Republicans are intimidated by Obama who will lie, is clever and knows how to stick a knife in them and most do not know how to respond because they are too patrician and do not like to fight much less fight dirty and gutter like as Liberals and Progressives. To Liberals and Progressives, winning is everything and how they accomplish their goal is secondary.
Paul Rand, like Gingrich, and unlike Ryan, do not engage in intellectual responses that cause your eyes to glass over. They know how to be direct, say what they believe in language most, even Liberals, can understand and do not shrink from a challenge. I may not agree with all that Rand says but at least you know where he is coming from. Rubio has a a bit of this directness as well and certainly Col. West does. (See 1 below.)
Everything about government these days seems to be about splitting hairs, being evasive, covering your ass and outright lying. No wonder Americans have lost faith in their government, no wonder Americans have basically given up trusting public officials. They are totally justified based on what they see, hear and experience.
Obama won't even link Islamist to the word terrorist and he cannot even allow a Major who killed his own fellow service people to be charged with a military crime, it had to be tagged a workplace violation as if the killer knocked over the office water jug. What hypocrisy and nonsense we have allowed Obama to perpetrate because he is the media and press' 'dahling.' their chosen messiah and we have become too lazy intellectually to know the difference .(See 1a below.)
And if you think the media and press are not biased and protective of their chosen then: ( see 1b, 1c and 1d below.)
They even go so far as to cover up the fact that Obama has a gulf in his knowledge between the Atlantic from the Gulf.
Sent to me by my Australian cousin: https://www.youtube.com/embed/QmhQct1i2Rw
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Let em eat cake and buy them with Food Stamps!
FOX has a series about fraud and the Food Stamp Program and how the USDA is encouraging more Americans to become dependent on the government for subsistence. The demand and cost of the Food Stamp program, like all amoebic government programs, is expanding exponentially and not all to deserving and needy but, in far too may cases, to those leeching off the system.
The silent lambs among us are causing our nation to become divided between the dependent and the stuckees. Which one are you?(See 2 below.)
And then there are the elitists among us. (See 2a below.)
===
Dick
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1)
How Obama Wooed the Middle Class
It took painstaking research and a ruthless attitude to win them over in 2012.
By Peggy Noonan
Dan Balz's "Collision 2012" is the best presidential campaign chronicle in many years. It is a great book, in part because it isn't about what happened as much as about how people in the campaigns were thinking. It is unusual in that it gives proper place to the impact of thought on political outcomes.
Others around President Obama said he was no centrist like Bill Clinton. He saw no particular virtue in staking out the middle or splitting differences. Compared with Mr. Clinton, Obama "had less capacity to put himself in the minds of his opponents, to understand where they were coming from and why," Mr. Balz writes. That hindered his ability to negotiate successfully with Republicans in Congress, which in turn damaged his reputation for competence.
1a) The First Lexicological War: Throw the Dictionary at 'Em
Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but "a reduction in staff." This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the "evacuation" -- the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country.
This time it's for real ... Obama 2.0 is what many thought 1.0 was, except this time there are no smokescreens, no evolving on issues, no revelations, and no compromise. The president's economic tour has revealed a plan that will fundamentally change America forever.
We are talking the formation of the Modern Welfare state first envisioned by Otto von Bismarck and backed by Kaiser Wilhelm to stop the tide of socialism then implanted to a certain degree by FDR who had the best backdrop of fear and four years to offer
Elected after promising an economy that would enable people to earn enough to eat well and own a car, Herbert Hoover was smacked with the start of the Great Depression, just months into his presidency. This set up the perfect backdrop for FDR to promote an ideology that included eliminating want as an American birthright. Just imagine a world where the government took care of all your needs and wants ... all you had to do was wake up in the morning to be invited to the party. The skin in the game simply would come from being here in America. One thing's for sure, while it was never a feasible plan with respect to longevity or greatness, it was always a heck of a selling tool-particularly in hard times.
