Posted on 07/05/2011 5:09:37 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda. They have sparked a discussion on entitlement reform. They have turned a bill to raise the debt limit into an opportunity to put the U.S. on a stable fiscal course.
Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators. They have been tough and inflexible and forced the Democrats to come to them. The Democrats have agreed to tie budget cuts to the debt ceiling bill. They have agreed not to raise tax rates. They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a rare burst of honesty and eloquence, President Obama explained their rational the best:
“keep our boot on the neck”
Not true. We have enormous respect for real intellectuals. We have no respect for self proclaimed "intellectual authorities" who in their every column demonstrate themselves unthinking drones of the Media Establishment's Progressive political dogmas.
Note to David Brooks
Mr Brooks, if you quit being a complete political idiot mindlessly regurgitating the dogmas as handed down to you by the political establishment, we might respect you.
“There will be no peace for the islands of relative plenty until the continents of proliferating poverty have been lifted to something like the general material level of the islanders.” he wrote in National Review.
“Lifted” or “lifting themselves” out of poverty?
Sounds more like McCain than Cain to me.
Sorry Brooks, but I have never met an “intellectual authoritiy.” I suppose you are referring to yourself. What a joke.
He most certainly is referring to himself. He demands we substitute his brilliance for our own intellectual curiosity. Quite a request for such a hapless turd.
And the taxpayers gritted their teeth in 1986, 1991 and 1993 and gave them massive tax hikes. And what did we get in return? exponential increases in Federal spending and NO debt reduction.
And don't buy the Democrat machines' absurd lie about the Clinton tax hikes balancing the budget. In 1994, right before the GOP took over Congress. Clinton's administration put out a budget forecast that projected $200 billion deficits out until the year 2000. It was the GOP in Congress during the 1990s, who took the political hits and did the hard work of balancing the budget by reigning in spending.
So how about this ONE time we try it the OTHER way around. Congress will give us 5 years of blanched budgets 1st, then we will talk about taxes. Until the Congress and Administration shows it can be responsible with the taxpayers dime, the American taxpayers simply must insist that NO taxes of any sort can be raised.
OLTG volunteers! Please pick me!!! Over here! Yoohoo!!!!! Hello!
FR has many writers who are better than Brooks.
Washington, DC is lousy with economic "geniuses" who believe that the Federal debt is a meaningless abstraction in a globalized economy (or can be overcome by higher taxes and stimulus spending) and that government central planning is always far more efficient than free enterprise.
BIT OF RESEARCH (ever on-hand to respond to know-nothings): Richard Perle Linked to Iraq and Kazakhstan Oil Deal
Tuesday, July 29, 2008, by Susan Schmidt and Glenn R. Simpson
The Wall Street Journal (requires registration)
Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc
EXCERPT Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.
Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents. It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan. A consortium founded by Turkish company AK Group International is seeking rights to drill there, the documents say.
Potential backers include two Turkish companies as well as Kazakhstan, according to individuals involved. AK’s chief executive is Aydan Kodaloglu, who, like Mr. Perle, has been involved with the American Turkish Council, an advocacy group in Washington. (NOTE: RINO Guiliani's Texas law firm has two offices in Kazakhstan; he held a fund-raiser there for his failed presidential bid.)
Phyllis Kaminsky, who identified herself as the U.S. contact for Ms. Kodaloglu, said she herself was aware of the drilling plan but referred questions about it to Mr. Perle. “Richard would know the most,” Ms. Kaminsky said. “He is involved, I know that.”
People with knowledge of the discussions said they involve Alexander Mirtchev, a Washington consultant and adviser to the government of Kazakhstan, and an associate of his, Kaloyan Dimitrov. Mr. Perle has attended events promoting the interests of Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is involved in a long-running U.S. investigation of 1990s-era oil-company bribery.
Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as “visionary and wise,” according to a publication distributed by the Kazakh embassy in Washington. Mr. Perle said by email that Mr. Mirtchev is a friend of his who once spent a night at his vacation home in France. Mr. Perle said Mr. Mirtchev is “justly…proud of his influence on the liberalization of the Kazakh economy.”
Asked about pursuing oil concessions, Mr. Perle said, “I am not involved in any consortium involving Mr. Mirtchev or Mr. Dimitrov, nor am I ‘framing plans for a consortium’” involving either one.
