Ace went on quite the rant about the state of the GOP/Conservative side of the political aisle:
I’m also pretty depressed. Apparently, some in this party really do think they’re going to hand the election to Hillary, and, bizarrely, they think this will bully the rest of us into knuckling under to their agenda in 2020.
Rather than simply getting payback and tanking their candidate in return.
This party is on the verge of self-destructing. The upper class of the party is upset that the lower class has finally had its say, and they’re determined that should never be permitted to happen again…
Ace then goes on to conclude that perhaps he should become a Democrat for self-protection – you know, if we’re going to keep going with a weaponized bureaucracy in the hands of rather vindictive Progressives, maybe become a Progressive so they’ll leave you alone? Trouble is, that won’t work out, either, unless you are prepared to sell your soul. You see, Progressives insist upon public declarations in favor of their views…passive acceptance isn’t good enough. It’s why you have to bake the cake.
The real problem with Conservatism isn’t that Trump came along and killed it, but that it never amounted to anything to begin with. Name a moral value from 50 years ago that is still intact – meaning, that something held as absolutely morally true 50 years ago is still being held as absolutely morally true today. The only thing Conservatism has managed to conserve these past 50 years is Second Amendment rights – and that hangs by a thread. Just allow Hillary to replace Scalia and the Progressives in the court system will rush a case to the Supreme Court to undo the right to bear arms.
I think our problem – the reason for our failure – is that we in general accepted the Progressive agenda as the basis for argument. Rather than just reject it out of hand, accept the electoral defeat and just wait for the crash to elevate Conservatism to complete power, we tried to hedge…to make ourselves appear reasonable to Progressives so that we could be acceptable to them. Nothing, of course, is more bizarre than trying to be reasonable to Progressives who don’t even believe in Reason, as a thing. But, we tried it – and so just essentially went along with the continual Progressive alteration of society. Now we’re caught in a bind – the only person who can keep the government out of the hands of Progressive Hillary is Progressive Trump…who at least won’t direct government’s power directly against Conservatism (or, at least, we hope he won’t). It’s a lousy position to be in – but we got ourselves here because standing athwart History yelling, “stop!” is about the most useless thing a person can decide to do. Doing that is reactionary – doing what is Conservative, on the other hand, requires a clear idea of the massive changes which need to be enacted.
You see, the problem has been that we on the Conservative side never saw ourselves as Revolutionaries. But that is what we have to be if we want to be Conservative. A Conservative is not a reactionary – we do not just stand pat and hope to hold on to what we’ve got. We advance the cause – we seek to refurbish things and bring them renewed into the present. We say that such-and-such is good then, good now and always will be good and we insist that it be preserved as part of the common heritage of humanity.
To do this, we have to stake out our positions quite boldly and accept crushing, overwhelming defeat and then continue to stake out those exact, same positions. For example, Churchill never altered his views of Hitler once he decided that Hitler was a mortal threat to civilization – at times, his supporters in Parliament were no more than four or five. He was insulted and ridiculed – long time political associates didn’t want to be seen in public with him. But he just kept at it, saying exactly the same thing in 1938 as he said in 1934…and by the middle of 1939, after those who ridiculed him were proven wrong, people started to swing over to him…because he was right and he stuck by what was right no matter how bad it got. Churchill was a Revolutionary – in open and desperate revolt against the idea that Hitler was some sort of manifestation of deep, historical currents who could be managed…Churchill knew precisely what Hitler was: a bad man who wanted to do bad things for bad reasons. Bad people are to be opposed by good people even at the cost of spilling blood if that proves necessary; Churchill wasn’t proposing anything new; he was just trying to refurbish the correct moral view of conquering tyrants: they are to be opposed. They are to be opposed no matter if they are dressed in the panoply of an Emperor or a Totalitarian – whether their bogus slogan is Liberté, égalité, fraternité or Arbeit macht frei. It is true in the past, it is true today and it will always be true that no one has the right to wage offensive wars of conquest. If he had started to hem and haw and try to shift his position to match the prevailing view, then Britain might have been lost – there would have been no one for the British to turn to when the chips were down. Someone of courage and conviction that the people could trust because he had never wavered for a moment in his views.
Why should the American people in 2016 trust Conservatism? What have we actually stood for? Where is some battle for eternal truths that we have engaged in without wavering and carried through to absolute victory? As I’ve said, other than 2A, nowhere. No matter what battle you care to name, the Progressives have advanced and we have retreated…and now some of us are actually defending Progressive things simply because they’ve been around for a while (Big Corporations, most notably; but there are plenty of other Progressive innovations that we now defend tooth and nail…even if the Progressives who created them have moved on and decided to destroy them).
Hillary or Trump will be the next President – most recent polling shows Hillary once again with a slight advantage. It’ll probably shift back and forth several more times before November 8th. But neither of them victorious will be on the side of Conservatism. The only difference between them is that Hillary promises to be overtly hostile to Conservatism while Trump may, even if only by accident, advance some Conservative desire. But if we want to have a Conservative movement in 2017 and beyond, then we have to completely shift our world view. We are the outsiders – hated, feared and despised. But we are right – and eventually we will be proven right. Then, if we have stood firmly for our views, the people will come over to us, because we’ll be the only people out there they can trust to do the right thing.
This post has already gone on a little long, so I won’t attach to it a Conservative Manifesto – though I’m thinking of writing one, perhaps at book length. But it isn’t really all that hard to think of what a Conservative should want to Conserve – refurbish and make live again in the modern world. But when we say we want to defend the family, remember that means we also must oppose things like property taxes, fiat money, consumer debt, consumerism, the economic necessity of both parents working just to make ends meet…and probably a score or more other things which have worked against the family for many years. Positions, as I’ve said, have to be staked out – even, and especially, if when staked out 90% of the people oppose them. It is precisely the opposition to our views which will give us strength…provided we hold fast to them and allow reality to move people over to our side as time goes on. The world has been turned upside down – we now live in Progressive topsy-turverydom. It is they, the Progressives, who are the hide-bound, reactionary defenders of a dying order. We must become the Revolutionaries – the wild-eyed fanatics, as it were, demanding the impossible. As it was impossible in the past to imagine an America where taxpayer funds would go to support something like Planned Parenthood, so it is impossible to imagine today an America where taxpayer funds go to support a family home-schooling their children…but what is claimed to be impossible in human affairs is always possible, if people are willing to fight for it tenaciously and without apology. The Progressives did it, and won – we can do it, and win as well. If we but try.
Blogs For Victory 
The real problem with Conservatism isn’t that Trump came along and killed it, but that it never amounted to anything to begin with. Name a moral value from 50 years ago that is still intact – meaning, that something held as absolutely morally true 50 years ago is still being held as absolutely morally true today.
So true, so very very true. That is, if you define Conservativism merely by issues
If we would simply start with Conservatism as a POLITICAL construct, one based on commitment to a POLITICAL system, with POLITICAL values, we would have a majority so huge we could deal with all the issues that are eroding the moral structure of this country.
I see this as the biggest success of Progressivism—-the success in substituting issues for politics, on both sides. The loss of the ability to think in political terms—that is, in terms of the structure of our governance—-is the key to the advancement of Progressivism.
On one hand we have a system cloaked in Progressive issues so thoroughly that we have people saying “I will vote for XXXXX because I believe in gay marriage”……totally and blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are really voting for a POLITICAL system. On the other hand, we have “Conservatives” telling half the people in this country that they can’t vote for a “Conservative” candidate if they don’t agree with any of the issues “Conservatives” have staked out. So we’ve got tens of millions of people spinning around in a tumble of emotions and beliefs, with not a single thought among them about how best to GOVERN the country.
Oh pretty please please please tell me the difference between a liberal and a conservative without referencing any issues. As specifically as you can.
This whole post is self-gratification at the highest level.
You start with a question that could be taken seriously, but instantly segue into an insult. Now I remember you.
This is the definition of POLITICAL conservatism: It is the conviction that the federal government must be severely restricted as to size, scope and power, with most authority left to the states, or to the people. Liberalism is the POLITICAL view that the federal government should be allowed to expand in all those areas—-size, scope and power—-to address various problems, wishes or concerns. (Keep in mind that lowercase “liberal” has nothing at all to do with the political system once renamed Liberalism, to try to make it more palatable, and then renamed again to Progressivism for the same reason. The political system of Liberalism is so wholly illiberal the two words are antithetical to each other. And lower-case “conservative” can mean not wearing stripes with plaid, or having a beige house.)
That’s all. It’s very simple. You can be a lesbian Wiccan who believes in abortion on demand and wants to call her girlfriend her wife, and if you understand that these issues do not fall under federal authority but must be decided at the state or local level, you are a political conservative.
You’re right—it IS gratifying to explain why following the Constitution does not mean any issue at all is off the table, merely explaining that anything not specifically addressed within the body of the Constitution is up to the states.
I refer you to the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Got it.
Here are my two takeaways:
1.) The primary issue you care about is the separation of powers between federal and state governments. I know this to be true because you tried to make interpretation of the 10th amendment the only defining difference between liberalism and conservatism, despite the fact that it isn’t even the only difference of interpretation one can identify just in the space of the Bill of Rights. I hear arguments over the 1st and 2nd amendments are pretty popular. I suspect you actually have opinions on those, too. Maybe you should refine your absurd answer to talk about constitutional interpretation more broadly next time.
2.) By your definition, it is impossible to make any predictive determinations about what a conservative would do if elected to state or local office. I could claim to be a conservative governor, and the only thing you could guess that I’d believe is that I should have more power and the federal government should have less. If I want to turn California into a socialist state whose primary goals include equality of outcomes and social justice, I too am a conservative as long as I don’t let the federal government stop me!
Try, it appears that you have a form of Tourette’s where you simply can’t make a series of declarative sentences without injecting an insult.
I understand how essential it is for Liberals to define all politics based on issues because tissues are divisive, and the Left can only prevail in a divided nation at conflict within itself.
I don’t know what you mean when you say “… it (the difference between Liberalism and Conservatism) isn’t even the only difference of interpretation one can identify just in the space of the Bill of Rights…” Sorry, but that sentence just doesn’t make sense to me. You go on to say “I hear arguments over the 1st and 2nd amendments are pretty popular.” Not among Conservatives. You Progressives love to argue about them, mostly in the interest of changing them to force them into Liberal agendas and policies. Those of us who can read simply read them. When there IS a question, such as the definition of “free speech” as part of the 1st Amendment, then it is time to examine the contemporaneous writings of the Founders and their contemporaries, to learn what helped them form their ideas. Funny, all the contemporaneous writings of the Founders were concerned about “free speech” as the ability to speak freely about political disagreements. Not a word about elephant dung on a religious icon or a crucifix in a jar of urine. Those additions were Liberal in nature, not actually interpretations of the wording but additions to the meaning. More of those “emanations of penumbras” of unwritten but assumed intent the SCOTUS is so fond of.
“Maybe you should refine your absurd answer to talk about constitutional interpretation more broadly next time.” And here we are at the crux of the matter. You think the application of the Constitution depends on interpretation, which is the heart of the Liberal argument that postures as “believing in the Constitution” and then explains that this, of course, depends on how the Constitution is INTERPRETED.
Most of the time, the Constitution needs no “interpretation”. The 10th Amendment certainly does not. It is what it is. When there is a need to determine what was meant by the Founders because of changes in terminology or language, then the only way to approach this is to go back to what the Founders actually said on the topic at hand in other writings, and sometimes to examine the laws and customs of the day.
The ONLY reason to try to “interpret” the Constitution is to try to find excuses or justifications for expanding the size, scope and power of the federal government.
To be consistent, which is a goal of mine, I have to agree that the citizens of any state have the right to decide the meaning of “marriage”, its approach to welfare, and so on. I suggest that if a person were to run for the office of governor of a state on the basis of believing that nearly all issues have to be resolved at the state or local level, in a purely political sense that person would be running as a political conservative. You have got that right. Now, if he or she were to also run on what is usually considered a conservative view of those issues and then do a 180 and suddenly support same sex “marriage”, abortion on demand, huge welfare schemes and so on, the voters have the option of doing a recall or simply voting for someone else the next time around.
This is why state elections are so crucial, or should be. The Left has succeeded in shifting focus on all problem solving to the federal level, which has resulted in its goal of vastly expanding the size, scope and power of the federal government. All Leftist political systems depend on a hugely powerful Central Authority, with little and sometimes no control at any other level. Moving authority back to state and local control means more control by citizens, more access to lawgivers, and more recourse when things go bad. It is a lot easier to contact a state senator than a national senator, and to fire a governor than a president.
“Not among Conservatives.”
Great! Apparently another defining feature of a conservative is that they agree on your interpretation and valuation of the 1st and 2nd amendment. Curious that you left that out in the first place.
The only reason to interpret the constitution is that you are reading it. There is no such thing as reading without interpretation. That’s just not how language works. Chalk that up as another imaginary difference that makes you more enlightened than the dumb liberals.
I notice you completely avoided responding to my entire second point. Is there such a thing as a conservative governor? Can I be one while I set the marginal state income tax rate on income over $200,000 a year to 99% and then give all that money to poor people?