When asked about his Modern Welfare state, Bismarck remarked: "my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interest in their welfare."In other words, the state cared and would be willing to put its money where its compassionate heart was. Of course, in the end the state must find money before it can spend it on would-be altruistic notions of fairness. Over the ensuing century, America would realize the greatest gift a government could give to its citizens was to be subordinated to its citizens and allow them to flourish through the hurdles of life and unlimited finish lines. A chicken in every pot is a good thing, but developing wealth that transforms lives and lifts large swathes of neighbors, friends, family, and employees was a whole different level. The notion of socialism was rejected in America save for some vestiges, but ideas never completely die, they lay dormant waiting for the right moment in time.
That Moment Is Now...
While Bismarck felt there should be health insurance, a pension, minimum wage, lots of regulations, unemployment insurance and guaranteed paid vacation the next version of the socialist dream will look to perfect the idea of fairness. Over the years many of the schemes have become financially untenable. Even social security cannot pay back monies contributed and promised interest. Regulations are choking business and prosperity and Medicare is a ticking time bomb. What to do? How to make it work? The new "middle class" bargain looks to create newer entitlements but pass on the cost directly to the private sector.
When President Obama brags about wanting the free market to take over for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac he's saying he wants them to take on the role of doling out even greater largess without regard to risks. Housing should be part of the bargain and that means even folks with limited work history, high credit risks and limited funds for a down payment will still be eligible.
The healthcare law looks to funnel every American into a single payer system funded by outrageous taxes against working individuals and businesses of all sizes.
The new higher minimum wage push replaces welfare but at the expense of private industry. It rewards minimum efforts and thwarts the notion of true sacrifice to move ahead.
President Obama has had an epiphany over the past four years- capitalism and the American work ethic is hard to kill. Sure, each day more and more people drop out of the ranks of those willing to work, willing to take risk, willing to believe, but millions are holding firm to the idea this is still the land of milk and honey. Eureka! The government ran out of money a long time ago and debt racing toward $20 trillion will suck up any spare change and then some (just on paying the interest) and people are stubbornly stuck with that American DNA...
So, build the modern welfare system directly above the free markets. This goes beyond established schemes to a much bigger and more direct contraption sucking free markets dry. It's sold as a fair system with hints that all success is part of the public domain to begin with so should be shared equally. This is a lot sweeter than a chicken in every pot. It's the ultimate bribe ... freedom from want once and for all. Of course people should be paid $15.00 an hour for flipping burgers-it's a livable wage, and who is going to feed their children on anything less?
(The way this is being sold, an unwed mother working at McDonalds should be able to get a raise every time she has another child-McDonalds has that fiduciary responsibility.)
The true colors are out, setting up the midterm elections as the biggest fight for the America that became the greatest country in the world to resume that tradition of pulling one's bootstrap or ceding pride, self-determination and grit over to a paternalistic government that would baby us and reward mediocrity-cradle to grave. The summer tour will take a break for a presidential visit to an exclusive resort at Martha's Vineyard but then it's back to sell the notion of economic fairness
2a)
Dan Balz's "Collision 2012" is the best presidential campaign chronicle in many years. It is a great book, in part because it isn't about what happened as much as about how people in the campaigns were thinking. It is unusual in that it gives proper place to the impact of thought on political outcomes.
The Obama campaign had a lot going for it in 2012, but a lot going against it, too, most obviously the economy. A year before the election Americans weren't sure who the president was. He held himself at bay, observes Mr. Balz: "An Obama friend once suggested to me that the teleprompter was a perfect metaphor for the president, a physical symbol of how he kept the world at arm's length." His ties with the institutional Democratic Party were "minimal." Members of his own White House were still trying to explain his ideology and leadership style. One compared the president's relationship with the left to Lincoln's with the radical Republicans who thought him too cautious, when in retrospect he was daring
Others around President Obama said he was no centrist like Bill Clinton. He saw no particular virtue in staking out the middle or splitting differences. Compared with Mr. Clinton, Obama "had less capacity to put himself in the minds of his opponents, to understand where they were coming from and why," Mr. Balz writes. That hindered his ability to negotiate successfully with Republicans in Congress, which in turn damaged his reputation for competence.
So the Obama campaign faced real challenges. But they loved research and data, which they used to help think it all through.
