and you will protect and secure what is worth protecting.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Chavez, having nationalized, or stolen, as you prefer, the oil companys in Venezuela, is threatening to cut off shipments to the US. He's ticked about being sued and having assets frozen.

    I'd think that he'd need the know how they provide.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Chrysler dealers, meeting as a group for the first time with the struggling automaker's new management team, on Sunday expressed support for a newly unveiled plan to shrink Chrysler's retail network and streamline its product line-up.

    ...

    Since appointing former Home Depot Inc Chief Executive Robert Nardelli to run the company, Cerberus has been expected to shake up Detroit's business practices and some Chrysler dealers said they saw that already happening.

    Joel Lieberman, a dealer from East Hampton, New York, said he sold his General Motors Corp franchises two months ago to buy a Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge store because he believed Chrysler's new Wall Street owners would succeed where Daimler failed.


    Restructuring Move

    ReplyDelete
  38. My cuz Sally is a perfect example of farm programs. She was an only child, and her father, and his brother, farmed what was then marginal land in central Washington. The had 2000 acres, which sounds like alot, but isn't out there, as it is very low rainfall, can only grow a crop every other year, so they would summer fallow half and crop half each year in a rotation, and the yields even then are meager compared to around here. So in amount of productivity it would be like maybe 600 acres around here. It only took her father and brother, who died, about thirty years to pay off the land(!) and they were helped by the farm programs. This was hard farming in those days. Many went bust. The dust was unbelievable, I don't know how they survived in cats without cabs. Anyway up until just recently they were still getting farm payments, driving Lincolns and relaxing. They even put in a swimming pool with gov. money, legal too, as it was ruled a water resource for fire protection out there. I looked up once the amount of money they had received over the years(public records USDA) and it was a hell of a lot. I doubt her father could have made it without the gov. help, but it is really long past when they and similarily situated should be cut off.

    ReplyDelete
  39. When Captain Amnesty goes back to work, I think you'll be thankful for the help of those entertainers, 2164th.

    ReplyDelete
  40. An active Islamic Jihad terror cell planned and carried out a number of suicide bombings from the northern West Bank between 2003 and 2006, until its senior leaders were killed by the Israel Defense Forces.
    Meanwhile, the Shin Bet security service announced Sunday night that it would allow dozens of wanted Palestinians affiliated with Fatah to travel unharmed in the West Bank as part of an ongoing amnesty deal with Israel.

    According to the deal, some 200 wanted gunmen will undergo a test period during which they will remain under the watch of Palestinian Authority security forces. The Shin Bet said most of the 200 men have abided by the rules of the agreement and have not gone back to carrying out terror attacks.

    Shin Bet added that a "positive dynamic" had been created for Fatah members who were not included in the deal, but warned that militants who have not received their okay to travel freely will be considered valid targets.


    Suicide Bomber

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  41. A President Obama really might withdraw all the troops from Iraq in which case we might find ourselves confronted with 7 devils worse than the first. Whether we should have gone in at all is a good question, but I can imagine the situation becoming a lot worse than the status quo ante if we leave willy nilly. I doubt Hillary would do this, which is the only difference I can see between the two. And Hillary wouldn't go on a world wide apology tour. If she was to do that, she should start here at home.

    ReplyDelete
  42. I thought she said she was bringing them home, also.

    Oh, wait, I think she said incrementally where Obama would do it all at once.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Also earning a Grammy was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who defeated two presidents -- Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- to take home the award for best spoken-word album. Obama won for his book, "The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream."

    The Grammys, nicknamed "music's biggest night," are as much an all-star concert as an awards show. This year's performers include Aretha Franklin, named the 2008 MusiCares Person of the Year, singing with Mary J. Blige, the Clark Sisters, Israel And New Breed, and Trin-I-Tee 5:7 in a gospel segment; a reunion of the Time; Beyonce and Tina Turner; the Foo Fighters with Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones conducting; and the Fab Four tribute.

    CBS will air the show from Los Angeles' Staples Center.


    Grammy Wins

    ReplyDelete
  44. My daughter is an economics major, bob. Do you know what she likes about it? It's nonjudgmental in its own way.

    If you want this, then this.

    If you want that, then that.

    Everything has its cost and its benefit.

    ReplyDelete
  45. "The nickel you can argue about. And maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't.

    But to me, the penny is just obvious," says Jeff Gore, a young scientist at MIT who says keeping the penny is costing all of us, in more ways than one.