Just as “liberal” and “Liberal” mean two different things, so do “conservative” and “Conservative”. When we conflate lower-case “conservative”, which can be summed up in one way as “…We say that such-and-such is good then, good now and always will be good and we insist that it be preserved as part of the common heritage of humanity….” with capital-C “Conservative”, which is conviction that the best blueprint for governing the nation is our Constitution, we get ourselves all tangled up in confusing semantics. It’s not that the two are mutually exclusive—in fact, they are wholly compatible.
It’s just that they are not the same thing. And I think the confusion in thinking they are is contributing to the struggles of capital-C Conservatism to survive, much less flourish. We are the ones allowing emotion-based “values” to be grafted onto what is really a completely political concept, which then lends itself to divisiveness.
Look at this blog. Rusty and I, once on opposite sides of any political discussion, are now on the same side POLTICALLY—-but he has made it clear we are not on some issues, such as abortion. Until we as a movement get that sorted out we are only going to continue to drag ourselves down.
Nothing, of course, is more bizarre than trying to be reasonable to Progressives who don’t even believe in Reason, as a thing.
It’s funny that you say that. That is essentially the argument I began to use a couple years ago when I decided to purge Leftists from my life. Instead of saying, screw you, I don’t want you in my life anymore, I simply began to reply to everything they said with, “your argument is devoid of reason, and therefore can’t be responded to with reason.” Pretty much everyone I said that to just faded from my life. It was as though this giant, dark cloud overhead just drifted away. It’s often been said that one of the greatest enemies of Liberalism is sunlight, and I’ve proved, at least in my own life, that that’s absolutely true.
Congratulations, you sound like you’ve successfully insulated yourself into an echo chamber by intentionally being insufferable. Does that not give you pause at all?
Oh, my—-sounds like someone is threatened by the fact that a once-fellow traveler has seen the light. I don’t blame you, Try—–is is always scary when someone who once agreed with you realizes he was wrong. Kind of shakes things up a little, doesn’t it?
I see you are being a good little Liberal footsoldier by resorting to personal attack when faced with reality.
I am not threatened by anything on a random blog on the internet. I am concerned with the growing tendency for people to surround themselves only with people who agree with them. If you cut people off from all but a few sources of information and get them to ignore and distrust everything else, you can get people to believe some incredibly crazy things.
It was bad enough when it was Fox News and conservative talk radio working in tandem to convince a bunch of people that you can’t trust anybody, only them. But now people don’t even get their ideas from just Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly anymore, they get them from facebook friends and twitter.
Rule number 1 of being a successful cult leader is to cut your cultists off from every other source of information by convincing them that you’re the only one they can trust. That’s how you get control of people, regardless of whether it is to get them to kill themselves in your doomsday suicide cult or to get them to join ISIL.
There is no empirical evidence that conservatives have any sort of monopoly or even competitive advantage when it comes to logic and reason. Trying to make that argument on the other hand is entirely irrational, and amounts to just another excuse to stop listening people who have different ideas from yours. You’re not excused. Political discourse is as broken as it is because people are doing exactly what you’re doing. People can disagree with you without being sociopaths, liars, idiots, or madmen.
Our political system produces worse and worse political candidates because the continually increasing self-insulation of voters is allowing and forcing them to.
Retvasty
For what it is worth, Amazona and I are at odds at this moment. There are regular disagreements on this blog, it is no echo chamber.
Sorry, the garbled spelling of your name was dislexia, not an attempt to make a joke garbling it. I’m not very bright.
One thing that I have realized over the last several years is that on a personal level I have nothing in common with unexamined progressives. Absolutely nothing. In fact I have zero respect for anyone who casts a vote for Hillary Clinton. Ardent progressives are dangerously stupid, vile and repugnant people. Among their more despicable tendencies is their penchant to divide people by race, ethnicity, gender, and class in order to foment discord and create victims, which they exploit for purely selfish political gains. They are never held to account for their many personal and policy failures, they lie as easily as they breathe, they harbor a false sense of self superiority, and have made the very unflattering character traits of shaming, condescension, and mockery an art form. In short, progressives represent the worst of what America is, or ever should be, and personally I either want to defeat them at the ballot box or dispense with them on the battlefield. There can be no compromise with people who have no personal integrity, no accountability for their actions, or of whom will say and do anything to gain power. The current Democrat party is as dangerous to this country as any outside threat, and if there is one positive take away from this election is that common sense Americans are finally starting to fight back.
Cluster, I have an example of an unexamined Liberal. After a long bout of my efforts to actually talk about politics and his constant snapping back to all the Republicans he hates, he snarled “I don’t know why you keep using pejoratives.” ???? “Yeah, you keep using the word “Left” and referring to me as a “Leftist” and I don’t know why you can’t talk without insulting me.”
Oh. My. Goodness. I was speechless. All I could say, when I could put words together again, was that if he didn’t even understand that “Left” is a clinical, objective definition of a specific POLITICAL philosophy, then we were never arguing politics at all, but just some weird version of fan club identity. As he had consistently and passionately defended Democrats and excoriated Republicans, I had to assume he was promoting the Democrat, or Leftist, political system. He was genuinely confused. I did manage to get a little in about the L/R spectrum, with big powerful government on one end, the Left end, and smaller federal government with most authority left to the states on the other end, the Right end, before his confusion took over again and it was back to BushBushBushBushCheneyBush.
Not. A. Freaking. Clue. And he is probably the poster boy for 90% of those who vote Dem.
This is why I keep harping on the necessity, and I do mean necessity of starting to define political philosophy to people. As long as we keep using undefined terms, and letting the Left do what defining is done, we are always going to be losing ground. We’ll be losing to personality and identity, we’ll be losing to issues, but we will be losing.
Cluster, too bad your rant won’t fit on a bumper sticker. Spot on, my friend.
It might, if we would start driving those wonderful big cars again.
OK, I am prejudiced, having spent the day behind a 38-year-old V-8 that sounds LIKE A CAR SHOULD SOUND. I forgot how much I miss that wonderful growl.
Oh it is just ever so much fun to hear people talk about HIllary dividing people by race and gender with a straight face. Trump literally in a presidential debate responded to a litany of chauvinistic things he’s said by saying that a lot of them were about Rosie O’Donnell, and we an all agree that she deserved it. That was his defense.
Although I can’t actually figure out which thing drips with more hypocrisy. I still might have to give it to complaining about people having sense of superiority and being condescending in the middle of a rant about how awful an entire group of people are. Bravo.
Awww, Try, you might just need to sit back, take a breath, take a pill. And remember why you were banned from this blog, several times if I remember correctly, for being just plain nasty. Not nasty in the course of making a case for a position, just nasty to be nasty. (See “footsoldier” comment, above.)
Rosie O’Donnell is one person. Therefore, insulting her is insulting one specific person, not the entire class to which this person belongs. Let’s look at classes to which she belongs: Actress, overweight, rude, hostile, crude. Hmmm. Yet Trump didn’t make snide comments about any of these classes. He saw her as an individual and he treated her as an individual. And he certainly did not attack all women, or even all lesbians, because of what Rosie O’Donnell said or did.
Now, back to Cluster. He is another who got your panties in a twist, turning his back on your side. You seem to miss, or don’t care, that the “entire group of people” he is discussing is not a group which just happened to you/those people. No, you/they made the decision to be part of that group. You/They chose that group, and it is a group identified by certain characteristics which are also voluntarily assumed by its members. There is a difference between criticizing a group because it is all women, or all men. or all southerners, and criticizing a group that has chosen to be hostile, rude, and dishonest. Did you miss that part? Here, let’s take another look at it.
Ardent progressives are dangerously stupid, vile and repugnant people. Among their more despicable tendencies is their penchant to divide people by race, ethnicity, gender, and class in order to foment discord and create victims, which they exploit for purely selfish political gains. They are never held to account for their many personal and policy failures, they lie as easily as they breathe, they harbor a false sense of self superiority, and have made the very unflattering character traits of shaming, condescension, and mockery an art form.
Let’s see if I can come up with an analogy that might not be so close to home, and therefore less likely to spur that knee-jerk defensiveness of yours. Let’s say that a certain college football team, the Goatheads, has a practice of robbing, looting and gang rape when not on the field trying to injure other players. One could use this as the basis for attacking all college football and football players, which would be wrong, or one could single out the group that is made up of volunteers who chose to be in that group.
I know you are smart enough to know what we are talking about when we talk about lumping people into demographics that are then manipulated for political gain. We saw it in the debate when Hillary tried to lump all women into a group and then turn them against Trump, tried to lump all HIspanics into a group and then turn them against Trump, tried to lump all blacks into a group and then turn them against Trump.
“Rosie O’Donnell is one person. Therefore, insulting her is insulting one specific person, not the entire class to which this person belongs.”
He didn’t just insult her, though. Even Trump didn’t claim that in the debate. The best he could do to defend himself was to point out that “some of it” was about Rosie O’Donnell. He did it to Carly Fiorina during the Republican primary, for pete’s sake. Maybe he’s not a sexist and just plays one on television, but you’d have to be delusional to vote for Trump because he’s the candidate that doesn’t use divisive language.
And it appears we will be fighting unscrupulous voting again this year:
So now not only is it prohibited to require identification to vote, but you’re not allowed to require the voter to even claim citizenship, never mind using any tools to verify or purge voter rolls of non citizens. The Democrats have made such an issue of Russia possibly influencing our elections, while actively working to corrupt the process right here at home.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/09/the_election_is_being_stolen_right_before_our_eyes.html#ixzz4LkdAESTR
I also remember reading that some Democrat Governor (maybe McAuliffe), had recently granted incarcerated felons the right to vote, so It has become more than obvious that Democrats have long ago abandoned representing decent, hard working, common sense Americans and now have become the party of uncivilized degenerates, illegal immigrants, foreign nationals, and race baiters.
Here’s a helpful link on felon voting disenfranchisement:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx
McAuliffe issued an order giving rights to felons who have completed their sentence and any parole or probation associated with the sentence. That’s actually the most common process across states.
And here’s the Governor I was referring to re: the “disenfranchisement” of felons:
Bates said the new law will undermine the integrity of elections by allowing people in jail to decide close contest.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-updates-felons-in-jails-to-be-allowed-to-vote-1475094969-htmlstory.html
Why is that progressives never want to hold any one accountable ever for their actions? With the possible exception of law abiding, older white people.
I haven’t really put much thought into felon voting rights. It seems like I can think of felonies that wouldn’t make me particularly leery about letting a person vote, but that might just be an issue of fixing what should and shouldn’t be a felony rather than a reworking of felon voting rights. I actually don’t even know without going and digging which felonies result in county vs. state jail time.
Can you foresee any potential collusion or corruption with the felon vote?
I could imagine some, but since there are already states that allow incarcerated felons to vote with less restrictions than the law in question in California, it seems easier to rely on data than my imagination. Do you have any specific concerns borne out by data coming from Maine or Vermont?
hahahaha, typical stupid progressive. Can’t see around corners. Hey I have an idea, let’s move minorities into government housing, tell them that rich white people don’t pay their fair share, put in regulations that hurt job growth, and open the border and allow more low skilled labor to come into the country. This should be good for a lot of votes, and the data does not indicate any potential problems. It’s a win win.
Let’s not forget how the Clinton’s treat women:
Former White House aide Kathleen Willey Schwicker, who accused President Clinton of groping her in the Oval Office, filed a lawsuit yesterday naming Mr. Clinton, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and other top aides in a conspiracy to violate her privacy rights. The civil suit, filed in U.S. District Court here, said the Clintons and others improperly released personal letters she sent to Mr. Clinton and turned over confidential information about her in a scheme aimed at “destroying her good name, credibility and reputation.” I will not sit by while those in power come down like a ton of bricks on one woman fighting alone. I will go to court to seek redress,” Mrs. Schwicker told reporters outside the District of Columbia federal courthouse. “My children have been threatened, my government files have been released and my life’s innermost secrets have been dragged through the press. “I am only one private citizen and he is the president, but that is why we have courts to protect people like me from abuses from people like him,” she said. Mrs. Schwicker, formerly known as Kathleen Willey, also named the FBI as a defendant in the case, saying the bureau “willfully and intentionally” released information about her “without … any lawful justification.”
Cluster, is that a new story/lawsuit? It sounds like it took place while Clinton was still president. It does show that Hillary was fully aware of and participating in the attacks on women who complained about Bill.
I’d like to see a TV ad with text, quoting things said about Willey, Jones, Flowers, Lewinski, and Broaderick, and a reference to the “bimbo eruptions”.
I see that Hillary’s pet Miss Universe is a sleazy little thing, porn actress and hometown criminal as well as a pain in the donkey while she held the title. However, I think Trump needs to shut up. Can’t someone take away his computer for the next six weeks or so? Parental controls? Mittens?
This was from 2000 and Rush reminded me of it this morning. The Clinton’s are much worse when it comes to treatment of women but you are correct, someone needs to cancel Trump’s twitter account and put a F**ing muzzle on that man.