A lawyer for Mr. Dimitrov didn’t respond to questions about oil discussions.A spokesman for Qubat Talabani, the Kurdistan regional government’s representative in the U.S., confirmed that the envoy had been approached by Mr. Perle.
Kurdish authorities have been granting oil-drilling contracts even though Iraq’s central government and the Bush administration want them to hold off until a national oil law is passed. The K18 concession, which is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International, according to documents and people familiar with the discussions.
Mr. Perle also has explored obtaining an oil concession in Kazakhstan in tandem with a northern Iraq deal, according to people familiar with those discussions.
Mr. Perle, who was an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration, is known for his strong support of Israel and hawkish views on arms control.
In the early days of the Bush administration, Perle was one of the most influential proponents of U.S. military action to oust Iraq’s President Hussein. Mr. Perle was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon, but resigned in March 2003 amid criticism of his role as an adviser to a telecom company that was seeking U.S. government approval for a sale to Asian investors
=====================================
PERLE THE PARTY "LOYALIST"----LOYAL AS ALL GET OUT---BUT TO WHOM?
Wall Street Journal---Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc
Mr. Perle was an assistant Defense secretary in the Reagan administration and headed the Bush Admin's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (a group of influential advisers that meets regularly with the defense secretary and other top officials, has access to classified information and plays an important role in shaping military policy).
AT THE SAME TIME. Mr. Perle advised American satellite maker, Loral Space and Communications. (Loral's head---Bernie Schwartz was Clinton's pal), as Loral faced government accusations that Schwartz improperly transferred rocket technology to China (under Clinton).
Perle himself contacted the senior official at the State Department considering the Loral matter. Mr. Perle has said he contacted the official, an assistant secretary, Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr., to inquire about the status of license requests by Loral to deliver the satellites that had been made for China.
Perle was posing as a "Bush Republican," and was helping a Clinton Democrat---kinda like the Lieberman gambit---flacking McCain and writing a $100,000 check to the Dims at the same time.)
Copyright © 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121729971113092303.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Isn’t this guy David Brooks the guy who plays the “conservative” columnist for the NY Times after Saphire left? Or is that David Frum? David Brock? Whatever... Read my lips: The rats cannot be trusted. And neither can David Brooks, who is here pushing his Democrat party’s scheme to convince the Republican party to commit suicide.
The “art of government,” wrote Kristol, is to translate the “liberal or radical impulse into enduring institutions,” which in a constitutional republic means that neocons want socialist ends to be achieved with conservative means.
As Billy's deceased daddy once wrote: the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. Irving Kristol August 25, 2003 issue Weekly Standard.
NEOCON (GAG) THINKING IN BRIEF: neocons want the Republican Party (which they loathe) to compromise and accept the moral ends of liberal-socialism, but with the caveat that conservatives can do a better job of doling out the goods and services. Note well neocons demand Conservatives compromise THEIR principles. Liberals are being asked ONLY to compromise the manner in which welfare is delivered.
ALL THE SECRET AGENDAS Neoeons' moral appeasement serves to embolden the Left........a lesson conservatives need to learn posthaste. Conservatives need to grasp that compromising one principle inevitably leads to hundreds of compromises.
In neocon-driven conservativism, liberalism will always have the upper hand and will always dictate the future. Having abandoned principles, neoconservatives can offer no principled opposition to the creation of new welfare programs in the future. Of course, they would see this as a problem only if they opposed welfare programs, which they do not.
According to arch-neocon William Kristol, the “idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy—as Bismarck knew, a hundred years ago.” So----the Neocon Squat in the Republican Party is to restore not a Jeffersonian model of government, but rather the Prussian welfare state. This, according to the neocons, is what it means to be “in the ‘American grain.’”
SUMMING UP This is the neocon contribution to Republicans----“the stupid party” as they call it.......and to the American way of life.
I guess you do know something....;-)
The leftist Trojan Horse “Republican” strikes again.
Go ahead-—ask me anything.
“They have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts “
This is the same scam Tip O’Neill tricked Reagan into accepting. Reagan agreed to tax raises and Tip reneged on spending cuts.
Say NO to tax increases!
I know better ;-)
This cannot be emphasized enough.
As John Galt once said, "In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."
It only gets hard if and when someone forgets that.
;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.