May 13, 2010
This One Puts Things In Perspective…
…rather well, good for politicians (except RINOs, as we learned recently from developments in Utah) on the right side of the aisle, not so good for those on the left.
A better title might have been Europhiles Beware.
From The Wall Street Journal and a link from Best of the Web Today:
One of the constant criticisms of Barack Obama’s first year is that he’s making us “more like Europe.” But that’s hard to define and lacks broad political appeal.
Until now.
Any U.S. politician purporting to run the presidency of the United States should be asked why the economic policies he or she is proposing won’t take us where Europe arrived this week.
In an astounding moment, to avoid the failure of little, indulgent, profligate Greece, the European Union this week pledged nearly $1 trillion to inject green blood into Europe’s economic vampires.
For Americans, this has been a two-week cram course in what not to be if you hope to have a vibrant future. What was once an unfocused criticism of Mr. Obama and the Democrats, that they are nudging America toward a European-style social-market economy, came to awful life in the panicked, stricken faces of Europe’s leadership: Merkel, Sarkozy, Brown, Papandreou. They look like that because Europe has just seen the bond-market devil.
Hmmmm, looks sorta’ like this “let’s be just like Europe” trip the lefties among us have been on for the last several years is coming back to bite them where the moon don’t shine, what with them trying to push us into the same barrel of socialism, in full view of the voting public, that’s dragging Old Europe’s collective economy down a deep, deep drain.
Good, let it bite ‘em hard and deep this November.
Barack Obama would never say it is his intention to make the U.S. go stagnant by suppressing wealth creation in return for a Faustian deal on social equity. But his health system required an astonishing array of new taxes on growth industries. He is raising taxes on incomes, dividends, capital gains and interest. His energy reform requires massive taxes. His government revels in “keeping a boot on the neck” of a struggling private firm. Wall Street’s business is being criminalized.
Economic stagnation arrives like a slow poison. Look at the floundering United Kingdom, whose failed prime minister, Gordon Brown, said on leaving, “I tried to make the country fairer.” Maybe there’s a more important goal.
A We’re-Not-Europe Party would promise the American people to avoid and oppose any policy that makes us more like them and less like us.
I’m all for it! Between a little of this and a little of that, the Democratic Party and B. Hussein Obama are already well into sowing the proverbial seeds of their own political destruction, but it couldn’t hurt to add that extra little push…
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=1263
May 14th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
“We’re-Not-Europe Party” Nice ring. I like those old catchy monikers …
May 14th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
BB –
LOL, I wonder what kind of impression a resurgence of that party would make on today’s political landscape.
It might actually do some good, since it would lend credibility to the left’s false, entirely politics-based claims that there’s racism afoot, and then such critters as illegal aliens would know what the USSR felt like when Reagan dubbed them “The Evil Empire” (possibly causing more than a few to drag their trespassing touchases back across the border for fear that some of the No-Nothing Partyers might be extremist in nature) while the domestic multicultural crowd stifled themselves for fear of being focused upon as “greazy furner lovers”.
For the first, send ‘em back! and for the second, shut ‘em down!, that’s what I say!
May 14th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
“wonder what kind of impression a resurgence of that party would make on today’s political landscape.”
..Probably about the same as the Mugwump Party.
May 15th, 2010 at 6:35 am
Europe is failing economically — that much is clear.
The Thanksgiving Day after BHO was elected, an Obamabot I know was singing the praises of Europe. I’ll have to run down this fool and see what he thinks now.
May 15th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Linked!
May 15th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
BB –
Brings to mind a few lyrics from the Mamas & Papas song, Creeque Alley:
Mugwumps, high jumps, low slumps, big bumps.
Don’t you work as hard as you play?
The Mugwumps actually sound more desirable than the Know-Nothings, and probably had a lot of the same patriotic American blood in them that runs through the veins of today’s Tea Partyers (including the opposition to dishonesty that is marked more in Conservatives than in “progressive” politicians, who believe that the end justifies any means necessary, including blatant lying).
