EFFin’ Unsound

- posted by demo kid

I think I might take a little bit of a rest from writing about Jonathan Gardner’s mad hypocritical ravings… but I can’t resist commenting myself on this one (since he’s not allowing this comment on for his crazy-ass post):

All I know is that in free democratic societies that mistakenly elect socialist presidents, these things really happen.

Absolutely! It’s been proven time and time again. Take a look at the bloodbath during Gro Harlem Brundtland’s reign in Norway in the 1980s. I know that Tarja Halonen of Finland became famous for poisoning right-wing opposition politicians and slaughtering entire villages to consolidate power. I also remember that Helen Clark violently put down that stockbrokers’ strike in Wellington a few years ago, stripped all multimillionaires of their New Zealand citizenship, and exiled them to Indonesia.

And who can forget how Pierre Trudeau used the War Measures Act to send troops into Montreal to put down the FLQ during the October Crisis? (I mean, ignore the part about how the FLQ were radical left-wing Marxist Québécois, of course.)

This can tell you volumes, though, about where Republican and American conservative priorities lie. If the Bush administration advocates for war without end, spending off the books, breaking/bending civil liberties to their utmost, and so forth, anyone that protests *that* is… well… not an American in their eyes. However, if we actually TRY to act like a society that cares for one another, if we make an attempt to address common problems we all face, it’s “socialism” and some kind of corruption of the American ideal. It even merits shooting and killing people, according to Jonathan.

Makes you wonder… if left-wingers were to have taken up arms against the government to make THEIR views known, would he have been quick to pick up the hyperbole and promote those efforts as part of his own twisted “democratic process”?

Posted by Robby

Eric Earling, citing an article in the NYT, is absolutely giddy as he declares “Good News: Netroots Starts to Eat Their Own.”

The skinny is that a number of progressive bloggers have joined with the SEIU to form  a PAC called Accountability Now designed to launch primary challenges against democrats who are more conservative them their districts.  Really, it’s a pretty great deal.  There’s been talk of it for awhile, I’m glad to see it’s getting up off the ground.  The Times compares it to a liberal version of Club for Growth.  Eric disagrees.

Ironic they would mention the Club for Growth. That group has laudable goals and an impressive record of winning primary contests in recent years. The record of the candidates they have supported in competitive primaries actually winning and retaining seats in the general election has not been so spectacular.

Grammatical issues aside, I think he missed the point.  While the netroots have made some spectacular primary gains in the last two cycles (Donna Edwards and, to a lesser extent, Ned Lamont being excellent examples), an organized effort would certainly be more effective, which is why the group is forming.  I, for one, am glad to see groups like this starting to form.  For altogether too long the Democratic Party in D.C. has been markedly more moderate then the Democratic Party in the rest of the country.

Also, which of our own do you suppose we’re eating by forming this group?  If anything, Accountability Now will help netroots candidates have more confidence that they won’t be abandoned at some point in the race.

Posted by Carl Ballard

Gary Randall is afraid that we might not be allowed to say “God” in our public schools.

John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, is considered by many to be conservative America’s foremost legal, political and cultural watch dog.

And the guy who decided that Paula Jones was the most important thing in the 1990’s.

I first met John when I interviewed him on television some years ago. I was impressed with his grasp of the issues then and still am.

That must have been a fun time on the teevee.

Whitehead has gained a great deal of insight into the issue of religious discrimination in public schools as a result of the many cases that have come across his desk over the years.

And I’m a card carrying member of the ACLU because of people like him.

He is now saying that he believes that “GOD” has become the new four letter word in the classroom, at least in most public schools across America.

I promise you, you can say “God” without getting in trouble on school grounds. You just can’t preach using school time or resources.

Why this has come to pass is very concerning.

Because of the fever dreams you’ve been having?

Whitehead says, “An elite segment of society that views God as irrelevant has come to predominate.”

Not wanting the schools, where everybody attends, to be Jesuscentric is elite.

He says that elitists–the people who run society, from public education to certain governmental agencies and institutions, have basically decided that God is irrelevant in public discussion.

