Glenn Reynolds really has an eye for talent. On the same day, he links not just a post on this blog, but also a column by quite possibly the best college blogger/columnist there is, my nephew Mitchell.
That smart young man joins me in commending House Republicans for standing tall on the stimulus, but warns their Senate colleagues not to break ranks:
As the bill moves on to Senate, Republican Senators must keep their backbone and vote against it. There’s going to be Democrats accusing them of hurting the economy, and they might face pressure to vote for it, but voting for it is just what will hurt the economy and hurt the Republican Party.
If Republicans in the coming months fear public backlash and begin softening their position, they face the threat the Democrats did when they voted for the Iraq War in 2002.
Exactly. Exactly.
Mitchell rightly notes that opposition to the “stimulus” has been increasing “due to Republican efforts attacking the wasteful spending included.” That’s why we need to keep debate open on this for as long as possible so people can see just what political payoffs it contains.
The more they see what’s in it, the less likely they’ll be to support it. Just read the whole thing.
My brother and sister-in-law should be proud. They raised one smart kid. Well, not quite a kid any more. 🙂
The more people learn about this thing, the less they support it. Only the die-hard socialists who want to rebuild a seventies style welfare state and the Obama cultists who live in glassy eye obedience to the Dear Leader want to see this thing pass.
Much has been made about Republicans losing a generation of younger voters. One wonders, though, how these younger voters will feel about paying tax rates 50 to 100% higher than current ones in order to pay for Chairman O’s welfare and deficits?
Actually, I know one person other than “die-hard socialists who want to rebuild a seventies style welfare state and the Obama cultists who live in glassy eye obedience to the Dear Leader”. The guy is a longtime friend, who I’ve talked about before. A lawyer, but OK because his business is (after all) defending cops. Straight, Jewish and married with kids. Describes himself as a “conservative Democrat”. Strong Israel supporter. And Obama was not who he supported in the primaries.
My friend doesn’t love the stimulus; he gives a heavy sigh when he talks about it. Yet the thrust of his talk is to bitterly insult Republicans for opposing it. I don’t get it. I chalk it up to the excessive, dare I say unreasoning, attachment that far too many American Jews have to the Democrats. But I don’t get the latter, either.
(bad edit, sorry. “I know one person other than die-hard……… *who supports the stimulus*.)
Wowzers! Even the AP is reporting that this is not really stimulus:
i think jews tend to be democrats because jews tend to be intelligent and well-educated (this from a non-jew).
Study your history, bob. Jews tend to be Democrats because the GOP was once the party of the “white shoe” “Gentleman’s Agreement” Republicans who were quietly anti-Semitic. That ended sometime in the 1960s, but some such Republicans remained within the GOP until recent times, e.g., Illinois’s Charles Percy and former Secretary of State James Baker.
There’s more to it than that, but I’d advise you to study your history before opening your mouth–or turning on your computer.
Agreed – which, again, is why it makes no sense whatever that they should be so emotionally, narrow-mindedly and ignorantly attached to left-wing parties, especially sloppy and dishonest ones like the Democrats whom American Jews know full well are, at present, planning to spend America to ruin.
yeah actually the second reason i would have given is that republicans are generally more bigoted (against gays, racial minorities, religious minorities, etc.). i figured by saying that, i’d ignite a whole uproar about racism, which i didn’t have the appetite for. so i gave the other reason, which has to do with education level.
ilovecapitalism, it isn’t just the jews for which this intelligence/educational pattern has emerged. obama won people with post-graduate degrees by 18%. why do you think that is?
hmm, bob, do you follow the news? The supposedly “bigoted” party just elected a black man its chairman.
tell me, GPW, did the entire republican party get a vote on this one, or just a small number of RNC members?
that’s what i thought.
bob, the fact is he won. Do you think party leaders elected in their states would countenance the choice of a man anathema to that base?