Despite all the ridicule, innuendo and belittlement subjected to the Tea Partyers by the MSM and by numerous Democrat politicians, they have been the driving force in a successful effort to move the country back in the right direction (although the resultant exhortations via the Voice of the People are falling on the deaf ears of King Obama the First and his Imperial Kort of Kommies); As we will see in November, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth among denizens of the left side of the aisle.
May 15th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
AOW –
I hope Obamavich allows Europe to pick up the tab for its own socialist moronics, but I seem to recall reading someplace that he intends to use some of our tax money, which as we know grows on trees, to help bail out Greece.
But what the hay, right? As long as the Chinese have the cash to lend us, why not just borrow our next twenty generations into deep enough debt that they can follow the money to Beijing in a straight line via the China Syndrome route, rather than go all the way around the world?
Thanks for the link!
May 15th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Yep, there is a similarity between today’s TeaParty and the Mugwumps. Hear Mark Twain:
“I was a mugwump. We, the mugwumps, a little company made up of the unenslaved of both parties, the very best men to be found in the two great parties–that was our idea of it–voted sixty thousand strong for Mr. Cleveland in New York and elected him. Our principles were high, and very definite. We were not a party; we had no candidates; we had no axes to grind. Our vote laid upon the man we cast it for no obligation of any kind. By our rule we could not ask for office; we could not accept office. When voting, it was our duty to vote for the best man, regardless of his party name. We had no other creed. Vote for the best man–that was creed enough.”
Having several acquaintances who are TP (no, not that-Tea Party) activists, I ponder their solutions to ‘entitlements’, since they are to a man, either on social security or disability. But, I haven’t followed the movement much more than the Mug Wump folk.
May 16th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
BB –
I have sorta’ mixed feelings about disability and Social Security, in that while they are not what you’d call staples of the the intentions of the drafters of the Constitution, most of those who receive these “entitlements” were, for years, compelled to pay into them via itemized payroll deductions prior to the advent of their collecting benefits.
It’s the same with union folks — they are compelled to pay into the system against the event that they either become disabled or live to retire (happy thought!). Approve of entitlements or not, you can’t tell someone that “Sorry, pal, we’re not paying out these benefits any more, guess you got burned!” after they’ve been forced to pay for them over time.
There’s the trap laid for today’s taxpayer by the liberals of yore: Even though the Social Security Administration is now running on less than fumes, they can’t refuse to pay those from whom they’ve been collecting diligently, at increasingly higher rates, for decades.
T’wouldn’t be right a’tall.
However, what we can still do is rid ourselves of those politicians who would continue to burden the taxpayer with new, additional entitlement spending.
That will, of course, require a lot of politician-ridding, kind of the same thing as the vice squad attempting to “clean up” prostitution in the red light district in a very large city.
Not, actually, “kind of”: Given the charactar of most politicians, exactly would be a more accurate description.
May 16th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I can’t argue with that (dang). All through my career, we were taught the three legged stool and it made sense at the time. Been retired going on 8 years and still got three legs on my stool. But, my what problems coming up: IRAs and 401Ks tanking, no more places with pensions and SS caught between aging demographics and the general fund. Regarding politicians, IMO they follow the rule of self preservation, or as a
hotshot Army pilot-Major once advised, “To Thine Own Ass Be True”.
Its all about reelection, politics.
May 16th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
BB –
Its all about reelection, politics.
Which is why what the country needs is to enact, by the insistence of the voters, a single term limit (say, 6 years) on everyone, no exceptions, in the House and Senate. Let ‘em do what was intended: Go to Washington on behalf of their community for one term, serve to the best of their ability, representing their constituents, then go home to reap what they’ve sown.
Also, they should have no special privileges re future pensions, health/medical care, etc, should be subject to exactly what they subject the rest of us to. Even their salary increases should be determined via a referendum at the polls on election day.
Politics was not supposed to be a career track, and we can see why by what our government’s become.
What the politicians have wrought to this point guarantees a lot of misery in the not-too-distant future, in addition to that which has already begun to rear its hideous head.