When President Barack Obama met with a group of outstanding Boy Scouts in the Oval Office a few weeks ago to discuss policies affecting Scouting, and especially policies affecting children, teen agers and young adults in the U.S., very few conservative sites thought it important to cover. Let’s be more precise: No conservative Obama critics, nor much of anyone else, bothered to cover it. I’d love to see links even of local media in the Scouts’ hometowns that printed a story or photo.
To the credit of the White House, neither did the press promote the meeting as a political point. Scouting prefers not to be a political football, and Scouting policy asks that Scouts avoid even looking like politicking while in uniform. (Scouts are encouraged to participate in the political process, including through the three citizenship merit badges, which encourage Scouts to communicate their concerns about policy to elected representatives, while working for the merit badge and in the future as participating citizens.)
2010 is a grand year for Scouting. It’s the centennial of Scouting’s coming to the United States. There’s a special Scout Jamboree, being held at Fort A. P. Hill in Virginia (the last time the Jamboree will be held on federal property — that’s another story for another time). It’s always fun when presidents come to the Jamboree and speak, but it’s not always possible.
But today, news comes that President Obama will send a video speech to the Scouts at the Jamboree, as has been done sometimes in the past. Many of us are disappointed that President Obama will not appear in person; but some of us who have experience scheduling such things know that elected officials cannot make every appearance they would like to. Presidential schedules in the modern world are particularly difficult; for an appearance at Fort A. P. Hill security must be imposed (even on a Scouting event), aircraft landing sites need to be arranged and secured . . . dealing with more than 30,000 Scouts becomes an onerous task.
Still, we’re disappointed.
Adding to that disappointment, comes now a group of harpy Obama critics, no friends of Scouting that I can determine, but anxious to claim this scheduling decision as some sort of snub to Scouting, and to the American flag.
Media Matters has the facts, and puts the scheduling stuff into perspective, “Overhyped conservative nonsense of the Day: Obama hates the Boy Scouts.” Update: Blue Wave News has it in perspective. Wonkette’s satire, unfortunately, goes awry, but her heart and brain are in the right places.
The snub is by those critics who attempt to turn Scouting into a political football. The insults are all from them.
Shame on them, collectively and individually:
- The right-wing CNS News (CNS makes a bad habit of reporting only trouble or events involving homosexuals in Scouting) (I’m disappointed to find even a biased outlet moderating comments to favor only anti-President, inflammatory comments.)
- Howler monkey daily howling order site Meme-orandum
- Scared Monkeys (are they howlers?)
- Weasel Zippers (who then, curiously, uses a poster that appears to ridicule Scouting’s uniforms and Michelle Obama’s youth initiatives, with a disgusting comparison to Hitler Youth (Godwin’s Law applies, yes))
- Gateway Pundit at the formerly-Christian-oriented First Things
- Left Coast Rebel
- No Sheeples Here (no coverage of Scouting in any earlier post)
- Instaputz wins no merit badges, nor honors, either — double shame on that site.
- Political Junkie Mom
- Liberal Whoppers
- The News Factor, an online conservative news magazine
- Glenn Beck (yeah, Boy Scouting is the youth program for young men in the Mormon Church, but remember, Beck is a convert, and didn’t grow up with ethics taught to him every week; still . . .)
- Fox News (Fox did cover the 100th Anniversary in the last few days, twice, and they deserve credit for that — they don’t cover Scouting enough, but give them credit where credit is due)
- Aptly named Hot Air
Update: We’re going to have to add on a wing to accommodate the Wall of Shame:
- Just One Minute got suckered in
- Cassy Fiano pushes the nonsense
- One Dude from Utah
- Disrupt the Narrative tells the false version (added 8-9-2010)
- My Country Matters got the story wrong, too (8-9-2010)
- A Scouter’s Journey unfortunately relies on erroneous reporting (8-9-2010)
- Michelle Malkin continues to blacken Scouting’s eye, touting Scouts behaving badly (added 8-9-2010)
- Gateway Pundit, a notorious non-supporter of Scouting, at First Things, a notoriously luke-warm on Scouting site, blackens Scouting’s eye (8-9-2010)
- Bluegrass Pundit punches Scouting in the eye (8-9-2010)
- Proof Positive, with a false Churchill quote in the masthead, punches Scouting in the eye again (8-9-2010)
- InfoWars makes Scouts look bad (8-9-2010)
- Der Jagger’s Blog, apparently dedicated to making Scouts look bad
Hmmmm.
I’ll wager none of those authors bothers to volunteer for Scouting. I’d be surprised (and disappointed) to discover any were Scouts. Scouting wouldn’t revoke their citizenship merit badges, but they’ve forgotten them, if they ever earned them.
Scouting faces severe hurdles these days, some of them I would say were placed by poobahs at the top of Scouting; these guys listed above are not helping.
Here are some tests to see which of these blogs and pundit outlets is friendly to Scouting: Which of them covered the award, this morning of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award to Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee? Which of them covered the dedication of the U.S. Postal Service’s stamp honoring the Scouting Centennial, today? As of this moment, I can find no media coverage of these things at all, even by local media.
Why do these pundits cover Scouting only when it gives them a chance to make an unfair shot at a politician they don’t like? Seriously, who is doing disservice to Scouting, and the nation?
Good news about Scouting’s 100th Year, and the Jamboree:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Reaching out to slap the virtual face of the racists, yes.
Bad taste, ugly, banned by Democrats in conventions and all organized liberal groups that I affiliate with, but not racist, no. Hitler didn’t promise to kill all whites.
If you can’t figure out why it is racist to allege a Jew, or a dark-skinned African, or a Gypsy is a Nazi or like Hitler, then you need to study just what racism is, how it works, and how it is designed to crush the ethnic, national and patriotic identities of targeted people. It would also help if you’d take a tour through one of the Holocaust Museums in the U.S. You’re deficient in your understanding of history, it seems to me.
Why in the world would you think that something offensive when applied to Bush, is not offensive when applied to Obama?
Absolutely. Bush’s flirting with fascism and totalitarianism were also offensive, as is Obama’s failure to dismantle the fascist structures Bush built.
So, are you defending the racist epithets against Obama, or do you agree they are offiensive?
Not here, no. The pictures were not used as signs at any demonstration I saw (nor would they translate well to a sign).
The signs also did not play on a 200-year-old racist cant that Africans are subhuman, closer to apes. Bush is not African in recent descent. It’s not a racist image applied to a person of recent European descent.
It was racist, in the past. Take a look at Thomas Nast’s cartoons from about 1870 on. His portrayal of Irish as apes is quite offensive — but it fit his Republican, anti-immigrant politics.
In Bush’s case, his entire class, tribe, or race was not described as apes. It was a personal epithet used against Bush — and beyond the pale.
Democrats and Coffee Partiers disallowed it from demonstrations.
When will the Tea Party act responsibly? What took them so long?
Africans are actually more evolved, but that sort of understanding escapes racists. The clear implication of the last 200 years of racial epithets by racists is exactly as you state it.
How is it you recognize it when you say it, but when others point it out, you deny it?
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I must disagree with a couple of points.
Ed, you said, “A key mark of dictators is their ignoring democratic processes and checks and balances of all sorts in their dictating.”
Hitler didn’t. Several other dictators haven’t, but I prefer the example of Hitler, because at the time Germany had free elections.
jsojourner:”many Tea Partiers have openly stated by carrying signs that state he is a tyrant and, therefore, his blood will be needed to refresh the tree of liberty”
I thank you for not using the offensive “teabagger” name, but this is disingenuous. What of the calls for Bush’s assassination? The calls for soldiers to murder their officers? Yes, to use Jefferson’s quote in conjunction with a picture of Obama may imply a desire for violence against him, but rational people will dismiss it as rhetoric. I’ve seen no overt threats of violence against Obama. The Secret Service monitors that pretty well, as I think they should.
I don’t wish for Obama’s death. I would mourn him. I’m ordained; I regret any unnecessary death. I will not mind his political demise.
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Morgan, you were asked questions. You won’t answer. You did say, “Aw shucks, I didn’t defend that sign”.
Well good. That’s sort of an answer. I’m glad to know it. I wish you would condemn it as racist.
And Wallis did not say the TP was racist because it was mostly white. I read the quote. He said it concerns him that the TP was mostly white AND spouting racist messages in their signs. If you can’t see the difference there, you’re more clueless than I thought.
Now…about those questions you ducked last time…
I should apologize for implying that there’s a consensus here. You are right and I am wrong. I don’t know that a majority or plurality of people here agree with me. Just because Ed, Nick and I usually (but not always) agree doesn’t mean we represent the majority. I overreached and I apologize.
I still think, though, that you need to answer these questions — particularly since you and Lower keep hectoring Ed about his alleged failure to answer your questions. (Which I think he has done.)
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Then it’s a reactionary political group, contrary to American tradition. Americans stand for something.
Hate-fueled “I’m-agin-it-no-matter-what-it-is” movements run on mob rules.
We know that. The question is what fuels such destructive hatred. Racism appears to be a big part of it.
Since January 19, 2009, at least. Not nearly so close to a dictator as Washington was naturally, nor as Andrew Jackson on his most democratic day (‘ . . .let the Supreme Court enforce their ruling.’), nor James K. Polk in stealing a third of Mexico, nor Abraham Lincoln in prosecuting the war to hold the Union together (who was eligible to vote in that Maryland election, again?), nor Teddy Roosevelt in several of his roles (especially as Undersecretary of the Navy), nor Woodrow Wilson from December 1916 to the end of negotiations at Versailles, nor Hoover in crushing the Bonus Army’s hopes, nor Franklin Roosevelt prosecuting the U.S. role in World War II, nor Harry Truman trying to settle the steel strike, nor Dwight Eisenhower moving against Fidel Castro, nor John Kennedy negotiating against Khruschev over missiles in Cuba, nor Lyndon Johnson getting the Voting Rights Act, nor Richard Nixon setting wage and price controls and “plumbing” leaks from the White House and the Democratic Party, nor Ronald Reagan selling arms to U.S. enemies in Iran and drugs to U.S. boys in Los Angeles and in “rescuing” Grenada, nor George H. W. Bush in “arresting” Manuel Noriega at his house in Panama, nor George W. Bush pushing war in Iraq.
In short, you are fantasizing whole cloth. Stop it. Obama’s no closer to being a dictator in the U.S. than Thomas Jefferson was. Shame on you for saying it, even if you’re really so poorly-informed as to think it true.
That’s complete balderdash. I can’t think of a single area where Obama’s even tried to make that so, let alone, where it is so, in our decentralized government.
Got an example? Put it out there, please.
But explain why he hasn’t closed down Guantanamo, though he wants that so, or why he hasn’t dramatically expanded charter schools, say in Utah or Texas, though he badly wants that so.
A key mark of dictators is their ignoring democratic processes and checks and balances of all sorts in their dictating. Obama uses democratic processes, and hasn’t dared to dictate, even where legal (how many recess appointments, versus Bush’s? Versus Reagan’s?).
But the Tea Party isn’t about anything going sideways. It’s fueled entirely on imagined dudgeons aganst Obama, and more and more of us see that the reason these grudges against Obama must be imagined is that they are not true. And we fear, and we can find no evidence to the contrary, that the offenses are imagined to justify the racism inherent in the claims.
Obama’s a pure small-d democrat compared to Ronald Reagan. Where were these hack political people during the administration of George Bush, when he was stealing rights, boosting the U.S.’s spying apparati internally, and spending us to oblivion?
Oh, well, George was a good ol’ boy from Texas, an Ivy League guy who gave a good party . . . and white.
Tea Party people don’t notice that most of what they protest is policy from the Bush administration. They can’t be told the facts, that the spending they complain about is spending locked in by George Bush.
Dictator? You’re at least seven years late waking up. How long you been sleepin’, Rip? And with whom?
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Wow J! I must have hit a nerve. In your previous post you were all jocular, trying to wheedle out of a serious discussion like Jon Stewart, and now you’re acting all like a brave angry Alan Alda Hawkeye Pierce sorta guy.
To your questions & bullying protests we go.
You say Jim Wallis is a racist because he simply observes the FACT that the tea party is almost entirely white…
He does a lot more than observe, my friend. In that sentence he said there was something wrong with it. Because of the skin color of the people he chose to observe. Yes, that is racist. Dance around it all you want, but it is.
The Tea Party is going to be anti-Obama, by definition. Obama is the closest thing we’ve had to a dictator in a very long time, so if there’s anything going on in government He likes, it’ll keep going, and if He oppose it it’s going to come to a stop right quick without anyone having to bother to protest against it. If the Tea Party movement is going to be all about what’s going sideways and needs to be fixed, it will be perceived as anti-Obama and that perception is going to be mostly accurate.
Now, why there are so many black people who choose not to participate, is a question to be put to them. If you really wanted to know about racist motives within the Tea Party, then your question would be put to the persons of color who are in the movement and who support it. They’re out there. And it really doesn’t take too many of them to discredit Wallis’ ravings, when you think about it. These people are sane, and they seem pretty smart to me. If you’re capable of recognizing smarts in people who take positions different from your own…which is a dubious proposition at this point…I think they’ll demonstrate their mental acuity to your fine self as well. Let the dialogue begin. Expand your horizons.
Perhaps you can salvage something of your image (which is rapidly becoming that of a cyber chew toy) by…
Why do liberals keep doing this? Purport to speak on behalf of a phony consensus? It’s like a nervous tic.
You spend half your time declaring who should be shunned…no, wait, make that ninety percent or so…the balance goes into declaring what ideas are unanimous among all the people who are allowed to remain in the village. “Everyone who agrees with us, agrees with us!” This is not the picture of mental health.
Yet you insist the tea partiers who carry such signs are not racist. That’s called flying in circles, Morgan. You’ve been ducking questions, strawmanning and defending the indefensible since the start of this thread.
Oh please point me to the quote where I defended carrying such a sign. This should be good.
There is an organized movement to “infiltrate” the tea parties. The purpose of this, apparently, is to enable left-wing myrmidons like you to use social gatherings, or threads like this one, to make pugnacious inquiries just like the one you just made. Now, in science, or for that matter any endeavor toward figuring out what’s true & what is not true, no matter how formalized it might be…that is enough to effectively gutterball any evidence having to do with carrying signs. Fruit-of-poisoned-tree and all that. Unless something has been properly researched. Looks like it’s my turn to start demanding links.
Now show us, Morgan. It’ll take balls either way to admit what you are.
This is another thing liberals do. They keep calling things the opposite of what they really are. Here you are using your Alinsky tactics of putting the opposition on the defensive, and for me to succumb to it and kow-tow to it would take some of what you call “balls.” You’re having an Inigo Montoya moment with that particular body part my friend.
Ed, sorry to say it old chap, but you haven’t said anything worth excerpting. We were talking about excessive loyalty, and I “primed your pump” by offering two examples of where I disagree with GWB. You want to go off on a bunny trail debating me on those points…which is all irrelevant. You need to focus better. Except you did say one thing germane to the subject at hand…
Rational discussion? Where is the Tea Party position paper . . . on anything?
Here you go.
Non-negotiable core beliefs
Illegal Aliens Are Here illegally.
Pro-Domestic Employment Is Indispensable.
Stronger Military Is Essential.
Special Interests Eliminated.
Gun Ownership Is Sacred.
Government Must Be Downsized.
National Budget Must Be Balanced.
Deficit Spending Will End.
Bail-out And Stimulus Plans Are Illegal.
Reduce Personal Income Taxes A Must.
Reduce Business Income Taxes Is Mandatory.
Political Offices Available To Average Citizens.
Intrusive Government Stopped.
English As Core Language Is Required.
Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged.
Common Sense Constitutional
Conservative Self-Governance
Once again fellas: What color is that?
I’m glad you finally answered Lower’s question though.
I must say, I’m finding more to be impressed about with the sophistry than with the sophistication, in spite of your best efforts. More and more, this is looking like “We take the position that seems, to a casual observer, to be most friendly to people who might have more pigment in their skin…and you’re mean and bigoted if you dare disagree.” That, and “Dissent WAS patriotic but it’s not anymore. So shut your mouth.”
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Ed, you’re really reaching.
“The portrayals of Obama as Hitler are not only racist, but among the most patently offensive images used in modern politics.”
So the portrayals of Bush as Hitler weren’t racist, because, well, Hitler was white, and Bush is white, so it’s okay? (Need I remind you that Obama is half white? Or do you subscribe to the “one drop of Negro blood” idea?)
The portrayals of Bush as Hitler weren’t patently offensive?
If it’s offensive to associate one president as a fascist dictator, it is for any, until one is. Ed, did you have this outrage over that? How about the “Chimpy McBushitler” pictures? Would it be racist to do so with Obama? If so, why, unless you think that by virtue of his black ancestry, he’s less evolved, closer to the apes?
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Am I a racist because I, a white male, have criticised the President for breaking his promise on Gitmo? No. Am I a racist because I have voiced strong disappointment in his position on ending the misnamed Patriot Act? Certainly not.
Would I be a racist if I — in getting upset with the President on these issues, carried a sign saying, “End the niggarization (sic) of America” and included a picture of Obama with a bone in his nose?
Uh, yeah.
You say Jim Wallis is a racist because he simply observes the FACT that the tea party is almost entirely white and is prone to displaying such signage (and worse). Yet you insist the tea partiers who carry such signs are not racist.
That’s called flying in circles, Morgan. You’ve been ducking questions, strawmanning and defending the indefensible since the start of this thread. You and others keep suggesting liberals like me are in lock step with Barack Obama. Yet we have repeatedly given examples of where we substantially disagree with the man. Perhaps you can salvage something of your image (which is rapidly becoming that of a cyber chew toy) by offering three or four examples of where you substantially disagree with the tea party movement?
For instance, do you feel — as Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle does — that if this election in 2010 doesn’t meet with Tea Party approval, “bullets and not ballots” will be necessary? Or would you care to say, with conservative Republican Bob Inglis, “Sorry, but I’ll oppose that.”
