Posted on 09/05/2014 6:39:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
Another attack on the scale of 9-11 would be a perfect reason to enact restrictions of our freedom and encroachments on our civil rights that would make the DHS, TSA and the Patriot act look like fun and games.
Marshall law, curfews, “your papers, please”, gun seizures, etc.
I forgot restrictions on freedom of speech....control of the press, etc.
Obama likes the perks but he's back to his pattern of passive aggressive denial - voting 'present'...That's what he did in the Illinois legislature...When the going got rough - he refused to take a stand.
Yes, the United States has someone with the title of President. And he lives in the White House. That's it - Obama might has well be the chef in the WH kitchen for all it matters.
Yes, I can very well imagine Obama setting up a Constitutional crisis trap and the ‘Pubs would walk right into it. Look what Clinton did with Gingrich and the ‘Pubs back in the ‘90s with the much-ballyhooed “government shutdown”. The media was full of stories of the “poor government workers” being furloughed just before the holidays by those mean ‘Pubs. Back then it was “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas”. Look what Obama did with the last “shutdown”, spitefully closing national monuments and the like, and of course the media blamed it on the ‘Pubs. The hell of it is, ordinary schmucks like us can see these setups coming. Why are the ‘Pubs so stupid they can’t see them?
The Dems are very clever at banding their campaigns against Republicans. They quickly seize upon a catchy description (e.g., War on Women) and then their pols and the media pick up the theme and its game on. The Dems always seem to have a game plan. The Pubbies just stumble around like they’re lost in a fog. You can’t win without a plan, a disciplined team, and effective leadership. The Pubbies have none of them so they keep losing.
Also, the Pubbies don’t really stand for anything and chase away any would be supporters who actually want them to fight for something now and then.
Republicans are content just being on the playing field. They don’t really have any desire to win the game.
Correction: “banding” should have been “branding”.
The resentment is covetousness, and poverty is a factor, but character and family values are key. This is the SOCIETAL element of why we are where we are.
The decline of the family unit and the decline of this country are lockstep. Their correlation is near 1.0.
You could go on for pages about this aspect of our decline.
The other undeniable aspect of the decline is economic, but it’s more macroeconomic than anything else.
There is a theory about the market that talks about the five competitive forces in any marketplace. It’s called Porter’s Five Forces theory.
Your company has direct competitors. That’s the obvious competitive force. The other four are interesting - pressure from your customers to provide more for less; pressure from your suppliers to pay more for less; pressure from substitutions for your product.
Then there is the fourth - pressure placed upon businesses through barriers to entry into the market.
This is otherwise known as the use of regulation by monied interests to keep good new ideas out of the market in order to protect scale investments necessary to implement yesterday’s good ideas.
We are where we are today because the wealthy bought politicians on both sides of the aisle in order to hold on to what they have.
Another word for ‘Creative Destruction’ is bankruptcy, or default, or both. Nobody that’s rich is going to look at that as a noble and necessary thing.
Since Westinghouse vs General Electric (the last big public battle in the marketplace between two life-altering, privately funded, epochal ideas), There hasn’t been another like it really since.
Government has lost its credibility with people, not just the poor, but everyone outside the 1%, because the perception is they have been completely walled off from the processes that, until about 1910 or so, made the US unique on the face of the earth.
Tesla, an ex-employee of Edison, saw DC power for what it was (dangerous and stupid), and substituted it with a much better idea - AC power. AC power ALMOST prevailed. It was backed by a rich idiot (Rockefeller), and Edison used public opinion, arsonists (Tesla’s lab was burned twice), and politicians to try and keep AC power down.
They almost succeeded. When Rockefeller saw, finally, AC power was the way to go, he forced Westinghouse to sell it to him.
After that very public display, all future protections of vested interest became much more subtle.
The bottom line - keeping people out of the entrepreneurial process through government intervention has caused the US wealth demographic to being to look very much like a modified form of economic imprisonment.
The Gen X’ers are trapped between their mortgages, their kids college bills, and taxes. They have almost no power at all at the polls.
The millenials aren’t buying homes like the X’ers. They are also forgoing college - seeing both as ‘sucker’s bets’.