And once again, you reveal your narrow-minded view of the world. Yeah, there are bigots in our party, but I’ve been openly Jewish in the GOP since the Reagan era and openly gay since the Clinton era and have received little problem from my Republican peers.
So, learn about the party based on what is today, now what it was half a century ago — and in the imagination of the liberal bloggers you read so regularly (and link so frequently in your comments.
dude, there are bigots in the D party and in the R party. there are open-minded ppl in both parties. there are minorities of all stripes in both parties. but there is no getting around that bigotry thrives more in the party of the elephant. all of my republican friends even admit this.
liberal bloggers? like david brooks, whose article i dropped in here recently? oh that’s right, he’s a conservative.
i actually don’t read liberal blogs. i do read some liberal news sites like huffington post, though.
“Do you think party leaders elected in their states would countenance the choice of a man anathema to that base?”
no, i think leaders of the party are starting to wake and realize that being the party of old, rural, white, uneducated people is not a way to blaze into the future with any relevance.
bob, since you once posed as a man claiming to lean conservative, I remain dubious about any Republican friends you may have. I’ve just related my experiences to you, but since they don’t fit your narrative, you choose to ignore them.
Um, bob, you’ve linked a few times to Huffington Post and alternet, the latter which is about as reliable as a deranged lunatic on a street corner railing about this or that conspiracy.
oh, and there’s actually some merit in your comment #15. GOP is perceived that way. And election of Michael Steele goes a long way to dispel that nonsense.
yes, there is a perception. i hope for the sake of your party that you can dispel that perception (and that bigotry in all its forms is eliminated).
[That was part of the point of this post.]
and 1) it was my roommate, and 2) i have more republican friends (or acquaintances) than you might think.
[For some reason, bob, I just don’t believe you.]
and no one has answered my q yet. why do you think the most educated ppl tend to be liberal?
[Simple answer: intellectual arrogance. They think they know better than the rest of us how to run our lives. My rebuttal question: how come a supermajority of those who create wealth, i.e., businessmen and women, vote Republican. –Dan]
“I’ve just related my experiences to you, but since they don’t fit your narrative, you choose to ignore them.”
actually i didn’t ignore them. i responded to them directly. i said:
“dude, there are bigots in the D party and in the R party. there are open-minded ppl in both parties. there are minorities of all stripes in both parties. but there is no getting around that bigotry thrives more in the party of the elephant. all of my republican friends even admit this.”
just because you don’t like what i said doesn’t mean i just blew past your comments.
Sorry, bob, you did just blow right past me.
You say “bigotry thrives more” in GOP, yet provide no examples. It’s just your perception based on what you read in the media and on left-wing blogs.
I could provide you countless examples of bigotry in the Democratic Party, noting that despite my involvement in the GOP, the only anti-black jokes I have heard in the past quarter-century have been told by Democrats. Does that mean bigotry thrives in your party?
i’m afraid your ability to reason is quite poor. i made pretty clear in my post that bigotry exists in both parties. and i should note that republicans haven’t always been the party of bigotry — that was both parties, including the dems, for a while up until the 1960’s and the civil rights act signed by johnson, and the subsequent and not-so-subtle “southern strategy” used by the republicans. the “left” however, which is distinct from any political party, has generally been the more tolerant ideology. (parties evolve, ideologies are more consistent.) conservatives, by definition, prefer the status quo and tend to feel threatened by change. conservatives resisted integration in schools, giving blacks the right to vote, interracial marriage, giving women the right to vote, and now they fiercely resist gay rights. there is a bit of a pattern here, no?
again, i’m not calling any of the conservatives on here bigots…i don’t use that word lightly (please note that in the couple of days i’ve posted on here, i’ve been called racist twice, and never thrown that word at anyone else. and for the record, i don’t have a racist or bigoted bone in my body.). but any person not blinded by partisanship would concede that more bigotry currently exists on the republican side. i’m not saying this has always been true, but it’s certainly true now.