Do you share the conviction of the Tea Party movement
Do you believe, Morgan, that President Obama should be assassinated as many Tea Partiers have openly stated by carrying signs that state he is a tyrant and, therefore, his blood will be needed to refresh the tree of liberty? Conservatives like George Will have been critical of that sort of rhetoric. Will you join him? Or do you believe assassination is called for?
Do you agree with Tea Party candidate and hero Rand Paul, that businesses should be allowed to serve only whites…or only blacks?
Now show us, Morgan. It’ll take balls either way to admit what you are. Either you, yourself, are a racist syncophant in complete harmony with the Tea Party and proud of it. (Man up, if you really believe it.) Or, you’re a free-thinking conservative who agrees with the Tea Party on some things, but has serious reservations about others. That will take guts to admit, too. Since you have done nothing but defend these cowards since day one.
We await your response on pins and needles.
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Stop the racist ranting, you’d hear the discussion the Tea Party is trying to drown out. Why shout down Members of Congress in the health care town meetings? Because discussion is too rational for the pathological hatred directed against Obama and the government these days.
You’re assuming a degree of civility and rational thought among the Tea Party mob that simply has not been demonstrated. Any group that will condemn the census, and claim to support the Constitution in the same breath, lacks the ethics, brains or manners for rational discussion, and maybe all three. (The census is required by the Constitution, and was in 1787 a major departure from the anti-democratic, anti-republican styles and actions of European government — a chief goal of the Sam Adams/Sons of Liberty Boston Tea Party patriots; most Tea Partiers don’t even see the irony.)
Tea Party tactics were pioneered by fascist movements in Spain and Italy in the 1930s. History readers recognize them well.
Rational discussion? Where is the Tea Party position paper . . . on anything?
Benevolent effects can be debated in any number of fora, any time. Any time you’re ready, come on.
It’s an irrelevent and rude, discussion-bashing question that’s been answered here to long-time readers. In the fullness of time, perhaps. Joe knows better — but neither he nor you would dare answer the other question: Where do you support Obama? Most of my disagreements you probably don’t know the issue — Salazar’s appointment, Duncan’s bizarre, anti-public education position on charter schools, most of the Race to the Top stuff, the inexplicable delays in clearing out the Bush detritus at Minerals Management, and most of the rest of Interior, for that matter; the new delays in settling the BIA trust accounts issues, the failure to push for a more centrist Supreme Court, the refusal to get tough on confirmations of judges, the kow-towing to Republicans on health care, the delay in going for a second, larger stimulus, the low-level behind the scenes discussions on Palestine, the failure to bailout underwater mortgage holders . . .
There are a hundred places of disagreement, at least.
Heck, you don’t even know 80% of what Obama’s done. Rush to judgment much?
Easy to say now, but beside the point. Where do you support Obama?
Bush was right. Have you followed the United Farm Workers Union’s “Take My Job” campaign?
I don’t see you rushing to the Imperial Valley, nor anyone else. Lots of bully-boy tactics against the UFW, more than 2,100 pieces of hate-mail — but only three people applied for jobs (and they got them).
Meat cutting plants where ICE conducted raids now can’t get people to work there. (Turns out that unionization helps, protecting workers against hiring illegal immigrants, and protecting workers against widespread abuses of workers — the workers were being abused, too.)
What’s really funny to me is that this is an economic problem, a diseconomy of supply and demand. A free market solution would get aliens work permits to take the jobs, but instead the Tea Partiers and Republicans wish to impose a Soviet-style, Berlin-wall sort of solution to keep immigrants from having the jobs at all.
Why not let the markets work?
Did I say that was “funny?” I meant ironic, but in thinking about it, I’ve changed my mind. It’s a tragedy. Where free market economics might make a difference, you advocate abandoning the free market completely.
You take the extreme position against immigration and against Bush’s more common sense, good neighbor stand, and that makes you a “moderate,” you think?
Just as soon as Australia moves to the Northern Hemisphere you’re a moderate, yes.
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Well Ed, how’s about THIS for an idea. For the establishment, I mean:
Come up with some good ideas that have a beneficial effect upon the situation. Things that will reward, rather than penalize, the investors who choose to do business in the United States, or sink some equity into the USD currency. Strong ideas that will pan out.
Then, when critics emerge, the benevolent effect of those good ideas could be debated. As opposed to this tired old trope of “You’re saying bad things about my guy so you must be a racist.”
Say…as long as we are on the subject, are you ever going to answer Lower’s question??
I disagreed with GWB when he went all those years without a single veto, when he spent every single nickel Congress wanted him to.
I vehemently disagreed with GWB when he said illegal immigrants are here “to do the jobs that Americans will not do.”
In my book, that makes me a moderate and you an extremist. Prove me wrong. Where do you disagree with O?
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Tolerance of racism is qualitatively no different from racism. NAACP was right. If the Tea Party wishes to be considered not racist, it will have to police its ranks as the major parties do — and as the Tea Party has begun to do.
But that policing is far from effective as it would need to be, yet. The portrayals of Obama as Hitler are not only racist, but among the most patently offensive images used in modern politics. They drip with racism.
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Would you like to offer some actual evidence to back your claims about Mr. Wallis?
I offered one quote, which is on the record. Google it if you think I’m a liar.
So how is Mr. Wallis a racist and a false prophet?
Let me turn that into a question back to you, Nick: What color is caring about your kids and their financial future?
Wallis went on record saying 1) the Tea Party movement is almost all-white, and 2) from the racial make-up of the movement, you can reasonably come to a conclusion that it ought to be ignored. Now, with regard to 1) I suppose you can (and you will) claim that word “almost” is the magical loophole. Rev. Wallis obviously didn’t intend for too much emphasis to be placed on the a-word, so this is dubious at best. It’s deceptive. There are persons of color within the tea party movement, many among them are plenty smart enough to figure out if they’re surrounded by klansmen…they’ve apparently decided in the negative. It’s just another mendacious statement from yet another lying liberal. With regard to 2), no matter how you cut it, that’s racist. Which race is being derogated is strictly a non-issue. Wallis thinks if the racial makeup isn’t to his liking, then the movement is “wrong.” Those are his words. He’s a racist.
This is a case of, as we call it at my place, “racists calling non-racists racist” which is something that happens with a disquieting frequency nowadays. See: Shirley Sherrod accusing Andrew Breitbart of trying to bring back slavery. Wow, this is really turning into a peaceful, post-racial era of American history isn’t it? I’m afraid if Obama repairs our race relations much more the way He has been up until now, the republic just might implode. Perhaps, if people like you send the message to your left-wing political overlords that they can’t avoid public scrutiny this way, they’ll stop doing it and things will start to cool down.
Of course, then they’d have to endure honest debates about what it is they’re trying to do. There’s much resistance against this, isn’t there? I wonder why. You should too.
You and your fellow conservatives, Morgan, are a throwback to a version of the 1950?s that never existed. All progress this country has made has not been made because of your kind…but in spite of it.
Just five words in response to this one, Nick: Let go of the hate. “My kind”? After you get everything running the way “your kind” wants it to be run, what exactly is it you plan to do with us? No wait…I’m too afraid to ask. You’re a scary dude, Nick.
Morgan, here’s one with a bit more evidence and reasoning than you may be comfortable with. Get a big glass of water, and have a cup of some herbal tea before you read…
So congratulations Mr. Darrell, you are one of the early ones to answer the question: What exactly does Barack Obama need to do to be a socialist, that He has not yet done? Also, you are on record: Socialism is a bad thing. And you can’t have socialism without some central planning, you have a link to prove it’s true.
Except it doesn’t actually say that. If it did, Merriam-Webster would take issue with it:
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Now, let us see…Obama has pushed to place the manufacture of automobiles — the “means of production and distribution of goods” — under the government. By the way, for your edification, when you place something under control of the federal government, central planning is implied because it is a reality. Quite unavoidable. Obama put the savings & loans under the control of the feds as well, albeit with a nudge from His predecessor. But you know what? At this point, the “Bush did it first!” excuse is falling flat with me…and I perceive this is one of those rare occasions in which I happen to be in an emerging majority. Not that Obama was lacking in an abundant bank account from which He could draw, in blaming things on His predecessor — it’s just that He’s been drawing against it so heavily. At some point you have to say: Mr. Obama, if You don’t like being in a hole, why are You continuing to dig?
Then He appointed a “bonus czar,” answerable only to Him, to figure out what bonuses were excessive. Oh yes, only with the firms that were bailed out by the government. That’s only fair. Enforcing the Will of the People…the same claim as any other socialist dictator. But that line was always fuzzy, the line between firms dependent on the public largess, and the firms not so dependent. He put it better than anyone else, didn’t He? “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Time to face facts: The word “socialist” begins to lose all useful meaning, if you start trying to twist it and re-shape it so it doesn’t have to include His Eminence. Let’s repeat the exercise with as few words as possible, shall we? He told Joe-the-Plumber “I just think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody” and we have it on video, if you don’t think JTP is a good character witness.
Your book smarts are impressive, such as they are. But when they tell you things like “Obama isn’t a socialist,” in light of evidence like this…well, maybe you’re in that situation where you need to pry your face out of the books so you can figure out what’s really going on. You’re passing that dangerous bend in the road where you start to call things the opposite of what they really are.
Which brings me to…
Do you know what a Hiney Bird is? (Incoherent rambling, awkward humor involving bird species…)
J, I understand. I have a big heart about these things. You’ve figured out you’re on the losing side and you want to turn the whole thing into a big joke. Like an eight-year-old, or Jon Stewart. Hey, why not give it a try? It you can make the entire exchange into a comedy routine, maybe some Cheesecake Nazi will come along and say “Oh knock it off everybody let’s turn the subject on to something else.”
Maybe it will happen before people are forced to confront the fact that Jim Wallis is a racist, and Barack Obama is a socialist.
But just in case that doesn’t happen, and you’re forced to engage the question of who really has his head stuck up his ass, you might want to consider this: Wallis came up with the idea that a movement, tens of millions strong, should be ignored altogether — based solely (for this one point of his) on the color of the skin of the people participating in it. He came up with a reason, one entirely irrelevant to the mission statement of that movement, why nobody should be paying attention to it.
That’s pretty much the definition of having your head stuck up your ass, isn’t it? Can you think of a better one?
If that question’s too hard, you can just admit defeat and exit the entire exchange. You’re on your way out anyhow.
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I find that not quite right, and I think — perhaps — you misspelled that word.
It should be “merkin.”
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Ed, Nick…
Do you know what a Hiney Bird is? Ed, you’re a birder, aren’t you? (I could be wrong.)
Well, a hiney bird is a fairly common specie. It’s a bird that flies around in circles so anxiously and furiously that it eventually flies up its own ass. Or, hiney. Hence the name, hiney bird.
Morgan is a good example. Most of the tea partiers are, too. They are incapable of good-faith argument, discussion or give and take. If you refute their points with sources, your sources are biased. If they source their specious arguments — which they seldom do — their sources can always be trusted. Because their sources are real ‘murricans.
You say someone is a racist for carrying signs that say “End the niggarization (sic) of America” and show Obama’s picture. (I saw that sign at a Tea Party event in Virginia.) They say that’s not racist. Because…well…because it’s probably some liberal planted into the Tea Party movement to discredit it. Or, because Rush Limbaugh says so. See, that’s called “sourcing” your statements with unbiased information.
They say someone is a racist because he accurately observes that the vast majority of an armed movement advocating the violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of the President is white. And that troubles him. Not because — and Wallis said this too — if blacks were threatening the same thing against Obama, it would still be evil. But it would obvious not be race-based. See, in the upside-down, topsy turvy world of the hiney bird, logic, reason and intellect have no bearing.
The hiney bird reads Stormfront, Free Republic, Newsmax, World and World Net Daily..and he is well-read. He won’t read Jim Wallis. He won’t read Ron Sider (damn Mennonites!). You, Ed…and you, Nick…well, like any human, you have preferences. But you’ll read George Will. You’ll muse over what Bill Safire or Bill Buckley had to say. You likely won’t bother with Stormfront or the Council of Conservatives web site. But then, we’re not asking the hiney bird to read Che Guevara or Mao, either.
There’s no “winning” them over. The hiney bird likes it up his own arse. It’s warm, dark and safe there. And, to him anyway, it smells beautiful.
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Of course the problem, Lower, is that you can tout private charity all you want…but you know damn well it is not enough to cover all the needs. Does private charity have a place? Yes of course. But anyone who thinks that it should be the only thing out there is seriously deranged.
In the last 30 years the middle class saw its income grow 25%. In the last 30 years the richest 10% saw their income grow 300%. The richest 10% of the country now control 60+% of the wealth of this country.
What does the ratio have to be to get you to understand that is a problem and that it endangers this country? The last time the income gap between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor was as large as it is now…was right before the Great Depression.
You write: The question is legit, I believe. Politicians usually defend their party guys until its politically expedient not to – even when something happens that they disagree with. So, my question was, are you a party loyalist or do you have legitimate credibility in pointing out the failures of each administration rather than just the Republicans?
And you’re going to ask that of yourself right? And of Morgan right? Can you criticize your precious Republicans for being responsible for a large share of the deficit? Can you criticize the Republicans for thinking that it doesn’t matter that tax cuts add to the deficit? Can you criticize the Republicans for wanting ever more military spending when we already spend more on our military then the next 15 countries combined?
We have cut taxes to the rich by more then 50% since the 50’s, Lower. At what point is it enough? Bushs tax cuts were going to bring such prosperity and yet keep the budget balanced. It didn’t. We have been in a slow slide into a depression since 2002 and Bush and your fellow Republicans blew the budget to hell and back.
And have the Republicans learned from their mistakes? No..they’re hell bent on repeating them. And we should give them power? Instead of realizing that part of the reason that your party got its ass kicked in the last two elections was because it had marched too far to the right….your party has spent the last two years marching even further to the right. The party of Lincoln has now become the party of traitors, fear mongers, racists and conspiracy whackjobs.
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Another clear indication that we don’t have a socialist system, and our taxes are low. Were it otherwise, these rich people could not accumulate such astounding mountains of wealth.
Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates have been working on this deal for more than a decade — it’s nice to see this much success. (See this joint interview by Charlie Rose, another of Morgan’s “socialists.”) (More specifically on the Giving Pledge, here.) The reality is that these “socialists” at the top of the wealth pile have done something courageous and valuable. Some of the results so far are pretty good — the Gates Foundation’s campaign against malaria (and not for DDT) — but some are pretty thin — the Gates Foundation’s flubs at education reform.
Of course, Morgan and the Tea Partiers think all these billionaires are part of the Grand Cabal of bank owners, rich people, and people who read books, attempting to turn us to socialism and book reading. Nothing the Rockefeller Foundation does is ever given credit by the true K-Js, to the point that when something good happens that the K-Js agree with, they’ll refuse to state the Rockefeller Foundation did it. According to the Tea Party and Lyndon Larouche, Norman Borlaug’s work was not really funded by the Rockefeller group.
Most of these billionaires are the exception — but the sad fact is that over the past 20 years, largely through “tax cuts,” our government has take large sums of money — trillions — from the middle class and poor, and redistributed it to the very rich.
Yeah, they ought to give it back.
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By the way, according to CNN, many of America’s top billionaires (including George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Rockefeller, Mayor Bloomberg, George Soros, etc) have now pledged 50% of their money to charity either during their life or in their will, to the tune of a minimum of $600 billion dollars! Hows that for the generosity of the private sector! 50% is certainly loving your neighbor as yourself, literaly! Can you see the federal government giving away 50% of all tax revenue to charity? Oh, those evil rich people – we should give more of their money to the goverment! Ha!
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I’m not a faithful reader of everything on your blog, no. But before I originally asked, I went through the month of July and didn’t find anything. Maybe it was there in the subtext, but no articles of concern or anything that I could pinpoint.
By the way, I don’t disagree (especially be knee jerk) with everything Obama has said and done. I thought I’d already stated a few things, and there are plenty more to commend him about. As I’ve said many times, I like the guy – I just disagree with his policies and a lot of his ideology.
The question is legit, I believe. Politicians usually defend their party guys until its politically expedient not to – even when something happens that they disagree with. So, my question was, are you a party loyalist or do you have legitimate credibility in pointing out the failures of each administration rather than just the Republicans?
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So how is Mr. Wallis a racist and a false prophet?
And exactly how are whatever problems in D.C. the problem of liberalism?
The states with the best economies in this country are the blue states. The red states? They have poorer economies and the fact that they have low taxes is only because they are subsidized by the blue states.
There aren’t a lot of minorities in the Tea Party, morgan, that is fact. And yet they claim to represent the people of the United States. Well no…you don’t represent the people of the United States when your “organization” is 99% white.
You and your fellow conservatives, Morgan, are a throwback to a version of the 1950’s that never existed. All progress this country has made has not been made because of your kind…but in spite of it.
As for you, Lower, yeah Obama is capable of making mistakes. And I’ve disagreed with him at times. For example, if I was running the health care reform debate and I was president the first thing I would have said was “We are going to negotiate with the Republicans and our starting position will be single payer government run health care. So, Republicans, what are you going to agree to so that doesn’t happen?”
Then I would have spent quite a lot of time reminding the country that it was the Republicans who so roundly f—ed it up since 2000.
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Morgan, here’s one with a bit more evidence and reasoning than you may be comfortable with. Get a big glass of water, and have a cup of some herbal tea before you read this piece from Mother Jones, “Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty.”
You should probably read this, too:
You’ll note, please, that there is no central planning function in the U.S. economy — not even the Federal Reserve Board.
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Would you like to offer some actual evidence to back your claims about Mr. Wallis?
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I can’t believe any rational person would come to such a question.
But before I answer (and clearly you’re not reading much of the rest of my blog), can you answer this for me, please?
How do you disagree with Obama all the time in a knee-jerk fashion without sacrificing all your credibility, and self-respect?