They knew the economy was the president's biggest obstacle to re-election, that they couldn't win a referendum on his economic stewardship. They wanted a way to "leapfrog" the immediate economic debate. In Iowa they convened a focus group of independents who had supported Obama in 2008 but voted Republican in 2010. They found themselves fascinated by one frustrated man in his 50s. An Obama adviser summed up the man's stated grievances: "I can't send my kid to college next year. . . . I haven't had a raise in five years. . . . I am sick and tired of giving bailouts to the folks at the top and handouts to the folks at the bottom. I'm going to fire people [politicians] until my life gets better."
That is as succinct a summation as I've seen of how the American middle class has been thinking the past few years: The guys at the top and the bottom are taken care of while I get squeezed.
The Obama people took his comments seriously. It would be nice to say they were primarily looking for policies to help him, but their job was politics: They sought ways to reach him, to make him an Obama voter.
What followed was a "massive research effort" to help the Obama campaign develop a message. They came to see a long erosion, in the words of an aide, "of what it meant to be middle class in America."
The campaign asked middle-aged, middle-income Americans to keep online financial journals. Over 100 people took part, twice a week for three weeks. The Obama campaign did not reveal it was behind the effort. Participants were asked such questions as whether or not they were putting off various purchases, or buying a used car rather than a new one. They were also asked: When was the last time you were treated unfairly at work? The journals yielded 1,400 pages of raw material.
I'll add here that when I told a young friend, a professional in her 20s, about this, she asked: "Do they have to do things like that to understand their own country?" Yes, they do. Ideology is only part of it. The American political consultant class lives rarefied lives. Business is good for them in the modern democracies and likely always will be. That's true of those on the Republican side, too.
What followed the journals was a series of focus groups in which members, according to an aide, "shared a strong sense that America was changing in a way that was out of their control." They felt the old rules of the economy no longer applied. They didn't know how to get ahead anymore, and they feared sliding behind.
The groups revealed that the American dream meant less to younger workers than to older ones. Here a departure from the book: There is pervasive confusion about what the American dream is. We seem to have redefined it to mean the acquisition of material things—a car, a house and a pool. That was not the meaning of the American dream a few generations ago. The definition then was that in this wonderful place called America, you can start out from nothing and become anything. It was aspirational. The limits of class and background wouldn't and couldn't keep you from becoming a person worthy of respect, even renown. If you wanted to turn that into houses and a pool, fine. But you didn't have to. You could have a modest job like teacher and be the most respected woman in town.
When we turned the American dream into a dream about materialism, we disheartened our young, who now are forced to achieve what we've defined as success in a straitened economy.
Back to the book. The Obama campaign's research produced three findings. The first was obvious: People were dissatisfied with the economy. Second, people hadn't quite given up on the president. Third, they weren't sure he was up to the job. They feared the nation's problems were bigger than he was, and they criticized his failed negotiations with the Republicans in Congress. Amazingly, people in focus groups kept bringing up Lyndon Johnson, who knew how to knock heads and twist arms. A campaign aide told Mr. Balz, "I've never had so many damned references to Lyndon Johnson in my life!"
Washington journalists usually blame Mr. Obama's failures to work with Congress on the GOP—its tea-party nuttiness, its "nihilism." But the president's own focus groups, which didn't contain Obama haters on the assumption they were unreachable, put the onus on him: It's your job, make it work, get it done.
The Obama campaign decided not to make the campaign about the state of the economy, but about who could look after the interests of the middle class in a time of historic transition. At the same time they decided to go after Mitt Romney hard, and remove him as a reasonable alternative. His selling point was that he understood the economy and made it work for him: He was rich. They turned that into a tale of downsizing, layoffs and rapacious capitalism. An Obama adviser: "He may get the economy, he may know how to make money . . . but every time he did, folks like you lost your pensions, lost your jobs."
Somehow the Romney campaign never saw it coming.
Republicans, now and in 2016, should remember the colorful but not at all high-minded approach of Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. "My favorite political philosopher is Mike Tyson," he told Mr. Balz. "Mike Tyson once said everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." Obama's people punched first, and hard
1a) The First Lexicological War: Throw the Dictionary at 'Em
Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but "a reduction in staff." This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the "evacuation" -- the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country.