God is irrelevant to public education. There isn’t Christian or Jewish or atheistic public education. Math class ain’t the place for Church activities.

This, he says, ignores the 120 million or more people in America who take their religion seriously, practice it and who pay taxes to support these very institutions.

I guess the only way to satisfy anyone who has ever prayed is this curriculum:

First period: Moses
Second period: Math
Prayer Break
Third period: Jesus
Lunch
Fourth period: English
Fifth period: Creation Science

These people are being forced, along with their religious rights and free speech rights, into subservience to all other beliefs.

I know, like when schools teach that the planet is older than 6,000 years old, people lose their rights.

He says the issue is not, as secularists, the ACLU and others would have you believe, separation of church and state. It is an issue of the religious believer versus the state.

A religious believer pushing their religious beliefs.

This, Whitehead believes, is a denial of everything this country stands for in terms of the freedom of speech, religion and a respect for moral tradition.

Learning is bad.

He says it reminds him of the old Soviet Union or even China where people of faith must fend off the state.

That’s basically the same: America and the Soviet Union. Awesome perspective there.

Whitehead has released a six-minute video on the subject. I strongly recommend you view it.

Pass.

Patrick Henry once said that, “When people forget God, tyrants forge their chains.”

When you google that phrase, you get less than a dozen hits. So it may be apocryphal. In any event, it turns out that tyrants come in the name of all sorts of ideologies, some with God, some against.

It is clear that many who have cloistered themselves in public education have a very different view and priority than most Americans. They have, especially in public colleges and universities, often hiding behind tenure, espouse anti-American and anti-Christian views.

Gary Randall speaks for most Americans now.

This cannot help but have a negative effect on this country and our culture.

Edmucation is the real problem.

Abraham Lincoln knew this and once said, “The philosophy of the classroom today, will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.”

Yes, starting the land grant college system is basically the same as complaining about liberals in the colleges.

This is a time when Christians are being called upon to stand and take back their country.

I always love that Randall thinks that all Christians think exactly like he does. Anyway, the end.

Posted by Robby

Over at FW Con, Jonathan is taking advice from Limbaugh on how to turn liberals into conservatives.  Apparently, it’s really easy.

Listening to Rush today on the way to volunteering at Highline Community College, I heard Rush comment that he knows how to make liberals conservatives, and he was going to tell us what we need to do. I always give Rush the benefit of a doubt, and so I turned my ear to listen closely.

Rush Limbaugh once said that veterans who don’t support the war in Iraq were “fake veterans.”  I wouldn’t put too much faith in his opinions.

His point was simply this: Liberals are liberal because they want to feel good about themselves and what they stand for. It feels nice to say, “I want to help the poor, the sick, the criminal, the outcast, etc!”

So far, so good, I guess.

Liberals don’t see, however, what effect their politics has on the poor, the sick, the criminal, the outcast, and so on. Instead, the party masters make double sure that they never see any of the negative consequences of liberalism. They are, after all, rubes, manipulated by those who simply want power for power’s sake.

Yeah, if it wasn’t for us nasty liberals, the poor would still have the opportunity to work in seatshops and the elderly could just die without the bother of medical care.

So how do you fight against that? Well, you make liberals feel bad about being liberal.

So you make shit up?

You point out to them the natural consequence of liberalism with real examples of real suffering. You connect it to their politics and their votes and their choices. The ideal would be something like, “This little girl died because she couldn’t get medical care because Barack Obama created a system where there were simply no doctors or money to help her.” In other words, “You voted for Barack Obama, he deprived her of medical care, she died. YOU killed the girl because your voted for Obama.”

So, to be more specific, you make up shitty hypotheticals that could not possibly have happened yet?  I don’t know if these guys know it or not, but Obama hasn’t had time to reform health care yet.  He’s been pretty busy trying to clean up the pile of steaming financial shit that Bush left behind.

It’s actually quite easy to do this for any tragedy. Natural tragedies are bad, but humans, especially conservatives, pitch in and help. So the disasters become really great things with humanity on display in its best colors. That is, as long as people are free to do so, they will.