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So…should I press the issues of asking if there is Is he incapable of making mistakes? I’ve been asking for a week. Shoot, I don’t even agree with myself 100% of the time! :-) How can you agree with Obama all the time without sacrficing your credibility?
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The dangers of indulging in whines before their time.
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[…] bitching about the bad press Obama was getting over skipping the Boy Scout centennial, has popcorned into a thread just shy of eighty comments about all sort of […]
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This is all very touching.
I’d like to enter the following as Exhibit A:
http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/palin-go-round/
And Exhibit B is here, a ranking of states by how-liberal and how-conservative. It will only mean something if you’ve been to a majority of the states on both lists:
http://www.hapblog.com/2010/08/top-ten-most-conservativemost-liberal.html
The lesson?
Overall, legislating human wonderfulness is not only a dismal failure. It is far, far worse than that. When we try, people invariably turn into jerks. Deep down, everyone knows it’s true. Would you like to ask for directions to the nearest bathroom in Oklahoma, or in DC? You like the idea of your kid leaving his expensive bicycle leaning up against a tree, unlocked, in New York? Or in Utah?
So we like Jim Wallis, huh?
Jim Wallis said, among other things:
“…I am just going to say it. There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white.”
Wallis is a racist. He is a false prophet, bears false witness. He is a walking emblem of all our so-called “civilization” tolerates, and should not.
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Lower writes:
Then your side of the spectrum should quit demonizing the government at every turn, quit labeling those who disagree with you on this as “socialists” quit using the government to protect your cronies, realize that there has never been an agreement on your interpretation of the 10th admendment, quit believing that the “free market” can fix everything, quit beleiving the government should never never never ever step in to protect people from the “free market” when it goes completley out of whack, quit thinking that people who have seen their taxes cut 50% in 30 years while seeing their incomes rise 300% in the same time period need more tax cuts, quit worrying about the defecit when your party never did and is the cause of most of the defecit, quit putting the interests of big corporations ahead of the interests of the country, enforce federal workplace laws, agree to reasonable regulations on businesses instead of this insipid “businesses should be allowed to do as they please” nonsense, and kick out the crazies and the whackjobs that are taking over your party, Lower, and taking it from a center right party to a party of being the right wing fringe.
Sorry, to give an example, as long as the health insurance companies are allowed to let people die to save their profits, as long as they are allowed to kick people off insurance at whim, as long as they are allowed to engage in double digit rate increases at whim…as long as they earn massive profits you have no grounds to object to any attempt to rein them in. Once they start acting responsibly and ethically then you can object to the government getting involved. But as long as companies like that act irresponsibly, without ethics or morals, and put their own greed ahead of the interests of the people they serve and the people of this country then they should face the hammer of the government. After all…something your side has forgotten…the government is the people in this country.
Which means your side should quit throwing hissy fits because it lost in 2006 and 2008. Your side can also own up to its mistakes, learn from them, quit trying to repeat them, and quit trying to blame the Democrats for what your side did to f— up the country.
You want to worry about “massive government spending”? Then cut the subsidies to big businessees like Big Oil and cut military spending. And realize that unless your side pays for Bush’s tax cuts they go away.
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I spent the better part of an hour responding, Lower. But I did not save! Ugh! And I haven’t time to back track. In the future, I think I will write my responses on a separate, saved, page and cut & paste them here. Apologies. I am new to blogs.
For now, let me just say…
1. Thank you for your kindness and warmth!
2. We mostly disagree, but there’s some commonality, too.
3. I would wholeheartedly and enthusiastically encourage you to read “The Soul of Politics” by Jim Wallis. It beautifully address so much of what you are asking about and commenting on.
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Here is that article that I tried to post the other day. I can’t seem to post web-sites, so I just copied and pasted it. It’s from the automaker web-site. He says it a lot better than I would (must be why he does this sort of a thing for a living). :-)
Esteban Sanchez-Aguilar | May 18, 2010
For the first time since the second quarter of 2007 and the highly unpopular doling out of bailout money, General Motors has reported a profit: $865 million in net income and $1 billion in free cash flow. At this rate, GM may rebound from bankruptcy and make a public offering by the end of 2010, enabling the government to recoup a portion of its investment.
Is this a sign that the company could be moving toward living up to its promise for a better, greener company? Let’s hope so. After all, we’re the ones footing the bill for their bailout. With plans to enter in to the hybrid car market, GM should be launching its much anticipated Chevy Volt, which is expected to get 230 mpg. For their sake (and ours), let’s hope it’s a wild success.
For GM workers and American taxpayers, GM’s profit announcement is certainly good news. The automaker turned a profit by reducing costs and improving revenues. On the other hand, GM’s record hardly remains unblemished:
1.GM turned the profit when the world’s top carmaker, Toyota, was down and out after a series of recalls dealt a massive blow to its reputation for building quality vehicles. In spite of that opportunity, GM still lost a small amount of market share relative to the first quarter of 2009, which wasn’t exactly a red-letter time period for the automaker.
2.GM’s fleet sales also increased to 31 percent of all vehicles and 40 percent of all cars, according to The Truth About Cars. Typically, fleet sales are not as profitable as retail sales, especially to car rental companies, and they also reduce the secondary market for the product, which ends up making retail sales less profitable.
3.GM is trying to return to the car financing business. For years, there was a running joke that carmakers were really financial companies with a car business on the side, which is one of the primary reasons the financial crisis left them devastated. GM needs to regenerate its core competency as a car manufacturer before it delves back into the financial industry.
4.The European arm continues to struggle, with trucks doing better than the rest of the firm. In other words, GM is still struggling in the small-vehicle market but doing better with larger vehicles at a time when fuel prices are expected to rise.
Do Profits Excuse the Bailout?
GM’s profit is good news, but does it really vindicate the government’s bailout? We don’t believe so, for the following reasons:
•Ideologically, bailouts are not a wise move, as they destroy the free market and encourage very unhealthy relationships between companies, the state, and labor unions. Now that the government has bailed out the auto industry, it will be more difficult not to bail out other foundering industries. Even if the auto industry bailout had been worth it, it would still be risky because it has set a perilous precedent.
•The cost reductions that helped GM turn the corner is a result of bankruptcy rather than the receipt of bailout money. The government’s stake in increasing the number of UAW jobs has also exacerbated the situation.
•Taxpayers will still lose a colossal amount of money [8-12 billion is the web-sites estimate] on the auto bailouts.
•The idea that the country would not have survived GM’s demise is an absurd overreaction. The government essentially assumed that the liquidation of GM would have eliminated all of the automaker’s manufacturing capacity as well as all of the buyers of GM vehicles. However, profitable auto lines would have been purchased by other automakers, and these other carmakers would have manufactured additional vehicles to meet market demand. To do so, they would have bought more materials from suppliers. The fallout from a GM collapse would have had some effect on the economy, but it would not have been the catastrophe the government would have you believe.
•The psychological consequences of the bailout on the country’s morale should not be minimized. The bailout was viewed by many as a windfall for Democratic special-interest groups in a big state. This practice is hardly rare, but this bailout was extremely public and carried a massive price tag. While we believe that the government should perform fewer duties, we do not believe that the erosion of public trust in governmental institutions is a positive thing. We want a trustworthy government that performs the very few legitimate functions that it was originally intended to do.
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Jim – well written post, sir.
Of course, all of this talk of compassion, etc. is all predicated on a moralistic society (or far better, a society full of Christians) which is quickly becoming less compasionate and more self centered. By and large, do compasionate, honest people represent our national leadership? I would say, “no” unfortunately – on both sides of the aisle. Everyone claims compassion and honesty, but mostly for sake of politics. Even Obama – remember the statements, “the most transparent administation ever” and my how we’ve been treated to all these backroom closed door deals! How about his record on abortion? A moral president? When it suits his purposes.
There are far cry differences between social justices and social programs. God has ordained governments to hold the mantle of justice and law in authority over their citizens. Convicting murderers, rapists, robbers, etc. God’s condemnation of Israel and the surrounding nations was injustice to the poor and the needy and allowing evil to pursist. It wasn’t that their people weren’t provided with universal healtcare, a free phone, subsidized electrical, food stamps, unemployment, etc. A chicken in every pot, so to speak. They led their countries into worshipping pieces of carved wood and stone. They were actually exploiting the poor for the sake of the rich and those in power (i.e. themselves). Does that happen today? You bet! How many are using the citizens for their own pocketbooks and careers? How many are leading people to worship materialism, money, themselves…and to some degree their president? It’s government’s responsibility to make sure that justice prevails and that the poor aren’t exploited, not that everything is equal and fair. That is why good labor laws protecting the employees health, etc. are so important, not that people will be on the same financial ground as their employer, but that they are not taken advantage of.
So, who in the New Testament does the Bible give as the main providers for social provision? The government? Romans 13 states that the government’s primary purpose is to punish those who do wrong and to protect its good citizens – even commands us to pay our taxes. So who does God see as being responsible for the poor? The church (made up of Christians who the Bible says are to shine His light of love into the world). I believe that the reason why the government has had to step into these social programs is simply because they were needed to – why? Because the church hasn’t done its God-given job (Galatians 2:10 – I like this paraphrase of James 1:27, “Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us.” NLT). This needs to change and the church needs to step it up (and it is, by the way!). People who don’t believe should at least have to concede that their communities have been bettered and could not exist without the church.
Yes – love God, love your neighbor! Bingo. Good stuff James!
Our country is ruled by citizens who are represented by delegates, not by a ruling class with all the power who make all the decision (idealy). Who then when God looks at this country for judgment of how we treated the world/poor will He commmend or condemn? The citizens. In our country, the corruption in Washington is our responsibility – we selected these people to be our representatives. We are accountable for their greed, their corruption, their abuse of power – we put them there. If we do not take them out of power, we are accomplices. If we do not care, we are to blame. How many do not even vote who are elligable? For shame! You will be judged.
Is it wrong for the government to enact social services? Morally? I would say it would only be good if it is the agent that the people have chosen by their will rather than the people working FOR the government against their will (i.e. raising taxes and defecit spending for social services).
Is socialism the most effective model of benevolence? Not hardly (again I point to Haiti)! Instead of being strategic, it creates a class of citizens that are depedent on the government for survival and impoverishes a nation. We see citizens not realize their own responsibility for benevolence because the government will take care of people. We see people angry at the government for not reacting fast enough (Katrina) when we sit in our chairs and do nothing but give a few bucks in a can at the grocery store. We’re mad at the government for not extending unemployment instead of financially helping those out of work and helping look out for a job for them. People get mad at the government for not doing more for healthcare but don’t do their part by going to the emergency room every time they get a cold or the flu and raise the prices for small little things! We sue over frivilous stuff, just to get a piece of the pie! We get upset because the government is spending more than it makes – how many of us are up to our eyeballs in debt? This is what our great social programs have made us as we go down a path of dependence. Come on citizens – it’s your county! Take some responsibility for your leaders and for your own actions! Ok…I’ll stop preaching. :-)
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I’m picking up three people in this thread who seem to be suffering from the dreaded “six-in-ten” disease.
That is to say, they want more of life’s everyday decisions to be decided by government…the more decisions, the better, especially the decisions that have to do with value systems, ethics and morality.
And this is a government that, six years out of ten, is run by a Republican President whom they absolutely loathe, and whose value systems they do not trust.
For Jesus, in Matthew 25, makes clear that He is judging nations.
Have you heard the saying that you can’t legislate morality? Did you decide just to shunt that one aside because it isn’t convenient to your argument, or your scriptural quotes trump it, or…you just don’t care?
A nation is filled with jerks and creeps, it becomes bound by a law that mandates good conduct — the people within don’t all of a sudden become wonderful. They remain jerks and creeps.
Did The Lion of the Lord say He was going to go flipping through the rulebooks of the nations, as He set about judging them? If so, I must’ve missed that one. If not…well then, it seems to me He must have been talking about how the people within those nations conduct themselves. So if you’re worried sick we’re all going to Hell because we aren’t being taxed enough — just mail in some more. Problem solved.
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Hi there Lower!
Thanks for the offer. I think you and I would agree on precisely nothing…except that Jesus is God and that His death and resurrection are the source of salvation, not just for our eternal future but for life on earth lived in meaning, purpose and fulfillment.
As to Jesus and the prophets, I read their teaching as pretty consistent (and Divinely, not humanly, inspired) on the matter of social justice. Individuals are called to lives of service to the poor and the oppressed. But governments are, too. This is what so many of the prophets raged about. Amos thundered that God’s wrath would fall on the Kings, rulers and wealthy of both Israel and surrounding Kingdoms because they trampled the poor and denied the alien justice. Isaiah went so far as to proclaim that government must enact law that does not rob the poor and fatten the wealthy. Ezekiel further scandalizes us all, me included, by suggesting that Sodom’s sin had to do with neglecting the poor and needy in her midst. Jeremiah, bless him, wept and called individuals, priests, officials and kings to account for cheating workers, depleting forests and mistreating widows and orphans. In appealing to the king (the government), Jeremiah praised the previous king (Josiah) and offer a loaded assessment: “He tended to the cause of the poor and the needy. Is this not what it means to know Me, says the Lord?”
Of course, Jesus sums it all up by saying, “Love God, love your neighbor.” The popular response to that, which I fully expect to find at the center of the Ayn Rand Study Bible whenever Zondervan gets around to publishing it, is — “Oh my goodness, well of course individuals are supposed to do justice. But not governments. Jesus only meant for private citizens to care for the poor.” Of course, that argument is shattered to smithereens on the Rock itself. For Jesus, in Matthew 25, makes clear that He is judging nations. (The greek there implies people groups, not individuals.) Further, if Jesus — in Matt. 25 — is not judging nations and is judging individuals — then He is directly contradicting the teachings of Sts. Paul and Peter, that we are not saved by good works…but by grace through faith. Clearly, in Matthew 25, judgment is based on works. So…since we know Scripture does not contradict itself…it must be that Jesus, at the end of days, judges individuals on the basis of grace and nations on the basis of works.
This is, certainly, not an excuse for individuals to avoid charity or volunteerism. On the contrary! Grace, if received sincerely, begets generosity. It is, however, to affirm the whole counsel of God…and not just a part of it. We, like the prophets, must not only expect social justice from individuals and churches…but from kings, rulers and governments as well.
If you’d care to read more on the matter, I would heartily commend to you “The Soul of Politics” by Jim Wallis or “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” by Ron Sider. And anything by Tony Campolo! ;-)
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Jim – not sure about Oscar, but a couple of differences between pipedreams and Jesus and the OT prophets. Jesus was perfect and the OT prophets were supposed to be 100% perfect when speaking the future on God’s behalf, or they were stoned. Oh, and Jesus claimed to be God. :-) He wasn’t just a visionary do-gooder. He was/is one of a kind. If you want to be like Him…that’s a very good step in the right direction! Not sure if that’s the government’s agenda… By the way, if you’re not a Christian, I’d love to share with you how from Scripture!
Quick point – To reject socialism and/or liberalism isn’t to reject compassion for our fellow man – it’s cutting out the middle man (i.e. the government). It’s actually more compassionate because it recognizes that the most compassionate are the private citizens, non-profits, and churches who give directly and strategically. Shouldn’t things like the scandal going on with Rangel and countless ones before on both sides of the aisle be any indication of the morality of this lot in Washington? It’s stuff of legends! We’re going to leave benevolence to those whose main goal in life is re-election, greed, and prestige? I’d trust a lawyer first (oh, a lot of them are lawyers…my bad)! I don’t trust the Republicans with doing an adequate job with social services – why would I trust “compassionate” liberals and socialists?
We need to get back to privatizing compassion rather than socializing it.
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Well you’ve got some swell company Jim!
Enjoy each other.
Like the tee shirt slogan says, I’ll keep my guns, freedom, hot-looking girls and my paycheck thank you.
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Hiya Morgan!
Thank you very much for this comment, which I take as high praise… >>>”Capitalism has its restraints built in. They may be disappointing to a pipe-dreamer who’s come up with a vision, unenforced by reality, of what the self-restraints ought to be (socialistic governments are absolutely NOT self-bridling). But they’re there.”<<<
They said the same thing about the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, Oscar Romero and a host of other pipe-dreaming "do-gooders". I'll cast my lot with them, thanks.
You can hang tough with Ayn Rand and the C-Streeters.
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According to “automaker” website, as of July 20th, the car industry has paid back 18.3 billion of the 86 billion. A far cry from what you said Ed.
Also, the government still officially owns 60.8% of GM, making it in full control of the company as of yet, and about 10% of Chrystler.
And Ford…how’d they do without government money? My respect for Ford has greatly gone up since these bailouts.
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By the way, according to automobile.com, the car industry has payed back 18.3 billion of the 86 billion they were given. While the auto industry vows to pay it back…it hasn’t happened yet.
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http://www.automobile.com/gm-has-first-profitable-quarter-since-2007.html
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Comparing the Titanic with GM is apples and oranges. GM didn’t hit an iceburg – it’s been slowly leaking for years. I keep trying to post an article but my comment keeps getting sent to your filter! Rats.
For like the fourth time, I ask – is there ANYTHING that he has done that you disaprove of policy wise or action wise where you can demonstrate that you’re not just an Obama mouthpiece but a free thinking individual?
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Comparing the Titanic with GM is apples and oranges. GM didn’t hit an iceburg – it’s been slowly leaking for years. I keep trying to post an article but my comment keeps getting sent to your filter! Rats. You may have to put the link together for yourself for this to work. The article will explain my point of view on the auto industry better than I can. They’re car guys – I figure they know what they’re talking about. :-)
automobile .com /gm-has-first-profitable-quarter-since-2007 .html
For like the fourth time, I ask – is there ANYTHING that he has done that you disaprove of policy wise or action wise where you can demonstrate that you’re not just an Obama mouthpiece but a free thinking individual?
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Yes Jim. Self-bridling. Capitalism has its restraints built in. They may be disappointing to a pipe-dreamer who’s come up with a vision, unenforced by reality, of what the self-restraints ought to be (socialistic governments are absolutely NOT self-bridling). But they’re there.
