I have been among those raising their voices insisting that the election of Obama means the end of civilization as we know it (TEOCAWKI - an acronym just crying out for general use). The election has not changed my belief that Dem control of Congress, the executive, and soon the judiciary, will mean hard times for everyone, especially as it does mean another lurch to the left in policy.
Yet, as he is to be our president, I believe that it is time to treat Obama with a bit of respect. Respect does not mean that we must agree with him, or that we must support whatever cock-eyed policy he may eloquently pronounce. But it does mean that we should endeavor not to proclaim the man a fool or an idiot simply because he proposes socialist schemes that are bound to fail, have failed every time they have been tried, and are (as I read in some post somewhere) “so 19th Century”.
I plan not to question his intent, in spite of any actions that might smack of demagoguery. I will remain polite in the face of unreasoning assaults on free speech as occurred in Missouri where district attorneys were sent after opposition political advertisers during the presidential campaign. Most of all I promise not to pronounce the president-elect’s first name if I happen to belch at the dinner table, which I unfortunately did to my son’s delight this very evening. In fact it was this incident which sparked my writing today. Truthfully, it did seem a bit unseemly. My wife, the dictator of manners in the house, cautioned me to remain civil. It made me realize there is a line that should not be crossed, especially in front of impressionable children.
We must all rise above our feelings of bitterness at the national situation, and if not necessarily pull together, at least act with a degree of civility. To this end my final resolution in this post election period is to refrain mixing carbonated beverages with political discourse. At this point I think any mention of President Obama should instead be preceded by a shot glass full of Bourbon. This, if nothing else should bring on an era of good feeling.
I guess after January 20th we will have to start keeping track of time by designating the years OE, the Obama Era. The Romans kept track of their years by naming them after the consuls in power. Why not track our years by who the President is. We already do this in a way. You can find all kinds of references on the web to the Reagan Era or the Clinton Era. Why not make it official? Lets call this the Obama Era.
So how will we look back on the Obama Era when it is all over? This is what I think is going to happen. George Bush has already begun the process of socialization with the “Bail Out” - U.S. government taking stakes in private corporations. Expect this trend to continue under Obama. Medicine will be socialized to a far greater degree causing first wonder and good feeling in the populous with a bitterness on the part of health care providers. This will cause problems with the providing of health care, with long lines and poor care becoming endemic.
Next, Obama will attempt to reinvigorate quota systems in colleges and workplaces, which will cause divisiveness among workers and various interest groups. It will be said that the election of a black president is insufficient to wipe out the stain of America’s racist past.
Public works will blossom in spite of a lack of funds available in the government. This will suck even more dollars out of the productive private sector. The government will be unable to resist printing money to meet all of its promises, which will cause an inflation spiral second to none in the history of the nation.
Obama will call for sacrifice from everyone, and the initial response will be good. These sacrifices will include taxes, higher energy costs so that investments can be made in so-called green energy. This will simply add to the inflation spiral.
The Era of Obama will see clamps put on free speech that include the “fairness doctrine”, limiting free speech, punishing those who disagree with the “Democrat” party line, and even going so far as limiting access to the president of any reporters hostile to the administration. In extreme situations specific organs may be shut down “for the good of the nation”.
President Obama will certainly be tested in foreign policy. He will mistakenly believe that he can talk his way out of any crisis. He will be forced to react militarily in order to prove that he is willing to do so. President Obama will see the wisdom of T.R.’s old saw about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. He will likely apply this adage to his domestic foes as well.
Standards of living will decline on a consistent basis for the first time in American history.
Will all this happen? I don’t know. Let us hope not. Many of these predictions could also have been made about a John McCain administration. The drift toward socialism seems to be transcending party at this time. I’ll have to check back in a couple years and see how right…or wrong…I was.
There has been considerable boo-hooing on the part of conservatives regarding the lamentable results on the 4th of November. We will now have a Democrat president, Dem majorities in both houses of Congress, and most likely in the courts as well.
But why did the good guys lose this election? Of course, there are the long term factors, the liberal controlled education system and press being of primary importance. But conservatives have had to swim upstream against these obstacles for years.
