Monthly Archives: January 2012

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View from Across the Pond

Barack Obama is trying to make the US a more socialist state

Anotehr nugget dredged (not Drudged!) up from Airstrip One (the UK in Orwellspeak)

What was it everybody used to say about the United States? Look at what’s happening over there and you will see our future. Whatever Americans are doing now, we will be catching up with them in another 10 years or so. In popular culture or political rhetoric, America led the fashion and we tagged along behind.

Well, so much for that. Barack Obama is now putting the United States squarely a decade behind Britain. Listening to the President’s State of the Union message last week was like a surreal visit to our own recent past: there were, almost word for word, all those interminable Gordon Brown Budgets that preached “fairness” while listing endless new ways in which central government would intervene in every form of economic activity.

Later, in a television interview, Mr Obama described his programme of using higher taxes on the wealthy to bankroll new government spending as “a recipe for a fair, sound approach to deficit reduction and rebuilding this country”. To which we who come from the future can only shout, “No‑o-o, go back! Don’t come down this road!”

After running through a number of the gory details, the
The United States is a country that was invented to allow people to be free of domination or persecution by the state. Its constitution and political institutions are specifically designed to prevent the federal government from oppressing the rights, or undermining the sense of responsibility, of the individual citizen. If it ceases to stand by that principle, then it will suffer a catastrophic loss of purpose and identity.

This gal over in the U.K. has it nailed! Now, why can’t the LibDonks see it?

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GOP Primary Notes

Understatement alert! — A number of things to take note of in the current episode of the GOP Presidential Sweepstakes:

Newt goes nuclear: Gingrich slams ‘pro-abortion, pro gun-control, pro tax-increase moderate’ Mitt Romney

When asked by Jake Tapper of ABC News on the This Week programme whether Romney had the character to be president, Gingrich said that his opponent had a “very serious problem” in this area and “would not be where he is today” (presumably Gingrich meant leading in the polls) “if he had told the truth”.

This reminds me…what’s that concept from psych? Oh, yeah…PROJECTION. Look it up.

There’s a lot more political stuff out there of course…Buchanan’s disparaging view of Newt during the Reagan era, the polls continuing to strengthen for Romney while slipping for Newt, etc.

For what it’s worth, the Chief has had enough of Newt. After recently completing a US History Master’s program, with probably 20% to 25% of the time dealing with the rise, implementation, and often disastrous results (which we are STILL fighting off) of what is referred to as “the progressive movement”, which morphed over time into what is more often called liberalism (or worse), the Chief is firmly convinced that less of this is more. That is to say that less progressive liberalism (MUCH less!) will result inevitably in more: more economic growth, more jobs, etc. So, where does Newt come in on all of this?

In his own words (speaking from his own background and understanding as an historian):

“But I want to say a second about the UN because I’m a big fan of Franklin Roosevelt’s. I’m frankly a fan of Woodrow Wilson’s and I think what they were trying to accomplish was terribly important.”

Second: “I come out of the Theodore Roosevelt LaFollette progressive tradition.”

Third: “And I do want to pick up directly on what Dick Gephardt said because he said it right. And no Republican here should kid themselves about it. The greatest leaders in fighting for an integrated America in the 20th century were in the Democratic Party. The fact is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who gave hope to a nation that was in despair and could have slid into dictatorship. And the fact is every Republican has much to learn from studying what the Democrats did right.”

Finally, the supreme disingenuous irony of Newt attacking Mitt’s character. Hmmmmm. Character. Hmmmmm. What was that bit in the discussions when Newt was in his Congressional prime, back in the days of Bubba Clinton…? Oh yeah…CHARACTER COUNTS.

Newt largely sidestepped that one, both in his political life (with his observed reticence at the time to actively lead the charge against Clinton’s behaviors and evasions). This is not, of course to say that Newt lacks character. He has plenty, but a lot of it is negative, especially when contrasted with Romney’s lack of moral or ethical lapse.

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Blog Hiatus Ends

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height.” — Henry V, Shakespeare

’nuff said on this.