Posted on 10/08/2013 6:25:32 AM PDT by TomServo
One way or another, the battle of the budget and the debt ceiling will be over by All Hallows' Eve.
Yet, as one looks deeper, at the irreconcilable conflict behind the present clash, only a roaring optimist would imagine we shall ever know again the tranquility and unity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy years.
Consider the bile dumped upon Tea Party Republicans by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and their camp followers in the national press.
What did the Tea Party do to deserve this? Answer: These extremists shut down the U.S. government, they're holding America hostage, and they're inflicting terrible suffering on innocent people.
But is this true?
Three times in a fortnight, the House has voted to fund every department, agency, and program of the government -- except Obamacare. Who, then, is truly shutting down the government?
What we are witnessing here is the unfolding of the Big Lie -- the constant repetition of a transparent falsehood -- to persuade a pliable public not only to believe it, but to recite it, as in Orwell's "1984."
Obamacare, we are told, was enacted by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court, confirmed by Obama's victory in 2012. To try to defund or reform it amounts to an attempted coup, an overturning of the election results of November.
But does not Congress have the power of the purse to fund or defund any program it chooses? Is that not in the Constitution?
And have not the last three years exposed glaring flaws in Obamacare? Have not severely adverse consequences turned up in widespread layoffs and a reversion to part-time help? Did not the Cleveland Clinic say it will have to let 3,000 people go?
Why then is the House's exercise of its constitutional authority to defund Obamacare, which polls show a majority of Americans favor, such a moral outrage?
This brings us to the underlying conflict.
The Obamacare battle is part of a larger struggle between a party of government and a conservative party that fears America is heading down a road traveled by Greece, Italy and Spain.
Now the party of government can surely claim credit for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. Yet, that same party is also responsible for driving New York City to the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s and for the disaster that is Detroit today.
That party is also responsible for an unsustainable welfare state where half the U.S. population pays zero income taxes but consumes hundreds of billions yearly in social welfare benefits.
And how are the people who preside over this annual redistribution of America's wealth faring? Just fine, thank you.
According to the latest data from the Census Bureau, the four counties in the United States with the highest median family income are all in the D.C. area: Arlington, Loudoun and Fairfax County, Va., and Howard County, Md. Maryland's Montgomery County, just north of D.C., ranks 7. Five of the top ten. Not bad, eh?
Though 120,000 D.C. residents are on food stamps, the city boasts a median family income higher than all but four states. And D.C. leads the nation in the number of bedroom counties, nine, where the median family income exceeds $100,000.
Big government and the Fat City are one in Barack Obama's America.
And how does the Tea Party imperil the country?
First, they risk taking America over the cliff into default. But that raises a question: Since the Tea Party folks are newcomers to town, who brought America to the edge of this cliff?
What radical added $6 trillion to our national debt in five years? Or did the Tea Party do that?
Almost all now agree that the entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- threaten to consume the budget.
Is the Tea Party responsible for this gathering disaster?
Was the Tea Party beating the drums for those trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is the Tea Party responsible for our being committed to fighting other countries' wars and paying other countries' bills, in perpetuity, through foreign aid?
When the Tea Party says the Fed's QE3 amounts to printing money and inflating the currency, that it is creating stock market and real estate bubbles certain to burst, and that the dollar's future as the world's reserve currency is imperiled, do they not have a point?
These same views are today being echoed by economists and writers, few of whom are ever likely to show up wearing side arms at God and Country Rallies.
And just where did our community-organizer president learn his economics. From Saul Alinksy's "Rules for Radicals"? From his senate days in Springfield, capital of the state that is the odds-on favorite to be first in the nation to default on its debts?
The Tea Party is feared and detested in Washington because these folks threaten the ideology, the vested interests, and most critical of all, the rice bowls in this city that voted 15-1 for Obama.
I see it more like Solomon cutting the baby in half with a rusty sword.
Welcome back JR...
Heal up. God bless.
I have a friend who often uses the phrase, “Better than a sharp stick in the eye”. She now refers to this mess as, “Well, we had better sharpen our sticks.”
Bump & bookmark
Funny you mention parasites...
I equate that to the opposition being blood sucking fleas...
We might all need to submit to a flea dip to rid ourselves of this infestation in due course...
The question is, what constitutes an effective “flea dip” that will remove/kill the fleas (liberals) that infect this country???
Flea Dip = ???
Just thinkin’ outside the box...
I thought it was a good article.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” — Declaration of Independence
I’ve been irreconcilable with the Liberal mindset most of my life. They have no respect for other people’s property, one way or another. Maybe it started when some punk ripped the Goldwater bumper sticker off my bike in grade school. ;-)
“We are no longer a single people with common goals.”
Yep. The only thing we have in common is commerce. And just wait until the dollar collapses.
LOL great post!
Bump.
“I don’t see a civil divorce. How would it happen?”
Exactly. I don’t foresee a scenario where a peaceable divorce happens, The other side isn’t content to get 3/4 or 1/2, it wants the Whole Enchilada.
It’s been suggested by other posters that our adversaries would be OK with a state seceding as it would change the electoral dynamics in their favor. And that’s true, they might be OK with one or two troublesome states leaving if it changes the electoral calculus in their favor. But it fails to think it through when the other conservative states realize that they’re in an even worse situation as a result. And thus have to decide whether to head for the exit themselves.
I don’t see our adversaries standing idly by while that all plays out.
Thanks. Emailed this on. Hope it goes viral.
Flea dip = cut off ALL entitlements and then offer a two tier payment choice to rid our country of the worst of the fleas.
Larger payment to export a former flea to a new country of their choice, giving up US citizen rights and signing papers to never return. One way ticket plus a cash payment and they sign papers giving up citizenship and get on a blacklist that could never set foot within U.S. borders again.
(Goes without saying the borders would have to be sealed.)
2nd option - stay here, take one time smaller payment to give up all voting rights forever, with the understanding that they will never again receive welfare entitlement payments. If they take the 2nd option route, and ever get caught agitating for return of welfare entitlements or trying to get their vote back, would mean immediate deportation to some communist country that would appreciate their views more.
3rd option - former fleas who wish to rejoin civil society, they may stay here, keep voting rights with the understanding that voting to steal money from others via the government is now illegal and knowing that if they don’t work, they don’t eat - simple as that.
This gives a one time bonus to the worst of the “fleas” who never intend to work again to take the money and run.(I would say extremely harsh penalties for any who take option 1 and show up again within the borders.)
For those who were temporarily down on their luck and took advantage of the system, it gives them the opportunity to decide if they want to be good citizens again and be allowed to vote, or if they want to be merely “tolerated” residents, but never get to vote again.
I think this could be done via the Liberty amendments. It would require a new amendment defining citizenship.
Please add me to your Secession and Anti secession ping list.
Tranquility and unity? What the flaming heck is Pat smoking?
I feel like "Memories" should be playing in the background.
Buchanan has done more than Buckey, and doesn’t shy away from the ethnic aspects of the conflict as Bill did.
Look at what a sorry excuse for a conservative publication the National RevIew is. Their PC firing of Derbyshire was merely icing on the cake.
Buckley was essentially a neo con, and couldn’t see past the end of the Cold War.
We don’t need another Buckley, his time has passed.
But the way he argued was civilized, elegant, deadly
Rush shouts and O’Reilly is worse
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