Posted on 05/21/2009 10:30:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Edited on 05/21/2009 5:19:54 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
So what do you do when you realize that everything you've ever thought and believed no longer worked for you? Where do you go when the bubble of progressive politics bursts in your face and you're left in the leftist place on earth? It seems that the choices are as follows: either you cling to your beliefs even more zealously and attack anyone who dares to disagree. Or, if you're like me, you embark on a journey of discovery and recovery.
I wrote another piece recently for American Thinker, a letter of amends to conservatives. In it I described why I transformed from a Berkeley leftist to a talk radio loving conservative the last 1 1/2 years. I realized the Democratic Party wasn't what I thought, that it had mutated into something mean and rough, and that I had probably been living in a fantasy world all along.
I don’t quite see the distinction between them, and the rats who want more social services but want somebody else to pay for them.
BTTT!
While I agree that derivatives should be regulated, Gramm’s deregulations saved many banks from ruin with the real estate boom/bust.
Unrelated ???
When you hear this nonsense on talk radio you really need to think about it a few seconds before you accept it as fact. Both Bush and Reagan cuts taxes AND increased spending at the same time (printed money in Bush case) hired many new government workers. Each government worker (paid for on borrowed money) paid taxes they wouldnt have paid if the government hadnt hired them (like Obama now) by deficit spending. So tax revenues went up with the deficit, that proved nothing about tax cuts. The IRS has no data showing the origin of the increased tax revenue when tax cuts and deficit spending together increases the deficit, that is complete non-sense repeated on talk radio and repeated by the robot listeners, without question.
Obama is raising revenue by deficit spending too, so what?? He has co-opted these simple-ton arguments by claiming new health care entitlement will pay for medicare deficit. It as silly as saying “if you pay no taxes you pay more taxes.” In fact he is using that argument to for tax credits to his voters.
See #45. Talk radio Urban legend! Especially under Bush
I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years.
My theory is that while many of us on the “left” and the “right” think that we’re issue driven, I think to a far greater extent than we probably realize we choose a team to root for (like rooting for the Red Sox or the Yankees) and then parrot the party lines of our team. I don’t say it’s all that - but I think it’s a lot of that.
Quick what’s your position on brassiere tariffs? On our relationship with NATO? On the correct multiplier for Medicare?
I’m being a bit absurd but you get the idea. Many of the potential issues are highly technical and don’t lend themselves to easy slogans.
I think just as in high school we decide if we prefer the smelly hippies and aging pony tail dudes, or we prefer the guys in the truck commercials. And then we get our talking points once we choose up sides.
Which tells me that you don’t deprogram people all that easily. Folks on this forum aren’t going to want to start hanging out with Cindy Sheehan anytime soon. And folks on the other side ain’t going to cozy up to Dick Cheney.
So much of this stuff I think is subliminal and goes back to who you hung out with in high school. Or what movies you like.
The United Sates of Mercury....where EVERYTHING is FLUID! God Bless Robin.....wonder who she voted for.
Hey guys, I see the old adage about arguing with a fool applies here.
It's like paying your credit card bill on time with the checks they send you and claiming the credit card ‘paid for itself’ and you got the 1% point rewards as a bonus then blaming someone else when you run over the credit limit.
Here's good place to start to break your addition of the fairy Tales:Austrian Recipe vs. Keynesian Fantasy (GDP measure includes government spending)
btt
Good analogy.
Taxes were "cut" yet not "cut," since government borrowing is essentially a deferred tax increase on a future generation.1 There is no free lunch, after all. At the end of the day, someone has to pay the bill. In this case, that "someone" is the present and future generations of young Americans.
I've read arguments here on Free Republic that the size and scope of government is secondary to physical safety. In other words, a certain life in slavery is preferable to the chance of death as a free man or woman. However, suggesting that somehow freedom is worth less than temporary safety is folly, and it's not at all conservative.
Ultimately, having more government today may seem quite nice in the short term, but some day, the piper will come to collect his pay, and the youth of America will have been bound by their predecessors to satisfy their nation's debts, through de facto slavery if necessary--and to place such a terrible burden on future Americans is morally wrong and utterly contemptible.
1 It's a commitment to the creditor that a future taxpayer will satisfy the debts, a commitment made without the consent of the future taxpayer. And as such, excessive government borrowing constitutes a form of involuntary servitude.
bras should be banned. nato needs some work. and medicare should be abolished.
Been there and done this.
You lose.
But you gain reality.
Oh but Clinton had to fix it!!!! /s
Fiscal conservatives want small government and low taxes, period.
You have a point.
Well said.
Levin is smarter and wittier than you could ever dream of being. How many number one best sellers have you written?
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