No, it’s not my reasoning that’s poor, it’s your ability to communicate with someone with whom you disagree.
Any person not blinded by partisanship would see that the GOP is not the party its critics deride. You make a lot of blanket assertions in your comment which are frankly not true and easy to debunk.
A lot depends on how you define conservative. So, please study the origins of the American conservative movement and you’ll see how wrong you are. And understand how someone can oppose legislation ostensibly designed to benefit one group without being bigoted against it.
And please quite insulting me. I mean, it’s amusing to me to see how much time your spend on my blog while insulting me and writing in to praise your own post. If you consider it a waste of time to spend 30 seconds reading my posts, why do you spend so much time arguing with me.
Now, go visit a Republican gathering, talk to real Republicans before rendering judgments.
i’m quite informed, GPW. you should learn to defend your arguments better. i really hope you’re not a lawyer.
now i’m off to enjoy my friday evening. i’d imagine you’re staying home and blogging from mommy’s basement. have fun w/ that.
bob, if you’re quite informed, you have yet to show it in your comments. And, as to your insults, they only help confirm my impression of you. You don’t want to argue with us, you just want to attack us.
And once again, I’m amused how much time you devote to posts written by a blogger whose debate skills you question. If they were really so bad, why would you bother?
Now GPW, don’t confuse the self-praising scamp with your hifalutin’ common sense.
Because alleged “education” does not equal intelligence nor even common sense… as you demonstrate daily.
Because, within the exception of some important geniuses here and there, academics are not the world’s “doers”, they are the world’s unhappy critics who think (mistakenly) that they should be in charge. And because, on that level or with that in mind, Obama was/is one of their own.
Because they hate(d) Bush, McCain and Palin that much. Bush, McCain and Palin all being real people with real accomplishments, NOT “one of them”.
#21: “i’m not calling any of the conservatives on here bigots…i don’t use that word lightly”
Except when you apply it to an entire political party that you disagree with.
While spending a trillion dollars on welfare and pork, Obama proposes gutting the Defense budget.
if the GOP continues to be an obstructionist party, their irrelevance will extend long beyond Obama’s eight years. They better get on board, and fast, or they’re toast for two decades.
The people know it was bush and the GOP which ruined this economy. Even Alan Greenspan knows laissez faire economics to be a fraud. Eight years of tax cuts resulted in negative employment and the huge widening of income between the haves and have-nots. And the sheer number of have-nots is the biggest voting block there is.
The GOP will pay, and pay big time if they continue to deny the country’s progress; which, of course, starts with Obama’s stimulus plan.
Actually, what the people are figuring out is that the Obama Party is a party of lying cheats who demand that taxes be raised on everyone else while they refuse to pay them — see Daschle, Franken, Geithner, Rangel…….
Meanwhile, buckeyenutlover, the people are starting to reject Obama’s wasteful spending plan because they’re realizing it’s nothing more than a giveaway to organizations like ACORN that systematically commit Federal crimes.
And the sheer number of have-nots is the biggest voting block there is.
Not yet. But that’s part of the Obama Party plan; the more people they can put on welfare and make government-dependent, the more they can control. That’s why the Obama Party tries to destroy businesses, tries to eliminate corporations, and viciously attacks and demonizes successful individuals; all of those people are independent, and thus are a threat to the Obama Party, who is dependent on welfare addiction.
Actually, the funny part is that you won’t see people like bob condemning his Obama Party advisors who openly state that stimulus money and jobs should be kept away from skilled people and white male construction workers — in testimony to Congress.
Here we thought it was wrong to deny people Federal benefits based on skin color. Looks like the Obama Party is all for it, though.
buckeyenutlover, if the GOP doesn’t fight the “stimulus,” they won’t have much of a future.
Yeah, we’ve had tax cuts, but have we had budget and regulatory cuts? Without those, we haven’t have a true laissez-faire system for some time.