The immediate cause is the Dems selected a candidate that they could vote for. He was a candidate we conservatives wanted to vote against. But McCain never really excited us. He was not a man that we could hold forth to our neighbors and say, “Hey, this guy is great because…” We had this same problem when Dole ran against Clinton in 1996. We all detested Clinton (now, we long wistfully for the days when he was president!), but we weren’t all that keen on Dole. The idea of the Republican electorate was that McCain was the darling of the press, and he would allow us to glom onto that amorphous mass in the middle.
As it turned out, the press only backed McCain until he had the nomination locked, then they slapped him around because they wanted the candidate left of him. McCain, then, was taking fire from both sides. The conservatives never really warmed to him. How was McCain going to reach out to the middle when his only support was a few country club republicans, and conservatives who could only fight for him with one hand because they were holding their collective nose with the other?
Every loss is a lesson learned. I only hope that we remember this lesson the next time we choose a candidate for prez.
Why does the Presidential election always seem to be about personalities rather than ideas? There is a simple answer to this question. The media wants to report a horse race, not an intellectual discussion. Which do you think gets higher TV ratings? A sporting event like the superbowl, or another super sporting event that occurs only every couple of years, but requires mental stamina not only to be a player, but a spectator.
Few readers probably know that Vishy Anand just defeated Vladimir Kramnik for the chess world championship in Bonn, Germany. Every game of the 10 games played was exciting. I replayed all of them myself, and read through the commentary. It was beguiling and fascinating and an exercize in logic and preparation.
I have asked a number of people in our town if they had heard anything about it. No one even had an inkling. The press in this country did not report it in any way. How many people would have been interested? More than many of you might think. Thousands of chess sets are purchased every day in this country. Thousands of people are learning the rules of chess every day.
What keeps the press from reporting chess results? The same thing that keeps their eyes on the polls rather than the issues of a campaign. They want to report a physical event, not transfer ideas or news. There are thousands of polls conducted every year. The polls glut the airwaves, the pages of newspapers and even the websites online, where available space seems infinite. After poll analysis there is little time left to dig for real information.
Interestingly enough it all comes back to Frank Knight’s First Law of Talk: “Talk is cheap and it drives out talk that is less cheap.” The news services would rather analyse poll numbers than analyse the effects of various policies on the future of the nation.
Just finished my review of American Rifle. Great book. This is not a revisionist history of the U.S. nor is it written from a strictly conservative perspective. It tells the story of how the rifle was developed and came to be identified as a part of the American psyche.
There is a lot of truth, and a lot of insight in Alexander Rose’s book that you do not have to be a gun fanatic to appreciate. One of the more intriguing things I noticed was the almost quantum leaps in technology that occured from the Revolutionary period to the present. Meanwhile the same issues seem to pop up over and over. For example we see the advent of new gun powders that can propel projectiles farther and faster with a more even burn, we see bigger clips, smaller calibers, lighter materials, etc. But the whole time there is the argument over whether massive fire at close range or precise fire at long range are more important. The author notes that it depends on the circumstances. One doctrine does not fit all situations.
The other thing that struck me in this book was the how the advancements in small arms technology and manufacture occurred. Yes, the government was involved, via the Ordinance Department. However, without private enterprise, patent laws, and individual initiative the U.S. would have been far behind other nations.
I haven’t given up on McCain/Palin just yet. Even so, I don’t like the direction of the flow of events. Whether or not Obama is defeated, there is considerable reason to believe that the drift of the nation will be to the left for at least the next four years. This is a drift that the nation can hardly afford.
It is no secret to students of history and economics that socialism does not work. It is also evident to anyone who has studied our current dilemma with the economy that it too is socialist induced. A continued push to the left can only mean hard times for everyone, the haves and the have nots.
One comforting thought is that it has been this bad before; in fact the situation was worse. It appeared that the United States would be mired in socialism forever. The event was the Great Depression, when continuous government intervention spawned a permanent cycle of poverty and disincentive to invest capital. If you want to know how really bad it got during that period with the alphabet-soup of agencies wreaking havoc on the economy, read Cousin Mercedes and the White Russian”, by A.G. Heinsohn, Jr.. It has been out of print forever, but there are still a few old used copies floating around. I paid a dollar for mine at some library sale some 20 or more years ago.