You sell something, the buyer has to agree to the price and the terms. Otherwise you go out of business. You buy something, the seller must agree or you go home empty handed.
Government does something like, oh…regulate BP? BP writes in the answers to the audit in pencil, the auditor traces over it in pen. The mentally flaccid will say “Aha! See? That’s a failure of capitalism!” But it isn’t. “Regulatory oversight” was put in place, and it was found not to work.
Hey wouldn’t it be sweet to have a job like that? You’re supposed to do something…and when you use the time to stare at porn all day instead of doing your job, it’s the other guy’s fault.
You want unbridled? Look at Obama or any other leftwing dictator asshole. The rules say He can’t do something, and whatever that rule is it’s just a minor irritant, nothing more. That’s what I call unbridled.
Or if you insist on something in the private sector, look to the businesses that employ illegal aliens. There’s your “unbridled.”
Capitalism is self-bridling. Obama makes it a lot more expensive to hire people, and in keeping with the law, the corporations lay people off. And then this is supposed to be the fault of capitalism somehow.
But I never said the bridling had to be comfortable for everyone. Businesses that want to operate out in the light, do what must be done in order to stay legal. And then it’s their fault, even though the leftist government comes up with the policies. Often, in contravention to the Constitution and other laws.
Obama shakes down BP, has the “audacity” to pick up the phone and order them to put billions of dollars in a pot. Hey, is that your idea of self bridling? Just curious.
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Capitalism is self-bridling? OMG. Morgan, that is possibly the most clueless thing I have ever heard any intelligent person say.
Tell that to the people in Anniston, Alabama; Mossville, Louisiana; and Lima, Ohio. Tell that to the families of the miners killed in West Virginia or the workers killed on the BP Oil rig.
Unbridled Capitalism is no different than unbridled Socialism. Both lead to negligent homicide.
This orgy of deregulation must be stopped, just as the orgy of oppression in the old USSR had to be stopped.
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You. Of course, with somebody like Obama at the helm, if you’d listen to him, you’d have a chance.
After all, it looks like you made a profit off the GM bailout, not that you’d ever admit it. That won’t cost you a dime.
So, ready to carry the sign for Obama yet?
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And how about those passengers on the Titanic! If only they hadn’t demanded full speed through the iceberg-laden waters, things would have been fine, right?
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Wow – that was quite a reaction Ed to my statement on car companies.
My point was more against the liberal unions than the car industry itself. I have no problem with GM and own a GM vehicle myself. Unions started well and were important at one time…but have long since taken many companies (like GM) captive to the point where they bankrupted the company with their impractical demands for a tightly competitive industry!
GM typifies what happens when you live on defecit spending – no one cared as long as they got their pensions, their cash, and their medicine – they sacrificed the future of the industry for their today. But it was ok – the government was there to protect them from failing. Here’s my question – who is going to bail out the US government? What is OUR safety net? Just the tax payer. So all these things we’re doing for the sake of the taxpayer, even though we’re doing it by defecit spending, are going to come around and bite us in the tail at the end of the day, just like it did with GM. Thanks liberals (and I’m including Bush in that paradigm with his bailouts, etc.)!
Whenever an organization or government no longer works for your benefit but rather you work for its benefit, it has ceased to function as it should. Liberals with good intentions seek to make the government (and have largly been successful) become such a thing – that no longer does the government work for our benefit, but we work for the benefit of the government (i.e “the great society”) and for sake of the common good. This is one big problem I have with those who seek to channel compassion through government instead of using private companies an groups that will do so much better a job. The government would then simply be used as a tool for oversight against corruption. Again…Haiti is a great example of the compassion of the American people! Instead, the taxpayer is used as a tool for what the government wants to accomplish! Not cool!
Going back to what you said about taxes – no Republican I know has a problem paying taxes in principle. The problem is that our tax dollars are not buying civilization, it’s buying a bigger government that keeps needing more and more funds to “feed the pig” so to speak.
This is a discussion that has been around since the foundation of our Republic – how big should the government be? King George showed us what a big government could do with that kind of power when it wasn’t benevolent and our founders rightly set rules to protect against such things happening again – like the constitution and the bill of rights. But I would reckon that even the most prominent of federalists would have been appalled at the bloated size of the federal government of today! Makes my mind wander, imagining trying to explain “unemployment benefits” to a pioneer. :-)
In capitalism, bigger is not always better. Bigger profit is always seen as better…as long as money is seen to be the chief objective…which thankfully not every company has as its mission. There is a fault in capitalism – it’s the mighty god called the “dollar” and the evil twin goddess called “materialism.” This would be the same beef I have with liberalism/unions, etc. Instead of the dollar working for us, we now work for the dollar. So, no, I’m not an unbridled capitalist, though there’s no sin in making lots of money and capitalism seems to be the most productive way of doing so. I’m an unbridled Christian…which really would fix everything (1 Timothy 6 is a great Bible passage on money). :-) Capitalism (along with anything else) is only good as long as it works for us…not when we work for it. A billion dollars in the bank is nothing compared to the love of a good family and friends – so why do we spend all of our time working for money, LCD TVs, new toys, etc? Priorities people – money is a tool…government is a tool…a mechanism…nothing more! Don’t bow to the god of consumerism!
I don’t want to bring down Obama. I want Obama to change his heart and do what’s best for the American people – not what’s best for his political persuasion. I would vote for him next time around if he did what I believe to be the right course of action more often than any of his oponents. Praying for him daily.
If GM is a company worth keeping then we (America)would buy their cars. GM needs to learn to stand on their own two feet of supply and demand – of doing what it takes to sell a product that people will actually buy for a price they can afford. If they can’t do that because of a bloated system in their company, the system needs changed – not subsidized.
Regarding socialism…if “dictate the production of factories” is the definition of socialism then I was wrong to label unions as liberal – socialist would be much more adequate. What political party do the unions control? Hmm….
If socialism is defined as “government programs that take care of people” then beyond defense of body and liberty, what were the ‘social programs’ and ‘services’ that were dictated by our founding founders as ‘very good’? I suppose you could make the case for the mail…others? :-) Very few if you can think of any…making roads…hmm…Shoot, even education used to be seen as a community responsibility rather than a government responsibility! My how the bureaucracy has grown into an unquenchable beast! Now…they’re eating up the healthcare industry? My hopes aren’t high.
I believe your hypothesis to be in error. Most people do not base their political views on what Obama does. You’re not helping his narcissistic tendencies at all by making claims like this.
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You assume that [“bigger and bigger” means expenses and not revenue], but that’s not in evidence, nor is it necessarily accurate.
Bzzzt! Wrong again. It is in evidence and it’s accurate. Thanks for playing.
Modern, non-academic conservatives just rarely think through what they want to say. It’s okay to them to savage the Boy Scouts if it gets a dig at Obama. Spitting on the flag is fine, if some of the spittle might get on Obama’s limousine. Sacrificing veterans is great, if it makes Obama look silly.
Dude, seriously. All the posterboards from anti-war marches, 2001 to 2008, comparing Bush to Hitler. “We support the troops when they kill their commanders.” Do you really want to start this?
The “study” was wrong on its face. You keep missing the point: The claim was wrong. Even Michael Cembalest agreed with me that the methodology was so flawed that the results were in error, and he withdrew the claim…The chart said only 7% of Obama’s cabinet had private sector experience.
Okay, well not to keep re-hashing it, but you’re forcing my hand because you’re repeating nonsense that anybody who can chase a link, which means click it, can readily see is balderdash.
The chart as it is posted now — whoah, that’s not a very good job of “withdrawing the claim” is it? — does not say 7%.
It’s not that I think you’re being dishonest, Ed. I think you’re just filtering out whatever isn’t compatible with your prejudices, like you do with everything else.
Now I’m not going to get too much into speculating on what happened with your phone call. You were there, I wasn’t. But what you choose to leave out of it is pretty consistent, so I don’t think it’s exactly going out on a limb to create a rough outline:
Cembalest noted that Obama nominated an academic/lawyer, and then another one, and another one, and another one. About this time, his employer J.P. Morgan, just like my own company and everybody else’s, was wondering what was coming down the pike. They were sniffing around for clues. Well, Cembalest was able to justify spending company time on the research, albeit with the provision that he’d have to put the disclaimer of “does not necessarily reflect the views of” at the end. In hindsight, these really seems only reasonable. Someone got the gut-feel that Obama was relying, in an extraordinary way, on the experience of those who didn’t have real experience. This can only be a gut-feel, the product of painstaking research, or both of those…you can’t kinda-sorta substantiate it. So the digging would have to be done.
But you cannot compare Obama with previous administrations if you don’t come up with some kind of scorekeeping system. Cembalest arrived at his with a desire to prove what he wanted to prove. This is a big no-no in “hard” science…although it’s a rule that is broken, even there, all the time. The oceans are drying up in ten years. Women are better drivers than men. Et cetera…anyway, he “published” his findings and they appeared in Forbes.
An obnoxious liberal blogger named Ed Darrell conducted a study of his own. He, too, sampled the data in an effort to prove what he wanted to prove. Hey, all lawyers work in the private sector! Hey, when your daddy does something, it counts as something you can put on YOUR resume! And all kinds of silly whack-job stuff like that.
So during this phone call…I think what’s going through Cembalest’s mind is this: Gee, my little formula is barely strong enough to provide a level playing field as I compare Obama’s to previous administrations. That is ALL I built it for. It was never formulated to withstand the excoriation of douchebag liberal bloggers. I’d better come up with something else.
So he revised the chart. Implemented a new formula that might withstand a few more of the attacks…not “challenges,” but attacks…from determined loyal leftists like Ed. The result is that the Obama administration comes up to just over 20% instead of 7%. The next runner-up for ignorance about what makes things go, is JFK in the high 20’s, then Carter in the low 30’s. Most of the others are 40% and up. http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/24/michael-cembalest-obama-business-beltway-cabinet.html
The chart/study have not been taken down, recanted, redacted, rebuked, debunked, disowned, repudiated, anything of the like. Everytime you say so you look sillier.
But as I said, the idea that Obama’s cabinet is radically different from what came before — and this is what Cembalest is really trying to say, it seems — isn’t even something with which you’d disagree. Obama relies on people who take absolutely no responsibility for producing anything. You part company with the other side when you say that is a good thing. But you don’t disagree with what’s being said about Obama being different.
Nick and James have pointed out that Obama couldn’t win either way with the Scouts. All his work to help Scouting is ignored by people who wish to claim now, from whole cloth, that Obama’s not being at Fort A. P. Hill was some sort of major snub of Scouting
This is one of the silliest things you’ve had to say about anything thus far.
If there are people who are eager to find fault with everything Obama does, they are easily outnumbered — still, with all the fuck-ups to-date — by the slobbering Obama fans who are eager to canonize His Holiness over every little thing He does. Which isn’t bad considering He hasn’t managed to produce results in any given situation superior to the results he found when he first started managing that situation, whatever it may be.
But suppose there was some overwhelming mob ready to tar and feather poor Barack Obama over the way He handles this thing, or that thing, or some other silly thing. Suppose they achieve majority rule and the mob mentality that comes with it.
What you have there, then, is a perfect repetition of George W. Bush’s presidency. Since you’re insisting this somehow makes Barry a swell guy, that He has all these critics — which, I’m supposed to presume, He doesn’t deserve? — please point me to your swollen archives of essays with your passionate defense of the unfairly maligned George W. Bush.
You probably can’t, and that would be fair. Just because you’re being attacked doesn’t automatically make the attacks unfair, and it doesn’t make you a great leader. Sometimes it’s deserved.
In this case, people are frustrated with Obama because they want to make some money and He won’t let them. So yes, it is deserved.
T[h]e right wing has so twisted the definition of the word “socialist” that you’ve decided that its definition is “Anyone I don’t like.”
Well Nick my boy, this is your golden opportunity to straighten it all out.
I can tell you what my reference materials say socialism is…one problem with that though. It would be disrespectful to our host. “Means of production” are the central focus of attention, and I know from discussing things with Mr. Darrell he just doesn’t like to think about producing. He’d prefer to conflate the producers with the non-producers. But when you look at what is produced, and by who, it becomes clear Obama is a socialist and there are a lot of accepted definitions of the word that back this up.
So since these awful extremist right-wingers have hijacked this word, take it back. What do you require someone to do, in order to be a socialist, that Barack Obama has not yet done?
Untwist, please.
The apologists are on your side of the debate here, Morgan. Because your side is so short on ideas of its own and is so incapable of coming up with actual rational reasons to oppose the President…
Actual rational reasons to support the President?
How about…the economy is sitting in stasis, in critical condition, with no prospects to move out of it…much like many of Obama’s voters are sitting in welfare & unemployment, with no vision whatsoever to ever move to anything else. And Obama’s ideas all have it in common that they make it harder to run a business and turn a profit.
There, that’s a good reason.
Ideas? How about…if we want the economy to get better…make it easier to make money.
Stop defining it as a problem to be solved, anytime anybody anywhere (outside of Washington) manages to squeak through a quarter or a year with a profit.
Stop fighting ourselves.
Or does that just make someone “The Party Of No”?
Socialism isn’t bad at all. It has worked quite well in a number of other places.
I agree completely!
If, by “worked quite well,” what you mean to say is “hasn’t dissolved into yet another mudpuddle shithole of starvation, corruption and blight just yet.”
Capitalism is no evil. In fact, it is pregnant with the potential for great good. When it is bridled.
Capitalism places the opposite participant in a transaction (seller, if you’re the buyer; buyer, if you’re the seller) in the same position of authority that socialism invests in some centralized dictator who is far less interested in the outcome, knows a whole lot less about the nature of it, and is consistently an asshole.
Capitalism has no need to be bridled. It is self-bridling. It is equally risible to talk about bridled & non-bridled socialism; it is inherently unbridled. Any & all charter documents that seek to place limits on power, socialism labors to undermine. Once the ruling party gets it in their head they want to do something, anything standing in the way is exactly that and nothing more. Just an obstacle to be defeated.
The strategy of the extreme right is to label anything that is not wholly unbridled, unchecked and unregulated Capitalism as Socialism.
When you have a candidate for high office saying “I just think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody” — there is nothing extremist about opposing that candidate, just like there’s nothing extremist about opposing someone who says “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
You mention Goldwater. You remember Goldwater’s most famous quote, don’t you? Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.
The three of you have made this much more satisfying than I ever thought it would be. I asked you if you’re on the side of 1) No, Obama is not a socialist and anyone who says He is, is a dummy! Or 2) No, c’mon, socialism isn’t such a bad thing, it’s really want the country needs…
It seems all three of you belong to 3) both of the above. So Obama’s not a socialist, and socialism is the way to go.
You must all be really pissed at Barack Obama for being insufficiently socialist huh?
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Howdy Morgan!
In your response to Ed, you say…>>>”I notice the apologists like you are about evenly divided between 1) No He isn’t! and 2) Actually, socialism isn’t so ad.<<<"
Yes. And quite right.
Socialism isn't bad at all. It has worked quite well in a number of other places. Why? Well, because when and where it has worked, it has been restrained by the best impulses of Capitalism. The all or nothing meme is getting really worn out.
Here in the United States, I would posit that Capitalism works best. But only when it is restrained by Socialistic impulses. That's why our Capitalist system worked, more or less, swimmingly from 1945 to the early 1980's. There were economic ups and downs, but no cataclysm. The only clusterphucks we've known economically have come in 1929 and since deregulation in the 1980's. Why? It's not because the Gilded Age Presidents or Ronald Reagan were pure evil. Liberals who talk that way presume these men WANTED to destroy America. And that's just nonsense. They meant well, were sincere and were, clearly, sincerely wrong.
Socialism is no evil, unless it us unbridled. In North Korea and the old Soviet Union, it was unbridled. Capitalism is no evil. In fact, it is pregnant with the potential for great good. When it is bridled. Since Ronald Reagan (and in fairness, I should note that some deregulation was championed by the supposedly liberal Jimmy Carter), we have had nothing but a succession of extreme Capitalists as Presidents. Barack Obama is simply a Capitalist, but not an extremist. If nationalizing Willard "Mitt" Romney's health care reform plan is Socialism, then Billy Sunday's tent revivals were Roman Catholic masses.
The strategy of the extreme right (and since the passing of Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley and William Safire, extreme seems to be just about all that's left on the right) is to label anything that is not wholly unbridled, unchecked and unregulated Capitalism as Socialism.
Tell me Morgan, were Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon Socialists? Because, domestically speaking, both of them were at least as "progressive" as our current President. (And this could explain the dissatisfaction of liberals like me, who voted for and hope(d) for change that went beyong Clintonesque accomodation for corporate America.)
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Obama is only a socialist if the Republicans are fascists.
THe right wing has so twisted the definition of the word “socialist” that you’ve decided that its definition is “Anyone I don’t like.”
Sorry, in economics and in political science socialism has a very specific set of definitions…and Obama is no more a socialist then Bush was, for example, a fascist.
The apologists are on your side of the debate here, Morgan. Because your side is so short on ideas of its own and is so incapable of coming up with actual rational reasons to oppose the President that your side is playing the same game that it did when the Soviet Union existed….labeling everyone who doesn’t agree with you as a Communist. Your side continously acts out of puerile childishness and all because its so pissed that *gasp* the American people threw you out of power. Well living in a democracy or in this case a democratic Republic means that sometimes you lose.
The funny thing is that if the Democrats started labeling the Republicans as fascists your side would flip out faster then it took me to type this last sentence.
You guys f—ed up the country and instead of acknowledging that and fixing what is wrong with your party that caused it…meaning the march ever on to the right..your party is marching even quicker to the right, becoming even less mainstream and are glorifying in your desire to repeat the policies that fucked up the country in the first place. And part of the problem is that your party somehow got it in your heads that living in a free market means no rules, no regulations, no taxes, and that anything that somehow impedes companies doing whatever they damn well please is anathema to the United States even if what those companies are doing is against the interests of the people of the United States.