The true level of taxation in the economy is how much the government spends. Say it cuts nominal taxes, running a deficit. Well, how does it finance the deficit? It borrows the money. Where does the borrowed money come from? Some combination of (1) the capital markets, and (2) newly created fiat money from the Federal Reserve. Both of those are indirect forms of taxation. Bonds and interest have to be paid, which means future taxes. Those taxes in turn can be avoided if the Fed monetizes, i.e., creates new fiat money to pay them – but that, in its turn, is a stealth tax (or a stealth wealth transfer from) people who save.
Long story short, government makes up the deficit from fancy indirect forms of taxation. You have to look at current taxes + the deficit; i.e. you have to look at spending, to see the total of government’s burden on the economy. Bush did the right thing by cutting taxes, but sadly, only half-right – because he boosted domestic spending, needlessly / wastefully. Now Obama is making it worse. Bless him, because it means the Democrats will take the blame for it all when it comes home to roost. And, to bring it back to GPW’s theme, Senate Republicans had better make sure of that… by standing firm against the “stimulus”.
As for this:
I’d say we haven’t lived under capitalism at all, for some time. The bailouts started after 9-11. And bailouts aren’t capitalism. Bailouts are the opposite of capitalism. Letting the incompetents fail, and thus get taken over and reorganized by the competent, is capitalism. We don’t do that. Our present economic system is a kind of corporatist crypto-socialism or, dare I say, crypto-fascism.
By that you mean such notable “conservative” stalwarts as Ross Barnett, George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Robert Byrd (d, KKK) etc. right?
BTW, was it conservatives who were, just a few weeks ago, demanding that Jews get back in the ovens? Is it conservatives on the UN Security Council that focusses on attacking Israel? Was it conservatives supporting Palestine that were hooking up with the media slut Cindy Shehan?
You say that conservatives resist “Change”. If by “change”, you mean the same liberal bullshit which has proven to destroy America, you bet your ass we do. Chairman Obama’s “change” is the same old shit which is a proven failure going back 70+ years. Why would anybody sign onto that?
And where did they go? Many “have-nots” became the “haves”. The liberals cannot stand for this. They can’t have people actually succeeding. As to the “negative employment”, that wasn’t a factor until the liberals increased the “minimum wage”. Yet anoter attempt at pretending to give a shit about “the little guy”. Not to mention the fact that many companies saw Chairman Obama’s presidency and started laying off folks so they could afford to survive his puinitve tax increases.
To put it in terms even you can understand, nutguzzler, companies were getting rid of employees so that they could SURVIVE Chairman Obama.
Maybe you could tell us which specific parts of the porkulus bill we should all rally behind? I’ll give you a dollar if you can provide ONE measure that will actually benefit the Proles.
Ooh, TGC mind if I piggyback?
Fixed it for bob.
Fixed it for the other.
P.S. To spell out the first point… Democrats have always been the party of racism, in the United States.
– Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts (the Democratic-Republicans, which today’s Democrats proudly trace their traditions back to) insisted that slavery be preserved in the United States Constitution.
– Democrats insisted that slavery be extended to the territories
– Democrats fought to the death for slavery, during the Civil War.
– After the Civil War, Democrats created Jim Crow and, yes, resisted integration in schools.
– In today’s world, Democrats are the party of racial quotas. They have made the switched from wanting systematic discrimination against blacks, to wanting systematic discrimination against whites. But systematic discrimination is still racism, which is stupid and evil. Democrats are still the party of people who see a person’s race, not their character.
Which is why we now have Chairman Obama. They can say “I’m no racist! I voted for ‘that black guy’!”.
Under the “stimulus” plan, the government will spend billions to purchase perfectly good cars and crush them. All in the name of saving the environment.
This is idiocy.