This is exactly the kind of thing I warned the GOP about in my email campaign back during the early part of the summer. But nooooooo, they had to shut down Cruz and Trump was how they decided to do it.
Not that I think he would be a terrible president. In a lot of ways I think he will be a good president, and in the others, well the standard for Bad President is so high now that no one can ever reach it, so anything will be an improvement. As I have been saying since the nomination, I fear him much less as a president than as a candidate.
The thing is, even when you are right, there are times when it costs you more to prove it than to just let it slide and move on. He knows he didn’t do anything wrong with that Miss Universe, and so do most people, but he has this need to convince everyone. And it just doesn’t matter.
I wonder – you see, Hillary did do well in the 1st debate and polling is showing her with a substantial bump from it. If the election were held today, she’d win…but what are we talking about, now? Machado and other silliness…meanwhile, Hillary can’t draw flies at rallies in FL and Trump is still out there to massive crowds. The Stupid will be switched off – probably over the weekend – and Trump will get right back on track towards attacking Hillary. At least, that is how he’s done it all year, from what I can see.
I think what has people concerned about Trump is his lack of self discipline. Hillary led him down the garden path. She set it all up, with ads and speeches saying he is too emotional, too unbalanced, to be president, and then she set her traps and he walked into every one of them. No, he rushed in, eagerly, and then when the door was still open and he could have left he stayed, stomping around and making an even bigger mess of it all.
When someone bases a lot of her campaign on the concept of “If he feels poked he’ll snap” then when she pokes you the absolute LAST thing you want to do is snap. It’s not like he wasn’t warned. It’s not as if he didn’t have a clue about what was coming.
I don’t know if he can unring that bell. Thankfully, in this case, most Americans have the attention span of gnats, and react to the latest shiny thing, so he might be able to pull this out of the weeds. But he has to be disciplined, he has to stop his meandering and too often incoherent babblings, he has to be focused and tight and above all DISCIPLINED.
If Hillary comes in the way I think she will, next time, unsufferably smug and overconfident and drugged to the wandering eyeballs, I think Trump can throw her off her game. There are just too many things she can’t respond to, she can’t deny or smooth over, and he has to hammer her with them over and over, relentlessly, but calmly and in short, direct, statements. And when she tries her tricks, he has to just point out that this kind of personal smearing, about things that could not possibly have any effect on his performance as president, is exactly what someone has to do when she has no record to run on.
BTW, I have looked at photos from the debate and the bizarre eye makeup that struck me so much when I watched it on TV doesn’t show up as much. I was talking to someone about this and he said he had noticed that she always tilted her head up, so she was looking out from under lowered eyelids, and I said yes, that is what was going on. She had this extremely heavy blocky black eyeliner, and then she kept her eyes half closed most of the time, so there wasn’t any white showing, making it harder to see when that one eye went wandering.
Harry Reid: Republicans ‘Treated President Obama With Unprecedented Disrespect’
I would like to invite Harry over for dinner some night so that he could see what “unprecedented disrespect” is first hand.
Well, there you go again, Lefty, simply redefining words. As disrespect for George W. Bush reached levels so far not even approached by the earned contempt for Barack Obama, we are left with the same old conundrum when evaluating what Harry Reid says: Is he really that stupid, or just lying again?
What on earth are you on about. He didn’t redefine any words. You can disagree with his sentiment, but every word quoted there meant exactly what it does to everybody else. Is it really that hard to disagree with someone without accusing them of a grand leftist conspiracy of some sort? Try it sometime. Just say that you disagree that it was unprecedented because George W. Bush was treated with similar disrespect. Is that so hard?
Something that is unprecedented is not known, experienced, or done before.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/unprecedented
Definition of unprecedented in English
Never done or known before.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/unprecedented
You claim “…every word quoted there meant exactly what it does to everybody else.” Except no, it didn’t. The word “unprecedented” as used by Harry Reid did NOT mean “exactly what it does to everybody else” because it didn’t even mean what the word MEANS. Really. Seriously. Check it out.
Therefore, Harry Reid redefined the word “unprecedented” when he made his comment. Or he presented us with that conundrum I mentioned—-is he really that stupid, or just lying?
BTW, you can take you sad silly straw man back because there is no room for it here. The comment about Harry Reid was—-now read this slowly, so you can understand it—–about Harry Reid. It in no way hinted at, implied, or suggested “..a grand leftist conspiracy of some sort..”
Where do you come up with this stuff?
And no, George W. Bush was NOT “treated with similar disrespect.” He was treated with disrespect on such a grander and more extensive scale there is no comparison. Ranging from lies about his military service to attacks on his wife and daughters, he was treated so despicably that no treatment of Obama has even been in the same ball park. Or even in the same zip code.
Seen any movies, much less movies praised by the Right, about assassinating Obama? I didn’t think so.
I know that to a hard core Liberal, merely asking questions of The One We Have All Been Waiting For qualifies as “disrespect” but most of what has Leftist panties in a twist has been just that. As you, your wife and your granny have all commented on you being born in Kenya, will you please prove you were not? As there are questions about your college career, will you please provide us with records of those years? Yes, THAT kind of “disrespect”. And don’t forget, Obama had complete control of these issues at all times. All he ever had to do, from Day One, was provide those records, just as everyone else running for the office or in the office has been expected to do. I’d say the “disrespect” was from Obama to the American people, when he basically told us to “F off, I don’t have to give you any records”.
No, Harry Reid meant exactly the definition you so needlessly provided. He just doesn’t think that George W. Bush was treated with this level of disrespect.
I’m not even espousing a view one way or the other. I’m just commenting on the pure ridiculousness of the idea that if somebody makes a statement that you disagree with, they must be acting is such bad faith that the only way they could say what they said and be self-consistent is by secretly redefining one of the words they used. That’s absurd.
Harry Reid isn’t stupid. He probably has political motivation to come to that conclusion and/or exaggerate the way Obama’s been treated. Here’s the thing, though. In the same speech he actually laid down his case, with specifics, for why he thought that the way Obama has been treated was unprecedented. They all track perfectly well with the well understood and accepted definition of “unprecedented”. He used the phrase “first president to” a lot of times. That sounds a lot like the definition you provided.
I’d say there is much greater evidence for you trying to redefine the word “redefine” than there is for Harry Reid to have meant anything other than exactly what he said.
“He used the phrase “first president to” a lot of times. That sounds a lot like the definition you provided.” No, it just means he is a consistent liar.
I think it’s sweet that someone wants to defend Harry, but the fact is he is an unrepentant serial liar.
And I am not saying Harry didn’t mean to say what he said. I just said he was wrong. If it will calm you down I can agree that he just used the word incorrectly, as part of his lie. There. Now the poor darling is not being accused of doing something so dastardly as REDEFINING a word.
Better?
Yes, it absolutely makes me feel better that you are just calling him a liar. I don’t even like Harry Reid. I just hate it when people take garden-variety politician behavior and try to turn it into something else. It’s impossible to hold people accountable if everybody tries to escalate every politically-motivated statement into a crime against language or humanity or whatever else, because we end up having conversations like this instead of ones about whether there is actually any merit to the idea that the relationship between congress and the president has changed in a negative way over the past few decades.
“It’s impossible to hold people accountable if everybody tries to escalate every politically-motivated statement into a crime against language or humanity or whatever else,…” just as it is impossible to have a rational discussion if a metaphor for using a word wrongly—saying it had been “redefined”—-is suddenly and dramatically blown up into, to use your own words and perception, “..a crime against language or humanity or whatever else,…”
You’re the drama queen here, getting hysterical over the word “redefined” and dragging it out into a big kerfluffle, complete with a shrill accusation of an accusation “…of a grand leftist conspiracy of some sort..” and so on. Get over it. Get over yourself. I used a word in a way you didn’t like, and you blew it up so far out of proportion it quickly became bizarre. And now you are lecturing us, or me, or some someone else, about “escalating” things. Get a mirror.
I say grand leftist conspiracy because there is a fairly common narrative that part of the evil progressive plan is to redefine words so they can assert orweillian control. If it was not your intent to link Harry Reid’s statement into a larger pattern of word redefinition and it indeed was just a misstatement, then I apologize.
What I said about Harry Reid was NOT a “misstatement”. If you want to be taken seriously here, you have to stop inventing things. I said it was a metaphor for using a word wrongly. I meant what I said. Please to not distort what I say or misquote me. It’s sneaky, it’s dishonest, and it makes me cranky.
Tryvasty
You need to re-read Amazona’s post. She said Reid was either lying or stupid. You well defende that Reid was not lying. Nuff said.
I’m sorry, but do you have any idea at all what a metaphor is?
met·a·phor
ˈ
noun
a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
It looks like you are running out of things about which to quibble. It’s really kind of funny to see you reverting back to trying to argue about definitions at the end of a whole string of posts in which you obsess about definitions. You have very strange priorities.
If that was a metaphor, I’m the King of Scotland.
Here’s a hint: metaphor doesn’t mean lie.
Here in Colorado, popular Representative Mike Coffman is being targeted by ads whining that he stands with Donald Trump. That could backfire if Trump regains his lead and lengthens it a little, and I am hoping Coffman will come back with something along the lines of this is a whole lot better than being in Obama’s back pocket.
It actually won’t matter if Trump regains his lead. It would only matter if he ceased being so disliked. The most likely scenario for Trump catching back up at this point is if Clinton causes her to be disliked even more.
You don’t get to be popular by coming out strongly in support of the lesser evil.
The comment has been all along that in many ways this is a race to the bottom. I don’t agree that Trump can do nothing but wait and hope than Hillary does something to turn off a lot of people. When you have a negative impression because you didn’t correct a falsehood or correct a mistake you made, you can gain ground by making that correction. When you lose ground because your opponent focuses on immaterial personality issues and you didn’t move the discourse to things that matter, you can change the direction of popularity by doing that when you have a chance.
While you seem to agree that Trump is “the lesser evil” in this election, agreeing with him on the issues that made him popular shouldn’t hurt anyone.
I certainly think it is possible for a candidate to do things to right his image, although I am seriously dubious that Trump could ever learn enough self-control to do any of them. I was just pointing out that that’s the sort of thing you’d actually need from Trump for linking people to him to backfire, not just for Trump to inch into the lead in the presidential race while still saddled with a terrible favorability rating. Conventional wisdom about what tactics are dangerous goes out the window in a race where getting ahead in the polls might just look like getting your favorability up to 42 or 43%.
I want to thank Travesty for chiming in. He/She is the perfect example of the ardent progressive most every American has grown to hate. Progressives like Travesty are mostly responsible for our toxic culture, the inner city violence, the current racial divisions, failed policies like Obamacare, and our weak and dangerous foreign policies. And absent any semblance of self awareness, they continue to strut around, regale in their ignorance and mock those who call them out. It’s really an amazing phenomenon.
Man it feels pretty good to be personally responsible for inner city violence. Not that I like inner city violence, but hey it means I have something in my divine portfolio, apparently along with racial divisions and toxic culture. Pretty impressive when the most influential thing I’ve ever done is vote (and not even in a swing state!). Out of curiosity, does this mean you take personal responsibility for the War in Iraq? Or did you not vote for George W. Bush?
By the way, what is an “ardent liberal” besides a label you use to try to shut down conversation? I certainly am enthusiastic when it comes to analysis of political policy, but you’re using the term in such a way that it seems much more like a pejorative than that. I guess really I’m interested in knowing whether you believe there is such a thing as a non-ardent liberal.
There are plenty of “non ardent” or examined liberals and Rusty is a good example. Rusty is definitely a liberal and left of center on most issues, but he also has plenty of self awareness and common sense and knows when to look more objectively at matters when policies begin to have negative impacts. I have a colleague who is also acknowledging the current negative impacts and questioning the status quo. Unfortunately, we are no longer simply discussing the theories or ideas of progressive governance, rather we are actually living through the failures of those policies and that governance and witnessing the negative impacts unfold in front of our eyes. A single vote does not cast you as an ardent progressive. It is your inability to acknowledge the results of what you voted for that firmly puts you in that camp.
Can you list a single specific example of my failure to “acknowledge the results of what you voted for”?
Your failure to address any of my points on the racial strife, the chaos around the world, and the weak economy as a result of 8 years (12 if you count Bush’s last term and when Reid and Pelosi took over in 2007) of progressive policies and governance. Conservatives were told to sit in the back of the bus and to my dismay they did exactly that and allowed Bush to pass TARP I, and then sat on the sidelines while Obama passed an $800 billion dollar infrastructure stimulus, Obamacare, 0% interest rate policies, using the IRS and DOJ as political weapons, and approving of Obama’s weakness abroad which has led to complete chaos. So rather than acknowledging the results of the issues you voted for, you come in here with typical progressive ignorance and arrogance, which is tiresome and deserving of contempt.
Since apparently not responding to a list of really vague accusations in your first post counts as failure to acknowledge the outcome of my votes, does that mean your ignoring of my accusation about your responsibility for the Iraq War also counts as failure to acknowledge the outcome of your votes? Fair’s fair, right?