    At work, Gore does research in biophysics. But away from the lab, he's a fearless crusader against the penny, arguing that if time is money, the cent is senseless.


    Should we Make Cents?

    ReplyDelete
  46. I have some of These Indian Heads. My Bank of America card rounds off any purchase to the dollar and gives me the difference! What a deal!

    Stop minting the penny, start minting the centavo.

    The 3C.

    Caesar Chavez Centavo.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Yeah, I remember seeing some of those around the house growing up, also.

    ReplyDelete
  48. If you have any Indian Heads left around, Sam, you ought to check them over carefully. They are all worth in the dollars and many are worth a whole lot more than that. Go through them by date. I remember being really surprised at what they were worth.

    ReplyDelete
  49. As it happens, on the Woodstock museum, McCain's absolutely right: If clapped-out boomer rock is no longer self-supporting and requires public subsidy, then capitalism is dead, and we might as well Sovietize the state. In a sense, it's the perfect reductioof geriatric hippie idealism: We've got to get back to the garden, but at taxpayer expense.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Thanks, Bob. I'll check them. I think mom's got them all somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  51. God I could strangle a few so-called conservatives about now.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Although there was snowy weather in Maine, turnout was strong in the state's democratic caucuses. With 87% of precincts reporting, Obama won at least 13 of the state's 24 delegates, while Clinton won at least eight, according to the AP.

    Clinton still leads the race for the nomination, with 1,135 delegates, including superdelegates, while Obama has 1,106, the AP reported.

    Candidates in both parties are now looking ahead to contests Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.


    Clinton Replaces Manager

    ReplyDelete
  53. Remember the death penalty, Trish.
    Certainly don't act it out in Texas.

    ReplyDelete
  54. The Rwandan Chamber of Deputies [official website] has passed legislation that would make promoting "genocide ideology" a crime, punishable by life in prison for the worse offenders. The bill was passed unanimously by the country's lower house Friday, and now must be approved by the Rwandan Senate [official website] and signed by President Paul Kagame [official website; BBC profile] before becoming law.

    Some of the impetus behind the bill comes from a December 2007 government report which revealed that ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi children in the nation's schools were widespread, and evidence that the divisions had been promoted by numerous teachers and school administrators. Lawmakers hope the bill will serve as a strong deterrent for future violence.

    The bill includes penalties for offenders of all degrees: children under the age of 12 could receive up to 12 months in a custodial rehabilitation center; political, administrative, or religious officials found guilty could face up to 25 years in prison and fines ranging from $360 to $1900; and both repeat offenders and those who commit or are complicit to an ethnically motivated murder would face life in prison - the country's maximum criminal penalty.


    Banning Promotion of Genocide

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  55. Thanks for the warning, bob.

    In an election year when we were going to be damn lucky to make a decent showing - miraculous to do better - what little we have is going to be thrown away.

    And for less than nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  56. In the seven days before Super Tuesday, Mike Huckabee was featured in a grand total of 2 percent of presidential campaign stories.

    ...

    NBC is done apologizing to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

    NBC News President Steve Capus is the highest-ranking official to have personally expressed his regret to the campaign for MSNBC correspondent David Shuster's crack that Chelsea Clinton was being "pimped out" for political work. But after the apologies from Capus, Shuster and others -- and the suspension of Shuster for an undetermined period -- the campaign released a stinging letter to Capus over the weekend.

    ...

    What may become the biggest investigative team in journalism is getting a major boost today.

    ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that plans to launch online this spring, is announcing an advisory board that includes five top newspaper editors. And that boosts the chances that some major papers may run the group's investigative pieces, which otherwise would appear only on its Web site.


    All Knotted Up

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  57. A washer/dryer in every home. Obama and Nelson Mandela

    This is a good article. The people took Mandela seriously, and went to the appliance stores, demanding their washing machines.

    ReplyDelete
  58. I demand a government that will make me deliriously happy 24/7. It's our American right. It's in the Constitution, or the Declaration, or the Magma Chart or something.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Barrister Kingsley Ononuju was recently appointed as co-ordinator of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in Imo State. In this interview, he discusses the opportunities inherent in NEPAD and how Imo’s economy can be galvanised through it.

    In the past couple of weeks, we have seen a lot of activities concerning NEPAD. What exactly is NEPAD and how does it affect Imo State and the South East?

    NEPAD is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. By extension, what this means is the “New Partnership for Nigeria’s Development” and by extension Imo State, which is the territory I am representing in NEPAD.