I guess if Hurricane tought us anything, it was that governments don’t have any role in disaster relief.  Wait, I might have gotten that wrong…

But when government comes in and takes money away from the rich and tells doctors who they’re going to see and what kind of medicine they can proscribe, why, that’s when the problems really start.

Just ask anyone in Great Britain, France, Canada, or any of the dozens of other countries with a national healthcare system.  Ignore the statistics showing that people in those countries usually live longer.  Life expectancy doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with health care.

Conservatives are all about feeling good about themselves as well. It’s just that we don’t buy all the crap shovelled across the airwaves every day on the old-stream media.

Radio seems pretty old-stream to me.  I mean, it was invented quite awhile before tv, wasn’t it?

We listen to Barack Obama promising to halve the deficit but triple spending and we realize, at the very moment he says those words, that he is lying.

First, I don’t know that Obamas said that.  He’s said that he wants to work on the structural deficit.  He seems to have accepted the deficit spending in the stimuluos as a necessary evil while still hoping to cut back the annual budget.

Second, I guess it was ok by these guys when Bush actually said and did just that.

See, we think. We use that thing in between our ears to see that our compassions actually arrive at the intended recipient. We understand that there are evil people out there and they are trying to take away our freedoms because they are evil, and we don’t want to allow them to do that.

By think, I guess he means that he blindly accepts what Rush Limbaugh tells him.

Conservatives can easily carry this message, since we are the group that goes out and gets things done. For instance, I went to Highline today to lecture and demonstrate all about Web Services. That’s real benefit that is going to help those students make wise choices as they plan out their future websites and build web applications and services. That’s something that I created out of thin air since they wouldn’t have gotten that instruction otherwise.

Well, I’m glad he volunteers.  But it’s ridiculous to say that Conservatives are the only ones doing community service.  Absolutely ridiculous.  Also, the contribution he’s so proud of is teaching kids how to set up a website?  That can be useful and all, but Jimmy Carter builds houses and monitors elections, and he’s pretty liberal.  Just sayin’.

I didn’t need government to tell me to go tell those students about Web Services. It’s in my very nature to help. It’s in the very nature of all conservatives to help. In fact, our jobs are just a means to an end. We work to make money so that we can feed, clothe, and shelter our kids, and then when that’s done, we naturally draw out and try to help the guys around us find the money to feed, clothe, and shelter their kids. We don’t need government to tell us to do that because we simply do that on our own.

Again, good for you.  Just don’t forget that there are plenty of liberals who look at life in a similar way.

I want to solicit real-life stories of how liberalism has injured, killed, or impoverished people. Look for examples of how the government got in the way and made people who would normally help run away for fear. At the same time, share examples of real heart-warming help and assistance where government played no role at all, and indeed, never could.

I don’t know about all of that, but I could give you some of the opposite kind of story.  If you’d like, I could talk about the experiences of the average Iraqi over the last several years.  Or, if you prefer, we could talk some more about Hurricane Katrina.  There’s always the unknown number of Americans who have had their phones illegaly tapped.  Or maybe we could look at all the people who have lost their jobs in this recession caused in no small part by a lack of regulation in the housing and finance sectors.

Posted by Robby

While no one is probably surprised that this editorial in the Columbian is against taxes, I found this paragraph about Rosa Franklin’s income tax proposal particularly interesting.

One of the most absurd proposals is a state income tax — we kid you not — described in SB 5104 sponsored by Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma, who seems to own a level of confidence in her own re-electability — plus an immunity to voter wrath — that is uncommon among politicians.

There’s nothing new about the ideas or rhetoric in this paragraph, but I still think it’s worth talking about.  Why is it so impossible to even consider an income tax?  Last I checked, all but 7 states have some form of state level income tax.  Franklin’s pushing for an income tax shouldn’t require as much political courage as it does.  Washington’s tax structure needs serious reform.  The B and O tax is unnecessarily oppressive, and our sales tax is uncommonly regressive.  But serious reform would necessarily involve a discussion of an income tax.  It’s rhetoric like this that makes that debate impossible.

