When the Hawaiian president said he would change the country many people heard, "Surf City!" Many other people heard "Serf City!"
What's all the fuss about a single vowel?
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- Kirby Olson
- Upstate, NY
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40 comments:
Kirby, I noticed your invocation of the homonymic term "serfs up," which I straightaway thought was applicable to the Tea Party protests over excessive taxation, government regulation and dependency, and the general dirigiste bent of the Obama-Democrat establishment. Indeed, "Serfs [rise] up!"
I also liked your comments on the hopelessly politicised and corrupt Attorney-General Holder-run DOJ that persists in hamstringing states from helping protect their borders, ignoring "sanctuary cities'" open flouting of federal immigration laws, arbitrariliy treating certain federal laws like DOMA as unconstitutional (in the absence of proper judicial review), and refusing to apply voter protection laws to all citizens (namely, non-minority citizens and military personnel). Obama's DOJ also distinguishes itself in ignoring judicial injunctions to issue off-shore drilling permits and in its determined obfuscating in the case of adverse judicial rulings on the constitutionality of ObamaCare (or HCR).
I also agree that there is some good evidence that the young Obama was influenced by Marxist and ant-colonialist radicalism, though he is at present constrained from trying to move the country too overtly in those directions by this country's laws, traditions, and institutions, not to mention the rebuke his party suffered in the last mid-term elections.
However, I shouldn't want to underestimate his political cunning. And he can count on his shock troops among organised labour and the public sector unions (which shouldn't even exist), minority groups, radical environment organisations, and compliant student groups to man his street barricades, with wealthy-stealthy crony capitalists to provide extra monies and statist academics ideological cover.
James, I'm very glad to have you weigh in.
It's shocking to me. Every day the headlines seem to be about another law that Obama is openly flouting. It's as if he's a young hippy flouting laws like an out-of-work Thoreau. But he's also the president, and should symbolize law and order.
My head is doing 360s when I read the paper.
The phrase, "Serfs up!" I first saw in a radical journal for secretaries called Processed World in about 1980. It was a phrase used by an anarchist lawyer named Bob Black. I don't know what ever became of Black.
But he was the first to use this phrase. I think it's lost in the little world of small mags out of SF from about 1980, so I decided to redeploy it but from within the Tea Party.
Because I think they are the ones now that need the phrase.
I see the Tea Party as the party of small-business owners and minor employed people who are fed up with the Party that wants to tax them at 40% to fund people that don't work and can barely get to the voting booth to vote for their agenda.
The NYT gave us an article that said they were surprised at the well-educated quality of much of the Tea Party, and how they were a little more wealthy than most.
I thought it was more like auto shop owners, and hair stylists at good salons, and so forth.
I don't know where you'd find a good analysis of the Tea Party.
Brett wants 39% taxation and to take us back to the time of WWII when we were fighting for western civilization, and needed to pay huge amounts for armamentation to stave off the Nazis and the Soviets and the Japanese.
Not sure why he wants such excessive taxation.
I guess to float all the bloated social programs and to take care of people who refuse to do anything for themselves, and are splintering into wilder and wilder groups who don't even know who their father might have been.
I see the Tea Party as made up of rather modest people who still possess a work ethic and remain within their marriage to raise their children, confronted by a bizarre coalition of sinners who don't care what they do, get amazing diseases, and won't work, and yet want the government to pay them out of taxes stolen from working people.
Not sure if that picture is sound, but that's my picture.
While some party, others work, and pay for the party. That's serfdom, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, the Healthcare proposal is expected to cost another trillion dollars. If you go to the government page and read through the frequently asked questions, they say the government will pay for this trillion dollars by minimizing paperwork, and eliminating jobs.
But they also want 16,000 new IRS agents to be paid upwards of 50 grand a piece to monitor compliance. They don't have the jail sentences any longer that the bill originally called for. Now it's giant fines.
(they keep playing with the numbers.)
Some here think I should be on the side of the current government because I'm in education. But geez, I feel sorry for all the small-time business people struggling to make an honest living while the government gouges them.
I see Joe the Plumber as the metonymous symbol of that enormous group.
Don't know how accurate my picture of the whole scene is. But the vowel change from u to e I thought caught the whole thing in a tiny but effective manner.
The term also spins a little on Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and of course plays on Obama's heritage as a Hawaiian.
i wish the terminology would spread through the blogosphere.
It might be effective!
Yes, Kirby, I too hope "Serfs up!" catches on. I like the Hayek and Obama "Blue Hawaii" allusions implied in it.
I also think your depiction of composition of the Tea Parties is right; as I've said, the events Emmy and I attended were spirited, innocently festive, mostly positive, and (note: Northern peoples!) clean. Many attendees had apparently never before attended any such political demonstration and quite a number of them were well-educated and well-informed.