I mean lets take health care as an example. Your side has, among other parts of it, whined about the insurance mandate. That it’s somehow “socialist” and “unAmerican” for the government to require everyone to have health insurance. And yet as a counter to Bill Clinton’s attempt to engage in health care reform…the Republican party proposed…wait for it…an insurance mandate. And the two Republicans that proposed it were Orrin Hatch and Bob Dole. Are you telling us that the Republican party nominated Dole, an apparent socialist, for President of the United States in 1996? And that one of its leaders these days, Hatch, is also a socialist?
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You assume that, but that’s not in evidence, nor is it necessarily accurate. You assume conservatives can’t say what they mean, and I don’t think that’s accurate. Modern, non-academic conservatives just rarely think through what they want to say. It’s okay to them to savage the Boy Scouts if it gets a dig at Obama. Spitting on the flag is fine, if some of the spittle might get on Obama’s limousine. Sacrificing veterans is great, if it makes Obama look silly.
Joe’s statement is an accurate reflection of the non-thinking that goes on among so-called conservatives consumed by hatred for anything that is related to Obama, reality, or conservative errors in politics and economics.
The Onion carried a headline recently about Obama curing cancer, and Republicans coming unglued about all those unemployed oncologists. It won’t be long before some conservative idiot picks up that argument and runs with it. It’s impossible to satirize some forms of idiocy, as Mencken discovered. Dangerous, too.
The “study” was wrong on its face. You keep missing the point: The claim was wrong. Even Michael Cembalest agreed with me that the methodology was so flawed that the results were in error, and he withdrew the claim. Cembalest told me it was a humor piece — not full satire like the Onion, but humor. Conservatives are so sapped of even fictional humor that they mistake it as fact.
One more time, I’ll explain it. You won’t get it, but others will. They will see that I did, indeed, call your error out, and am doing so again.
Cembalest’s W.A.G. claim was that Obama’s cabinet didn’t have enough private-sector experience to know how to create government policy to create jobs — a problem which Cembalest, a top economics guy for J. P. Morgan, sees as a key to recovery, contrary to current Conservative Cant and Mitch McConnell’s bloviating.
The chart said only 7% of Obama’s cabinet had private sector experience. The truth-shredders in American “Enterprise” Institute’s flacking department put it out as a hard-core study instead of napkin W.A.G. AEI didn’t think to bother about methodology, and so applied it to the entire cabinet.
22 people in the entire cabinet. 7% would be . . . well, it doesn’t work. 7% of 22 people is 1.54 people. That was
a clueclear evidence that the claim was wrong.Are you really arguing that AEI is so stupid they didn’t know it was wrong? You think it can’t be a hoax if they are too stupid to recognize the error — that’s what you wrote at your blog. I don’t accept that. I think they fully intended to make the false point. But make your case — I’ve worked with them, and I didn’t find them stupid at all. Devious, conniving, willing to step on the truth to get at imagined enemies, but not stupid.
Make your case for stupidity if you can. Otherwise, it’s an AEI hoax.
In any case, Cembalest himself had limited his WAGging to cabinet jobs he thought most critical to policy that makes jobs. Who is that? Commerce? Treasury? Labor? The only ones I can find without significant private sector experience are Veterans Affairs Sec. Eric Shinseki, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Labor Sec. Hilda Solis, and, arguably, Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood.
Now, each member of the cabinet is 4.5% of the cabinet. Can you explain how any combination including the Secretaries of Treasury and Commerce, comes up with 7%?
Your Hemingway (Excrement) Detector is faulty, you say?
So the study is untenable as a study. The guy who did the study pulled it back. But you defend it, saying I’m wrong? Of course, you won’t defend it by arguing where I erred, or showing how you think Cembalest came up with the impossible number of 7% . . .
There are lots of errors in that claim of yours, but very few of them, if any, are mine.
Truth loses in all of your versions. It’s your blinding animosity to anything close to Obama that prevents you from seeing that, I’m sure.
But that also means I don’t trust anything else you say that gets close to the current administration. You have blinders on, and you’re not seeing the whole truth, nor, often, even part of the truth.
What I point to is the wrong-headed idea that “big” means “liberalism” (without getting to the point that “liberalism” doesn’t mean “liberal,” but you guys are so sloppy with language and ideas that it doesn’t really matter much, does it?) and that “big” means “not American, not flag-waving, not good.”
GM didn’t surrender its mantle to Toyota happily or willingly. Ford doesn’t check those figures because they hope not to take the top spot. In the auto business, “big” means “having done a lot right for a very long time.”
If you’ve never engaged in private enterprise, especially at a very big company, you still should understand that.
There are only two kinds of politics, good politics, and bad politics. That’s where you should worry.
Socialism? You don’t offer your definition, but I’m pretty confident you don’t use a classical economic description, or you wouldn’t have to ask the questions.
Socialism, in von Mises’s terms, means that large groups, generally governments, dictate the production of factories, or other industrial output.
No, Obama’s not socialist. Nothing in the U.S. is socialist in that economic view.
Do you mean to define “socialism” as meaning “government programs that take care of people?” If so, socialism is very, very good, and it’s one of the founding ideas of America, that one of government’s big jobs is to make sure people get opportunities in various areas of life.
Which definition to you wish to use?
I’ll wager you think the health care reforms are “socialist,” while at the same time you complain that one of the problems is that costs might run away. The irony there, of course, is that were the health care reforms socialist, costs could not run away. Outputs would be predetermined.
I think your whole premise is flawed. “Socialist” or “Not Socialist” doesn’t mean what you want it to mean, and it shouldn’t be used as you wish to use it, as a cudgel against Obama.
No. He’s not socialist in economics. No, he’s also not sufficiently socially-oriented in other policies. We should have had a bailout for homeowners, for example, and not just the banks who held their mortgages (irony here being that our money went to keep whole the bankers who were already whole and in little danger of losing their jobs or homes, while leaving those who lose their homes in the hole). We should have greater concern for teachers, and not blame them for all failures of education which are, after all, failures of educational administration.
I have a hypothesis: I find that most people base their political views these days on what Obama does or says. If he does something, it is automatically bad; if he says something, whatever he said is automatically wrong.
That’s how Obama’s pro-capitalist, free-enterprise-preserving actions with regard to GM can be said to be “socialist” though it is 180 degrees from socialism, or bad, though it saved millions of Americans’s jobs, which most patriots would say was a good thing to do.
What do you think? Is there any policy you’ve advocated for a few years that Obama has done exactly what you asked him to do, and so you’ve complimented him on it?
No, I don’t find that at most conservative blogs or outlets.
And that’s the point here. Nick and James have pointed out that Obama couldn’t win either way with the Scouts. All his work to help Scouting is ignored by people who wish to claim now, from whole cloth, that Obama’s not being at Fort A. P. Hill was some sort of major snub of Scouting, though I haven’t found any of those critics who has ever lifted a finger for Scouting prior to that moment, and though BSA has not complained, but instead pointed to Obama’s other support of Scouting.
I’m sure whether you stand on #1 or #2, you’re going to insist anyone who doesn’t see things precisely the same way is a drooling moron. That much is a given.
Can you tell us what your policy is on anything, without first somebody telling you what Obama’s policy is, so you can call Obama’s views “wrong?”
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Actually Ed, it’s implicitly implied that “bigger and bigger until everything falls apart” is a reference to the expenses involved, not the revenue. It’s an important distinction to make. Generally, I think it’s not a good idea to try to evaluate whether something makes sense before you understand it. This is a continuation of that blunder you made with Cembalest’s “Obama’s Cabinet” study. You got so lost in the forest studying the trees, that not only did you fail to realize the overall point o the study was still standing, intact, but what it was saying was something you didn’t even disagree with.
So now you point to big things that have been growing and haven’t fallen apart yet. Toyota. Heh. Nice one. Hey, come to California! Just hang around here for a week reading the newspapers.
Ed, I’ve been curious about something that’s only tangentially related to this. How do you react to the idea that Obama is a socialist? I notice the apologists like you are about evenly divided between 1) No He isn’t! and 2) Actually, socialism isn’t so ad. My theory is that the Obama apologists are grasping at straws so desperately, that they see nothing wrong whatsoever with standing behind BOTH of those at the same time, failing to see the mutual exclusivity. Is my theory right?
I’m sure whether you stand on #1 or #2, you’re going to insist anyone who doesn’t see things precisely the same way is a drooling moron. That much is a given.
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Joe said:
Generally, I think it’s not a good idea to get one’s philosophy of life, or economics, or politics, by putting a textbook in a blender and pulling out things that look like sentences, and then trying to live by them.
Companies “getting bigger and bigger” is a classic definition of capitalism. Successful companies grow, unsuccessful companies shrink and die.
That’s one of the great genius ideas of capitalism.
So, Joe, on your terms, success in a capitalist competition for market share, is really a “fault” of “liberalism,” whatever you may conceive that word to mean (though I can find nothing in the dictionaries of economic terms, nor anywhere else, that makes much sense in your application).
You may be right. Capitalism may be doomed, and dysfunctional near the end. But generally, capitalism works well, and your aphorism is dead wrong.
Most of us prefer to keep capitalism, thank you very much, and we resent the attempts of conservative yahoos to relabel our “God-given” economic system as “liberalism” in an attempt to denigrate it and bring down our national economy. (Though, what you really want to do is just bring down Obama — it’s your unholy blindness to “collateral damage” that makes this statement really offensive; you’d sit by and watch the ship of America sink, so long as you were confident Obama went down with it, never thinking for a moment of those passengers and crew who also go down.)
Toyota is now bigger than GM in worldwide sales. While Toyota has problems of size, their success in selling things, their success at being the “biggest,” is not greeted as a foretelling of doom in very many quarters. Size, from success, is not a sin, and generally not something we should eschew in a knee-jerk fashion in our nation’s flagship corporations, even the biggest, even those in trouble.
I think, Joe, this just goes to indicate that so-called conservatives don’t generally know what they’re talking about with history, nor economics. Conservatives use that profound lack of information to string words together to say anything to contradict their objects of distaste — in this case you’re going after Barack Obama through GM.
Either end of that
crusadejihadstruggle of yours is unholy. GM is a company worth keeping; Obama is not a villain.Please don’t step on your grandmother, again, on the way out. Stick to the facts; they are stepping stones to genuine understanding, learning, and good action.
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[…] the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) goes to commenter lowerleavell who is trying to talk some sense into progressive blog proprietor Ed Darrell. I can’t fault LL for this because I’ve […]
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Morgan, as for your first point. Tax cuts do add to the defecit. Under accounting rules they are an expense. You and the rest of the right wing can pretend different all you but but when the governments cut taxes it is government spending money. Furthermore..there’s the fact that, according to the CBO, the Bush era tax cuts are a significant portion of the national debt…much more so then any stimulus you’re bitching about.
ANd if tax cuts are so good for economies..then pray tell why is every low tax state in this country have a worse economy then every state with higher taxes?
And there is something worse then a “left wing sh–hole.” That would be a right wing sh–hole. ANd your side keeps on claiming that high taxes drive people out and yet your side has never actually proven it.
So let us know when you want to deal with reality, Morgan.
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Ed,
Your assumptions, and Mr. Yglesias’, whether you realize them or not, are as follows:
1. Tax cuts add to the deficit. This is not going over terribly well with me, partly because I’m sitting here in California…which is rapidly turning into another left-wing shithole, same story, different date. Gotta raise those taxes, money can’t come from anywhere else. Hey, HEY! Where are those taxpayers going? They’re leaving the state! Wonder why. Derrr… Look. People with memories get this. You want more of something, subsidize it, if you want less of something you tax it. Taxes are being raised on INCOME. The rest of the picture isn’t hard to fill in, unless you’re spending Darrell-level amounts of effort trying not to fill it in.
2. This one is also timeless: Without the stimulus (or whatever other liberal panacea it is)…oh my goodness, much worse things would’ve happened. This is an irrefutable and unprovable lie put out by crooked politicians. Did I say irrefutable? Won’t fly in this particular case. The White House explained, well after Bush was out of the picture, that without Stimulus the unemployment might go over 8%. Now it’s 9.6 and has been pegged there since shortly after the panacea was passed. If that doesn’t qualify as a definition of failure, nothing does.
3. In view of #1 and #2, Yglesias’ pie slices need to be seriously revisited. But don’t wait for Yglesias to do it.
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Lower, exactly who started the bank bailouts?
Oh and the wrong answer is “Obama.”
On the flip side do you want to recognize the absolute carnage that would have resulted if we let them and the auto industry go completely under?
Oh and historically speaking, do remember who was President when the S&L bailouts happened.
ANd I wouldn’t speak too poorly of unions if I were you, Lower. Considering the rise of unions caused the middle class to come into being and to grow. And the Republicans destruction of unions has shown up in the middle class economic position stagnating and falling back.
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Grand webcast of the centennial celebration, from Fort A. P. Hill, and other locations, on the web NOW. (It is now 6:25 p.m. EDT, 5:25 p.m. Central, etc.)
Links to telecast here.
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1. Bush.
2. Much, if not most, has already been paid back — no debt.
3. Necessary.
Have you seriously given any thought to what would have happened without some form of bailout? Look at the effects of the Lehman Brothers collapse — multiply that by ten times . . .
It would have made the Great Depression soup and bread lines look like a promenade of the wealthy.
To fail to spend, even into great deficits, to save American industries, to save American banks and businesses and financing, to rescue people out of work, is the moral and financial equivalent of surrendering to Osama bin Laden. Not rational. Shouldn’t happen.
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Whoever gives Washington and Lincoln credit for their accomplishments to the chagrin of the sacrifices of millions are just wrong. I would even say it’s like saying Reagan won the Cold War. Yes, they provide the leadership and you’re right, more than often get the credit and should for their leadership, but you can’t discount those who have sacrificed to make it so.
Clinton usually gets all the credit for balancing the budget…under a Republican Congress (who held the purse strings tightly before the power went to their heads). It’s usually to a fault that the leader gets the credit when there are others who are responsible.
The debt that I and my kids are strapped to isn’t just from GM, it’s from the trillion bucks spent on the banking industry as well. You’re looking at the results of the economy now in such a short sighted way – even with the auto industry. This massive defecit spending is going to bankrupt our country! I’m not just blaming Obama here – I’m even blaming the public who takes advantage of “free money” when they don’t really need it! But really, 1) When did it become governement’s job to make cars and artificially prop up (save) any industry? 2) This level of control is rarely given up once aquired. And 3) why is it ok to mortgage our children and grandchildren’s futures to artificially prop the economy up (i.e. the bank bailouts and billions of stimulus)? It’s like taking all the money from your kids piggy bank and college funds, etc. and saying, “oh good, now I can afford to keep my spending habits going.” Pat on our backs for mortgaging our children’s and grandchilden’s futures for the comfort of our own.
I’ve sacrificed for the auto industry – I have bought their cars even though they are more expensive. I try to buy American whenever I can. It’s hard to do these days to find stuff made here, especially clothing, but I’ve never driven a foreign car. Why should I be forced to contribute to fat salaries, pensions, union dues, premium medical insurance plans, etc. for the good of the auto industry? ompany experts have been saying for years that the Unions were bankrupting GM and they were right. Glad to see some of those things go away because it was a bloated industry…ruled by the liberal unions. The auto industry is a great example of what happens when liberalism succeeds – it just gets bigger and bigger until everything falls apart.
Yes, I’ve heard they’ve payed most of it back. I wasn’t just saying GM when I said “companies.” I was including the Wall Street bailouts, much of which was squandered on salaries and bonuses and didn’t do what it was intended to do. Work is still being done to try and fix all that fiasco, but I’m really upset about all the bailouts and defecit spending!
“A good commuter car that will handle 95% of all driving commutes in America”…that no middle class person can afford to buy. $40,000? That would buy four of the cars that are usually used for commuting! :-) Is it a step in the right direction? Sure. But to say that this may be the “salvation” of our country is just ridiculous! If we get converted to electrical cars there isn’t enough electricity in the country to handle the grids and needed electricity…so you’ll have to produce more electricity with…wait for it…oil, coal, nuclear, etc. More power plants needed even now and guess who is holding up making new plants??? It isn’t the Republicans.
There was an oil spill??? Shoot, I thought all those pelicans and fish were coated in chocolate! Well darn! (insert rolling eyes here)
Let’s just take food stamps and WIC for example in response to unemployment, etc. I worked in the grocery industry for three years. Perhaps 1 in 10 that bought food stamps through my checkout actually needed it long term. I had people who bought carts full of Pepsi on food stamps so their kids could get the new DVD we were giving away with the purchase of $100 in select products. I had people buying crab legs, filet mignon, etc. I had people getting their baby food with WIC and then spending $50 on booze in cash, play $20 on the lotto and $10 in cigs. In CA I had people telling me to put my kids on the kids healthcare plan because we fit into the fincial bracket, even though we could afford our own insurance. Energy was subsidized for the ‘poor’ and even though we had no problems making our electrical payments, I could have gotten 20% off our bill – just because I could (I didn’t). I could have also gotten a free phone line too. And we wonder why there is defecit spending? Seriously! American people need to stop abusing the system and the government needs to stop making it so easy and enabling them to do so!
Look, no one should argue against helping those who are in need. But for the sake of compassion we are creating an entitlement mentalitiy in this country that I have seen first hand so many times in work and in charity work.
By the way…I’m not talking from a lack of experience here. How did I get a degree? I worked my butt off and payed my own way through a private college, even though I had a wife and kids. I worked two jobs so that I could buy my first house at 25 and then lost it to forclosure when we moved out of state and the housing market crashed because so many people had bought homes they couldn’t afford and so many investors just walked away. We tried to short sale our home and settle up with the banks but the government actually made it worse. The banks wouldn’t work with us and forclosed our home becuase they told us they were simply waiting for the Obama administration to give them money for our mortgage…no joke! Thanks Obama for enabling greed and bank corruption! How many people now are just not making their payments because they hope the government will make it for them? You’d be surprised.