Those aren’t vague accusations, those are descriptions of the current realities which evidently need to be itemized for you. And I do accept responsibility for the Iraq war, I did support it and still think it was the right thing to do. The failure and chaos surrounding the war is the result of how the war was politicized and how Obama pulled out, purely for political reasons.
“…..does that mean your ignoring of my accusation about your responsibility for the Iraq War also counts as failure to acknowledge the outcome of your votes? “
This is a partial question, which seems to be based on an assumption that your perception of “the Iraq War” is accurate and therefore accepted by Cluster, or me, or any of millions of others. I would say that is a highly inaccurate assessment of the reality.
“Fair’s fair, right?” Not when you get to invent the scenario and define the terms.
“This is a partial question, which seems to be based on an assumption that your perception of “the Iraq War” is accurate and therefore accepted by Cluster, or me, or any of millions of others. I would say that is a highly inaccurate assessment of the reality.”
You seem to have found the point I was trying to make.
“I guess really I’m interested in knowing whether you believe there is such a thing as a non-ardent liberal.”
This appears to be directed at Cluster, but I will chime in. I think most Liberals are non-ardent. I think most Liberals are good, decent, people who genuinely want the best for the country and its people. I also think that they are intellectually too lazy to examine the reality hiding behind the curtain of the fake warm-fuzzy facade that Liberalism paints. I think they are too caught up in Identity Politics and Personality Politics.
Then there is the tier of Liberals where you fit in, those who feel so very very strongly about your Identity Politics that you are driven to attack those on the other side, but because your positions are not based on actual governance but on unexamined hatred of an invented Other all you can do is snarl, snipe and complain.
The upper tier of Liberalism is that of the true ideologue, who knows, understands and loves the actual ideology of Leftist governance. Some may actually believe it will lead to a better world, but I think most even at this level support it because it represents power.
My perception is that of the three levels of Liberalism, as I see them, the non-ardent level is pretty passive and just goes with the flow. This level is perfectly happy accepting what is fed to it, and doesn’t see anything wrong with mouthing utterly stupid comments such as “I think it’s time to have a woman president”. People at this level are more likely to say “I don’t like to talk about politics” and they just vote the way their families have always voted, or the way their neighborhood votes, or the way their emotions tell them is “fair”.
It is the middle tier and the upper tier that engage in overt lying, character assassination, and is deficient in remorse for the misery it has brought to so many people. This is the tier that depends on divide and conquer as its primary tactic, and which uses hatred and violence as tools to create chaos and unrest, which can then be used to further political advancement.
Oh? You think you were making a point?
I voted for George Bush. I supported the Iraq War in its incarnation under Bush. I did not support the dismantlement of that incarnation and the destruction of all that had been accomplished under Obama. Therefore I proudly acknowledge my contribution, small as it was, to the “Iraq War” as it was conceived and fought before Obama took over.
If I were to be proved wrong, I would admit it. If the war had been proved to be a failure I would then have supported an alternative. I would not have doubled down on a mistake. That is the difference between a Conservative and a LIberal/Progressive. The point Cluster has been trying to make is that Progressivism is a series, an unbroken series, of failures, leading inevitably to economic disaster, erosion of liberty, and personal misery. And you people still defend it, and still attack those who acknowledge its historical defects and failures and want another way to govern the nation.
Exactly. And on top of the “unbroken series of failures”, there is no accountability. We elect the same establishment people with the same ideology to fix the problems that they created. Rinse and repeat every four years.
I seem to have done decently well, since you pretty specifically spelled it out for me.
Just as you and Cluster don’t accept my perception of the Iraq War, I don’t accept Cluster’s perception of our culture, racial divisions, Obamacare, foreign policy, or the state of our inner cities. We have seen the same evidence and come to different conclusions. That is an honest process and what political discourse is all about.
I can talk about any particular one of them with you if you’d like, as long as you don’t make it out like I have some character defect or I’m trying to shirk some sort of responsibility just because I am not sold on your analysis.
“I don’t accept Cluster’s perception of our culture, racial divisions, Obamacare, foreign policy, or the state of our inner cities.”
Explain, please. What about Cluster’s description of racial divisions do you find inaccurate? Of our culture? Of the state of our inner cities? Of Obamacare? Of foreign policy?
Well, since it’s the only thing he’s really mentioned in this thread, that they are all terrible and the result of liberal policies, probably, I can pick and choose some of them to make random points if you want (Obamacare is hardly coming up in this election cycle because it’s been around a while and nothing catastrophic has happened, so it’s hard to keep using it as a boogeyman, for instance. See my point in the other thread about how exaggerating the evils of something prevents us from actually fixing real problems). It’d probably be more productive if Cluster picking one that he actually wants to talk about, though, since he’s the one who brought them all up.
Do you honestly think Obamacare is success?
I’d say it is a very mixed bag. It is pretty unarguable that it decreased the number of uninsured in the country, and the rate of increase of health care costs has gone down, although there’s less definitive causation there. But it is still pretty flawed. It also seems like it caused some sets of people to get worse healthcare coverage than they had before the ACA, for instance.
The problem you now have, though, is that it was so demonized that when some time passed and it didn’t cause the downfall of America, opinion of it rapidly improved. The Republican Party bet the farm on ousting Obama on the issue in 2012, and now that that hasn’t worked, it’s stuck around long enough to give lie to the outlandish claims of what problems it was going to cause. And the longer that has happened, the more people have become okay with it:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-obamacare-and-the-supreme-court/
As of last year, it looks like we go to the point where more people approved of the ACA than disapproved of it. So now it feels like we’re kind of stuck with it in limbo unless we end up with a Democrat majority congress, which seems pretty unlikely, because it’d be very hard for a Republican party who argued that the only sane thing to do was entirely repeal Obamacare to now turn around and try to help fix the things that were wrong with it. And they certainly aren’t going to make it their central party platform anymore, because they already fumbled that political football, and now it’s a losing issue.
So we’re all stuck with a kind of crappy ACA when it would have been so easy to make it better if our politicians were actually interested in making things better and not just in scoring political points.
The problem you now have, though, is that it was so demonized that when some time passed and it didn’t cause the downfall of America, opinion of it rapidly improved. The Republican Party bet the farm on ousting Obama on the issue in 2012, and now that that hasn’t worked, it’s stuck around long enough to give lie to the outlandish claims of what problems it was going to cause
Well you see none of this is true, and that’s my problem with progressives, the lying. First of all, the only thing the government did for the uninsured was to give them a piece of paper, that comes with restricted access and high deductibles. Many doctors wont even take Obamacare due to the reimbursement rates, and many health care companies have pulled out of the exchanges altogether. And Obamacare was not even implemented in 2012, and the only demonizing that was going on were skeptics who were telling the truth about the program which we are all now seeing unfold, so what you just said is a lie. I suppose you still think the politicians can make it all better though if we only had single payer right?
“It is pretty unarguable that it decreased the number of uninsured in the country…..”
Well, no. Not at all. The number of uninsured is almost exactly what it was before, but at great cost to the rest of the insured. It’s just that different people are now insured, and uninsured. That doesn’t include worse coverage for more money and very high deductibles. If the real concern was making sure that a small subset of Americans could get health insurance at a reasonable rate if they so desired, that could have and should have been accomplished without destroying an entire industry, taking over one-sixth of the economy, and inflicting so much harm on so many people.
For one thing, the number of the “uninsured” was highly inaccurate. It included students who were covered on school or family plans, “children” up through the age of 25, and young people who could easily afford insurance but whose priorities were for cell phones and tattoos instead of boring old health insurance. The number of people who seriously needed insurance they could not get or afford, due to financial problems or pre-existing conditions, was small enough it could have and should have been addressed through various state initiatives.
The ratio of like/dislike of the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act, which is neither affordable nor about care, has remained pretty steady, at about 42 % liking it and more than 50% not liking it.
Some information on the “success” of Obamacare: emphasis mine
“According to the ObamacareFacts.com, “5.8 million firms in the United States have under 50 employees and will not be penalized for choosing not to provide health coverage to their employees”. Likewise, this source states that “96% of those firms already cover full time workers.”
Yet now these business owners are entering the renewal season for their group health insurance plans for 2015 and are being blindsided with large renewal rate increases. If I do the math, that’s nearly 5.6 million small business owners in the United States who are experiencing an increase in costs. That certainly feels like a penalty to me.
According to Jerry Bonenberger of Babb Insurance in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, “small employer groups with less than 50 full-time employees are experiencing an extraordinary increase in their insurance premiums for 2015. In one case, a professional services firm with 42 full-time employees received an 87% increase in their premiums for next year.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hollymagister/2014/04/30/5-6m-small-businesses-blindsided-by-obamacare/#402c988c45ff
OBAMACARE’S IMPACT ON SMALL BUSINESS WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT
Ben Gitis, Conor Ryan, Sam Batkins
American Action Forum (AAF) research finds that Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulations are reducing small business (20 to 99 workers) pay by at least $22.6 billion annually. In addition, ACA regulations and rising premiums have reduced employment by more than 350,000 jobs nationwide, with five states losing more than 20,000 jobs.
The relationship between rising premiums and lower pay was already well known in academic literature. Our research simply measured how the ACA has affected the relationship between health insurance premiums, small business wages, and employment. While there was no significant relationship between healthcare premiums and employment before the ACA, since 2010 small businesses have slowly started shedding jobs and reducing wages. We found that, on average, employees who work a full year for a business with 50-99 employees lose $935 annually due to ACA regulations, while employees of businesses with 20-49 employees, on average lose $827.50 annually.“
Read more: https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/obamacares-impact-on-small-business-wages-and-employment/#ixzz4LxegzjAX
Exchange plans with the lowest premiums – some as low as $75 a month – also come with deductibles that are thousands of dollars, and employers are shifting more costs to workers because health insurance is becoming more expensive and because they are anticipating federal taxes down the line.
Americans concerned about not being able to afford life-saving treatments should not blame drug companies for high prices, a former health advisor to George W. Bush said Tuesday.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the conservative American Enterprise Institute told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” there’s not really a drug cost problem in the U.S., except for a small subset of specialty drugs that cost a lot but are providing a lot of benefit.
“What we have is an under-insurance problem,” he said. “People are now under-insured, especially for catastrophic drugs if they get a disease like cancer or something like that because of these new [narrow] formulary designs … popularized by the Affordable Care Act.”
Defined on the government health care website, the term formulary, also known as a drug list, is described as a rundown of treatments covered by a prescription plan or another insurance plan offering prescription drug benefits
“If the drug is not on your [Obamacare] formulary list, you have no co-insurance. You’re completely on your own,” said Gottlieb, an advisor to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Bush presidency. The agency, a division of the Health and Human Services Department, administers government health-care programs, including Obamacare. “Since these plans are the predominant structures in Obamacare, they’re starting to migrate into commercial plans” in the workplace, he said.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/24/obamacare-to-blame-for-soaring-drug-costs-aei.html
“The ratio of like/dislike of the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act, which is neither affordable nor about care, has remained pretty steady, at about 42 % liking it and more than 50% not liking it.”
I like how you make an unattributed statement and think it is reasonably a counterpoint to my already sourced statement. Attribution or it is made up.
“The ratio of like/dislike of the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act, which is neither affordable nor about care, has remained pretty steady, at about 42 % liking it and more than 50% not liking it.”
I like how you make an unattributed statement and think it is reasonably a counterpoint to my already sourced statement. Attribution or it is made up.
So glad you focused on the most important aspect of this whole discussion. It reminded me of Spook’s comment on picking fly s**t out of the pepper. But here you go. Sorry I wasn’t more accurate in my memory. The ratio is more to the “dislike” side than I remembered. emphasis mine. I hope you like the link.
According to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of Americans disapprove of the 2010 Affordable Care Act compared with 44 percent who approve of the law. While approval showed a modest increase since the law’s passage, disapproval has increased by 10 percentage points. The divide has also become more pronounced since July, when 48 percent of respondents said they approved of the law and 49 percent said they disapproved.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/survey-shows-surge-in-disapproval-of-obamacare
This might be a good time to point out that your comment (“As of last year, it looks like we go (sic) to the point where more people approved of the ACA than disapproved of it”) had no link or citation. In other words, no, your comment was NOT “sourced”. If lack of attribution means something was “made up” then I guess you got caught, eh?
Double standard? Oh, say it ain’t so !!!
I certainly did provide a link, ableit above rather than below the statement. You might have just missed it.
I will concede looking at a larger number of polls, though, that I happened on one that looked more favorable for the ACA than a poll of polls would bear out, though.
I do still think it is telling that the ACA went from being so bad that repealing it could be an entire platform in congessional races in the last couple of election cycles to being not brought up basically at all now.
The ACA is not being brought up now?????? One of Trump’s central issues is getting rid of the ACA. So that’s another untruth of yours. Travesty it would help if you at least lived in reality some of the time. Just saying.
Cluster, it appears that this blog has popped up on Progressive radar again, calling for the appearance of Tryvasty to flood it with Leftist nonsense. It’s been one screed after another, ranging from the melt-down over my word “redefined” to that silly attack on the Tenth Amendment with its attendant weird distortions of history, and the typical “flea on a hot skillet” tactic so beloved of Lefty foot soldiers.