Despite the major media's initial condescending scoffs at the Tea Partiers and later the scurrilous and false charges they laid against TPs when they seemed a growing force to be reckoned with, Tea Partiers as a whole best represent a movement grounded in independently-minded middle-class America and one the Ds desperately want to co-opt.
In the union demonstrations in Wisconsin and elsewhere one sees again and again the incivil faces of some on the other side: demonising of political officials (such as Governor Walker) as Hitlers, Mussolinis, Mubaraks, tyrants, dictators, etc.; a petulant rump of Wisconsin state senators refusing to do their elected jobs by fleeing the state (the "Fleebaggers"); illegally striking teachers breaking their lawful contracts, causing the closing of schools (at an extra cost to taxpayers of millions) by skipping work to join protests and then soliciting fake excuses from politically-motivated physicians; a Massachusetts congressman intoning about civility one week and in the next urging union supporters to go into the streets and "get a little bloody"; incidents of union goons threatening and assaulting TP supporters, and the like.
Kirby - 39% is the time of Clinton.
You know this, I know this, why would you lie and say it's WWII? Which is a double-lie, since 90% is the time of Ike in the 50s, not even WWII (though taxes for the rich were high then too...)
For the first 6 years under Reagan, the tax rate on the rich was 50% or higher.
Yet now 39% is linked to being 'Marxist.' Do you see why I'm rather convinced that your perspective is probably the skewed one? When you view the tax rates during the first 6 years of Reagan as Marxist, I think you're Probably mistaken in your viewpoint (same with all of the presidencies of Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, et al.)
I also thought that in the previous administration we were also fighting for the freedom of the Western World - strange, though, that they decided to be radicals and cut taxes during a time of war. That seemed counterintuitive, no?
I want this taxation so we can be fiscally responsible. I also want you to admit that a tax rate of 39% on the rich is Not Marxist at all (you can disagree with something, but not call it Marxist) OR to admit that Reagan and Ike and Kennedy were Marxists...
Brett, you attribute too much to me at times, too little at other times.
I was in Finland during Clinton's administration and didn't pay attention (there was at the time no time to pay attention).
Plus, it wasn't my problem.
I couldn't really follow your post. I'm supposed to admit that Reagan was a Marxist?
Send me to a clear unbiased source that lists taxation rates over the last 60 years so I can check your data. I think that's perhaps where we should begin.
"Robber baron" is another tag, more acceptable than Nazi, for the Republicans. As if they (the Tea Party, and all Republicans) are animated by these enormously wealthy robber barons who make their people dance like puppets and spout how they love capitalism even though it doesn't serve them anything but a pile of beans and rice.
Are the Anointed One's motives pure? Are the left's motives pure?
I see the Anointed One as wishing to build a pyramid scheme using healthcare to build a giant universalizing complex with his enormous seeing eye on top, his omniscience will cost us trillions, but we should be grateful he is willing to be the Patrick Mugabe of America, as we are the building blocks of his superiority, we the pesky rabble, he the mega-Heliogabalus of the new world odor, the Pharoaonic Pharos with the largesse of King Tut.
At most we will get a few lines in his next book of memoirs: Guess What I've Been Smoking. After his wild chariot has passed over us it will be America itself that is smoking.
Good comic hyperbole, Kirby, on "The One" we've been wasting from. . . .
Probably one of the deep down the roads fears for the Republicans is that the Communists/Democrats will begin to use healthcare to liquidate political opponents.
This is what Palin was referring to as DEATH PANELS. The elderly generally vote Republican, and so would likely be the first target.
We haven't had a lot of that kind of thing in this country, but in many countries genocide has been practiced -- Rwanda, Cambodia, Serbia are recent examples.
cultural genocide has been practiced in many countries, and is ongoing in places like Tibet and N. Korea.
When you think of universal healthcare in places like Finland and in Canada this kind of thing hasn't happened, but of course it always could.
What's holding it back is that the government would need to control both legal and medical branches, in addition to the politics. That would be the recipe for a genocide.
I think that when we are talking about communism, this is what we are talking about: liquidation of political opponents has always been part of the process. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but how far is it away?
What would need to happen for that to happen?
In academia a cultural genocide was attempted against dead white males. I'm not sure if it really worked. It seemed like it would happen, but it wasn't conclusive, and is now widely decried, I think.
Right now it's mainly the expense of Marxism. It doesn't work, and it causes the economy to cave in.
Later, it seems to make it easier to liquidate political opponents including entire classes of people (the disappearance of the Kulaks under Stalin is an example).
The main thing is to avoid monopolies by government on any area of private life. It gives way too much power to government.
When there is someone in power with a clearly violent agenda toward other groups, it is best to have as many sources of legal and political power as possible (proliferation of factions) to fight against any given liquidation.
It's also possible to divide and conquer and liquidate first smaller groups, and then larger ones, as the National Socialists managed, after they had consolidates medical, legal, and political power.