I have no problem with unemployment to those who are fired from their jobs for a short amount of time while they look for work. I personally know people who are not looking for jobs but are perfectly content on unemployment, food stamps, and mediCal, and aren’t going to get a job until their benefits run out. One told me that he found several jobs but he would lose his benefits if he took them so he might as well just stay on the benefits without having to work. Some tough love is seriously needed here!
When I said I could find a job tomorrow – I didn’t mean it would pay $40,000 or more a year! I’m used to working two jobs to make ends meet. My wife has never worked since we have been married because we made the choice for her to stay home with the kids – we’ve lived just fine without the governments help, thank you. Has it been easy? NO! We’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices and I’ve had to work very hard! Have we had help along the way? Yes! We’ve been connected to a true charity organization…the church. We help each other in our churches. We help people find jobs. We help people with their rent. We help them with food, etc. Compassion for each other and for those who are outside of the church and is starting to be seen as critical and not the government’s job once again. I’m thrilled!
It’s ironic that you make those of us who believe in privatized charity to be Scrooges. There is a difference between helping our fellow man and tough love. Perhaps you would criticize the bird that boots its kid out of the nest to go and fend for itself? Personally, I would love to see charity work privatized even more – like churches, the Salvation Army, the American Cancer Society, Red Cross, etc. become stronger. Organizations that are well equiped to know when to say, “we’re here to help” and to know when to say “the best way for us to love you is to let you live with the choices that you have made so that you will change.”
Should the government help? Yes! Help the private companies who are doing the good! Beyond that, let us keep more of our own money so we can afford to drive American! Let us keep more of our money so that we can put it into the banking industry. Let us keep more of our money so that we can invest it into the economy of what we want to buy. Let us keep more of our money so that we can afford to give more to charity and to those in need. Don’t give me a rebate check so I can say thanks for the crumbs – just let me keep it in the first place and cut all the tape!
Giving to other countries in need? Let me use Haiti for example. The US government has given 130 million roughly? That may be an old figure. How much have the private citizens and corporations given? Over a billion…which has the capacity to do more good in times of need? The government or the private sector? Just an example.
Nick – it seldom does any good to deal in the realm of hypotheticals – what’s the point of accusing people for what would haven IF?
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If the President had gone to the Boy Scouts even the Republicans would be jumping up and down accusing the President of trying to indoctrinate the country’s Boy scouts.
So you’ll forgive me but, Lower, and to the rest of you criticizing the President for what he didn’t do…if he had attended you’d be jumping up and down attacking him for that.
So really…you all are a bunch of hypocrites.
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Actually, most Americans pay taxes willingly. Some even gladly. It’s one of those things Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., got right: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”
Of course I’m giving Obama credit. It was on his watch. It was his choice. He had to drag a few Republicans along kicking and screaming.
And it worked.
I like America. I think we should save it, and build it, and make it better.
When the flag goes up, one salutes, regardless of who is pulling the lanyard.
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In Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2009, formally.
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Can you tell where Obama began to be our President?
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The irony here is that if President Obama had done nothing to save GM and Chrysler, the right wingers here would be attacking him for not caring about American industry and for “surrendering to Japan, China and South Korea”.
Same thing going on here in our town. My wife’s company is preparing to leave our city for Chicago. The company says it’s a done deal, our city doesn’t stand a chance. The Democratic Mayor chooses to spend 95 thousand dollars on consultants who specialize in helping keep businesses in cities. And the local Republicans attack him for spending money on a lost cause. Not fiscally responsible. A friend of mine, fairly high up in the local GOP admits — with glee — that they were also prepared to put out press releases condeming the Mayor for NOT spending money, if he chose to simply accept the company’s decision without a fight and in the name of fiscal restraint.
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Hey Ed,
Producing requires decision-making too.
You want to give Obama all this credit for putting money in places where it was needed, and you get cranky when others don’t give the credit wherever you give it…well, there’s a bunch of problems with that. First of all, money is needed pretty much everywhere. So if Obama’s entitlement to this credit, His “bragging rights” come from realizing the money was needed and then getting the money applied to it…that isn’t going to be much to brag about in the final analysis, since it’s like hitting the broad side of the proverbial barn. Obama found a place that needs money. Everybody needs more money.
If you’re giving Obama credit for finding the money to meet the need, well that’s why there are so many people trying to tell you the producers deserve the credit. Because on that side of the coin, you’re giving Obama credit for producing. He didn’t do this. He used legislative and executive fiat to force the money where he wanted it to go, after it was forcibly taken from those who made it.
When money is taken from those who make it on whim of legislative fiat, it makes people not want to make it. And our economy sees the effects of this. The unemployment rate seems to have found its natural “home,” for the time being, at between 9.5 to 10 percent. Hey, before Obama came along, how often was the unemployment rate between 9.5 and 10 percent?
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We see how you are! Washington can win the American Revolution, discounting the blood of the thousands who marched with him. Lincoln can save the union, forgetting the hundreds of thousands who died. Polk can add a few acres, forgetting completely the Mexican-American War.
But when Obama does something good and right, and it works well, it’s really the Taxpayer who does it, not the guy in the White House.
We saw this with the Clinton boom, as well. Clinton saved our nation, pulled us out of recession and put us into the longest peacetime boom in history. But he “threatened America’s very existence” due to a lack of Johnson controls, according to prudish Republicans.
The Hoover Institute and too large a chunk of Republicans were ready to cede automaking to China and Japan, and put three million people out of work in the U.S. Midwest (more in Canada, but worrying about other people in other nations is “socialist,” so I won’t mention that — it’s Christian, too, but it’s not PC to mention the good, caring parts of Christianity in politic discussions with conservatives any more . . .)
Who do you want to give the credit to, Joe? If you’re going to blame Obama for spending the money, give him credit for what was done with the spending.
And, by the way, most of that money has been paid back. Don’t let the facts, nor compassion for American workers and families get in the way of a good dig at Obama, though, will you?
Joe said:
You’re not.
Why as a Democrat am I afflicted with critics of Obama who don’t know what they’re talking about? How much debt are taxpayers “strapped with” in the GM and Chrysler rescues, Joe? Where did you get the false idea that you don’t get a stake in GM?
Sheesh! Half the conservatives claim Obama “nationalized” GM and Chrysler — half deny it. But in both claims, it’s Obama’s fault, and it doesn’t work.
Half the conservatives say down is up, the other half say up is down — both groups claim Obama was the one who turned the world upside-down — but we should get rid of him “because he can’t do anything.” Frankly, I think anyone who works such miracles ought to be thanked.
Joe, I guess you’re the only one in the nation who was not asked to sacrifice anything to save the U.S. auto industry, or you’d already have the bill. Unions sacrificed pensions and working rules rights. Shareholders sacrificed some value (but can get it back). Management sacrificed dreams of grandeur. Here is a quick rundown of the rescue details. And here is a Wall Street Journal piece that politely points out that while conservatives were sleeping or yelling abut imagined socialism under the bed, the taxpayers got paid back: “GM Bailout: Paid back in full” (April 21, 2010). Sorry you missed that news.
Were you out of the country for the last two years, or something?
All responsible news outlets reported this stuff. (Hint: That’s right: If you listen to Limbaugh, or Fox, you’re listening irresponsibly, to irresponsible news organizations.)
Yes, Obama has helped GM become viable again.
A good commuter car that will handle 95% of all driving commutes in America — a great first step toward a multi-fueled transportation future. The “Obama bailout” as you call it speeded up that development, and may be the salvation of us all (you probably should be alerted that we have had a huge accident with oil in the Gulf of Mexico — I know, it wasn’t reported as well and accurately as it should have been, and you may have missed the connection that our oil-dependence is a major contributor to environmental degradation and Balance of Payments troubles; Obama’s on it, so American can continue on, blissfully ignorant of the way the world works, and doesn’t).
You have a better alternative? The Tesla, perhaps?
No, it’s not a panacea. Yes, it’s a great first step, and a major direction change for GM, formerly the world’s largest auto manufacturer, but symbol of American industrial decline.
It’s not the final summit ascent, but it’s a good first step.
I remember sitting through a briefing of the Republican Senatorial or Policy Committee on the futility of cell phones as communication tools, because the batteries couldn’t work for more than three or four hours, the devices were incredibly heavy, and the range of the radio transmitters was generally no better than 5 miles, “about the same as a kid’s walkie-talkie” the briefer said. We were told the auction of cell-phone spectrum would be a one-time boost to the FCC’s coffers, but that the spectrum would all be unused quickly, and Democrats would go down to defeat in a near-future election because of the socialist folly.
Today the Dallas Morning News has a story about how we should take phones away from kids under the age of 15, because they use them too much. Meanwhile, on my phone I have Skype, and in the car I can talk to our son in Europe, and see him from his computer camera. My phone will hold a charge with heavy use for 24 hours, or six days with my normal usage. Some socialism. Some folly.
And here you are, complaining about the battery life of an electric car.
Balderdash. Those payments save homes, save farms, keep the kids fed and in shoes, and drive the economy — when those payments run out, the investments in tax cuts (which were a third of the stimulus package Obama passed) have proven inadequate to even keep the economy from sputtering, let alone drive recovery.
Unemployment payments are like a blood transfusion to a guy who has bled a lot. Tax cuts are like using leeches to bleed him some more.
We have historical precedents, by the way: The Hoover-criticized, FDR payments sputtered, and the nation fell back into the Great Depression, when we discontinued such programs in 1936. And George Washington’s strep that killed him, was probably aided by his having lost at least four pints of blood to the Mitch McConnells of his day.
Look at history, look at the facts. If anything, we need to boost unemployment and create a new, stimulus like the plan the Republicans refused to pass earlier.
It galls me no end to see McConnell’s speech claiming that it was folly to boost home sales and pay unemployment, while all economic figures (even those of the Hoover Institute) show those tools worked, and then hear McConnell today calling to roll those back in favor of big transfers of money to the rich.
How are the automakers in your old congregation doing? Can they step into a new congregation and “get a job tomorrow?” How about the lumbermen? Truck drivers? Airline pilots?
If you can get a job tomorrow, you’re in a vanishingly small minority. We have five applicants for every job opening, nationwide. That job you get tomorrow means four other people will be out of work.
There is no job opening for them.
Jesus did tell us to kick out the widows and orphans, and I’m sure that applies to the unemployed, too.
I’m happy for you, Joe. You’re one in 30 million. I worry about the 29,999,999. Their inability to pay the mortgage or buy vegetables to feed their kids will sock our national pocketbook in two ways, by not adding to it, and by the money we have to pay when daddy suicides.
Can’t stand the competition, eh?
The social safety net is one of the grandest parts of America’s prosperity. As you know, with Christians, the benefits of charity are not to the donee, but to the donor.
Programs that make unemployed people into high-tax payers once again are the work of God, I think. I don’t begrudge them anything.
It’s troubling to me that you, and so many others, have adopted Scroogonomics: “The poor? Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?”
When did concern for your nation and your fellow man fall out of your life?
There’s no such thing as a solo act in modern life. Even the opera diva has an accompanist, someone to sell the tickets to the theatre, a manager, and ushers to help her out — not to mention the composer of the music and her singing coaches.
When did “I’m not my brother’s keeper” stop being a mark of criminal irresponsibility, and become a political mantra? Unless you don’t drive, your auto was made by an autoworker (most likely in the U.S., even if you drive a Toyota or Nissan). Unless you have a Volt, the oil for the gasoline came from some distant, dangerous place. And that’s just how you get to school or to your job. You didn’t write your textbook. You didn’t print it up. You didn’t go to Congo and cut off the hands of children to secure the supplies of coltan ore to make the chips that drive your computer and cell phone. You’re not Jack Kilby, you didn’t invent that chip. You’re not the guy who climb’s 150 feet, or 1,000 feet up to hang the cell-phone antenna. You’re not the cowboy in the Texas Panhandle who works for $2,000 a month to supply your beef, nor the Iowa hog farmer who has $3 million in loans for the hog pens, and who will “take home” a little less than $30,000 this year for supplying your bacon and pork chop. You didn’t pick your Florida tomato or Texas grapefruit, or California lemon. You’re not the shrimper in Bay St. Louis with a $500,000 boat that can’t go shrimping today.
American Experience has been rerunning its series on the 1930s on PBS. See if you can catch the one on the Dust Bowl. See if you can catch the one on the WPA and CCC.
Santayana’s Ghost paces nervously. Sure, most Americans alive today don’t remember the Great Depression first hand. But did they all flunk history that badly?
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Interesting links… and description of the religiously infiltrated Scouts amounting to “a century old in name only.”
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=node/8009
… President Barack Obama, citing “scheduling conflict,” will not attend the taxpayer-funded Boy Scouts of America Jamboree in Virginia today, an absence which drew criticism from conservative news media for what they described as the “political decision” not to attend the anti-gay, anti-atheist group’s publicly-funded 100th annual gathering.
An equal rights activist, however, belittled Obama’s absence from the 45,000 scouts-attended Jamboree as, “a victory for scheduling conflicts.”
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I’m becoming convinced Ed, that you have nothing that you disagree with Obama that you will put down in writing. Beyond that, the glorification of Obama is just troubling to me – “saved GM, Chrystler, and 3 million jobs?” Tell me Ed, how Obama saved them rather than the tax payer “saved” them? It’s the tax payer that was strapped with companies that bankrupted themselves through their Unions, pensions, and health care plans. Why as a taxpayer am I strapped with a company’s debt that I have no investment in? Am I going to get a shareholders check if they make money? When did such a thing as “consequences for poor decisions” become something the federal government will not allow.
Has Obama helped GM become viable again? How about a $40,000 car that can only run 40 miles before needing recharged. Wow…that’ll help the average American buy a car. In the wonderful words said to Flick on “A Bug’s Life” (Hey, I’m a dad), “Help us! Don’t help us!” :-)
There is a far cry between assisting the unemployed and enabling the unemployed to live on unemployment, or almost worse – the government payroll. By the way, I’ve been without a job for two months now and haven’t taken a dime from the government and don’t plan to. Why am I unemployed? It’s my choice to be unemployed as I left my pastorate over principle and a desire to get a master’s degree but I could take a job tomorrow if I wanted to – I just need to lower my standard of living. I’m hoping to work in a church setting though and don’t require the government to find me that job. This “savior” complex of the federal government is sickening to me. It’s not their job to find me a job – it’s their job to get out of my way of me finding a job. When did personal responsibility become an option?!
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Ed,
With all due respect, you are on record as thinking non-producing lawyers are perfectly good examples of the private sector. So when you say things like…Obama isn’t hostile to the private sector…well, it comes off like you’re accustomed to talking to people who don’t have working memories.
Dale vs. Boy Scouts. Look it up. The left-wing organizations tried to destroy the Boy Scouts. Not tried to defeat them…not tried to civilize them by forcing a fiat of non-discrimination upon them. The Boy Scouts won the Supreme Court case, and then the left-wing activist groups sought to deny the Boy Scouts funding. And succeeded at cutting them off from United Way support, if memory serves.
Now, you say what you want about Sarah Palin. If she were President, she’d attend the jamboree. You’d be instructing everybody not to pay attention as she did so, but she’d do it. Obama can’t seem to find the time. It’s a case of priorities.
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I’ve attended about 30 Republican conventions at various levels and about 30 Democratic conventions at various levels.
What you call “ideologically left-wing politics” typically follows the Scout Oath and Scout Law. The Democratic Party is much more comfortable with the morality of Scouting than Republicans. I’ve been constantly amazed to find Eagle Scouts and other former Scouts in all arms of “left” politics — and a dearth of former Scouts in right wing politics. I think the natural meanness that marks those who call themselves “true” conservatives cannot thrive in a good Scout.
It shouldn’t be a point of contention, no — but there you go contending it.
A couple of quick examples: Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt are both Eagle Scouts. You don’t find that at their campaign websites. You find people assuming they are not affiliated with Scouting — I don’t know why — but they both live the ethics of Eagles.
On the other hand we have Sarah Palin, who, to the best of my knowledge, has never had any association with Scouting, and “snubbed Scouts” as much as Governor of Alaska as Obama is accused of doing. And yet, at her announcement of McCain’s picking her to run for Vice President, the handlers made sure to get the Scouts who provided the flag ceremony to sit where they’d be shown on camera, in violation of Scout rules.
The Scout Law does not include “wraps oneself in the flag and claims to be more patriotic than thou.” Most Republicans assume that of Scouts, because most of them weren’t Scouts, at least not when I worked for and with them.
My experience is that those leaders who carry out good, people-centered politics, tend to be former Scouts. They also tend to cluster on the Democratic side, in my experience.
Not for any good reason, however. Hot water of artificial heating. For example:
You mean the “imagined hostility toward the private sector.” Obama’s passed tax cuts for small and medium sized businesses (of course, big businesses hate that), and tax cuts for most American families and the middle class (again, Republicans don’t see the sense of that). He saved Chrysler and General Motors.
Seriously: Do you have any evidence of what you claim to be “hostility” to anything in the private sector? Remember, please, that all of Obama’s experience prior to the U.S. Senate was private sector.
At the University of Chicago, the world’s greatest bastion of private sector and capitalist economics, Obama was regarded as one of the boys. One of the Chicago Boys, on the legal side.
In the rest of the world, they think that Chicago U. bunch is close to fascism, so dedicated are they to private sector solutions, even for things where the private sector has had nothing but failures for a thousand years. And Obama was in with them.
Do you have any evidence of “animosity” to the private sector, or do you guys smoke as much mushrooms as I think you do?
Are you guys dropping acid regularly? That’s either the biggest lie since “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning,” or the greatest hallucination since Dumbo got drunk and saw pink elephants on parade.
Any evidence? Come on, quite relying on MSU methodology, and stick to the facts. Stick to reality.
Obama’s not nearly as hostile toward Christianity as you propose. In fact, we’ve seen that the hard right is a lot more hostile to Christianity, especially those forms of Episcopalian, Methodist, Disciple of Christ, Presbyterian, Baptist and Catholic schools that dominated political and community progress in the era between 1880 and 1940, than any hostility Obama’s shown.