That is, throw out some crap, get it rebutted, and then just ignore the rebuttal and scurry on to something else. Rinse and repeat. Nitpick, overlook the big issues to focus on the trivial but the real goal is to argue, argue, argue. The idea is not to actually present a theory or a belief and discuss it rationally. No, it is to flood the blog with Leftist revisionist nonsense and if necessary to further that cause, simply lie.
And, of course, insult insult insult. If you can’t disprove a theory, just call it absurd.
Aside from the frantic Harry Reid defense, it seems that the two things the Left are fussing about right now, at least here on the blog, are the toxic effects of Obamacare and the stumbling block the Tenth Amendment would have on Leftist agendas for expansion of the federal government.
This torrent of Leftist claptrap is what happens when you treat a Lefty with respect and try to engage in actual discourse with one. I know that, you know that, but every now and then it can be a worthwhile exercise, if only to illustrate why they end up purged from the blog when the level of insanity, stupidity and vitriol reach their limits. I have engaged Try so far because it is clear that the trolls are lurking, and possibly others who might be convinced of some of his/her lies if they are not shown to be lies.
But you are right—it is tiresome. Though it is kind of interesting to see how someone, or many someones, have gone to the trouble to research American history and assemble a parallel universe using half truths and wild leaps to bizarre conclusions to try to patch together an alternate reality. This tells me they know that a lot of America, probably most of America, has respect for our Constitution even if those people don’t know much about it, so the Left can’t just attack the Constitution, they have to claim it says what it doesn’t say and means what it doesn’t mean. How they must yearn for the next level of their beloved political system, when they can just burn the books and rewrite history as they want it to be, and get rid of those who dissent, instead of having to jump through the hoops of pretending to respect the Constitution and having to come up with such wild versions of the truth.
So true. Progressives must construct the alternate universe because in reality their agenda fails every time. I also liked your comment re: the “interpretation” of the Constitution that so many progressives use as a deflection. I have always thought that the Constitution was pretty straight forward, for example the words “shall not be infringed upon”. I don’t see any qualifiers to that statement like “unless” or “until”, etc. No interpretation needed.
Try, you need to understand that your skittering around like a flea on a hot skillet, rephrasing what we say so you can be outraged at your version and inventing things that were simply not said at all, or skipping words here and there so you can reframe the concept in a way you then attack, all you are doing is proving out points about Liberals.
“Progressives like Travesty are mostly responsible ,,,” OK, one word at a time. “Progressives” is a plural. That is, it refers to more than one Progressive. Therefore, the whine about being accused of being “… personally responsible for inner city violence..” is simply a lie. No one said that. No one said that you, one person, is “personally responsible” for any of the ugly outcomes of Liberal governance, any more than any single German was responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews or any single Russian who voted for Stalin was responsible for the subsequent deaths of something like 20 million dissidents. That is a pathetically stupid and transparent effort to shift the discourse away from what was said, as well as to distance yourself from the fact that you DO contribute to the things Cluster talked about, by supporting the political system that creates the problem.
You have the responsibility to research, know and understand the political SYSTEM that lies behind the stalking horses of all those issues> that suck you into voting for that system. If you don’t bother to understand the system you are supporting, then yes, you DO have some culpability. If you understand it and approve of it then you have even more culpability. But it is utterly stupid, on so many levels. to pretend that voting for a system that creates, advances and promotes the things mentioned by Cluster does not convey any responsibility for them.
When you brag that ” I certainly am enthusiastic when it comes to analysis of political policy..” you seem to be donning the mantle of understanding and approval of those policies, so I don’t understand how or why you think you can vote for the system that creates and promotes them and at the same time have no responsibility for them.
Try, you need to understand that your skittering around like a flea on a hot skillet, rephrasing what we say so you can be outraged at your version and inventing things that were simply not said at all, or skipping words here and there so you can reframe the concept in a way you then attack, all you are doing is proving out points about Liberals.
“Progressives like Travesty are mostly responsible ,,,” OK, one word at a time. “Progressives” is a plural. That is, it refers to more than one Progressive. Therefore, the whine about being accused of being “… personally responsible for inner city violence..” is simply a lie. No one said that. No one said that you, one person, is “personally responsible” for any of the ugly outcomes of Liberal governance, any more than any single German was responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews or any single Russian who voted for Stalin was responsible for the subsequent deaths of something like 20 million dissidents. That is a pathetically stupid and transparent effort to shift the discourse away from what was said, as well as to distance yourself from the fact that you DO contribute to the things Cluster talked about, by supporting the political system that creates the problem.
You have the responsibility to research, know and understand the political SYSTEM that lies behind the stalking horses of all those issues that suck you into voting for that system. If you don’t bother to understand the system you are supporting, then yes, you DO have some culpability. If you understand it and approve of it then you have even more culpability. But it is utterly stupid, on so many levels. to pretend that voting for a system that creates, advances and promotes the things mentioned by Cluster does not convey any responsibility for them.
When you brag that ” I certainly am enthusiastic when it comes to analysis of political policy..” you seem to be donning the mantle of understanding and approval of those policies, so I don’t understand how or why you think you can vote for the system that creates and promotes them and at the same time have no responsibility for them.
If progressives like me are responsible, then the clear implication is that I’m responsible. Which of course I am responsible for my votes. There are even bad things that happen because the people I voted for won. Frequently I am of the opinion that even worse things would have happened if the person I voted for didn’t win and I am just engaging in the same game that the two party system requires of any of us. Certainly Trump vs. Clinton should prove to everyone that sometimes you have to make impossible choices.
Also, there are no progressives like me.
I guess the question that I, at least, always come back to is: What is it about the POLITICAL SYSTEM you find so great you vote to continue it/expand it?
That is, what is it about the ability to expand the size, scope and power of the federal government that you think is better than restricting it, as dictated by the Constitution, and having the states assume the authority to legislate everything that is not included in the delegated duties of the federal government?
Why do you prefer to have the power and authority in the United States concentrated in one place—Washington, D.C.—instead of distributed among the states? What do you see as a benefit of the former and a shortcoming of the latter?
Because—-and it is essential that you understand this—by being a Progressive you ARE promoting the centralization of power and authority, and you ARE supporting the expansion of the size, scope and power of the federal government.
Who said I prefer to have more power vested in the federal government vs. the states? The only argument I can come up with is that society is so interconnected these days that there doesn’t seem to be as much reason to be concerned about the geographic barriers that caused the founders to write the 10th amendment in the first place, but that’s kind of weak.
My question to you is why it is so important that decisions be deferred to the states? I realize that’s what the 10th amendment is all about, but let’s pretend there was an imaginary referendum on dropping it, where you’d be engaging in the actual constitutional process of striking it from the bill of rights. What are the arguments against doing so? Is it just that you live in a red state so you’d get governance more like you personally want, or do you think there’s still something so fundamentally different about living in Texas vs. California that there’s no way you can have consistent rules for both (even though there are a significant number of people today who have actually lived both places)?
“Who said I prefer to have more power vested in the federal government vs. the states? “
YOU say this, every time you vote for a Democrat. If you don’t understand the political philosophy and the political system hiding behind those issues that bait you, that’s not my fault.
Are you actually saying that you think the Founders attached the 10th Amendment to the Bill of Rights due to “geographic barriers” of the time? Seriously?
OK, given the state of what is so laughably called “education” in the United States these days, I can believe that you never studied the formation of this country or the development of the Constitution. Your loss. Before coming here (or to any other “random blog”) to expound on the motives of the Founders, do yourself a favor and actually learn something.
Here is a very very quick summary. The colonies rebelled against a powerful Central Authority, which at that time was the monarchy of England. There were many reasons, but the overriding reason was a philosophic abhorrence of centralized power, and the understanding that the more powerful a Central Authority is, the less freedom the citizens have.
As the Constitution was being created, there were lots of arguments about what it should and should not cover. The biggest area of disagreement lay in how specific it had to be in limiting the powers of the federal government. It was not whether the federal government should be restricted, but how those restrictions should be stated. One faction said that it was obvious that no power not specifically assigned to the new government would be allowed, and the other said no, it is human nature to try to stretch the boundaries of any rule or law, and the document has to have what we would now call belts and suspenders—-that is, on one hand say the federal government has to do these specific things, and on the other it can’t do anything else.
The only reason the Constitution was submitted for ratification in the form it was was because of the binding promise of those who wanted it out there quickly to be ratified so we would have a formal rule of law that they would very quickly come back and shore up the areas where some thought it was too vague or too easily distorted.
It had NOTHING to do with “geographic barriers”. That is profoundly silly, though I don’t doubt it has been fed to you by your Progressive indoctrinators..
The Tenth Amendment is a synopsis of the underlying precepts of the entire new nation and its entire Constitution. It is a distillation of the intent of the Founders.
Oh, dear. So many misunderstandings, so little time.
My question to you is why it is so important that decisions be deferred to the states?
No, not “DEFERRED” to the states. That is where they belong, where they originate and where they should remain. You make it sound as if the federal government has the authority to send these decisions to the states for legislation, when the opposite is true. The federal government has no authority at all in anything that is not one of the 17 delegated powers.
I realize that’s what the 10th amendment is all about, but let’s pretend there was an imaginary referendum on dropping it, where you’d be engaging in the actual constitutional process of striking it from the bill of rights. What are the arguments against doing so?
There is only one real argument—that the Tenth Amendment is the distillation of the entire philosophy and concept upon which the United States was formed. But there are examples of why the Tenth Amendment is so important.
Is it just that you live in a red state so you’d get governance more like you personally want, or do you think there’s still something so fundamentally different about living in Texas vs. California that there’s no way you can have consistent rules for both (even though there are a significant number of people today who have actually lived both places)?”
Wow. What a conglomeration of misunderstood motives. The benefits of state sovereignty are numerous.
When laws are made in a state, by a state, voted on either by representatives elected in that state or by direct votes of the citizens of that state, that legislation is specific to the needs of that state. Agricultural states have different concerns and needs than industrial states, Arizona has border issues and different climate challenges than Vermont, and so on. One size does not fit all.
When legislation takes place within a state, citizens have more access to their representatives than if they have to try to get their concerns heard by their national Senators and Representatives.
It is easier to fire a state legislator than a national Senator or Representative, and easier to replace a governor than a president.
In many states a Senator might be elected by a few urban areas that do not reflect the concerns and problems and issues of most of the rest of the state. This means that he or she is likely to vote according to the demographic most responsible for his or her election, which is not necessarily the way the rest of the state feels. You might remember the recent discussion of several states breaking up and forming new states for that very reason. When the laws are made in the state, there is a better chance of true representation of all the citizens.
Corruption follows power. When power is concentrated in one area, such as Washington DC, this is where the power brokers go, this is where the bribers and manipulators go, and this is where corruption and special interests flourish. Spreading the power dilutes the corruption, as power brokers will have to decide where to concentrate, and if they pick Sacramento and Austin there are 48 other states to balance it out.
State sovereignty means freedom. If I can’t get representatives elected who will enact what I want, or worse will enact things I despise, I have options. I can vote with my feet. I can find a state that is a better match for what matters to me. You mention Texas and California—that is what is going on with these two states, as businesses and families have the freedom to move away from a political and economic system they find oppressive, to a state where they feel they have more freedom and opportunity.
And, above all, state sovereignty is the best guard against the accumulation of power in a Central Authority that is the antithesis of everything that prompted the establishment of this country in the first place. Call it a monarchy, call it a dictatorship, call it Executive Orders from the Oval Office, it is a guarantee of oppression and the erosion of personal freedom. There is no government in history which has had a vast and powerful Central Authority that has not followed this pattern.
………………………………………
And why is there some benefit to having “consistent rules for both places”? or, I assume, for all places. What is the argument for imposing what works in New Hampshire on the people of Utah? What is so important about “consistency”?
“YOU say this, every time you vote for a Democrat. If you don’t understand the political philosophy and the political system hiding behind those issues that bait you, that’s not my fault.”
Are we seriously still on about this? A vote does not equal endorsement of all pieces of a platform. Given two party choices set up to hold diametrically opposing views as often as possible, it should be nearly impossible for a substantial portion of the population to get to vote for a candidate that agrees with them across the board. The fact that you think this whole federalism thing is really important doesn’t mean it is somehow universal Most Important Issue.
Let’s fill in a few blanks in your story.
After the Revolution, what the founders actually crafted were the Articles of Confederation. The Articles got thrown out and replaced by the Constitution specifically because the federal government had too little authority. The 10th Amendment is actually a holdover from verbiage from the Articles, only substantially watered down. Madison seems to have essentially thought it was okay to include it because it didn’t seem to hurt anything, even though it was essentially meaningless. The Supreme Court precedent currently is that the 10th Amendment is a truism and added nothing to the Constitution as otherwise written.