Like the Boomers, they also aren’t contributing anything.
Microsoft brought computing power to people - which was big - but it was an act of contract law, not disruptive technology. Intel did that (Genius immigrant talent, by the way).
I’d bet that 60 percent of the energy expended on this forum is focused on how Conservatives have been co-opted by their party.
Go on DU (I know, that’s a lot to ask), but the energy expended on the topic of disenfranchisement is about equal.
Oddly, it’s both zero in on the relationship between money and the use of government erecting barriers as the reason they feel this way. Both feel as if promises have been broken.
The MAJOR, and CRITICAL difference between your typical voting liberal and your typical voting conservative is that liberals believe the government - American Government - was, can be, but might not be at the moment, a moral force for global good. (Pillar 1).
Your voting conservative was never duped that easily, believes that people’s nature generally slouches toward self-interest, and further believes that government is an instrument used by those sorts of folks on simple, otherwise God-fearing people. Protecting your family is the primary legitimate function of government, and as such - from Tripoli up to WWII, strong national defense has been a priority of conservatives (Pillar 2).
This leads them toward strict construction along the lines of the Preamble, and that national defense is a legitimate government function, as is small government and fair, independent courts ruled ultimately by juries over judges, and even legislatures.
Neither side is getting any of that now, but the people left in government are still doing what they’ve been compensated to do - protect the interests of the people that got them there. Everything else they do is Kabuki, and the modern press is the stage on which its played, and the reason why their consultants are so well paid is because they know how to manage them on that stage.
The internet was initially a tool that allowed scientists to conveniently share and collaborate work on tough problems. That’s why DARPA funded it, and it ultimately crushed the Russians.
What it BECAME, the internet, was a way for the people being duped to communicate with each other in ways nobody, including Microsoft or Intel, had ever anticipated.
That’s why Internet Explorer was such a tough sell for Nathan Myrvhold at the time. It didn’t take much time, but once Gates bought it, his ability to run a company took over and the entire company pivoted on a dime and crushed Netscape.
At that time, MSFT had one lobbyist on its payroll in 1995. One, in Olympia. They went from there to the best, most expensive lobbying organization in the world. That was after the Clinton goons tried to break them up into six pieces. The riot act had been read to them - if you want to stay, you have to play by our rules. Google started out with great lobbying, from the get go.
With their help (Google and MSFT) eventually the government learned how to use a tool that got away from them (the Internet) to bring about what George Orwell knew was coming back in 1948. He couldn’t have known how elegant it was all going to be, but he knew.
I will say this, and it is a flame-worthy claim: Much of the politics of the last 20 years has been an effort to polarize the generally disenfranchised along religious lines - those that fear God, and those that think government is, was, a suitable substitute. Both groups, however, agree on one important thing - they’ve been played for chumps.
You move past the emotional and very real spiritual differences of world-view, and the old truth that Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison was trying to teach us emerges - Government is evil, because ultimately it appeals to the basest parts of the human condition.
Even liberals think government is evil, they just think ‘organized religion’ is even more evil.
It’s well documented how the American Experiment failed, starting with the Civil War, moving to the 14th and 17th Amendments, Roe v. Wade, etc.
I believe this more now than I ever have. The current ‘crazes’ out there are fostered and allowed to continue because it helps government control the people. This is why the gun issue, the 2nd Amendment, is still that thing that - even though libs lose elections by opposing it - they still oppose in every way possible.
Bottom line - if voting was effective, we wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
Interestingly, you can directly measure the extent to which it is effective - look at how many on both sides of the aisle are for open borders in one flavor or another.
Part of the deal is that incumbents die in their earldoms, their dukedoms. When they are deposed, we treat them like we did corrupt Middle Eastern, Central American and African dictators - we fly them out of their districts and make them rich (exactly what just happened to Cantor, and Corzine for that matter, even after MF Global).
There is a great big difference between a genuine entrepreneur and a guy who is brought on to be CEO of a global company. The first rich guy? That’s what we used to have here in the US by the bushel. The second guy? Created nothing, took over a company who’s best days are behind it, and was paid to ensure the cash kept coming in.