I can’t think of any hostility he’s shown toward Christianity.
What is it you guys eat/drink/smoke/drop?
Worse are the distortions of what he said. He said that the middle class should have some understanding for people in Pennsylvania, and the rest of the nation, who have been run over by administration after administration.
You make fun of it, but then, you don’t give a good Thor damn about those people, anyway. Obama saved three million jobs for those people in the Midwest, by keeping GM and Chrysler alive.
Conservatives tell fibs about it, and say Obama’s hostile towards those same companies.
Three million jobs you say should have gone away, three million of those people Obama said we should try to understand . . .
Whose side are you really on?
[What Obama really said:
]
Attending the Jamboree, sweating the parade, both would have been nice touches.
America’s at war in two far-distant nations. Unemployment is at 9%. Republicans in the Senate say all those unemployed are “lazy” and don’t need any assistance.
You think showing in person is more important than our wars and economy? On what basis?
Here’s a question: Do you know what Obama said in his speech to the Scouts? Why not? You don’t care?
Obama cared enough to send the Distinguished Eagle in his cabinet, invite the Scouts to the Oval Office to discuss policy more than two weeks earlier, and send a message.
Other than carp about Obama, what have you done for any Scout lately?
Not to the Scouts. Not to Obama. When Rod Stewart said “let your imagination run wild,” he never thought any political person would take that as advice on rhetoric. Licentiousness has an appropriate role in sexually suggestive songs, but not in policy about Boy Scouts.
He was here in Dallas. He didn’t even bother to send a message this year.
You really don’t have a clue what Scouting is, or how Obama’s supported it, do you.
Aristotle said the empty jug makes the most noise. Right about that, wasn’t he?
Oh, I don’t know. I think enough Scout Leaders recognize that when Fox News asked them to bend over, Fox News didn’t have nice things in mind for the Scouts.
Screwing over the President is one thing, but insisting the Boy Scouts come in between while screwing him over is way, way beyond the pale.
Fortunately, BSA didn’t accommodate you on that. Manners. Scouts learn those, too.
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Michael Winship got it right, too — only a Cub Scout, but he got the point.
(Now if we could only get him published by someone other than the woo-loving Huffington group . . .)
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It shouldn’t be a point of contention at all that the ideologically rigid left-wing politics, to which Obama owes so much, do not look favorably upon the Boy Scouts. Perhaps it will be a point of contention. But it shouldn’t.
Nor should it be a point of contention that President Obama is in some hot water right now, especially with independents. His consistent hostility toward the private sector, and the individual, and the faithful who lean toward Christianity. Intemperate remarks like “clinging bitterly to their Bibles and their guns” haven’t helped this one bit.
Many of the people who overcame their initial objections and supported Obama, did so because of His seemingly constructive example for maturing young men: How to achieve a following, not by being artistic and dippy and angry-looking, but by showing how well-spoken you are and keeping your temper in check. Attending the 100th celebration in person would have been an adept continuation of this and just plain smart politics. It would have taken a lot of wind out of the sails of his critics. Mr. Darrell would, no doubt, have been among the first to point it out.
But we’ll never know for sure, because once again Mr. Hope-and-Change has better things to do than to help the next generation become more ready, fit, independent and capable. And so, again, the pattern is maintained that it’s all about Barry and His never-ending popularity contest. President Can’t-Stop-Campaigning. Once again, we see His vision for the next generation seems to be that nobody knows how to tie a knot, use a knife or pack a sleeping bag, but it’s okay because everyone will have “free” medical coverage. Impressive.
Dumb political move. No matter how you cut it. And that’s supposed to be His home turf.
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As I said before, I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. Is this a huge deal? Probably not. Is it something that the American people should be up in arms about? Not really. Is it something that people are shaking their heads over? Yeah. Because if you had to choose between A) fundraising/View, or B) jamboree, what is more worthy of the president’s time? I understand the president is busy and every day would involve more than just those two choices. I understand that the President has a schedule and stress that ages him over twice the speed of a normal schedule. I get that and I’m not saying Obama is lazy at all. Don’t read too much into what I said. The scouting thing might not even be practical – that’s fine. I’m sure that one thing that any President has to get good at say is, “thank you, no.” It’s not that he didn’t go – it’s what he did instead, ok? If he’s soooooo busy to keep him from the jamboree, how’s he got time for PR on “The View” and for all this fundraising he’s got going this next week as well?
Do we really want an economical debate about what George Bush did to the economy vs. what Obama and the Democratic Congress is doing to my grandkids’ future? Obama has not saved our nation – he has robbed Peter to pay Paul. He has delayed the pain another year or two by unprecidented defecit spending so that it will take generations upon generations to pay off our national debt. Did Bush contribute us going down that road? Absolutely! And Obama is taking the spending that Bush did and making Bush look like a penny pincher.
Robert Gates going to the jamboree is a good move – I won’t criticize it.
Why didn’t the Scouts open up more time for the President? I have no idea. Do you know the answer? And no, I wouldn’t have criticized him for speaking to the scouts unless he said something worthy of criticizing. Shoot – the only reason I got onto this subject is because I heard about it on the news, knew that you were involved in the scouts and wanted to see what you’d say.
I don’t know if anything was covered on the jamboree or not – I don’t have cable. :-) The only news I see is headlines from web-sites and facebook, and maybe some talk radio.
Jim:
I remember that after 9/11. That was cool. I felt like we were one nation again. I was more referring to late in his presidency when people were making movies on how to kill him, Gore saying “he betrayed this country!” people continual mocking, continual criticism from a democratic congress…I just started feeling bad for the guy, though I didn’t agree with him either on a lot of stuff either. I started joking that he could have cured cancer and someone would have something negative to say about it. About the Aids relief thing, I heard words of appreciation and also heard, “It’s a start but he’s not doing enough!”
Actually, the conservative I heard say that Obama did right with the day of prayer was Shawn Hannity. :-) One thing that I will say is that Obama has done good for the religious freedom in this country. And I will part ways with my conservative friends and say that I agree with Obama that the US is not a “Christian Nation.” Never has been – never should be. It used to be and I’d love to see it again be a nation of Christians, but that’s something else entirely – though I don’t believe our religious beliefs should be left at the border of all public places.
No, I agree that there has been a lot of hostility against the President. The Tea Party movement is a good example. Things are getting pretty bad out there but I believe Obama is just making them far worse.
Check out this piece in the Denver paper to see what I’m saying:
denverpost.com/opinion/ci_15581194
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Hi there, Lowerleavell!
In your post, you say >>”unlike when Bush was in office and was constantly criticized for everything and still is, I have actually heard Obama praised from the right when he does something they agree with. For instance, when he upheld the day of prayer against judges orders I didn’t hear fanfare, but I did here a lot of, “When he does something right he does something right.” <<
Can you tell me which conservatives or right wingers said that? I'd love to know, because there are people on the right I respect…like George Will or John McLaughlin. I'd love to add another name to the list. All I heard on the National Day of Prayer was the usual bizarre ranting and conspiracy theories of Pat "Send Money" Robertson and Focus on the Family.
I'm a little surprised to hear anyone suggest that the left was perpetually critical of President Bush. Actually, our criticism of The Decider didn't start until he facilitated and promoted an illegal war of choice. After the 9-11 attacks, we were in lock step with him in pursuing Al Qaeda. We didn't care for his timid call to "go shopping" or his decision to lower taxes in wartime, but neither were John McCain, John Warner, Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich. We DID support him wholeheartedly in the mission to destroy AQ. In fact, one of our chief criticisms of the criminal Iraq war — a criticism proving today to be all too apropos — was that he was taking his eye off the ball in Afghanistan.
Too, liberals were quick to praise The Decider for his approach to solving the AIDS crisis in Africa. I recall E.J. Dionne and a Democrat from Wisconsin whose name escapes me expressing tremendous appreciation for his vision in this respect. Of course, The Decider's original plan was entirely watered down by extremist social conservatives who opposed any mention of family planning or contraception as one possible solution to the problem.
Finally, as I recall, President Bush received loud accolades from the left — and far more from the left than from the right — when he ordered the preservation of vast tracts of Pacific Ocean from development and other encroachment.
And I don't disagree with you, at least that there have been instances where Republicans have agreed with President Obama. Aside from Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, however, I have yet to hear a single Republican offer words of praise for the President. (Lugar has been effusive in lauding the Obama nuclear reduction and containment strategy.) I'll be more than delighted to correct my assessment if you can provide me with some links.
Thus far, almost all I have seen from the GOP has been occasional, grudging, support…or outright hostility, the bearing of false witness and obstruction. I sincerely hope you can prove me wrong. I would love to believe that the GOP is still the party of Javits, Hatfield, Simpson and Baker. What I am witnessing, rather, is the party of DeMint, Thune, Bachman and Palin.
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If you’re following this thread, you may want to see this article at Philly2Philly:
And for a California view, with some genuine substance and thought from a much different view than we usually hear, see this note from the California Progress Report.
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Yes, Ed, that’s it. I believe I had a gay leader who was harmless and beloved. I thought I was an atheist until I was 15 when I became agnostic. I enjoyed Sunday services on campouts, which were exotic to me. I think you are probably a good man.
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Kim, is this the piece you referred to?
A great piece. Mostly good. It’s horrible that these things always seem to be accompanied by horrific heat. That’s D.C. in July and August, now.
Yeah, I think people need to make peace with Scouting’s grand error. Some day they’ll wake up, figure out a way to accommodate the Mormons’ faith requirements instead of insulting most mainstream Christian denominations . . . but that’s not the big reason officials didn’t turn out for the parade, I don’t think.
You’d be hard put to find a Member of Congress or cabinet member who doesn’t have a story about their participation in Scouting. There are other things going on in America right now, mostly the promotion of great ignorance under the guise of patriotism. That hurts Scouting every day.
But it’s not nearly so damaging as the simple hubbub of modern life. Who has time to volunteer? Kids in Texas are kept indoors all summer — you want them to go outdoors? And parents are required to care about it, and sometimes participate?
Soccer’s a lot easier. So are the movies.
Fix that, the whole picture changes.
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Joe said:
Have you considered what goes into planning a president’s day, or week, in advance?
When I staffed the Senate, 20+ years ago, senators from small states typically had three event requests in their home states, and a half-dozen even requests in Washington, every day, seven days a week. On top of that, typically a senator has at least two competing committee hearings between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and the Senate itself opened for business at 10:00 with a hoped-for daily end of about 7:00 p.m.
For a hearing, typically both sides would have at least three different interest groups who wanted time with each senator — so for each of the competing hearings noted in the previous paragraph, there are requests for two- to four-hours of meetings alone. Add in transit time to get from one end of the Capitol to another, or from one side of D.C. to the other, or to get from Washington to Peoria, Illinois.
The average Member of Congress needs to raise several thousands of dollars each day for re-election, so time has to be set aside for phone calls to potential donors.
Now, multiply that by about 100 to get the demands on time for the president.
Plus, he’s got two hours of briefings to start each day, from the intelligence guys and the national security guys; and usually there’s another hour or so of work on domestic issues.
A trip to Fort A.P. Hill for a 10-minute speech takes about a half-day, minimum, but may require more. When the president is out of the White House there must be advance security contingents. For an appearance at the Boy Scout Jamboree, security check points would have to be set up to restrict access, and each of the — guesstimate here — 45,000 people would have to go through a security check point. Because of this security, you have to cancel a couple of hours of activity at the Jamboree, typically, and start the process hours early — this is what happened when George Bush scheduled an appearance (I believe Bush was “on vacation” the first Jamboree in his terms). While the tens of thousands of Scouts were being frisked for weapons, a thunderstorm moved in, making Bush’s departure unwise. Hundreds of Scouts were overcome with heat exhaustion, about three dozen were hospitalized. And then it was too late for Bush to make the trip.
A president’s schedule doesn’t come down to “fly to New York to do a television program vs. fly to rural Virginia to meet Scouts.” At no time was the question “Barbara Walters or Bob Mazzuca.”
The big deal on Wednesday was the economy, and jobs legislation, and the work to pull our economy out of recession faster. We have nearly 10% unemployment — Mitch McConnell forgets every day that George Bush pushed us over the brink and that Obama saved our nation last year, and criticizes Obama for unemployment. Republicans say every day that is a more important issue than Scouting. You didn’t say why Obama’s message at the Tastee Sub Shop was less important than his “hello” to Scouts.
Which criticism do you want to pick? You can’t have both.
Have you looked at the schedule for a president? They used to post them daily in the Washington Post — but stopped it after John Hinckley used it to figure out where to go to shoot President Reagan.
But today we can look back and figure out that Wednesday was not a slow day at the White House. Contrary to Bush’s taking every third day off, contrary to Reagan’s taking a couple of hours off for naps each day, presidents tend to cram a helluva lot into each day. Any travel is a delicate surgical operation to the schedule.
On Wednesday, July 28, Obama:
1. Sent six nominations to the Senate:
Presidential Nominations Sent to the Senate, 7/28/10
2. Named the delegation to go in his place to the inauguration of the President of Columbia.
3. Dealt with the issues surrounding the airplane crash in Pakistan, and issued a statement.
4. Took the campaign for the economy on the road, to New Jersey (see below).
And a dozen other events we don’t even know about yet; oh, and he taped “The View,” and sent a previously taped message to the Boy Scouts.
By the way, Sec. of Defense Robert Gates was at the Jamboree — he’s a Distinguished Eagle Scout. I think Obama sent a fine representative, but of course you will disagree, saying sending Gates was a goof.
Here’s a nearly typical White House week, showing Boy Scouts in the White House on July 12 — something that few of Obama’s critics on scheduling have acknowledged (Obama was with the Scouts before the conservatives decided to claim he wasn’t . . .)
The week just past, featuring July 28, isn’t on YouTube yet, but you can see it at the White House blog.
Why didn’t the Scouts hold their Jamboree in New York? Why didn’t the Scouts say, “You can come any day, Mr. President, not just Wednesday in this half-hour window?” After all, the Jamboree is open for ten days . . .
Schedules don’t always mesh, Joe. It’s not as if the President of the U.S. is sitting around with nothing to do, on any day. Obama’s done a lot less campaign-style appearances than Bush II or Reagan, and he’s taking heat for it. The decision was to go to New Jersey, for the Senate, for the economy, and a television appearance was tacked on.
Why don’t you say, “The president should ignore the unemployed and the state of the economy for a day, and go hobnob with the Boy Scouts.” That’s what you’re really saying.
For those sourpuss critics who wish to sow strife, Obama can’t win. Had he spoken to the Scouts, you’d have criticized him for his message, whatever it was. Remember last year when Obama scheduled a speech to tell school kids not to drop out? Most of these same critics came unglued, claiming any appearance by Obama was socialist activism and indoctrination; so when he speaks, he’s criticized for things he would never say; when he doesn’t appear, he’s criticized for not speaking the things you’d complain about if he did speak.
That’s politics. It’s not necessary to drag the Boy Scouts through the mud to carp unnecessarily at the president. You can do that without dragging Boy Scouts into it.
But if you’re going to drag the Boy Scouts into it, don’t make up fantastic falsehoods, please. That’s adding injury to the Scouts, to insult to the president.
One more way to tell the critics are hypocritical: Show me the coverage of Obama’s speech to the Scouts, which was carried on video; show me the coverage of the Jamboree at the critics’ sites. Do you know what Obama said? Why not?
They don’t care about Scouts, or Scouting, or America’s youth. They only mouth the words as they kick Scouts and kids around, hoping to ding Obama.
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Ed, this one’s for you, the indomitable summer of goodness within you, and your service to Scouting. Please read Michael S. Malone ‘Parade of Eagles’ at Pajamas Media.
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To me, the real story is not the “snubbing” but in poor scheduling ability. You’ve yet to address that in reply Ed. As you stated, Obama informed the Scouts well in advance that he wasn’t going to attend. It wasn’t that he was just too busy – he formed his schedule to not include the jamboree for sake of raising money. He’s a typical politician and no different than so many before him – do something that is a once in a life time for tens of thousands of young people or get $? Is anyone really surprised that the almighty $ wins out? I’m pretty sure that if Obama skipped one fundraising trip, our country would withstand any attempts to switch to fascism while he’s at the BSA jamboree.
Ellie, unlike when Bush was in office and was constantly criticized for everything and still is, I have actually heard Obama praised from the right when he does something they agree with. For instance, when he upheld the day of prayer against judges orders I didn’t hear fanfare, but I did here a lot of, “When he does something right he does something right.” Will all his achievements be appreciated by the right? Obviously not. But is he demonized the same way Bush was, espcecially by the media? Not be a long shot! Can you imagine if the oil spill had happened under Bush’s watch? Probably would have been impeached by now! By the way, Obama turning the BSA into the Hilter Youth would be just about as likely as Limbaugh getting back onto ESPN.
Let me ask you guys, what about Obama’s decision to skip the jamboreee (not to govern mind you, but to raise money for the dems and to go tape a talk show) was a good move? Never mind the attacks from the right – what about it was a good decision? What about it is praiseworthy? What about it inspires people’s condidence in his discerning abilities and scheduling abilities?
Why is this being used as a political football? Because Obama messed up! He left himself wide open by making a really poor choice in scheduling. When over $.40 of every dollar is being added to the defecit, this is the best our Commander can do with his time? When July was the bloodiest month in the Afgan war, this is how the Commander occupies himself? When unemployment is over 10%, this is how Obama defines leadership? Again…if he was actually governing instead of fundraising…
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What bet?
A Cub leader over there professed some strong sentiments against Obama. He or she loses; the Cubs lose if they are taught that.
Obama is, as you know from reading here, the Honorary President of the BSA. All presidents are. In Scouting, we honor the president as President, and as a leader in BSA, regardless of politics.