Thus continues the administration's penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano's famous formulation, terror attacks are now "man-caused disasters." And the "global war on terror" is no more. It's now an "overseas contingency operation."
Nidal Hasan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. But the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of "workplace violence."
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others are killed in an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror attack -- and for days it is waved off as nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration gone bad. After all, famously declared Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make?
Well, it makes a difference, first, because truth is a virtue. Second, because if you keep lying to the American people, they may seriously question whether anything you say -- for example, about the benign nature of NSA surveillance -- is not another self-serving lie.
And third, because leading a country through yet another long twilight struggle requires not just honesty but clarity. This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Just Tuesday night, explaining the U.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from "violent extremism."
The word "extremism" is meaningless. People don't devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and to its murderous quest for dominion over all others.
But for President Obama, the word "Islamist" may not be uttered. Language must be devised to disguise the unpleasantness.
Result? The world's first lexicological war. Parry and thrust with linguistic tricks, deliberate misnomers and ever more transparent euphemisms. Next: armor-piercing onomatopoeias and amphibious synecdoches.
This would all be comical and merely peculiar if it didn't reflect a larger, more troubling reality: The confusion of language is a direct result of a confusion of policy -- which is served by constant obfuscation.
Obama doesn't like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why "Islamist" is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies -- "open hand," "mutual respect" -- have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander in chief he must defend the nation.
He must. But he desperately wants to end the whole struggle. This is no secret wish. In a major address to the National Defense University just three months ago he declared "this war, like all wars, must end." The plaintive cry of a man hoping that saying so makes it so.
The result is visible ambivalence that leads to vacillating policy reeking of incoherence. Obama defends the vast NSA data dragnet because of the terrible continuing threat of terrorism. Yet at the same time, he calls for not just amending but actually repealing the legal basis for the entire war on terror, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Well, which is it? If the tide of war is receding, why the giant NSA snooping programs? If al-Qaeda is on the run, as he incessantly assured the nation throughout 2012, why is America cowering in 19 closed-down embassies and consulates? Why was Boston put on an unprecedented full lockdown after the marathon bombings? And from Somalia to Afghanistan, why are we raining death by drone on "violent extremists" -- every target, amazingly, a jihadist? What a coincidence.
This incoherence of policy and purpose is why an evacuation from Yemen must be passed off as "a reduction in staff." Why the Benghazi terror attack must be blamed on some hapless Egyptian-American videographer. Why the Fort Hood shooting is nothing but some loony Army doctor gone postal.
In the end, this isn't about language. It's about leadership. The wordplay is merely cover for uncertain policy embedded in confusion and ambivalence about the whole enterprise.
This is not leading from behind. This is not leading at all.
1bIs Obama 'Insuring' Softball Questions?
By Jim Yardley
There is widespread acceptance of the proposition that the mainstream media is fully in the tank for Barack Obama, and all his vague but pleasant-sounding initiatives.
Even when you discount the fact that the president generally makes himself unavailable to take questions from the media in the first place, and carefully pre-selects those few from whom he actually does take questions, this sycophancy is not completely understandable.
For many journalists (both broadcast and the more primitive paper-and-ink types) who were inspired to get into that business by the dogged determination of Woodward and Bernstein, a simple acceptance of presidential platitudes and soaring phrases that illuminate complete nonsense seems impossible.
Or maybe it's not impossible.
The spate of "phony" scandals swirling around Washington right now must raise a few eyebrows, even among the apparently jaded members of the journalist class. What began as an attack on the Tea Parties and other right-of-center (and occasionally far-right-of-center) organizations by the IRS has spread to allegations of involvement by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for the same purpose, and there are now rumblings of some involvement in the same "phony" scandal by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And that's only one of this administration's "phony" scandals. Ultimately, each of these organizations reports to the president, either directly or indirectly.
One has to wonder, though: just how many government agencies, departments, commissions, administrations, boards, bureaus, offices, or whatever does it take before a "phony" scandal becomes a "real" scandal? Is it three or more? Or do scandals move along a sliding scale? Might a scandal progress from a "phony" scandal to a "faux" scandal, to an "ersatz" scandal, to an "artificial" scandal before it finally becomes a "real" scandal?