Yes, things have been worse. But this does not mean that things cannot get even worse yet. Let me tell you how. The left is threatening to subvert our very form of government. In America, politics “swings like a pendulum do”. But what if, when a particular party got into power, it refused the let the pendulum swing? How might this happen? We do not need to look far for a model. In South America we have the increasingly brutal, restrictive government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He came to power legitimately, but once there, he began to restrict rival parties, the freedom of the press, industry and more. His adventurist tendencies even have him supporting insurgent groups in foreign countries (see Columbia).
Do we have evidence that citizens will receive this kind of treatment in the US? Yes, we do. Barack Obama is known to favor courts to achieve “economic and political justice”. The Dems have long advocated restricting freedom of speech with the so-called fairness doctrine. The Dems have literally forced banks to make bad loans. The list goes on.
Would McCain stop the slide to the left? Not sure about that one. But I am pretty confident he would at least keep in place the freedoms our society needs to keep the old political pendulum swinging!
A must see political ad featuring John Smith expresses the liberal point of view to a T! Politickles takes liberalism to its logical extreme. Funny though, it seems to me that there are many liberals viewing this who won’t see it as satire. If Smith were an actual candidate, I think he might even take away a healthy percentage of votes from Obama.
Christopher Buckley, scion of the revered W.F.Buckley, has endorsed Barack Obama. I find it sad because his approach is merely a genuflection to the Obama cult of personality.
He writes to say that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment. That McCain has turned against his maverick roots. That Obama is a rara avis - (a “rare bird” for the unlatinified). Truthfully, none of this means anything. If we have learned nothing else from politics over the years it is that the force of ideas is more important than the force of personalities. Sure, we need good personalities to get good ideas across and to effectively implement them. Maybe Mr. Obama is the “rare bird” and effective leader Mr. Buckley says he is. Why in the world would we want to elect an effective leader to implement bad policies? I would rather have a poor leader (read Carter) pushing us in the wrong direction. Better yet, a man like McCain pushing us in the right general direction is the best option we have.
Voting for Obama is just begging for an attack on freedom of the press as he knuckles down on conservative outlets. It will mean a deterioration of the economy as he punishes success through higher taxation. It will mean the erosion of jobs as Corporations run overseas to avoid regulation and more taxation. It will mean weak foreign policy that will allow more dictators to gain nuclear weapons, and make war on others and us. I see nothing good coming from an Obama presidency, unless a burgeoning bureaucracy is a good thing.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Political cartoons can express ideas very economically. Thus, I have made my first foray into economizing on words and shoving ideas into drawings. It may well be my only foray. I came up with a political cartoon which shows an ACORN voting.
No doubt I will be called a racist, or a fear-monger, or a bad artist. But if any one is offended by artwork this bad, they ought to be sending a few letters to some of the modern cubists as well. (If I were a better artist, I would have put Obama’s face under the acorn beret.)
Today I was thinking that we ought to fight fire with fire, and use some of the detestable tactics of the left, vote fraud, laundering overseas contributions, biased reporting in supposed news sources, personal threats…etc. When I thought about how to go about this I suddenly realized that it is the process for which we are fighting. This is what the Constitution is all about. For the left, the ends justify the means. They would overthrow the system for their own personal power and to impose their foolish, failed, socialism upon the rest of us. For us, a fair system of voting and discourse is the end. We have it now, but how long will we have it once the socialist Dems have full control?
We only have to look at every example of socialism that has been instituted in the world to see how socialists, when they gain power (usually by illegal means, but sometimes not), have shut down the press and basically outlawed opposition parties. See Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Yugoslavia, etc.
My voice may seem shrill today, but a year or two after the election, should Obama be elected, it may seem like the voice of reason.
F.R. Duplantier is known for many things. He is indeed a Renaissance man. Among his many talents is his facility with the limerick, or as he calls it the politickle.
He produces one per week and they are invariably fresh like a salad on a summers day, but biting like cold icecream on that tooth you need to go see the dentist about. Okay I am no hand with the metaphor, but he is.
Here is his take on the mortgage crisis:
MIGHTY HOAX
Assigning bailout blame
Can be a cryptic game,
One must be deft,
Read on the left:
Now you know the name.
My take on the bailout is not as pithy or creative as Bob’s, but as always, I try to get to the point quickly.
