Category Archives: Democrats

On Grief And The Aggrieved

Crime, Democrats, Etiquette, Pop-Culture, Republicans, The State, The Zeitgeist

In the aftermath of the Arizona shootings, our masters in modern Rome are foregoing “partisanship” (read principle) and are coming together to spend funds not their own to secure their sorry asses against the statistically minuscule chance that these royal behinds will come to harm. Curiously, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson is commending House Speaker John Boehner for being “extraordinary in setting the right tone” for “a more enlightened way.”

“A more enlightened way” than what?” It’s almost as though Larson is the aggrieved party and Boehner a member of the offending group. Both parties have assumed these respective roles.

Indeed: “Republicans are clearly responding as if they feel somewhat incriminated,” said University of Michigan political science professor Lisa Disch. “On the one hand, they are acting very quickly to distance themselves from the incident, but on the other hand, they seem to be feeling as if they have been caught at something; caught at using rhetoric that is incendiary.”

On the topic of grief: A day after their child’s dreadful demise, the parents of the “9-year-old girl gunned down in Saturday’s shooting rampage outside an Arizona grocery store” were liberally granting interviews.

To me this is unsettling. We once used to grieve privately—at least initially. These days, there is nothing people will not share and express in public, and ASAP. They have no private selves.

This is part of our festering cultural commons.

UPDATED: Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed’ (More Gloom)

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Debt, Democrats, Fascism, Homeland Security, Liberty, Paleoconservatism, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

The following excerpt is from “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” my new WND.COM column:

“Last week, this column explained the divide between Americans and their ‘Overlords Who Art in D.C.’ I asked that you quit invoking words too weak to describe that divide. ‘Disconnect,’ ‘disrespect’: These are soft designations; they don’t begin to bridge the moat that separates you from your sovereigns.

Proper metaphors for the relationship between The Great Unwashed and the government that literally has them by the genitals is that of ruled and ruler, Rome and its provinces, Imperial China and its peasants.

If you’re a tax payer — at least 50 percent of Americans are tax consumers — you are the Beltway’s bitch.

So stop beseeching sinecured statists for ‘hope’ and ‘change.’ They will never know what it’s like to slum it in your neighborhoods. They’ll never experience the effects of inflation and rising prices as you will; they’ve voted themselves salaries twice as high as yours and pensions in perpetuity. You’re paying.

Think of yourself as a servant, your nose pressed against your master’s mansion windows. That’s how I felt as I drove through the suburbs of Northern Virginia, in October of this year. I saw what Peggy Noonan lushly described in her Wall Street Journal column, excerpted by John Derbyshire in his full and fair assessment of the tottering American experiment, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism …

The complete column is “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” now on WND.COM.

Avail yourself of my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, on Kindle.

Merry Xmas to all,
ILANA

UPDATE (Dec. 25): “IT’S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME” (as the Beatles lyrics go). The Powers that Be thought “Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim” (and also happens to have “the equivalent of a pacemaker”), needed a reminder of her ordeal.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.
“I turned to the police officer and said, ‘I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'” and they said, ‘No, you have to do this,'” she said.
Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.
“I told them, ‘No, I’m not going to have my breasts felt,’ and she said, ‘Yes, you are,'” said Hirschkind.
When Hirschkind refused, she says that “the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security.”
An ABIA spokesman says it is TSA policy that anyone activating a security alarm has two options. One is to opt out and not fly, and the other option is to subject themselves to an enhanced pat down. Hirschkind refused both and was arrested.

Hey, what do you know: A noisy, irate, flying public has changed the behavior of their sovereigns not a whit. Who would have thunk? (See “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed.”)

And what do memebers of the sheep herd say about a middle aged, ill American lady being mauled by rabid TSA dogs?

“I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it,” said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

It matters not a bit that “less than three percent of travelers get a pat-down.” This practice is a matter of policy, not happenstance. Theoretically, everyone could be molested, very many are. No freedom loving individual should be consoled by the repulsive, “rare-occurrence” excuse.

Slash 'N Burn Congress

Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Politics, Taxation

The so-called lame ducks are far from disabled, although they ought to be. “A lame duck,” explains Wikipedia, “is an elected official who is approaching the end of his or her tenure, and especially an official whose successor has already been elected. Wikipedia: “In U.S. politics the period between (presidential and congressional) elections in November and the inauguration of officials early in the following year is commonly called the lame duck period. …”

Lame duck officials tend to have less political power, as other elected officials are less inclined to cooperate with them. However, lame ducks are also in the peculiar position of not facing the consequences of their actions in a subsequent election, giving them greater freedom to issue unpopular decisions or appointments.

“During Bush’s first lame duck session in 2002 he created the Department of Homeland Security,” which grew a malignancy like the TSA.

Besides, what kind of a practice is it to allow embittered politicians who’ve been dismissed in disgust to continue to legislate?

BBC: “This year, the biggest issue looming over the lame duck session revolves around taxes. The so-called Bush tax cuts are set to expire, which would impact the pay packets of the vast majority of Americans.”

The ducks that should be lamed may still manage to soak the “rich,” to the detriment of all—rich and poor alike.

More False Arguments For Taxing The Rich

Democrats, Economy, Government, Socialism, Taxation

Shepard Smith of Fox News encapsulated what to him was the counter argument for taxes on the person earning $20 million annually: “He’ll be $1 million the poorer. Is that going to impact his life style, asked Smith? Will he fire the chauffeur? Not really.”

That’s also not really the right, utilitarian, economic argument for letting a man keep what is his. One million in the hands of government is one million dollars circulating the drain. As soon as you transfer private property into communal ownership, it’s as good as squandered. Left as private property, that money could be saved, invested in productive endeavors, or spent on consumer goods, which will generate work for producers.

How do you think the government collective will allocate $1million it has stolen, and has never worked to generate?

To the moral side of the matter:

From “The 2 Parties’ Question: How Much To Steal”: Taxes are private property plundered. The government has several ways to pay for its obligations, one of which is to seize private property in the form of taxes. The particular portion of the ‘stim’ and bailouts that was not borrowed or counterfeited by the Fed once belonged to individual Americans. Thus, a tax cut for high-income earners, who also pay most of the taxes, is tantamount to a return of stolen goods.
With a tax cut, the plundering class simply agrees to pilfer less. The notion that you must ‘pay for tax cuts’… is akin to a burglar promising to return the television he stole just as soon as he is in a better financial position.”

Meanwhile, “Democrats in the House and the Senate moved Thursday to limit the reductions, in full, only for families making $250,000 a year or less.”