So yeah, it turns out the the Founders weren’t all of one mind about it in the first place. But to draw the distinction between issues of geography and centralized power is silly. The idea of centralized power in colonial America with regard to the Intolerable Acts and so on was centrally defined by the Atlantic Ocean, and substantially less important than self-determination. Insofar as it also matter, their clear view was the “self” in “self-determination” was largely defined by not being controlled by far-away people.
I still am at a loss for what specific problem you think you solve by having people in your state capital versus Washington D.C. be the ones to attempt to address something like poverty in the modern age.
I think it is particularly interesting that you bring up border security as a state issue. I hate everything about Trump’s make the Mexicans pay for a wall platform, but he at least understands that decisions about our border can’t be a state issue. Arizona can’t build a wall to keep out immigrants if they can still walk right in by way of New Mexico.
It certainly doesn’t say anything about building border walls (or nearly anything about physical border security at all). Does that mean you think there just isn’t anybody who is allowed to do anything about border security, or is it just up to border states to try to form some sort of cooperative coalition to do it?
A vote does not equal endorsement of all pieces of a platform. Given two party choices set up to hold diametrically opposing views as often as possible, it should be nearly impossible for a substantial portion of the population to get to vote for a candidate that agrees with them across the board.
You are so right. All those who think they are voting for those pet issues used as bait but who don’t have a clue as to the actual political system cloaked in the emotionally powerful appeals of those issues can claim they have not endorsed “all pieces of (the) platform”. But they HAVE voted to keep that system in power, and to give it more power, whether they are aware of this or not. And that is my point, and I thank you for helping me make it.
The fact that you think this whole federalism thing is really important doesn’t mean it is somehow universal Most Important Issue. Again, thank you for illustrating how deeply embedded this fundamental ignorance of political reality is. In an election based on politics, this IS the issue. On an election based on the warm fuzzies of fantasy that a vote is really for an issue it probably isn’t even on the radar. How can it be if you don’t even know what it is?
it turns out the the Founders weren’t all of one mind about it in the first place. Well, they were all of one mind when it came to stoutly rejecting the possibility of the establishment of another Central Authority in this new country. You can claim all you want that what they really wanted was just a Central Authority that was on this side of the ocean, but that won’t fly, as it contradicts the Federalist Papers, the other contemporaneous writings of the Founders, and the Constitution itself. Your spin might be that The idea of centralized power in colonial America with regard to the Intolerable Acts and so on was centrally defined by the Atlantic Ocean, and substantially less important than self-determination. Insofar as it also matter, their clear view was the “self” in “self-determination” was largely defined by not being controlled by far-away people but that is not supported by fact. If it were, the colonists would not have engaged in a costly and deadly rebellion against England, but merely demanded that the monarchy establish a regional or colonial government under its auspices but focused on this side of the Atlantic. That never came up.
You cannot find a single reference in the writings of any Founder stating an acceptance of the idea of a strong Central Authority. Everything they talked about, wrote, revised, wrote again, and voted on was based on the balance of powers they hoped to achieve with the three branches of government and the restriction of federal powers to the delegated duties stated. Not one of them ever said “It’s not that I mind a Central Authority, it’s just that I want it here instead of there”. Not one.
There was no formal federal government until the Constitution was ratified. The Articles of Confederation were a stopgap measure designed for a loosely organized group of colonies. They were clearly not adequate for the government of a formal and established nation.
I still am at a loss for what specific problem you think you solve by having people in your state capital versus Washington D.C. be the ones to attempt to address something like poverty in the modern age.
Gee, where to begin. First there is the Leftist concept that “poverty” is a problem waiting for a government solution. No government “solution” has ever done a thing about poverty. Look up the War On Poverty, its original funding, its original promises, its eventual cost, and the complete failure of every aspect of it.
Second, please quote the delegated duty of the federal government to indulge in any activity related to “poverty”.
Third, you seem to have some idea of the root causes of “poverty in the modern age”. Otherwise, why would you assume that the federal government would have the ability to “address” it? Please elaborate, both on the causes and on how a government, whether state or federal, can “address” it.
There is no one definition of “poverty” and there is no one way to “address” it. However, in states which have stopped giving money to able bodied people who could work but simply choose not to, these people have for the most part become employed. And employment is the first step in “addressing poverty in modern times”. Or in any time.
However, I do suggest that most of the poverty in the United States in these “modern times” is the direct result of the establishment and nurturing of a Dependent Class. Any state should have the ability to make its own decisions about whether it will follow suit or reserve its support for those who really need it. Any state should have the ability to make the decision to make decisions to lead to a Productive Class not dependent on the state, and to decide the best way to do this for that specific state.
I think it is particularly interesting that you bring up border security as a state issue. I hate everything about Trump’s make the Mexicans pay for a wall platform, but he at least understands that decisions about our border can’t be a state issue. Arizona can’t build a wall to keep out immigrants if they can still walk right in by way of New Mexico.
It certainly doesn’t say anything about building border walls (or nearly anything about physical border security at all). Does that mean you think there just isn’t anybody who is allowed to do anything about border security, or is it just up to border states to try to form some sort of cooperative coalition to do it?
Well, I actually didn’t do that. I merely mentioned that Arizona has border issues that some other state does not. But since you brought it up………….
If border security is properly and consistently identified as a national security issue, which it has become in the past few years, AND IF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT HAS LAWS AND ENFORCES THEM then I could see a justification for it to be assumed by the federal government. I don’t believe I have argued against this. “Border issues” covers a lot more than who crosses the border. It involves who can get free medical care, free education, how drivers licenses are handled, and so on.
But if border control is left up to the states, it is absolutely insane to fret that any border state is going to be lax. All you need to do is look at the problems, legal and cultural and financial, these states are burdened with to see how badly they want to be able to handle the problem on their own.
I can’t imagine why you “hate” the idea of a wall, or of Mexico paying for it. And get this straight. I don’t know if your statement (“Make the Mexicans pay for it) is intentional or simply a misstatement, but Trump has talked about having the government of Mexico pay for it. Not the poor people who are, we are always told, “just looking for a better life” but the government that benefits so much from illegal immigration into the United States. Money from the United States now accounts for the second largest aspect of the Mexican economy.
First, the terminology is misleading. It would never be a “wall”, it would be a fence. I’m not sure why you are offended at the idea of Mexico paying for it, or paying for part of it. Trump sometimes talks in shorthand, and doesn’t get into details. No doubt because he has a better grasp of the limited attention span and comprehension ability of the average American vote than I do. “Pay for it” could mean writing a check, but it could mean having the fence paid for at least in part through limiting the millions and millions of dollars that now flow out of the United States every week to Mexico from (often) illegal workers.
I recently posted a link to a fascinating video about border problems. Here it is again.
KUSI is NOT Fox News. It’s a local, middle of the road station in San Diego, CA.
http://www.kusi.com/clip/12667034/special-report-border-crisis-reality-check
While a modern (and increasingly Progressive) “… Supreme Court precedent currently is that the 10th Amendment is a truism and added nothing to the Constitution as otherwise written…” (note the lack or attribution—is this made up?) the man known for centuries as “The Father of the Constitution” did not agree.
The federal Constitution was eventually approved by the states and went into effect in 1789. The absence of a Bill of Rights was the loudest and most effective criticism of it. Although he believed that individual rights were fully protected by the Constitution as it stood, Madison recognized that drafting a Bill of Rights was politically imperative. His “Notes for a Speech in Congress,” June 8, 1789, highlights the arguments he used as a leader in the First Federal Congress to push 12 amendments to the Constitution through Congress in its first year. Ten of these amendments were ratified by the states and have been enshrined as the Bill of Rights.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/james-madison-papers/articles-and-essays/james-madison-and-the-federal-constitutional-convention-of-1787/
I have noticed that in the original thread up top, you’ve ceased responding, only to come down here and start over on your whole absurd system vs. issues thing. It’s fun and all, but I’m not really going to take you seriously on it until you answer whether I can be a conservative Marxist governor. But hey, we’ve all got our pet issues.
“You can claim all you want that what they really wanted was just a Central Authority that was on this side of the ocean, but that won’t fly, as it contradicts the Federalist Papers, the other contemporaneous writings of the Founders, and the Constitution itself.”
Again, history bears me out. Constitution was written specifically because the country didn’t have enough central authority. You can try to ignore the decade plus under the Articles of Confederation all you want, but they happened.
Clearly the founders were looking for a balance still, but the idea that the Constitution is principally concerned with dismantling a central authority is ridiculous, it was about exactly the opposite of that.
“If it were, the colonists would not have engaged in a costly and deadly rebellion against England, but merely demanded that the monarchy establish a regional or colonial government under its auspices but focused on this side of the Atlantic. That never came up.”
They did suggest the opposite though, that the colonies should be allowed to send representatives to parliament. Specifically people being sent from the colonies. So they could have people from near them make decisions about them.
“You cannot find a single reference in the writings of any Founder stating an acceptance of the idea of a strong Central Authority. Everything they talked about, wrote, revised, wrote again, and voted on was based on the balance of powers they hoped to achieve with the three branches of government and the restriction of federal powers to the delegated duties stated. Not one of them ever said “It’s not that I mind a Central Authority, it’s just that I want it here instead of there”. Not one.”
James Madison explicitly suggested letting congress directly invalidate state laws. In the Virginia Plan. Which was the direct progenitor of the the Constitution.
“6. Resolved. that the national Legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in Congress by the confederation — and moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent: or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation. to negative all laws passed by the several States contravening, in the opinion of the national Legislature, the articles of union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the union.”
“No government “solution” has ever done a thing about poverty.”
This one’s easy. Antitrust laws. Even Reagan liked those, and wage collusion artificially deflates wages and increases poverty.
“All you need to do is look at the problems, legal and cultural and financial, these states are burdened with to see how badly they want to be able to handle the problem on their own.”
I think you’d find that California has a border, and would likely address the issue in a much different way from Arizona. Or even Texas, which has the longest stretch of border and is also not that far away from having a Hispanic plurality.
George W. Bush did well with the Hispanic vote in his presidential races specifically because he was a governor in Texas and already had a track record of being relatively sympathetic to immigrants, even illegal immigrants.
“Trump sometimes talks in shorthand, and doesn’t get into details.”
So you’ll just make some up?
“First, the terminology is misleading. It would never be a “wall”, it would be a fence.”
Not to quibble over words here, but he’s said concrete and various heights, with about 35 feet being the low end. If you want to call that a fence, fine, but we’re certainly not talking about chain link.
“(note the lack or attribution—is this made up?)”
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/282/716/
“6. The Tenth Amendment added nothing to the Constitution as originally ratified, and lends no support to the contention that the people did not delegate this power to Congress in matters affecting their own personal liberty. P. 282 U. S. 733.”
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/312/100/case.html
“The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment, or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”
See earlier in the post for why trying to cite Madison for the 10th Amendment was a terrible idea. But the fact that we got a Constitution with less federal authority than the Father of the Constitution wanted actually illustrates the true central theme of the Constitution: governance is about compromise and recognizing one’s fallibility.
“The ACA is not being brought up now?????? One of Trump’s central issues is getting rid of the ACA. So that’s another untruth of yours. Travesty it would help if you at least lived in reality some of the time. Just saying.”
You’d think if it were a central issue, I’d have heard him bring it up in the debate. Or be able to find a citation of him talking about it in any meaningful since since the middle of September (although on that bit I admit to not listening to Trump enough to know if he consistently talks about it at rallies at all).
It is still part of the platform, but it certainly isn’t core to the platform like it was 4 years ago.
“And, of course, insult insult insult.”
Did you really just say that in the middle of a post where you accused me of having a meltdown, called me a leftist foot soldier, accusing me of throwing up crap, used me as an example of what “the Left is fussing about”, etc, etc, all in response to another comment where the entire content was more or less that I should try living in reality? All because I specifically called individual ideas of yours absurd?
Just trying to follow here.
Well, let’s take a look at what is going on here. We can start with the “I Can Dish It Out But I Can’t Take It” whine. Clearly you see being identified as a Leftist foot soldier an insult. I can see why, but then I am not volunteering to go onto a conservative blog to carry the flag for the Left. If I were, I’d be embarrassed as well at being identified as such. I am a Conservative foot soldier and proud of it, but then I fight for a movement I am proud of. Thanks for the insight.
You are also being indignant at a reference to you “fussing”? Oh me oh my what a fragile flower you are. You clearly don’t belong in the trenches of political discourse, darling, if that has you upset.
You see a comment on your overreactions as being a “meltdown” as an insult? See fragile flower comment, above. I never said you are “throwing UP crap”. That would be gross. I identify the ideas you present as crap, but hey, if you want to transfer that to yourself so you can be outraged, go for it. Conflating a negative comment about an idea or a position with a negative comment about a person is also a hallmark of Leftist agitprop. Boy, you are hitting most of the bullet points of the Leftist version of political discourse.
And by the way, here we go again, with that whole responding-to-something-that-was-not-said thing. It seems to be a pattern with you. You might be complaining about something Cluster said about your relationship with reality, but seriously, if you are really trying to follow you’re doing a really really bad job.
I’ll tell you what I am getting from your post.