Then there is the "phony" Department of Justice (DoJ) scandal that involves the wiretapping (or meta-data collection or whatever this invasion of privacy should most accurately be called) of the Associated Press and FOX News reporter James Rosen and Rosen's parents.
To get a judge to issue a warrant approving this activity, the DoJ even went so far as to swear to a judge that Mr. Rosen was effectively an unindicted co-conspirator under the 1917 Espionage Act. These invalid assertions were made by the DoJ and the main investigative arm of the DoJ, the FBI. Again, each of these organizations report to the president, either directly or indirectly.
Of course, there is the ever-popular "phony" Fast and Furious scandal, with the DoJ playing a central role once again, but apparently co-starring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Coincidentally, both the DoJ and DHS report directly to the president.
The deaths of four brave Americans during the embarrassing fiasco in Benghazi have the fingerprints of the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. It is apparently kismet that all three of these government agencies report directly to the president.
So what do these scandals, "phony" or otherwise, have to do with the softball questions that leave the president almost completely unexamined by the media? Well, there is one other agency that the president indirectly controls -- the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That control is exercised by selecting commissioners for the FCC, including such people as Mark Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd is the chief diversity officer for the FCC. The FCC has significant impact on the licensing of radio and television stations. Mr. Lloyd, as a proponent of diversity, can have a disproportionate impact on who is allowed to broadcast, encouraging women and other minority groups to challenge existing firms who are current license holders over racial and gender diversity, as well as content.
Mr. Lloyd, as the head of the Leadership Council for Civil Rights, participated in a panel discussion and said (emphasis supplied):
In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.
Wikipedia, not often accused of right-wing extremism, offers this initial paragraph in its examination of Hugo Chávez's relationship with the media in his nation:
Although the freedom of the press was mentioned by two key clauses in the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, in 2008, Human Rights Watch criticized Chávez for engaging in "often discriminatory policies that have undercut journalists' freedom of expression." Freedom House listed Venezuela's press as being "Not Free" in its 2011 Map of Press Freedom, noting that "[t]he gradual erosion of press freedom in Venezuela continued in 2010." Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chávez administration for "steadily silencing its critics". In the group's 2009 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders noted that "Venezuela is now among the region's worst press freedom offenders."
So the FCC has an officer who apparently admires the man who tightly clamped down on journalistic freedom as having led "an incredible revolution." Why would anyone in his position, in a nation whose Constitution dictates in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," claim that such a man is admirable unless he also admired, and desired to emulate, the control that Chávez had over the media?
American media executives, and American journalists, might have political positions with which we cannot agree, and they might not even appear sensible, but for the most part, they are still intelligent people. And they remember a lot of what they hear or read.
They see how this administration has approached dealing with those it might view as "enemies." They have heard how a president's choice for the FCC views control of the media. They actually know James Rosen, and they know he was under the potential for indictment under the 1917 Espionage Act. And the media, of all political stripes, are, in the end, for-profit enterprises. Any governmental interference, or excessive "investigation" in the style of the IRS scandal, would be of potentially lethal in terms of profit.
Knowing this and seeing how the administration has intimidated and damaged the goals of organizations such as the Tea Parties, would any rational person not see the potential for harm to himself and his own organization? The message has been delivered. Oppose this administration at your own risk. This is commonly known as intimidation.
With 80,000 pages of federal laws, rules, and regulations, there is an endless array of charges that can be brought against anyone. Even frivolous charges, even with charges of prosecutorial misconduct being leveled for bringing a case in the first place, the defendants would be forced to spend enormous amounts of money to defend themselves, plus having toknow that part of their taxes are being used to prosecute them in the first place.
So perhaps we should view these media "softball" questions as a pre-emptive defense position. That would be the most charitable view we could take. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that the mainstream media are acting in collusion with the administration to undermine the Constitution of the United States of America.
In one view, they're showing themselves to be weaklings. The other, treasonous. But no heroes can be seen, no matter what the answer might be.
Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller and a two-tour Vietnam veteran. He writes frequently about political idiocy, business and economic idiocy, and American cultural idiocy.
1c)Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
Barack Obama delivered one gaffe after another in his August 6 interview with Jay Leno, but the networks that usually mock every mistake or slip of the tongue made by Republicans ignored the President's verbal mishaps. ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s This Morning and NBC’sToday show, on Wednesday morning, all bypassed the chance to criticize Obama for: downplaying the threat of terrorism; falsely claiming Vladimir Putin once ran the KGB; placing the Atlantic coast cities of Savannah, Charleston, and Jacksonville on the Gulf of Mexico; confusing the Winter Olympics with the Summer Olympics.
Some comments are so unbelievable, one would think even liberal journalists would be forced to challenge them. However, even though all three morning shows on Wednesday covered Barack Obama's appearance on the August 6 Tonight Show, none of them noticed his claim to be a supporter of small government. Talking to Jay Leno, Obama discussed the sequester and spending. He seriously insisted, "One of the things I've been trying to get across here is that we don't need a huge government. " He added, "But we need government doing some basic things and we should all agree on a sensible mechanism to go ahead and pay for it. Make sure we don't waste money." Keep in mind, "in just one term President Obama will have increased the national debt as much as all prior Presidents, from George Washington to George Bush, combined," according to Forbes. He also pushed through Obamacare. Yet, NBC's Today, ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning all skipped this cynical assertion.
ABC's Good Morning America, which first covered the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal by ignoring that the politician was a Democrat, did grow to embrace the tawdry aspects of the story. Yet, the morning show on Wednesday avoided the mayoral candidate's latest gaffe: Calling his Republican opponent "grandpa" at an AARP candidate forum. NBC's Today and CBS This Morning both managed to highlight the story. CBS guest anchor Anthony Mason recounted, "Weiner slammed his opponent over age and did so, of all places, at an event sponsored by the AARP." A graphic mocked it as a "senior moment." Mason dismissed Weiner's campaign as a "circus." In the video, Weiner can be seen heatedly talking to George McDonald.
On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, after host Al Sharpton complained that House Speaker John Boehner's refusal to condemn birtherism feeds an inability to compromise with President Obama, Washington Post political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson agreed with Sharpton and asserted that Speaker Boehner "has not tried very hard to get the more raucous members of his caucus in check," and referred to some Republican House members as "freelance artists" in "overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly conservative" districts.
By Peggy Noonan
So the controversy over NBC doing a drama about Hillary Clinton: How will they play it? How will they draw her? It’s hard to believe they’d do bald propaganda but hard to believe they won’t. NBC is a cultural entity of the left, or you might say the soft left. She is a political figure of the left, or you might say the soft left.
I sense synergy
Actually I sense botch. It will be a drama about Hillary’s wonderfulness and when it’s done they’ll privately screen it and an executive will say, “We’re going to be accused of liberal bias, we’d better balance it a little.” So they’ll reshoot some scenes and insert things that might make Hillary look bad, but they’ll choose the wrong things, stupid things, and it will make the whole effort look cheesy. Even with Diane Lane. Who’s a ridiculous choice, but so what?
Let’s amuse ourselves by imagining what the movie will look like.
I’ll go first.
The dramatic template they’ll use is the life of Eleanor Roosevelt: Ugly duckling suffers much, finds her voice, leads. By the end she has become a thing of beauty, a real presence in the national life, a voice for the forgotten.
Quick opening:
Born in solid-burgher Illinois, baby boomer, father a small-business owner, a harried bully. She is propelled and protected by her mother, who carries with her competence, gruff affection and a quiet sense of grievance: Her own potential has been unexplored. “You have to be strong,” Mrs. Rodham tells her daughter. She gives 7-year-old Hillary a children’s book about a little girl who faces down some local toughs and protects an abused dog. It all takes place in a little town called Whitehaven.
She is an awkward teenager, can’t seem to get right what the other girls get so easily—the right headband, how to flirt. Scene: suburban basement party, 1963. The other girls dance to the Shirelles. Hillary, in a sad little flowered cotton dress, sits on a folding chair to the side. Next to her is a shy boy with a shirt-pocket pen protector. They silently watch, then talk about homework.