    Alleviating Poverty

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  60. The Clinton camp is now on the defensive and in an extraordinary turnaround started calling him the "establishment" candidate.

    Well that does it for me.

    Sam, you ought to be at least getting some good entertainment watching Billary twist in the wind like this. It's almost enough to make one feel sorry for her.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Yes, almost.

    I don't know what to think anymore. Obama's the furthest left. Hillary really needs to go to charm school. But like 2164th said, we know what we're getting with Hillary, at least.

    I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
  62. United States Representative Steve Chabot, who makes a policy of not endorsing anyone during the primary season, is nonetheless thinking past the conventions.

    "November is a long way off. A lot can happen and a lot will happen but I think John McCain stacks up very well against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

    I think it's going to be a close race," said Chabot.


    Local Headquarters

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  63. "I don't know what to think anymore. Obama's the furthest left. Hillary really needs to go to charm school. But like 2164th said, we know what we're getting with Hillary, at least."

    Hillary's going to have people, right and left, watching her like a hawk the moment she's sworn in. She's also a cynical bastard. Obama's movement potential, the kind of guy, like FDR, who can fuck up everything and still come out smelling like a rose.

    Of course, even the cynical bastard (LBJ) can do a lot of damage if given the opportunity.

    ReplyDelete
  64. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  65. So, of course, could our own Teddy Roosevelt Jr.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Obama's movement potential

    And that's what he is starting to call it too, a movement.

    I don't like most movements, though a good bowel movement is satisfying. The commies had a movement, the nazis had a movement, the Italian fascists had a movement. The environmental movement killed nuclear power in the country. Flamenco dancing is good movement.

    ReplyDelete
  67. The feds should thus revive a failed Enron-era proposal banning companies from allowing employees to invest more than 10 percent of in-house retirement savings in their companies’ stock. Congress should also prohibit the owner of any independent 401(k) or IRA from investing more than 15 percent of retirement assets in one company or 20 percent in one industry.

    (Investors could still do so elsewhere, of course.) And Congress should continue to prevent people from using their 401(k) accounts to invest in their homes, despite suggestions that lifting the ban would prop up the housing market.

    Housing assets, just as vulnerable to market bubbles as stocks are, already make up too large a percentage of Americans’ savings.


    Criminalizing Capitalism

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  68. hmmm-learn something every day. This says Flemenco dancing actually goes with the untouchable people of the Punjab who migrated west, the gypsies, and it comes from them. Back when Longacres Race Track was going in Seattle there were always a few families of gyps hanging around, betting on the horses, and picking pockets.

    ReplyDelete
  69. Longacres..

    Haven't heard that word in awhile. Blast from the past.

    Punjab - Isn't that a state in Afganistan?

    ReplyDelete
  70. PML-Q secretary general Mushahid Hussain Syed says the government should release Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, other deposed judges and senior lawyers, politicians and members of the civil society to create an environment conducive to free and fair elections in the country.

    “SCBA president Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retd) Tariq Mehmood, Ali Ahmed Kurd, Munir A. Malik and other lawyers and political workers should be released immediately and restrictions on the movement of deposed judges of superior courts should be lifted to help create a peaceful atmosphere,” he told media personnel at the Pakistan Muslim League House on Sunday.

    He confirmed that Chaudhry Parvaiz Elahi was his party’s candidate for premiership.


    Calling for Release

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  71. The area that is now known as the Greater Punjab comprised vast territories of northern India and eastern Pakistan. It comprised, in its original sense, regions extending from Swat/Kabul in the west to Delhi in the east i.e the area including parts of Afghanistan and the plains up to the Ganges [1]. It was a centre of the prehistoric Indus Valley civilization and after c. 1500 BCE the site of early Aryan settlements [2]. In ancient times, the area was inhabited by people called Vahikas or Arattas [3]. The Vahikas or Arattas were divided into many tribes or clans like the Gandharas, Prasthalas, Khasas, Vasatis, Trigartas, Pauravas, Malavas, Yaudheyas, Saindhavas, and Sauviras. There were also Iranian and transfrontier peoples such as the Kambojas and Pahlavas, as well as Ionians (Yavanas) and nomadic Scythians (Shakas).[4]

    The region, populated by Indo-Aryans, has been ruled by many different empires and ethnic groups, including Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, ancient Macedonians, Persians, Arabs, Turks, Mughals, Afghans, Balochis, Sikhs and British. In 1947, it was partitioned between British India's successor states, India and Pakistan.