Ballmer and Carly Fiorina are perfect examples. There’s nothing noble about that kind of rich. HOW you get the money is as important as having it.
THIS is the problem the left have with the rich. Ben and Jerry? That’s the kind of rich they can deal with. Brad Pitt once had a job handing out fliers in a chicken suit in LA, but now he’s rich, and that’s a too common tale in Hollywood, which is why THAT kind of rich is OK with the left. They think you can be rich and ‘not compromise who you are’. Being good looking is a legitimate form of genius, and all the more so because it requires no explanation.
Here in the US, we have no clue what grinding poverty is. None. I’ve been to places where they walk six miles to get water - one way. That’s grinding poverty.
Our prisons have cable. Our poor have phone and internet.
Rush is right about one thing - it is important - eventually for the left and right to come together again around the idea that this experiment has failed, but as long as you have Santa Claus in the White House, it will be very difficult to make the pitch to that group and take us seriously.
I believe that there will be a moment when the betrayal of us all in the US becomes so obvious, and the effect so devastating, that it will all fall apart such that the states will decide the usefulness of a strong federal system was obviated by its costs on all levels - moral, intellectual, economic, and legal.
John McCain is posing with the guy in charge of ISIL. Joe Kennedy was a supporter of Hitler. It didn’t cost either of them anything.
This is going to be an utter betrayal. There won’t be a ‘told you so’ by one party to the other. It will be fundamental.
I don’t believe Obama has ‘checked out’. He looks like a guy who’s been told, “We got this. Go enjoy yourself while we get this show on the road.”
You know the other guys that have that look about them? Boehner and McConnell. The Kabuki is coming to a close.
Correction:
“Tesla, an ex-employee of Edison, saw DC power for what it was (dangerous and stupid), and substituted it with a much better idea - AC power. AC power ALMOST prevailed. It was backed by a rich idiot (Rockefeller), and Edison used public opinion, arsonists (Tesla’s lab was burned twice), and politicians to try and keep AC power down.”
DC POWER almost prevailed. AC obviously did prevail.
Most people don’t know how the Brooklyn Dodgers came by their name. Streetcars of the day were powered by DC. Every once in a while an arc would snap off and hit a pedestrian, or a horse pulling a cart. ‘Dodging’ streetcars as they passed wasn’t because people were afraid of being run over. People would stop on sidewalks, or move way off toward the buildings to dodge stray bolts of DC power from the lines overhead and through the pavement.
“Republicans are content just being on the playing field. They don’t really have any desire to win the game.”
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At this point I am convinced that the GOP exists only as a “foil” for the left, like a prizefighter who is paid to pretend to fight for a while and then take a “dive” while doing his best to make it look as if he has really been knocked out. It has seemed that way since the 1992 election when George H.W. Bush looked at his watch during the debate with Slick Willie. Bush the first did not seem to want to be reelected, then when Slick was impeached the same Republicans who voted to impeach him acted as if they didn’t know why they even voted to impeach as the Senate found him fit to continue in office. Bush the second seemed to be there for the purpose of making people remember Clinton in a far more favorable light than he deserved and pave the way for the most absurd travesty imaginable, the current “resident”. I really do not believe we are having an election this year, I believe we are having a staged production which will be an election in name only.
I agree. After Reagan left, its been downhill for the Pubbies and they have since developed a deep seated, loser’s mentality. Reagan wrote a winning playbook for them, but they threw it away.
I believe we are having a staged production which will be an election in name only.
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Yes, nothing but lots of political theater with no real substance.
The question should be how long will he be allowed to continue?
You mean DC almost prevailed. It wouldn't have in the long run, no matter what. The line losses and requirement of a generating station on every block would have mad it unusable. As in Atlas Shrugged, in order to fix the system it must first be totally crashed......................
The problem is that OBama was never checked out on training wheels for foreign policy.
What we are seeing is the equivalent of the wild careening of a neophyte on his first bicycle ride.
FReepers are great. Such a knowledgeable group in so many ways.
Excellent post.
Well, he doesn’t have those pesky elections anymore.
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