She attempts to win her Republican father’s approval, becomes a Goldwater girl. It doesn’t work. He still criticizes her almost-perfect report cards. “Don’t they give A-pluses at your school?”
She leaves home, goes to Wellesley, begins to study politics more seriously. Reading great texts, taking notes. Scene: Hillary in flared jeans, book in hand, running breathlessly down a dormitory corridor. She comes upon another student. “Listen to this, listen,” she says. “The working poor, especially those who are members of minority groups, are discriminated during the mortgage loan process at banks—especially women, who can’t even get a loan unless a man co-signs for it.” The other student, a blank beauty, toothbrush in mouth, towel on freshly shampooed hair, stares at her, blankly. “Um, wow,” she says. Hillary insists, “We’ve got to do something about it!” and marches on. Another student pokes her head from a room, makes eye contact with towel girl, and they start to laugh. Rodham comes on a little strong.
Moment of triumph: senior class address on graduation day. Hillary challenges the establishment, the entrenched powers. “We need more ecstatic modes of being.” It doesn’t make complete sense, but it’s the ’60s and nothing has to. In the audience, a mortified U.S. senator who’d come to speak at commencement. Hillary sees him squirm. We see on her face this thought:This thing I’m part of has power. The young have more power than we know.
Yale Law school, long nights in the library. She meets Bill—charistmatic, friendly, ambitious. This one knows how to dance the mashed potato and the Loco-Motion too. “In Arkansas we grow watermelons the size of Saturnian moons!” Dates, movies, love. His mother, Virgina Kelley—antic, Southern white working class—doesn’t like her a bit. “She isn’t good enough, not your type—she doesn’t even wear mascara.” Bill holds firm: She is the partner I need for my journey.
Marriage. Elections. First lady of Arkansas. Awkward. What is the line between feminist seriousness and movement priggishness? Where is the line between getting power and staying human? She wants to be serious and she wants, as always, to fit in. Intermittent mascara use. Comic scene: Virginia gives her makeup lessons. Hillary walks out looking like a whore. But she’s learned something from their recently begun conversations: it’s a mistake to think you have nothing to learn from the Virginia Kelleys of the world. They know things they don’t teach in the Ivy League.
Thrown out of office, back in office, baby Chelsea, inexorable rise. Rumors about Bill and women, works through it. Growing friendships with Democratic activists, movers and shakers, moneymen, pollsters. A new interest in children’s issues. Lucrative board memberships. She will fight the power from the inside. The shoulders of her power suit get bigger.
They’re speaking of Bill for president in 1992. Why not? It will position him for the future. But no one can…
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2)
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We are talking the formation of the Modern Welfare state first envisioned by Otto von Bismarck and backed by Kaiser Wilhelm to stop the tide of socialism then implanted to a certain degree by FDR who had the best backdrop of fear and four years to offer
"A Chicken in Every Pot"
Elected after promising an economy that would enable people to earn enough to eat well and own a car, Herbert Hoover was smacked with the start of the Great Depression, just months into his presidency. This set up the perfect backdrop for FDR to promote an ideology that included eliminating want as an American birthright. Just imagine a world where the government took care of all your needs and wants ... all you had to do was wake up in the morning to be invited to the party. The skin in the game simply would come from being here in America. One thing's for sure, while it was never a feasible plan with respect to longevity or greatness, it was always a heck of a selling tool-particularly in hard times.
When asked about his Modern Welfare state, Bismarck remarked: "my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interest in their welfare."In other words, the state cared and would be willing to put its money where its compassionate heart was. Of course, in the end the state must find money before it can spend it on would-be altruistic notions of fairness. Over the ensuing century, America would realize the greatest gift a government could give to its citizens was to be subordinated to its citizens and allow them to flourish through the hurdles of life and unlimited finish lines. A chicken in every pot is a good thing, but developing wealth that transforms lives and lifts large swathes of neighbors, friends, family, and employees was a whole different level. The notion of socialism was rejected in America save for some vestiges, but ideas never completely die, they lay dormant waiting for the right moment in time.