That doesn’t touch the issue we’re discussing here. Was it a snub for Obama to invite the Scouts to the White House? I don’t think so. Was it a snub for Obama to agree in record time to take the “Honorary President of BSA” title? (A president could refuse it, and Obama was urged to refuse the position as protest against BSA’s discriminatory policies.) I don’t think so.
There are 600,000 Scout leaders who won’t make the Jamboree this year. Is it your claim they all snub Scouting?
Claiming Obama snubbed Scouting defies logic, and it is emblematic of the profound lack of reason for the distaste of Obama shown by so many who would, as Chuck Colson said he would, walk over their grandmother to insult Obama. In this case, they are walking over the Boy Scouts. It’s ugly.
Is it square to claim Obama refused to sign Eagle certificates, when he didn’t? No, it’s false, and it’s bad manners at best for others like Chuck Norris to make false claims. Is it wise, or fair, or politick to use Scouting as a political football?
It shows a lack of character on the parts of those who do it.
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I’m not an Obama fan, but I’m not stupid, either. It wouldn’t have mattered what the man did. The rightwing pundits would have been criticizing him for doing it. I can see it now, if he had chosen to attend this jamboree. Glenn Beck would have been on tv with his chalkboard and ever present swastikas accusing Mr. Obama of turning the Boy Scouts into Hitler Youth.
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Look, you may well be a fine scout, but this hero worship of Obama is badly misplaced. Ask yourself, how much worse could he have done?
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Oh nevermind, you said authors. It isn’t settled yet, but commenters there are clearly volunteers. We also hear a lot about Girl Scout cookies going to troops from several of the commenters.
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You lost your bet at Just One Minute. Gonna admit it?
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Hi there Lowerleavell,
In your post to Ed, you ask, >>”has Obama ever done anything that you disagree with (not just disapointed but understand) publically? Or are you first and foremost a “party” man?”<<
I certainly can't speak for Ed. Speaking for me, I disagree with President on a number of issues. Without boring everyone with lots of detail, I'll just said I'd prefer her was the Socialist or uber-liberal everyone on the right claims he is. Instead, he strikes me as a Clinton-style, center-right corporatist with occasional flashes of genius. I think he is certainly a far better option than his 2008 opponent and I will probably vote for him again in 2012, unless Republicans are able to convince 90-something Mark Hatfield to run for President (or resurrect the ghost of Jacob Javits). But yeah…President Obama ticks me off much of the time.
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Not quite. I said lawyering is a business — usually a big business. The business end isn’t easier than any other business. Cembalest discounts lawyers as businessmen. In my experience, most lawyers could run circles around retailers, and other service providers, often — and often do.
I failed at solo practice, yes — location issues, chiefly. There is little demand for the law I do best in the city in which my family lives.
I’ve been very successful at retail, and successful at management consulting and real estate management — the latter two because my understanding of property and related law provided a competitive advantage over the competition, often.
Lawyering can be cut throat, but often is not. What it always is, is demanding. Especially in a trial or litigation practice, there are not the tolerances for goofs that most businessmen hang their lives and successes on. A first-year lawyer in a big firm wouldn’t have made the grand goof Cembalest did, for example, in claiming that some of the most spectacularly successful-in-private business members of the Obama cabinet, were not. A first-year lawyer at trial couldn’t present the case presented that Obama is anti-Scout — the case is too weak, and relies on faulty evidence, evidence that could not be used in a court to make the claims made by the Obama critics. It’s a black and white issue, really.
I’ve been very successful in court, and at trial, especially when my tail was on the line.
I’m not saying my view is superior. Please check back. What I’ve said is that the case claiming Obama is an enemy to Scouting is a bad one. The case is based on a false claim that Obama reluctantly supports Scouts in signing documents, and on a false presumption that the President of the U.S. is expected to appear at Boy Scout Jamborees.
Obama’s been an enthusiastic supporter of Scouting, the evidence shows. Over the years, presidents, including especially conservative, Republican, wrap-themselves-in-the-flag presidents, have failed to show at the National Jamboree more often than they have showed.
Some conservative wag woke up Monday to the sudden realization that President Obama, like President’s Eisenhower, Nixon, (Ford didn’t have a Jamboree during his service), Reagan and Bush II before him, would be unable to appear at the Jambo. Obama so informed Jamboree organizers at least eight weeks ago.
So, late to the story (heck, most of those outlets never cover Scouting except to insult a politician), they decided to make a controversy by pitching the story to appear Obama was snubbing the Scouts.
That’s a lie. It’s not my opinion. Check the facts. See the case. Listen to what the Boy Scouts of America says.
If you won’t trust the statement of the Boy Scouts, there’s nothing anyone can do for you.
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You said somewhere that lawyer-ing is really hard because you’ve failed at it twice. I’ve left this alone because I haven’t tried to do it, and I’m ready to take you at your word that it’s hard, and I think no less of anybody for trying at it and failing.
But if your attempts have had something to do with appearing before a judge and arguing something, I can see why you would be frustrated. Your technique seems to be all “Here’s a factoid, I HAVE DECIDED it changes everything, therefore that’s the only reasonable perspective anyone can possibly have on this matter, and anyone who isn’t completely swayed is a great big ol’ dummy.” I can see now that this is a consistent theme of yours.
Judges don’t respond kindly to this attitude. Or so I’m told anyway.
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Sorry about the grammar mistakes – I’m in a hurry today!
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You’re hilarious Ed. That was a great article that you posted! It showed 1) how the ACLU is anti BSA, the “truth” you stated was at the end of the article (suprise, suprise – something we talkeda about), that Bush had tried to be there but had to cancel, and that he spoke to 75,000 scouts just a few days later. So…again, while I’m not a Bush nut, using this as a defense against what Obama is doing just backfired.
Also, what you’re showing in your posts isn’t how great these presidents are, it’s showing how classy the Scouts are! I can’t speak for the other presidents, but I do know there was a lot of good governing going on under Reagan’s watch. After Carter there was a lot of repair work to be done to the economy and our international image. I seriously doubt he skipped to go fund raising and go on a day-time talk show. The same could be said for Ford.
I’m not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill here. It’s not the end of the world for Obama to skip out and it’s little more than a blip on the map of poor scheduling decisions (and we all make them, like skipping out of the anniversary of the falling of the Berlin wall but still is able to squeeze in a trip to go lobby in Copenhagen for the Olympics. The Scouts will continue on with their festivities anyway, with class and grace. Again, if you read my original post, you’ll notice that my “beef” was in the WHY of skipping, not just the skipping of the jamboree itself. He’s the president after all, and he can’t be everywhere at once, and everyone knows those Democrats are sure going to need the funds this election year!
But you never answered my question – has Obama ever done anything that you disagree with (not just disapointed but understand) publically? Or are you first and foremost a “party” man?
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Over at the Washington Post blogs, Anita Kumar reminds us that in 2005, 400 Scouts at the Jamboree suffered heat exhaustion while waiting for George Bush to show — and he didn’t show that day.
Perspective. Keep it all in perspective.
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And yet, Reagan didn’t make it to either of the Jamborees on his watch.
Norris makes up stuff about what Obama hasn’t done, refuses to state what he has done, and generally falls short of the first point of the Scout Law: Trustworthy.
Tell me how horrible were Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon, to Scouting. The case is easily as strong against each of them. It’s a fool’s case, but if you wish to be a non-hypocrite, it’s the one you must make.
And then tell us about Gerald Ford. He didn’t make the National Jamboree, either. In fact, the certificates from the National Council to Eagles weren’t changed for nearly a year, as I recall. I attended Eagle Courts of Honor where people wondered about Richard Nixon’s signature, so long after he’d left office. That didn’t stop Eagle Scouts across the nation from turning out in honor of Ford as his funeral procession wound across the nation, not least because in his will and plans for his funeral, he asked for an Eagle Scout honor guard — but by CNS’s and Chuck Norris’s standards, Gerald Ford was “anti-Boy Scout.”
If someone lacks the common sense, and snipes at Gerald Ford, every Boy Scout with any sense of history will let that person know know he is an idiot. Ford was the first, and only, Eagle Scout to serve as president.
The same criticisms against Obama are just as idiotic. Those who have an irrational, unholy dislike of Obama won’t care. Idiocy in the pursuit of hatred is no vice, somebody might have said.
Hypocrisy?
Which part of the Scout Oath or Scout Law supports using Scouting as a cudgel against anyone, at any time? Chuck Norris’s ideas are so weak they won’t stand otherwise. So are the other criticisms, about Obama and his not attending the Jamboree in person.
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What the boyscouts statement shows more than anything is the level of class that they have in defending their commander in chief. I mean, regardless of who is in office, you have to say that they’ve just got class. If the boyscouts say they’re not being snubbed though, that’s good enough for me. I trust them too. :-)
Everyone is biased about something, Ed. You know that, right?
Regardless of whether Pres. O’s trip was about “The View” or about fundraising for the dems, again…it’s the 100 year anniversary. I don’t know – maybe I’m sentimental that way, but centennial anniversaries seem like a big deal for an organization that has done so much for this country…especially if, as you say, Obama is a former scout. Obviously anniversaries are not overly important to Obama who also wasn’t at the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Again, if actual governing was going on, then that’s one thing…
Don’t get me started about Bush, ok? I may be a conservative and I may like Bush as a person (and I like Obama as a person too by the way), but that doesn’t mean I defended all his policies or his practices, ok? Frankly, I hate the politics where you can’t have a disagreement with someone from your own party. Seriosly, when was the last time you wrote a scathing review of something that Obama did that you completely though he did wrong (haven’t looked – maybe you did)? Or is he incapable of mistakes? Apparently, this isn’t one in your book, but in mine…it’s just sad to see fundraising take the priority…politics as usual if you ask me.
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Joe, there’s no snub. Schedule didn’t allow. “View” was not the reason — that was added on to a trip to New Jersey and New York. Even Tenderfoot Scouts can figure out that New York is reachable from the New York area, but Virginia is not.
The schedule didn’t work for the Jambo. Too bad. George W. Bush couldn’t make it because he was on vacation — where was the outrage then? (Bush spent nearly a third of his presidency “on vacation.”)
Did Obama “snub” the Scouts? The Boy Scouts say no. I trust them more than I trust you.
The right wing hoax machine is so well exercised that you get in a dudgeon even when there’s nothing to get in a dudgeon about. Chuck Norris tells a bunch of fantastic lies about Obama and Scouting, and you think his stuff on Reagan is accurate?
There was a study done by a group of psychologists recently that showed biased people, when confronted with the facts that debunk their claims, only state their claims more vociferously, rather than admit error.
That’s what’s going on here. Obama’s the Honorary President of the Boy Scouts of America. He accepted that post in near record time after his inauguration. There was no “undue delay” on Obama’s part, nor anyone else’s, in getting certificates OR letters out of the White House. Obama’s got three initiatives going to benefit youth and Scouts (both Boy and Girl). Obama took the time to sit down with Scouts earlier this month to talk to them about these policies. He’s bent over backwards for Scouting. Obama’s a former Scout. Obama’s press secretary is a Cub Scout parent now.
I want people to quit making up excrement to complain about Obama. He’s not anti-Scout. It’s a crass lie to say so. I wish others would use their brains, and not repeat the made-up excrement.
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It’s false that Obama isn’t going to the jamboree? That’s what I said is damaging to Obama. The only reason I quoted Norris was the show my source is what Reagan had done for the BSA. This is pretty close to bait and switch in that President Obama’s the one doing something that’s just plain sad, and so what do we do? Attack the right! How dare they make things up and make the BSA something political? I understand – it’s a knee jerk reaction.
So…apparently this whole thing is Chuck Norris’ fault then? We can’t vilify Obama but Chuck Norris who is concerned that his president doesn’t support the BSA is an ok target? If he’s wrong – write on that post and tell him yourself. I’m not here to defend Chuck Norris. He can handle that himself if he needs to. He’s a big boy, and yes, I’m sure McGee could take him as long as back kicks were not allowed. :-)
The debate is about whether there was undue delay, not that he never signed them. I feel bad for those who got certificates and had to mail them back in for a fee to get them signed by the president. Frankly, I’m not prepared to argue one way or the other, and even more frank – I don’t particularly care. Of all the problems I’ve had with the Obama administration in the past year plus, this one doesn’t even make the radar.
A lot of articles I read, whether on MSN, CNN, Foxnews, etc. usually put the main facts of the article at the bottom, though most headlines I read do not (because they’re headlines). It’s about the only way people will actually read the whole article is to keep the juicy stuff until the end. It’s journalistic style I guess. Am I supposed to defend that as well?
Bottom line for me – I think the “snub” comes not from not being able to attend – it would have been fine if there were some real governing that was taking place. But to claim that doing a taping for “The View” and doing fundraising supercedes the 100th Anniversary of the Scouts is just plain bad scheduling and mixed up priorities. I don’t care about Chuck Norris! Why are you defending Obama’s move to spend time in the spotlight with Barbara Walters instead of real American heroes like a guy like Mcgee seems to be?
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Were it accurate, it would be a problem for Obama. Because it’s false, it’s still a problem for Obama as people like you may be mislead into thinking it’s accurate.
In any case, it shows the moral failings of conservatives to run with such a story without checking it out.
Obama had signed more than 13,000 Eagle letters, by the time Snopes labeled that claim of Norris’s false.
Human Events buried the facts in the bottom of the story. Doesn’t that make it worse to you? They knew the facts, but failed to put them in the lead, nor in the headline.
Can you tell me, Joe, what Jesus said about people who mislead others?
Norris himself would be liable for libel, were the President not prevented from collecting under Times v. Sullivan. He’s setting a urine-impoverished example for Scouts in telling whopping lies, however. He still deserves a punch in the nose, preferably from a Cub Scout Pack with at least 36 members.
You’d think that, were he going to libel the President in a three-part series (or is it four parts?), he’d pick something other than this. The Boy Scouts of America denies Norris’s claims. They say that certificates featuring Obama’s signature as Honorary President of BSA were printed just as soon as possible.
If the delay was on the part of the Scouts, and a normal delay that occurs at the start of every new administration, why is he attacking Boy Scouts of America? Why is he using Boy Scouts of America as a political football to attack Obama?
What has Chuck Norris done for any Scout lately?
What happened to the backbone of Chuck Norris? Where did it go?
Charles E. McGee could whip Chuck Norris using nothing but his moral fiber. Chuck Norris is so afraid of McGee that he has failed even to acknowledge McGee exists.
What happened to the backbone of Chuck Norris?
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Here’s human events view of the signing of the Eagle scout certificates:
humanevents.com/article.php?id=35616
What political persuasion must one be to NOT be political when commenting about what the president does? Should we just ignore this disapointing truth in order to keep Obama’s poll numbers higher? Just by acknowledging the issue at all and accusing some of being political, you yourself have made a political statement by coming to his defense.
I’m not saying people aren’t being political and have an agenda. Obviously they do. Everyone does, including you and me. But in this case, I want to know why citizens can’t just voice that they’re bummed that the president chose to go on a talk show and raise money for his political party rather than honor what is arguably one of the best organizations for developing the character of young boys in the nation? I would have been just as ticked at Bush or Reagan if they did the same thing. Maybe that poor choice on Obama’s part SHOULD be political because it demonstrates that his priorities are bizarre.
Be careful about criticizing Chuck Norris too much. I’ve heard he is suing NBC for using the name Law and Order as they are trademark names for his left and right fists. :-) LOL
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We probably should include Chuck Norris as one of those callous people who is pointlessly trying to make Boy Scouts of America a political football.
Human Events used to be a decent, if biased, publication. Sorry to see them boot decency out the transom. Norris should be ashamed of himself.
I’m particularly sad that Norris lies about Obama. Norris deserves a punch in the nose for claiming Obama delayed Eagle certificates. It’s not true.
Chuck Norris not only disrespects the White House, he disrespects BSA when he tells such tales.
Boy Scouting doesn’t need friends like that. If Chuck Norris can’t follow the moral standards Scouting expects of Cub Scouts, he should just stay quiet.
Shame on Norris.
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Not to downplay the importance of fund raising. But…this is the 100 year anniversary. It’s not just a typical jamboree, it’s a once in a lifetime event.
Not sure why R.R. didn’t go. I find this out though:
“Before becoming president, Ronald Reagan (1981-89), then governor of California, became involved with the BSA on the Golden Empire Council. He was chairman of Project SOAR (Save Our American Resources) and served as membership roundup chairman and on the council’s advisory board.”
It’s from a great article by Chuck Norris (yes, Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris) which was written three weeks ago found here:
humanevents.com/article.php?id=37917
Given the security, etc. it’s probably for the best that Obama doesn’t go. But the 100th anniversary of the scouts? Man, I wish I could go!
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Keeping Congress from going to the fascists is important. The future of our nation rides on that fund-raising. Will we be a nation where Scouts can flourish, or a nation that regards children as a problem to be dealt with, and denied health care?
Talking to Americans is important. A president must weight a lot of competing demands, all of which are important, but not all of which can be met.
Consider August 4, 1964. Did domestic terrorism by the Klan screw us up in Vietnam?
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Scouts gave him a small window of when he should appear; Obama informed them two weeks ago that his itinerary would take him to New Jersey that day. “The View” is an easy add-on from New Jersey; Fort A. P. Hill is not.
What was Ronald Reagan’s excuse?
The Scouts are busy as all get out. They’ll get the word on video — less security hassle for them that way (very few would get to see him any closer).
If I were president, I think I would have booked that time in advance, and held it — but no other president since Calvin Coolidge has ever done that. I’m not going to hold Obama to a higher standard on this than Dwight Eisenhower, who never made a Jamboree, or Ronald Reagan, who never made a Jamboree.
And, where were all these “lovers of Scouting” two weeks ago when Obama sat down with a contingent of Scouts in the Oval Office, to talk policy with them? Why wasn’t Obama praised to the stars for that? Show me a single story outside the official Scout publications, please.
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Yeah…but to skip so he can go on “The View” and to do fund raisers? If it were something important, then sure…but I think people are disappointed the most because it seems like something that can wait for later whereas the jamboree can’t. I feel bad for the scouts.
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