    The Pakistani Punjab now comprises the majority of the region. The Indian Punjab has been further sub-divided into the modern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi.
    --------

    I liked Longacres, very pretty. Used to go there often. Horse racing is pretty much a thing of the past in the northwest. They used to even have a little track at Coeur d'Alene, mostly quarterhorses. It closed sometime in the 70's I think. Not sure what took it's place, maybe Boeing.

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  72. Might as well be clear about what we're getting if we get McCain. This Amigo is on his staff.

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  73. Huckabee for President!
    ---
    Hillary Boots Campaign Manager Then and now.

    Patti cares deeply about immigration, an issue she's brought to the fore in this campaign.
    "It's very personal for me,"
    she says.
    "As a community and as a culture, we provide so much richness to this country."
    ---
    No, your dad's generation did, and those offspring educated in Catholic Schools do.
    Today's illiterate gang-bangers nurtured and perverted in public multicultibilingual hellholes bring social upheaval, cultural destruction and economic poverty to this country.

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  74. He's cute, too, and Mark Mckinnon is downright beautiful.
    ...for a snake.
    ---
    "McCain Aide Touts 'Mexico first' Policy"

    John McCain's Brain Trust On Immigration?

    Michelle Malkin is all over the background of
    senior McCain advisor Juan Hernandez in posts here
    and here.

    We must not only have a free flow of goods and services, but also start working for a free flow of people .”
    Last month, I received an e-mail from a concerned reader.
    She wrote:
    “Hispanic Republicans here in Nevada had a chance to speak by conference to Sen. John McCain and many of us were appalled to learn that his National Director of Hispanic Outreach is none other that Dr. Juan Hernandez, notorious for his open borders stance. How can McCain reconcile the fact that he says he “learnt his lesson w/the American people” with choosing as his Hispanic Ntl. Dir. someone whose views and interests are so clearly anti-security and not in the interest of the American people or for that matter us legal Hispanic immigrants.

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  75. Pelosi joins Reed, whatta brain trust:
    "The Surge was a failure!"

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  76. If Harry Reid is a Douche, what will Cpl Rock call Nancy?

    This guy was in our local paper.
    Too Cool! Cpl Rock!

    Says he wants to get back and have some starbucks coffee:
    "I love it when those people serve me!"

    "it sucks that iraqi’s have more patriotism for a country that has turned to complete shit more than the people in america who drink starbucks everyday.
    ---
    i spent my christmas holidays covered in ash from the mortar fire and the IED’s, sleeping under a dirty rug i found in the house. everyone was sleeping way to close for comfort just to stay warm. anyways. a family was there and they obviously didnt want us there. atleast at first. the daughters were very sick so our corpsman treated them. they didnt have electricity so we got them a generator for power, they were cold so we got them gas heaters, we got them food and water and then we gave them $500. by the end of the week long visit with them we were drinking tea with them. when we left we cleaned their house better than it was when we got there. i even have pictures with the family. they told us that they liked marines and they would help us as much as they could and they gave us some information on the insurgents in the area. we ended up catching a HUGE target down the road from there house because of it.
    "

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  77. It is quite amazing Doug. The evangelicals assisted by the MSM trashed Rudy for his dating habits and Romney for his religion. Tancredo and Duncan were ignored and McCain was given up for dead. The entire opposition party to the Democrats has been demoralized and discredited by the lack of leadership by one man. That reality will not be improved by surrendering to the left wing of the Democratic party and the completion of the ongoing putsch by the US Supreme Court. McCain at his worst is better than Obama at his best. The immigration mess is a result of George Bush failing to enforce US law.

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  78. The Rand Don't Think too Much Tank:

    General Franks’s command, the study asserted, also assumed that Iraq’s police and civil bureaucracy would stay on the job and had no fallback option in case that expectation proved wrong. When Baghdad fell, the study said, American forces there “were largely mechanized or armored forces, well suited to waging major battles but not to restoring civil order. That task would have been better carried out, ideally, by military police or, acceptably, by light infantry trained in urban combat.”
    ---
    Written as tho God, or the Iraqis had something to do with the Army and bureaucrats being dismissed, NOT by God, or on their own Volition, but by the President himself, and his willful Stooge Dandy himself, Jerry Bremer.

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  79. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  80. Thank you for the info. It sounds pretty user friendly. I guess I’ll pick one up for fun. thank u
    farm machinery used

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