Category Archives: Democrats

‘Tomorrow’s Headlines Today’

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Reason

It matter not how well or how poorly Mitt Romney performs in Wednesday night’s “first of three presidential debates.” On the morrow, the headlines the media scrum will run with will approximate these:

• “Romney tries to match BHO’s hipness, but sounds hollow.” (That is if Mitt dares to crack a joke. And Romney IS funny.)
• “Once again, Romney attempts to connect but falls flat.” (That is if if Mitt mentions any of life’s travails, or if he makes a logical argument, instead of sticking to emotions, as BHO does so well.

On and on. It’s tiresome.

Why don’t you have at it? Write “Tomorrow’s Headlines Today.” Pretend you too are a pre-programed journo pack animal.

Remember, it’s all for the love of Obama.

Andy Sullivan: Struggling to Stay Relevant

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pseudo-intellectualism, War

Like the late Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan lacks a philosophical core. Unlike Hitchens, Sullivan is not a formidable intellect, rhetorician and writer. Hitchens didn’t have to struggle to stay interesting. Sullivan does. The fruits of Sullivan’s Struggle are splayed on the latest cover of Newsweek, provocatively titled, “President Obama: The Democrats’ Ronald Reagan.”

Like any liberal who doesn’t have to worry about a pay cheque, crunchy con Sullivan is still convinced that Barack Obama can “hold his staff out” over stormy waters, and divide the sea so that the people may pass through “with a wall of water on either side.”

Obama’s “tally of achievements is formidable,” declares Sullivan, who then proceeds to praise every thing BHO has done to cripple the American economy (including extending or entrenching US hegemony abroad):

…the near-obliteration of al Qaeda, democratic revolutions in the Arab world that George Bush could only have dreamed of, the re-regulation of Wall Street after the 2008 crash, stimulus investments in infrastructure and clean energy, powerful new fuel-emission standards along with a record level of independence from foreign oil, and, most critically, health-care reform. Now look at what Obama’s second term could do for all of these achievements. It would mean, first of all, that universal health care in America—government subsidies to people so they can afford to purchase private insurance and a ban on denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions—becomes irreversible. Yes, many details of the law would benefit from reform, experimentation, and fixes—especially if Republicans help to make them. But it’s still the biggest change in American health care since the passage of Medicare in 1965.

Sullivan’s piece tells you about the degree to which neocon and left-liberal political “thinking” have converged.

On war too.

Crunchy con Sullivan’s anti-war followers should not forget what was documented in “Confess, Clinton; Say You’re Sorry, Sullivan“:

Senator Hillary Clinton and neoconservative blogger Andrew Sullivan share more than a belief that “Jesus, Mohamed, and Socrates are part of the same search for truth.” They’re both Christians who won’t confess to their sins.
Both were enthusiastic supporters of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, turned scathing and sanctimonious critics of the war. Neither has quite come clean. Both ought to prostrate themselves before those they’ve bamboozled, those they’ve helped indirectly kill, and whichever deity they worship. (The Jesus-Mohamed-and-Socrates profanity, incidentally, was imparted by Sullivan, during a remarkably rude interview he gave Hugh Hewitt. The gay activist-cum-philosopher king was insolent; Hewitt took it .)
I won’t bore you with the hackneyed war hoaxes Sullivan once spewed, only to say that there was not an occurrence he didn’t trace back to Iraq: anthrax, September 11, and too few gays in the military—you name it; Iraq was behind it. Without minimizing the role of politicians like Clinton, who signed the marching orders, pundits like Sullivan provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?

BAB's A List, Business, Debt, Democrats, Intellectual Property Rights, libertarianism, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

We all live on the “plantation”; we are all “moocher-hiddeen,” says Barely A Blog contributor, Myron Pauli.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?
By Myron Pauli

Unless you are hiding in the Unabomber’s Montana shack and consuming rabbits and berries, we all give to and take from the government. However, some give more than they take and some take more than they give.

Just how large is the sector that depends upon government?