Posted by Robby

Eric Earling is citing an article from the Boston Globe about how great Dave Reichert is.

In a maddening twist for the netroots, the MSM coverage paints Reichert as an independent and a moderate, not the partisan hack our friends on the left side of the blogosphere so earnestly insist that he is. Maybe those stories keep describing him that way because it’s true?

No surprises about the coverage.  The Boston Globe is simply joining other greats, such as the Seattle Times, in declaring their love for Dave Reichert.  That said, the fact that beltway papers describe someone as moderate is not really a guarantee that said person is, in fact, moderate.

Remember a guy named George W. Bush?  It wasn’t all that long ago that quite a lot of papers thought he was pretty moderate.

Of course, Reichert isn’t really all that moderate either.

– posted by thehim

Time for another contest. Guess which of the following quotes are from The Stranger Public Editor A. Birch Steen and which ones are from our good friend Lou Guzzo:

1. I say to Seattle: Enough, by gum!

2. Wake up! Wake up, Washington and America, before it’s too late!

3. Despite the unthinkable inauguration of a socialist Muslim as president of the United States of America, 2009 is shaping up to be a wonderful year

4. I could spend several days discussing issues about which that populist dunderhead and noted anti-American Noam Chomsky is completely wrong

5. A Pennsylvania judge, who should be investigated for incompetence and Liberal prejudice, dismissed a lawsuit challenging Obama’s right to run for the presidency.

6. I’ve done this before, and probably will do it again and again, thanks to my undying interest in political science, in which I minored at college.

Posted by Robby

Eric Earling has been pretty excited lately about Bobby Jindal.

Me thinks it would be wise for WA GOPers to find ways to apply his tone and approach to Washington state politics.

Maybe Washington GOPers should start performing exorcisms.

Posted by Robby

I’m relatively new here on the front page, so I want to be careful about using superlatives.  That said, this may be the craziest post yet by Jonathan Gardner regarding Obama and the economy.  No surprise, he continues to blame the whole mess on Obama.

What happened last year was the combination of many things. At the heart, I believe, was a perception that Obama would win the presidency and he would preside in an anti-business way. That was what led to the downward spiral starting early in 2008. When he secured the nomination, that was another time when securities took a hit.

So, way back in January when I was still hoping that Edwards would get the nomination and Carl and I were debating the merits of a Clinton nomination, everyone else knew that Obama would get the nod?  I guess it wasn’t decades of right-wing economic policies regarding unnecessary tax-cuts and deregulation that brought down the economy.  It was, in fact, the markets perception that the dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination was destined to become the next president.

But that’s not the crazy part.  The crazy part is his suggestion for how to deal with the economy.

My proposal to the Obama administration is to have Biden resign as VP. Then have congress appoint a VP who can actually inspire confidence in our markets, even if they are a democrat. Once the VP is in place, then Obama can step aside and let him (or her) lead the country back to prosperity. All other possible scenarios spell doom.

There are so many things that I could say about that paragraph.  But, I’m not going to say anything, not yet.  I’m just going to let all of you reflect on the crazy.

Posted by Carl Ballard

Eric Earling wants you to know that Bill Clinton is dissin’ Obama:

This is not a small issue. Bill Clinton has already begun offering public advice that Obama needs to be more publicly optimistic about the economy. That tip from 42 comes for a reason. Obama’s talking down of the economy - as part of efforts to ram through the “stimulus” bill - have had a real, tangible effect. Yesterday’s link to an Obama critic (and yet no fan of Bush) was notable is raising just such a point:

Did you read what Clinton said?

Regarding Obama’s bleak warnings that “the economy could get worse before it gets better,” and that the economic stimulus program is only the beginning of the end of the economic crisis, Clinton said, “I like the fact that he didn’t come in and give us a bunch of happy talk. I’m glad he shot straight with us.”

But he added, “I just want the American people to know that he’s confident that we are gonna get out of this and he feels good about the long run.”

Woo man, what harsh criticism. Bill Clinton totally thinks Obama is bringing down the economy when he says he appreciates that President Obama doesn’t talk down to the American people, and that the economy will recover in the long run.