1. You are very unhappy at having every single one of your arguments absolutely utterly destroyed. You were very proud of what you and your team came up with and thought it was devastating and would shut me down, and you failed miserably in every way on every topic. So you are now trying to find, or typical of you, invent, something to explain your anger. The thing is, everything you came up with is either invented or so mild you should be embarrassed to whine about it.
2. You are trying to throw up a lot of chaff (“throw up” as in toss around, not as in vomit) to distract from the fact that you have been unable to come back with anything. Anything. You can’t or won’t defend your Leftist political system, either because you know it is anathema to most Americans when accurately described or because you really don’t know, still depending on those issues to describe where you stand. In any case, you haven’t described it, defined it, or defended it. I have done all of the above regarding Conservatism, and all you can do is try to change the subject. Which, as I have pointed out, is what Lefties do.
3. Having exhausted your archive of falsehoods and misinformation and bizarre misinterpretation on the Constitution and James Madison, you are back to carrying on about petty details such as how much of Trump’s campaign is based on the ACA. And bleating about me calling Reid’s statement a redefinition of a term. Boy, that really got under your skin, didn’t it? Just let it go. Take a deep cleansing breath and just let it go. You are not doing yourself any favors by trying so frantically, so desperately, to make a big deal out of it. You are wrong and now you are kind of weird about it. Let it go.
4. You have conclusively proved that all you can do, either as an individual or as part of a Leftist hit squad, is snipe at the ideas of other people, without actually having any of your own. This is well known to Conservatives, but it is always interesting to see one of you pop up to remind us.
I responded to the screed you posted, above, at the bottom of the thread, because I wanted to be able to have my seven responses all in a line, and it was easier to do it that way. Yes, I believe it took me seven, because there was so much crap in what you said, and I wasn’t inclined to let any of it just lie there and stink up the place. I notice that you are just ignoring what I said. I understand why—-your comments were dismembered piece by piece and shown to be the nonsense they are, and if I had posted such drivel I would ignore the responses, too. But we have noticed that when you get caught out with such utter wrongheadedness, you just change the subject. In this case, go back to whingeing about what I said about poor Harry Reid. Great priorities there, Try.
Spook and I have referred to the Rule of Holes. Obviously it is time for a review.
I have been using, with great success, the Second Rule of Holes—-“When your opponent is in a hole, hand him or her a shovel”. Thanks for playing.
Now you need to pay attention to the First Rule—“When you are in a hole, stop digging”. You’re embarrassing yourself, as well as being really really annoying.
There is literally no defense to your hypocrisy. Enjoy being vile to people. I don’t have time to spend on people who can spend entire longwinded posts literally contributing nothing besides personal attacks and still try to pretend to have the moral high ground. I’m pretty sure your fellow conservative posters here can’t even stand you.
See ya.
Sweetie, I have covered more ground in my posts than you even knew existed. I have covered authentic political philosophy, which has flown right over your head. I have covered the political philosophy behind the writing of the Constitution and the political philosophy of its main contributor, James Madison, which you didn’t like because it corrected your bizarre versions of those topics. Those so-called “personal attacks” that have you so fretful are, one, very mild, and two, very scant. Of course, that is all you can focus on. Being an issues person and all, words about thoughts and ideas and facts will always take a back seat to something with an emotional content. No surprise there. Anyone who considers “fussing” a personal attack has proved my point. Proved two points, in fact, as the act of complaining about fussing pretty much illustrates fussiness.
If this meant being “long winded” that is just because you seem to have a really big supply of absurdities and lies, and I chose to address and, to finally use one of your words accurately, “dismantle” them. I can understand why this is distressing to you. I think you are probably used to being the smartest person in the room, and it never occurred to you that this was probably because the other people in the room were Liberals. Sorry about the reality check, but out in the real world, away from Progressive agitprop, you will find lots of people like me, who actually think about the political systems vying for control in this country, understand them and analyze them and research their histories of successes and failures, and make rational decisions based on what they learn. This will always be an alien concept to you, and you seem to be the kind of person who responds to discomfort by striking out at whoever made you uncomfortable instead of looking inside to see why these facts made you uneasy. That’s fine. You get to be you. I have no interest in changing you.
You just don’t get to march in here and unload all the nonsense that forms the thin shell of what you think is a political position and have it go unchallenged. As I shall so elegantly put it, if you are going to deposit a load of pseudo-political excrement here, I am not inclined to just let it lie there and stink up the place. I’m a rancher who has had up to 130 horses and plenty of other livestock. I not only know how to recognize different kinds of shit, I know how to shovel it.
There is another reason I address the kinds of things you and your fellow travelers write. (As an aside, in all the years I have used that term to describe you Libs, not one of you has picked up on it or its significance.) That is, dealing with the kinds of arguments you people bring to the blog, and particularly you as you seem a little smarter than most of the rest, makes me think. It makes me look at what I believe and what I know, evaluate it, organize it, and add to it if possible. That is a good exercise for me. And sometimes I even learn something. In this thread, for example, I learned about the SCOTUS opinions on the 10th Amendment, and in the juxtaposition of those quotes with Madison’s proposal to allow the federal government to sometimes override state decisions and analyzing the wording of that proposal, and the Amendment itself, I realized that the Court was wrong, and that the Amendment DOES add to the content of the core Constitution. I am sure scholars realized that right away, but because I hadn’t known that the Court had weighed in on the Amendment (and now I have to look at the context in which those comments were made, because I can’t imagine why anyone would attack the Amendment, other than its providing that speed bump I mentioned on the Progressive path to tyranny) when I came to that realization on my own it was gratifying. Thank you for leading me to that.
Anyway, after depositing yet another snarl, you seem to be bidding adieu. (“See ya.”) To which I can only say, buh-by.
I see you have shifted to complaining about the sequence or placement of posts. Sure, why not? Because I intend to respond to what you have said in your screed, I AM moving down to a new group of posts, to make it easier.
I have noticed that in the original thread up top, you’ve ceased responding, only to come down here and start over on your whole absurd system vs. issues thing. It’s fun and all, but I’m not really going to take you seriously on it until you answer whether I can be a conservative Marxist governor. But hey, we’ve all got our pet issues.
I did answer your question on the governor. You just either didn’t like my answer or you didn’t understand it. You are the one who can’t seem to sort out the basic concept of division of authority, and you are the one stuck in a simplistic mindset in which politics is really nothing more than picking and choosing among which issues make you feel better. The entire concept of political systems, each with its own ideology, seems to elude you. That’s OK—it IS more demanding, though I do wonder why you are so deeply invested in clinging to the shallow and superficial definition of politics that seems to be your comfort zone. I’m sure it soothes you to just dismiss something you can’t grasp as “absurd”.
“You can claim all you want that what they really wanted was just a Central Authority that was on this side of the ocean, but that won’t fly, as it contradicts the Federalist Papers, the other contemporaneous writings of the Founders, and the Constitution itself.”
Again, history bears me out. Constitution was written specifically because the country didn’t have enough central authority. You can try to ignore the decade plus under the Articles of Confederation all you want, but they happened.
No, history does NOT bear you out. The Constitution was written specifically because we finally had a new country and it needed a Constitution. Your shrill insistence that because, on a spectrum of authority, the Constitution granted slightly more authority to a newly formed federal government than the Articles had to a loosely organized group of independent states does not in any way mean the Founders wanted a Central Authority that was extremely strong and which could be expanded to accommodate additional authority other than that which the Constitution granted. Once again you are indulging in that favorite pastime of yours, imagining that I said something I never said. I am not “ignoring the decade plus under the Articles of Confederation”. That was a “decade plus” during which there was no United States of America as a formal entity in need of a Constitution. The war didn’t even end until 1783, and until then the identity of the governance of the country was still in question. The Constitution was ratified in 1787 so what’s this babble about “a decade plus”? One set of rules for a loosely organized group of states, another for a formally organized and acknowledged nation. That’s really not so hard to understand. Reading the Federalist Papers would have helped you understand the sentiments of the Founders, but then it is so much easier to just regurgitate Leftist spin.
Clearly the founders were looking for a balance still, but the idea that the Constitution is principally concerned with dismantling a central authority is ridiculous, it was about exactly the opposite of that.
There you go again, inventing something I never said so you can sneer at it. At no time did I ever say, hint, or imply that “…the Constitution is principally concerned with dismantling a central authority..” That’s just dumb. And a lie. First, you admit that the Articles did not constitute a very strong central authority in the first place, so there would have been nothing to “dismantle”, and besides, the term simply doesn’t apply to anything I said or anything that happened. There was no “dismantling”. There was no reference to anything being “dismantled”. You’re the one trying so hard to drag the Articles of Confederation into this, and making comparisons. I didn’t bring them up. I simply started with the construction of the Constitution itself, and its guiding principles.
This discussion would go much more smoothly if you could restrict your responses to what I actually say, and not to the voices in your head.
When the time came to finally craft a ruling document to govern a newly formed nation, the agreement among the Founders was that a central authority which was not firmly restrained as to size, scope and power could and probably would start to expand and take on more and more power. They were adamant that they had to construct a governing document designed to keep that from happening. And you cannot find a single thing to argue with that—aside from those voices, of course.
Let’s look at what Madison said about the Constitution they were in the process of writing. It is important to note that he wrote this while the document was being written, because this shows the intent behind the words. ““The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.” That is a pretty solid outline of the philosophy that guided him as he worked on writing the Constitution.
Let’s go over that for a moment. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” That is very specific. He is describing a document he is helping draft, explaining that a certain limited number of powers will be granted to the federal government, and they will be FEW. More to the point, they will be DEFINED. And sure enough, there are only 17, which I think qualifies as a “few”, and they are pretty well “defined”. But Madison didn’t stop there. He went on to explain that “Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” Do we really need to get into definitions of “numerous” or “indefinite”?
He even went into a little more detail on those “numerous” and “indefinite” powers reserved to the several States. Note the word “reserved”. These powers are not allowed to the federal government. They are RESERVED to the states. And look at what they include: “…all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
Now let’s go back to your pathetic quibble about the phrase you seem to think is cute, a “conservative Marxist governor”. If you define “Conservative” the way most of us do when discussing 21st Century American Conservatism—that is, governing the nation according to its Constitution—-even the Father of the Constitution, the man most responsible for its themes, its content and its wording, states that it is completely consistent with that Constitution to do pretty much anything, at the state level, that includes “…all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”
“If it were, the colonists would not have engaged in a costly and deadly rebellion against England, but merely demanded that the monarchy establish a regional or colonial government under its auspices but focused on this side of the Atlantic. That never came up.”
They did suggest the opposite though, that the colonies should be allowed to send representatives to parliament. Specifically people being sent from the colonies. So they could have people from near them make decisions about them.
Now you are changing your story, from wanting a strong authoritative government on this side of the Atlantic to just being able to send representatives to the other side of the Atlantic, weakly asserting that they just wanted “..people from near them make decisions about them..” In fact, “…in September 1774 representatives of the other colonies convened the First Continental Congress in order to respond to the crisis. The Congress rejected a “Plan of Union” to establish an American parliament that could approve or disapprove of the acts of the British parliament.” Since attribution is so important to you, at least when it comes to something I have said, you can look this up in Wikipedia—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_W
Sure looks like a rejection of the monarchy, doesn’t it? That would certainly imply a rejection of any government by a powerful Central Authority, especially in context with the writings of the era and the subsequent emphasis on self-government.. Maybe you could start to educate yourself on that determination of the colonists. Try this: http://www.americanheritage.org/index.php/en-us/programs/america-s-heritage-an-experiment-in-self-government
“You cannot find a single reference in the writings of any Founder stating an acceptance of the idea of a strong Central Authority. Everything they talked about, wrote, revised, wrote again, and voted on was based on the balance of powers they hoped to achieve with the three branches of government and the restriction of federal powers to the delegated duties stated. Not one of them ever said “It’s not that I mind a Central Authority, it’s just that I want it here instead of there”. Not one.”
James Madison explicitly suggested letting congress directly invalidate state laws. In the Virginia Plan. Which was the direct progenitor of the the Constitution.
“6. Resolved. that the national Legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the legislative rights vested in Congress by the confederation — and moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent: or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation. to negative all laws passed by the several States contravening, in the opinion of the national Legislature, the articles of union, or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the union.”
“Proposed” in early stages of working out ideas. If you bother to actually read and analyze the proposal, it was pretty specific in its identification of the few instances in which the federal government might be allowed to intervene, and they were only when state legislation threatened the unity or “harmony” of the nation as a whole, or were“contravening ….the articles of the Union”. In no way did it infer a proposal that the federal government ought to be able to just step in and override any decision made in any state. That is, even this proposal imposed some strict limitations on federal power and authority.
Contrary to the SCOTUS rulings you find so compelling, the Tenth Amendment DOES add to the meaning of the Constitution, because its wording addressed the concern Madison originally tried to deal with in his proposal—that is, making sure that the states could not “contravene…..the articles of the Union” “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It was also proposed that the national government would consist of two branches. Just as in any construction of an important and complex document, lots of things were tossed out for discussion. Several were clearly discarded. That’s the way the process works.