Children and the elderly have become virtual wards of the state – so that 50% already falls into the “moocher-hiddeen” (to use an Islamic term!). That leaves the “working age population” of roughly 25 to 65 supporting the rest. Of course, if “Joe the Plumber” has kids or elderly parents, then the government acts as a conduit from him to his extended family. Even addressing just those working age people with neither children nor parents – are they the ones who pay more than they receive? Maybe.

Remove government employees and the government contractors from that. Then you have the governmental corporations such as Fannie Mae and academia who are funded via government largesse. And what to make of GM, Chrysler, the bailed-out-financial sector, etc., kept afloat by government? Public utilities are governmentally regulated monopolies. Automobile Dealers function only thanks to governmentally legislated monopoly. Pharmaceutical firms, publishers, and the entertainment industry function on patents and copyright for their financial status. Sectors in agribusiness, health care, insurance, energy, and transportation (Amtrak!) are so heavily regulated that those employees are de-facto governmental workers even if there is a semblance of profit. The less said about lawyers and lobbyists, the better!

Truly private workers such as waiters, plumbers, and preachers are quite independent of government; but in locations like metropolitan Washington DC, nearly all their customers come out of the “oink sectors.” Even worse is that when Americans invest their money, the Roth’s, IRA’s, 401k’s, 529’s, HSA’s, “cafeteria plans” are so controlled by governmental rules that one wonders who owns the money – you or the government – or is that even a distinction?

The sad and pathetic truth is that we are all living on a large plantation with a quadrennial democratically elected “Massa” and a bureaucracy of overseers. It is to the credit of racial and religious tolerance that we can have a Mormon vs. mulatto fighting for the job of “Massa”.

The fact is that government has entangled itself from cradle to grave like a metastasizing cancer. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only government programs downsized in the last 40 years was transportation deregulation under Carter and welfare reform under Clinton (nothing eliminated under Republican presidents), and the budget was in near-balance (ignoring raids on the “Social Security Trust Fund!”) by Clinton. I mean, this not as an endorsement of the unabashed big government Obama but merely to point out that the odds of Romney downsizing the Federal Government is smaller than the odds that the Chinese politburo will make Yom Kippur a Chinese holiday!

So when “Tea Party Conservatives” start bitching about Obama endangering their Medicare, it is because the addiction to government is nearly universal. Some of us on the plantation may be more productive than others, but we all live under the rules and, regrettably, most inhabitants (or inmates) generally support the system.

A few libertarian “nutcases” like Paul or Johnson may point the other way, but even most billionaires are as happy to have the Warfare-Welfare state as the poor. Who do you think pays for the TV commercials and the spin doctors and the political “think tanks” – Christian coalminers and Hispanic gardeners, or guys named Koch, Adelson, Soros, and Spielberg?

Nothing short of a major non-violent libertarian revolution” (Constitutional restoration) is needed – but until then, we can all stick our hand out for our share of the public gruel.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

For the Love of Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Elections 2008, Journalism, Media, Republicans, Socialism, Taxation, The State, Welfare

Speaking to “a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser,” on a Sunday in April 2008, one presidential candidate slimes small-town America as bitterly clinging to their guns, bigotries and bibles. The media listens in, but decides to keep a lid on the rant, because, in the words of a reporter who like the rest was rooting for the candidate, she “didn’t want to bring down the campaign.”

Four years later, another presidential candidate states a few plain facts about an electorate of which “47 percent ‘will vote for [Obama] no matter what’; “who are with him,” no matter what, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it”; who regard as an”entitlement” the fruits of another man’s labor, and think “government should give it to them,” and who “will vote for this president no matter what… people who pay no income tax.”

The same reporters who refused to pull back the curtain to reveal Obama’s contempt for small town Pennsylvania are hyperventilating over Mitt Romney’s unvarnished assessment of a large portion of the Democratic Party’s constituency.

One is, seemingly, forbidden to point out that while some people work for their living, others vote for their livelihood.

Thankfully, Romney is not groveling, this time, but simply affirming the figures and his,

concern about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work.