Posted on 06/15/2003 8:36:50 PM PDT by IoCaster
Aha! And which president was seen signing the deregulation/conglomeration act in 1996?
That statement by RLK shows him to be the journalistic amateur that he is, he needs to spin the truth in order to make his "theories" work, there was never the idea that the ONLY thing that was important was to get Clinton/Gore out of the White House, this is just one further example of RLK's subtle lies. Getting Clinton/Gore out of the White House was the most important thing to be accomplished at the time of the elections. Wars are won by winning a series of battles, and that was the battle we were facing at the time.
The rest of the essay is the usual dribble, so I won't bother with it, but I will say this however:
Political theories like RLK's require a vacuum to succeed, we don't live in a vacuum, we live in a country where (GASP!) the other side has as much power, ability, and right to advance their political ideology as we do, at all times, so like in a war, we strategize, we calculate, we plan, and we deceive the enemy in order to gain the sort of advantage that will further our campaign, one battle at a time.
So while RLK feels quite macho when using words like "weakling" and "trash", I would like to point out that the biggest weakling here is himself, unable to advance even 1% of his agenda in the real world of politics. However, I don't think he notices this much, he's appears to be way to enamored with the sound of his own voice to notice the world outside his study.
Let us hope.
Has it ever occured to you that perhaps such flippant criticism of such densely written analysis indicates that the critic is entire too dull to understand such analysis, and that such flippancy also indicates that the critic is projecting his own inadequacies on the writer?
Here's a short political fill-in-the-blank /multiple choice test which helps the test taker distinguish "conservative" from "liberal" popular personalities.
The following are excerpts from a March 23, 2002 Washington Times piece by Bill Sammon.
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--------- Urges More Foreign Aid
"MONTERREY, Mexico: -------- yesterday said Americans are duty-bound to 'share our wealth' with poor nations and promised a 50 percent increase in foreign aid, but 'We should give more of our aid in the form of grants, rather than loans that can never be repaid,' he said. 'We should invest in better health and build on our efforts to fight AIDS, which threatens to undermine whole societies.'
In addition to the moral, economic and strategic imperatives of increasing foreign aid, ------ said, it could also help in the war against terrorism.
'We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage."
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Who is quoted above?
a) Bill Clinton
b) Al Gore
c) Hillary Clinton
d) Jessie Jackson
e) Reverend Al What's-His-Name
f) Bono and the pop band U2
g) Whoopie Goldberg
h) George W. Bush
Hint: he's very popular here at Free Republic.
RLK made some good points up until this last paragraph.
40 years ago the far Left was represented by hardcore Black Panthers, hardly the meager Left of today.
40 years ago the Left wanted the U.S. out of all wars, hardly Lieberman's position on Iraq or Gore's position on Afghanistan today.
40 years ago the Left wanted to nationalize health care, yet today you won't hear an electable Leftist even *breathe* such a threat (though they very well still want it) out loud.
40 years ago the Left wore red T-shirts stating "The Time is Mao", hardly something that you see in Washington today (outside of a few imported protesters, anyway).
In contrast, the Right has been winning battle after battle by pursuing incrementalism. We control the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, the Presidency, more than half of all state governors, and more than half of all state legislatures.
40 years ago there were more Democrats registered to vote (by almost 2 to 1), than Republicans. Today, they are about even in numbers.
40 years ago all unions were Democratic on all issues, but today unions are FIGHTING Democrats and Leftists regarding new job creation through drilling in the ANWR and rejecting the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty.
40 years ago Congress was passing national gun control laws. Today, Congress is arming pilots and immunizing gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits.
40 years ago the U.S. was willing to sign the CCCP-U.S. ABM treaty, but today we are willing to reject it.
And we didn't get this far from where we were 40 years ago by throwing long bomb passes every down. No, we did it through incrementalism.
This is precisely what Bush is doing today. We get one tax cut, fine. Then he goes for another and gets it, too. Some provisions aren't "permanent", so later he goes for extending or even making them permanent. Old treaties, one by one, get rejected. Old executive orders and regulations, one by one, get rejected or reversed.
Incrementally, Bush is rolling back the Left. The International Cirminal Court no longer threatens Americans. CO2 regulations are no longer choking electricity providers. Families of four making $40,000 per year are now only paying $45 per year in federal income taxes. The U.S. Dollar is no longer so over-valued that it props up the exporting economies of old, socialist Europe. The newspaper industry is no longer provided an anti-competitive monopoly position that prohibits conservative radio companies from buying newspapers or starting up fresh competition.
Little by little, the Left is being rolled back. In the next 6 years, Bush will even get vouchers passed, and private schools will soon thereafter destroy the political power of the public school teachers' unions.
But none of this would have been possible if Bush had tried to go for it all in one step. It had to come one small piece at a time. Removing the double taxation of dividends was clearly *not* something that could have been done in the first tax cut, for instance, but it was possible in the 2nd.
Oh, please. There was nothing "dense" about it other than the author.
The "writer" and others like him have been putting out the sort of smokescreen that you're so enamoured with for decades, to a net-net result of zero impact on any level of government anywhere.
BTW, it really doesn't matter who the article was talking about, if you had a clue about the way our monetary system works, you would understand the need to export dollars out of our economy. Foreign aid is little more than us exporting our inflation.
I never said he saved the welfare programs, I do however have a gripe with him getting the credit for it, and for getting credit at the same time for reforming welfare. The fact of the matter was, the republican congress had made welfare reform a key issue, and they were going to bludgeon him with it. Clinton fought as much as could, then signed off, and claimed the credit from both sides.
The person who actually gave him the polling numbers and also told him how to spin it, and make it look good and get credit from people that work and people on welfare was Dick Morris.
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If a Democrat were making statements such at this the yokels here would be enraged and shouting COMMUNIST SOB. But many people here have no more integrity than the Democrats or the Left. Once they convince themselves to support somebody, they will lie to themselves and lie to everyone else to continue justifying it.
Is the Alameda Times-Star's motto "Alameda News is All Made Up"?
They just change their name to "Progressives" and hope that'll entice voters to head down their path. (Notice how much Dims have used that term in the past few months.)
I get a mental picture of these so-called Progressives at a crossroad. They can choose to go left or even further left. Karl Rove is at the center of the path and while they decide (that is, use focus groups) he nudges an issue out to the center and that trips them up. They end up going off the deep end. :-)
Exactly. (You beat me to it.)
Reagan believed that government was the solution of last resort. He wasn't an anarchist.
Well, whose effing fault is that? Neal Gabler should do what he's good at--smile a lot.
Here's two entries that appear to be speaking your language already.
You might also want to check out the social engineering entry. Maybe it makes sense to you.
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