Businessmen like myself began meeting last October in anticipation of the messiahs election. We planned last fall for layoffs and terminations. We canceled planned expansions and reinvestments in our businesses. With a leftist government in place, you can expect serious anti business taxes and proposals of all sorts. So it is prudent for successful business people to plan ahead and get ready. We have and will continue until things come into furthur focus. Thus the Obama severe recession began last Oct/Nov with the fourth quarter GDP at negative 3.5%. We plan for things to get worse not better in the near term. Until the liberals are taught you don’t pull an economy out of recession by punishing the working people, and spreading their wealth to illegal immigrants and the non employable….. things need to get worse.
Obama is starting to say the House pork bill wasn’t his….it was Pelosi’s.
Not a very manly President. Buck up. Let’s see some of that arrogance. Swagger into the room Mr President.
Obama-Bernanke’s policies may then be summarized as, “The floggings will continue until morale improves.” That is, the monetary & “stimulus” floggings of savers, producers, the ‘good’ businesspeople, etc. I guarantee you that they will raise taxes, before all this is over.
sean A — i actually said explicitly that not all conservatives are bigots (not even close). thanks for making stuff up.
and to all the other confused posters misinterpreting what i said, here’s an important fact to note:
i was talking about ideology, not party. i even said that democrats have had their share of bigots in the past. my point is that the liberal movement, compared to the conservative movement, tends to be the inherently more accepting, less bigoted ideology. yikes, people.
bob: here are your words:
You also write these words:
And you claim
So, let’s ask a few questions.
1) You seem to be an expert of bigotry. What list of bigotry exists on the Republican side and what list of bigotry exists on the Democrat side. (I am curious to see how much :more bigotry exists on the Republican side.)
2) Have you a certain “disdain” for old, rural, white, uneducated people?”
3) Would characterizing the Republican party as being comprised of “old, rural, white, uneducated people” border on the bigotry of selective inclusion and selective exclusion?
4) Would it be “fair” if I called the Democrat party the party of welfare pimps, the disaffected, socialists, “victims” and tax cheats?
5) Why should we worry about the persuasion of your bones, when it is your mind and your choice of words you are using here?
When someone claims purity, I always look for how they are masking their escape valves. It would not surprise me if you came out in favor of “hate crime” status. It is usually the “pure” who appoint themselves as best able to sniff out the faults in others.
yes, MORE bigotry (more is the key word). that’s what we call a “comparison.” i did not say that ALL CONSERVATIVES think this or that.
the fact that the republican party is becoming a party of old, rural, white, uneducated people is just a fact. if you want to be in the business of politics, you have to learn to understand demographics, which will inherently include generalizations. but no, this isn’t a bigoted statement.
and you can call the dems whatever you want (have you seen the comments on this blog?). name-calling generally won’t win your side any votes though. have fun in the minority.
There are two kinds of people in the electorate: 1. People who remember how horrible the Jimmy Carter years were. 2. People who are about to find out.
I don’t really have a dog in this race, as I am neither a liberal (in the modern crypto-socialist / left-wing sense), nor a conservative. But I notice, bob-David, that you didn’t refute a single one of my points. Not even this most crucial point:
As for this claim:
Evidence? (Real evidence, please, and if you know what real evidence is. Don’t try to make bizarre claims again like “conservatives resisted integration in schools”, which have been duly flattened. And it’s been my experience that left-liberals aren’t loving or accepting at all. I was one – for nearly twenty years – and even then, I was shocked at how much intolerance of all kinds, including racism, I heard in private from the mouths of supposedly loving, tolerant liberals.)
And by the way, bob-David – Before you try to cite gay issues as evidence – You surely are aware, are you not? that Fred Phelps is a Democrat.
Heh. If you have to say it (or your “roommate” does), it prolly ain’t so.
To offer a contrasting example: I don’t say it. I merely challenge (or condemn) policies and thinking that categorize people racially, whatever their source. From the point of view of science, there are no races.
At the risk of being misunderstood by some, I think that bob is really queer.