“No government “solution” has ever done a thing about poverty.”
This one’s easy. Antitrust laws. Even Reagan liked those, and wage collusion artificially deflates wages and increases poverty.
So is your argument that antitrust laws got rid of poverty? Or is it that poverty is the result of “deflated wages”? Sorry, but while antitrust laws may have addressed one element of the economy that may have affected some people, it is way too big a stretch to blame “poverty” on “wage collusion”. That answer may have been “easy” but it is also woefully inadequate. And be honest here, the Left has no other ideas other than redistribution of OPM, which you have been doing for decades while the problem gets worse. Nice try, though.
“All you need to do is look at the problems, legal and cultural and financial, these states are burdened with to see how badly they want to be able to handle the problem on their own.”
I think you’d find that California has a border, and would likely address the issue in a much different way from Arizona. Or even Texas, which has the longest stretch of border and is also not that far away from having a Hispanic plurality.
You seem to be skipping over the part where I said that if we consider border control a matter of national security, which I think is becoming more and more obvious, then it clearly falls under federal authority. That would cover illegal entry into the country, deportations, and general law enforcement of immigration laws, in every state. AS I SAID, “border issues” cover a lot more than people crossing illegally. But you seem to be saying that you think some states, such as California and Texas, might just allow illegal crossings, for whatever reasons, if immigration control were to be left up to the states. So what’s your point? That the feds should be able to tell states what to do, and what their laws are? You seem to be quibbling just for the sake of quibbling here, but go for it—-at what point should federal laws override state legislation?
“Trump sometimes talks in shorthand, and doesn’t get into details.”
So you’ll just make some up?
Meow. By the way, I didn’t elaborate on what I thought Trump’s details might be. I mentioned some ideas of my own, but that is not “making up” something for him. You really get off on being nasty, don’t you?
“First, the terminology is misleading. It would never be a “wall”, it would be a fence.”
Not to quibble over words here, but he’s said concrete and various heights, with about 35 feet being the low end. If you want to call that a fence, fine, but we’re certainly not talking about chain link.
I’m not quoting Trump when I say a fence instead of a wall. He says wall, others say fence. I posted a link that covers this. http://www.kusi.com/clip/12667034/special-report-border-crisis-reality-check
I’m not calling his wall a fence, and he’s not calling my fence a wall. Once again, please stop pretending to respond to something I have said when I never said it.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/282/716/
“6. The Tenth Amendment added nothing to the Constitution as originally ratified, and lends no support to the contention that the people did not delegate this power to Congress in matters affecting their own personal liberty. P. 282 U. S. 733.”
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/312/100/case.html
“The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment, or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”
Yet I have addressed this earlier, in pointing out that the Tenth Amendment DOES add something “to the Constitution as originally ratified”, which is the specific statement that states may not pass any laws which contradict the Constitution. This is the concern that Madison originally sought to address in that proposal of his that made such an impression on you, because you didn’t understand it.
See earlier in the post for why trying to cite Madison for the 10th Amendment was a terrible idea. But the fact that we got a Constitution with less federal authority than the Father of the Constitution wanted actually illustrates the true central theme of the Constitution: governance is about compromise and recognizing one’s fallibility.
Well, trying to cite Madison for the 10th Amendment was not only NOT a “terrible idea”, it was quite relevant. And I didn’t “try” to cite Madison, I actually DID cite Madison. Using his own words. Who, by the way, was quite insistent on a Bill of Rights, which, by the way, included the Tenth Amendment.
We actually got a Constitution that Madison liked. His ideas evolved over the time the discussions were held, arguments were presented, and points were made. In fact, he argued against a strong central authority when he wrote in the Federalist Papers, explaining the new Constitution and drumming up support for it: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Or are you going to argue that he really wanted tyranny?
I don’t know why you have such a bee in your bonnet about the Tenth Amendment, other than the fact that it is kind of a speed bump for those who argue for indefinite expansion of federal size, scope and/or power.
We’ve had quite a lot of words from Tryvasty, but what have they really said?
There is a refusal to discuss politics on a truly political level, and a snotty dismissal of the concept as nothing more than my “absurd system vs. issues thing”. This, by the way, is what Libs, at least Libs on this blog, do. They don’t want to admit their preference for centralizing power and making it infinitely expandable, because that (very rightly) makes a lot of people nervous. The entire Leftist construct depends on an ignorant populace fooled into thinking that elections are about people, and issues, and not about the best blueprint for governing the country, for the simple reason that once people start examining the reality, the history and the implications of the two primary systems of government they run from Leftism. At least the smart ones do.
This is why Leftists employ smoke and mirrors, diversions and distractions, and constantly wave around all sorts of shiny things like their issues and Personality Politics and demographic conflicts they have developed and promoted. Anything, basically, to cover up or disguise or distract from the ugly reality of true Leftist governance.
This is why Leftism in this country, at this time, depends on the pretense that it does not want to overthrow the Constitution, or even undermine it. Why no, they declaim with Big Eyes, we just looove the Constitution. We just think it says something different than what the words actually mean. But get into an actual discussion, where the Lefty claims and quotes are challenged, and the true antipathy toward our rule of law becomes clear.
There was a challenge about why state sovereignty is better. It was met with many examples. Response? Crickets.
We still haven’t heard a case made for a stronger, bigger, more powerful federal government, taking on more and more authority. We know this is the goal, but Tryvasty hasn’t tried to pull that one off yet.
All we’ve gotten is a lot of indignant, meaningless noise, some lies, and a lot of insults. In other words, we’ve been visited by a Progressive.
Here is an example of Leftist “discourse”. Tryvasty fell in love with the idea that I could be trapped by having to address an imaginary situation in which a person presumably ran for the office of governor of a state as a conservative, or believer in Constitutional governance (this was predictably vague) and then acted, in his office as governor, in accordance with Liberal agendas—could I say that this person is a (tee hee) “conservative Marxist”? Oh, yes, this silly contrivance quite impressed Tryvasty.
But just look at the concept of governance telegraphed by Try: Is there such a thing as a conservative governor? Can I be one while I set the marginal state income tax rate on income over $200,000 a year to 99% and then give all that money to poor people?
In the world of the Left, the executive of a nation has the power to “set the….tax rate” as well as to unilaterally decide what to do with the money. It is so ingrained, this belief in power at the top, that it shines through every time one of them drops the pretense of belief in Constitutional governance.
Man, I can’t believe I missed out on the last day of this thread. What a great look into the distorted way Leftists view the Constitution.
Tryvasty obviously has a good basic intelligence. His/her writing is crisp and precise, and s/he can do decent research. It is always sad to see an intellect like this wasted on Leftist crapola. But on the other hand, an intellect like this carries with it the obligation to use it wisely, and when people like this waste their talents on regurgitating leftover Leftist agitprop they have no one to blame but themselves.
What I see in the kind of posts we have been seeing from Try is no interest in learning, no interest in expanding a field of knowledge. I think it comes down, at least with a lot of people, to cowardice. It’s as if it is less threatening to continue to try to justify what is just an emotion-based belief system than it is to face the reality that one has been bamboozled, led astray, fooled, deceived, or just plain made a big old mistake. It’s an ego protection strategy, perhaps subconscious but evident to observers.
There are some people like this, people whose comfort zones depend on being reassured that they made the right choices rather than exposing themselves to the reality that they didn’t. And then there are the operatives, who may or may not have a true ideological basis for what they say but are primarily engaged in what amounts to sabotage of sites that challenge the narrative of the Left.
Tryvasty kind of seems like the latter, but that’s just a hunch based on his/her history here, and the nature and content and scope of the posts.
In any case, this was a very good effort to present falsehoods and nonsense as fact and truth—a better effort than we usually see. Try should get a nice red star for his/her efforts, though they failed. The scattershot nature of the various approaches and attacks, clearly designed to overwhelm if not confuse, were a challenge, and I sometimes had the feeling it was me on one side and a team on the other, but it helped to have reality on my side.
The part that got me was the “Conservative Marxist Governor.” I wonder if that’s similar to a God-fearing devil worshiper.
Yeah, Spook, that was pretty funny. The sad thing is, it illustrated in living color the ignorance of the Left, or at least of this little Lefty activist, regarding political systems.
And it was supposed to be clever, and a trap. Epic fail on three counts.
Can you imagine how different the world would be if (a) we had a media that still had some intellectual curiosity and interest in the truth rather than the furtherance of an ideological agenda; and (b) we had an educational system that put the preparation of our youth for a productive life ahead of the furtherance of an ideological agenda? I hope there is a way that society can move in that direction without the intervention of a mass upheaval, but I grow less optimistic by the day.
I think the movement away from public schools to home schooling and/or vouchers that allow parents to choose schools that actually educate instead of indoctrinate will educate at least some of our young people. As for the media, I simply don’t know.
In a nation where more than half of the people self-identify as conservative, one would think that a conservative buyer would pick up one of the alphabet network stations when they routinely fall apart financially and run it not as a “conservative” station per se but just as one that reflects old-style journalistic values. It would seem that this would garner a really large percentage of viewers, leaving the other two stations to split the die-hard “gotta see the Leftist spin” viewers.
Let me point out something that slipped past in the barrage of verbiage from Tryvasty. S/he as much as admitted that Hillary is a bad choice.
Here it is: TRYVASTY October 2, 2016 / 2:55 am
The most likely scenario for Trump catching back up at this point is if Clinton causes her to be disliked even more.
You don’t get to be popular by coming out strongly in support of the lesser evil.
I don’t see admiration for Hillary in these comments. I guess that is some progress.
BTW, I finally saw a Hillary sign. My first one.
I brought up a Marxist governor to illustrate how woefully incompetent Amazona’s explanation of what a conservative is. Let me quote for you:
“This is the definition of POLITICAL conservatism: It is the conviction that the federal government must be severely restricted as to size, scope and power, with most authority left to the states, or to the people.”
That’s as specific an answer as I got, until it turned out that the idea that there would be such a thing as a Marxist conservative governor, which fits perfectly with Amazona’s proposed definition, but is of course completely ridiculous. But the reason the definition was so simplistic is because it was in the context of this nonsense about political systems versus issues. It turns out that all talking about an “issue” means is getting specific, which meant that Amazona had to do as little of that as possible to try to keep consistent with the basic claim to intellectual superiority. Like I said at the top, it was always an exercise in pure self-gratification.
“I don’t see admiration for Hillary in these comments. I guess that is some progress.”
If you ever spent a minute of your life ever talking to people rather than building strawmen, you’d have figured out that that’s nothing remotely like progress, because there’s never been in a time in my life where I’ve viewed Hillary Clinton as a good candidate for President.
If you’re so happy being an issues focused Liberal, then why do you care what I think, or what other Conservatives think? You love your bubble, where you never have to think, and all you have to do is FEEL. So stay there. You love your echo chamber, where your lies and silly imaginary constructs are never challenged. So stay there. You love your safe place, where pointing out where you are wrong equals being vile. So stay there.
We won’t miss you. Honest.
Tryvasty
I think the reason Amazona ignores your point about a Marxist Conservative is because those are opposing political (sorry, I meant POLITICAL) philosophies, not a philosophy with an issue wrapped around it as you posit.
Marxism specifically defines the State’s involvement in things – like your proposed 99% tax – and Conservatism specifically minimizes State involvement.
It is as if she described a POLITICAL philosophy to be a cat and you said “What about a hybrid cat/litter box?” There really is no discussion to be had there.
Bob, I didn’t exactly ignore Tryvasty’s “conservative Marxist” label so much as refuse to accept the terminology. I addressed it merely in terms of his/her description, that of a governor who advocates a lot of entitlement programs and higher taxes, at the state level, as perfectly acceptable under the Constitution as long as none of those policies violate any of the laws of the Constitution itself.
The term s/he chose was silly, and as you said self-contradictory, so I just discussed the extent to which the 10th Amendment would apply. I did that on purpose, knowing that moving away from smirky “gotcha” efforts into actual political discourse would befuddle and frustrate him/her. The Liberal dependence on issues presupposes that the issues of higher taxes or an expanded welfare state define the difference between Conservative and Liberal. No matter how often it is explained that the difference lies much more in the approach to the issue rather than the issue itself, someone stuck in the shallow pseudo-political world of the average Lib just can’t grasp that concept.
The two elements of the supposition were both false.
One was that the term “Marxist” could apply to someone who in his commitment to a Constitutional form of government for this country understands that some of his ideas do not fit into the scope of federal authority. That’s where the contradiction lies. If the governor believes that the feds should and could do what he wants done, he is not a conservative. If he understands that what he wants to do is compliant with the Constitution only at the state level, then he can go right ahead without violating any tenet of POLITICAL Conservatism.
We just saw how absolutely baffling this concept is to Try. It simply did not compute, leading to the sneering dismissal of it as “absurd”. That makes as much sense as me sneering at string theory as “absurd” just because I don’t understand it.
The other was that a governor could just do all of these things unilaterally. That fits into the wet dream of Liberalism, but so far at least it isn’t part of American governance.