That Moment Is Now...
While Bismarck felt there should be health insurance, a pension, minimum wage, lots of regulations, unemployment insurance and guaranteed paid vacation the next version of the socialist dream will look to perfect the idea of fairness. Over the years many of the schemes have become financially untenable. Even social security cannot pay back monies contributed and promised interest. Regulations are choking business and prosperity and Medicare is a ticking time bomb. What to do? How to make it work? The new "middle class" bargain looks to create newer entitlements but pass on the cost directly to the private sector.
When President Obama brags about wanting the free market to take over for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac he's saying he wants them to take on the role of doling out even greater largess without regard to risks. Housing should be part of the bargain and that means even folks with limited work history, high credit risks and limited funds for a down payment will still be eligible.
The healthcare law looks to funnel every American into a single payer system funded by outrageous taxes against working individuals and businesses of all sizes.
The new higher minimum wage push replaces welfare but at the expense of private industry. It rewards minimum efforts and thwarts the notion of true sacrifice to move ahead.
President Obama has had an epiphany over the past four years- capitalism and the American work ethic is hard to kill. Sure, each day more and more people drop out of the ranks of those willing to work, willing to take risk, willing to believe, but millions are holding firm to the idea this is still the land of milk and honey. Eureka! The government ran out of money a long time ago and debt racing toward $20 trillion will suck up any spare change and then some (just on paying the interest) and people are stubbornly stuck with that American DNA...
So, build the modern welfare system directly above the free markets. This goes beyond established schemes to a much bigger and more direct contraption sucking free markets dry. It's sold as a fair system with hints that all success is part of the public domain to begin with so should be shared equally. This is a lot sweeter than a chicken in every pot. It's the ultimate bribe ... freedom from want once and for all. Of course people should be paid $15.00 an hour for flipping burgers-it's a livable wage, and who is going to feed their children on anything less?
(The way this is being sold, an unwed mother working at McDonalds should be able to get a raise every time she has another child-McDonalds has that fiduciary responsibility.)
The true colors are out, setting up the midterm elections as the biggest fight for the America that became the greatest country in the world to resume that tradition of pulling one's bootstrap or ceding pride, self-determination and grit over to a paternalistic government that would baby us and reward mediocrity-cradle to grave. The summer tour will take a break for a presidential visit to an exclusive resort at Martha's Vineyard but then it's back to sell the notion of economic fairness
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This is the Stuff of Revolutions
Dear Sovereign Investor,This week we learned about a pending (and galling) extra-constitutional maneuver seeking to exempt members of Congress from Obamacare … because, after all, why should our elected representatives live under the same laws they pass for the rest of the country?The hideous health care law that was rammed down our throats on Christmas Eve 2009, in practice, means that about 11,000 members and congressional staff are set to lose the generous health coverage they now have as part of their federal benefits program. Instead, they would be forced to receive the lower-quality health coverage of the Obamacare exchanges. And because members of Congress and many of their aides don’t qualify for Obamacare subsidies, that means thousands of dollars a year in extra insurance costs.Fear not for the aristocracy, my friends. The Obama administration is once again prepared to skirt the Constitution by effectively rewriting a ratified law to create a special Obamacare reimbursement for the privileged class, formerly known as civil servants. Mind you, Obama has no authority to do so, just as he didn’t when he unilaterally pushed back the effective date of the Obamacare employer mandate. But what’s a little tyranny among friends?One thing is for sure: Members of Congress will never extend to ordinary Americans the same reimbursements that they may now be receiving themselves. So, it appears that disgraced former Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards was actually on to something when he spoke so often about the class-dividing existence of “two Americas.”Yet the real class divide in the Age of Obama isn’t between the rich and the poor. It’s between the political class and the rest of us. I mean, you really didn’t expect members of Congress to pay the same inflated premiums brought on by Obamacare, did you? Those are for serfs like you to pay. And make sure you do, or else you’ll find IRS enforcement agents at your door … who, by the way, are also asking for an Obamacare waiver.Regards,
Jim Signorile
Managing Editor, The Sovereign Society
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