Posted on 06/05/2011 9:17:12 AM PDT by Qbert
With Tea Party conservatives and many Republicans balking at raising the debt ceiling, let me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals.
It has among the lowest tax burdens of any major country: fewer than 2 percent of the people pay any taxes. Government is limited, so that burdensome regulations never kill jobs.
This society embraces traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility. Nobody minds school prayer, same-sex marriage isn’t imaginable, and criminals are never coddled.
The budget priority is a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution. When generals decide on a policy for, say, Afghanistan, politicians defer to them. Citizens are deeply patriotic, and nobody burns flags.
So what is this Republican Eden, this Utopia? Why, it’s Pakistan.
[Snip]
Maybe that’s why the growing inequality in America pains me so. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans already have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent, based on Federal Reserve data. Yet two-thirds of the proposed Republican budget cuts would harm low- and moderate-income families, according to... [Snip]
In fairness to Pakistan and Congo, wealthy people in such countries manage to live surprisingly comfortably. Instead of financing education with taxes, these feudal elites send their children to elite private schools. Instead of financing a reliable police force, they hire bodyguards. Instead of supporting a modern health care system for their nation, they fly to hospitals in London.
[Snip]
I’ve always made fun of these countries, but now I see echoes of that pattern of privatization of public services in America.
[Snip]
Mass transit is underfinanced; after all, Mercedes-Benzes and private jets are much more practical, no? And maybe the most striking...[Snip] is the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare as a universal health care program for the elderly.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’ve heard this kind of lame media trolling before in reference to Liberia.
It’s funny how they will never confess to the fact that their Utopia was the Soviet Union under Stalin.
The religious values of Pakistan are not in accordance with life proper to a rational being like the religious values of the Founding Fathers were.That is why Pakistan is a hellhole.
Not so much.
But only if they had a monorail.
:-)
I personally like the “luxurious” million-dollar crack-house compounds they have over there.
What a smug, contemptible creep. And a perfect fit as a mouthpiece for the New York Slimes.
My fantasy nation is the USA when Ronald Reagan was President.
That's not bad, but while you're fantasizing, you might think of Dwight Eisenhower's USA, but without the Southern Democrats enforcing segregation.
News for this jerk. Most of the feudal elites in America who send their kids to private school are liberals. Not all, but most.
Let me see, where does Obama send his kids, while refusing to allow the inner city kids in DC any alternatives to their failing public schools?
And look around you. Who is it that really, really loves Muslims and wants to help them take over the world? That’s right, it’s the leftists, those guys who are just about to send another invasion fleet into Israeli waters.
Or who wants to build a mosque at Ground Zero?
The author is the media equivalent of a forum troll.
“News for this jerk. Most of the feudal elites in America who send their kids to private school are liberals. Not all, but most.”
Projection.
The whole purpose of the NYT editorial board is to make its neurotic, and often wealthy, readers feel good about themselves (because though they know deep down, that never in a million years would they sacrifice anything they personally have to “help poor people”).
thank you for your post 4. I read this article in the morning before coffee and was thinking Kristoff may actually have some points, but you hit the nail on the head. Allah is not rational — he creates the world every second and there are no rules, no logic.
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