It's not the first thought that comes to mind when thinking about healthcare, but it's definitely in the backs of many minds. Soylent Green, baby.
The medievals did similar things under the Blood Countess, and other horrifying cases -- where the Aristocracy had a monopoly on power.
Monopoly on power is the main thing to fear from both left and right. It's why I am still for the center, and for the proliferation of faction.
Kirby:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States
Under 'history of federal income tax.'
Kirby, you've often claimed that Obama's desire to raise taxes on the rich to 39% is Marxist.
This is folly because the vast majority of the 20th century had tax rates much higher than 39%...
90% under Ike.
50% under Reagan for the first 6 years.
Thus, if 39% is Marxist...50% is Marxist. And Definitely 90%.
And your last post here is full of exreme-slippery-slope paranoia...
You're afraid that Obama wants to liquidate his political opponenets? That would be weird, considering he'd have to kill his secretary of defense...
So these are your views, Kirby:
You believe that 39% tax rates on the rich are Marxist, when in fact those are much lower than taxes under Ike and 6 years of Reagan.
If Republicans are afraid that Democrats are going to liquidate their political opponents, this says a lot more about the paranoid state of the Republican party than it does about the real state of the Democratic party.
Brett, I'm only saying that collectivization has often historically caused or been a precursor to genocide.
I'm not saying that Obama wants or would take advantage of a situation that allowed him to systematically liquidate his opponents. I'm just saying his policies will lead to an increased collectivization (this has already begun as medical institutions have tried to merge to spread the pain of forced insurance mandates that are predicted to otherwise cause the collapse of smaller institutions).
Collectivation once it's arrived results in Orwellian states that have, historically speaking, been allowed to murder their opponents at will (80 million in China and 30 million under Stalin are the going estimates at this time).
The chances of this taking place in America in the next two years are very low -- probably nil. But you have to think about fifty years from now. If factions are consolidated, and power is consolidated under one faction, then the possibility of liquidation of political opponents is at least present.
I saw a neat program on BookTV last night that indicated that only 10% of the population is hard right Republican and only 10% is super-liberal Democrat.
The show had about 12 independents on who claimed that 38% of the country is now independent. I liked hearing that.
We are told we have only two choices -- far right and far left. The proliferation of new choices is a good idea I think although it risks creating tiny strange parties if we move toward the European idea of representation of even the 2% groups (In Finland there is a pure beer party that gets representation).
At the same time I'm worried about collective bargaining I'm also worried about union busting.
I want a balance of power, and to some extent I think stalemate is a good thing.
WSJ of last Wednesday (finally had a chance to open it) said that the states which have right to work laws (you don't have to be a member of a union to work in a unionized work place) actually have higher average wages than unionized states.
Not sure how accurate it is.
My foray into economics and into large-frame thinking has been forced by others, it's not my natural bent. My natural bent is toward poetry, and my disgust with communism has been fed by the poets of the early 20th century who ended up in camps, or liquidated (oftne in medical murders) within totalitarian states.
Brett, your link broke, but I shall try to find it.
One huge problem of Marxists, Maoists and others is the lack of a sense of humor.
This is another problem in the Obamatons (although not in you, or in Bill Clinton, for that matter).
I find it menacing when people have no humor. It seems to show a lack of understanding that there is a multiplicity of perspectives.
Someone like the Unabomber or Jared Loughner also showed little true humor. This seems to characterize fanatics of every stripe.
Exactly what goes wrong with fanatics is hard to pin down.
I think this is what most of us object to when we see truly crazy fundamentalists of any stripe. They seem to be characterized by a lack of a sense of humor.
Also evincing no true interest in humor.
I don't think you can program computers for instance to tell context-specific jokes.
Which is why I often wonder if Obama has been programmed.
Bush told very good jokes (although I admit you had to be there).
Reagan told them.
Clinton could be funny and boisterous.
Obama has no sense of humor. The salmon thing was pretty good, but I'd bet he didn't write it.
Calvin Coolidge told very good jokes as did Lincoln.
"Authoritarian Collectivist Dictator-for-life Fartbongo Hussein ObaMao Zedong al-Chicago."
hehe
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/02inpetr.pdf
That's the government page that lists tax rates over the last 100 years (there was no federal income tax until 1913 when the highest rate was 7%).
It went up higher during the Great Depression when up to 90% was being taken away, but again only for the highest percentiles (over 400,000 in income). This began to come down more, so that more and more assets were being seized by the Feds for their programs.
There are lots of mysteries behind these numbers I should think, and lots of other hidden statistics.
What I hear journalists complaining about in the WSJ now is that Obamacare has already pushed consolidation of medical industries to get ready to fight the huge problem that they can't turn down the deathly ill, which will mean rates will climb for everybody because insurance industries can't look out for themselves on any kind of sound fiscal basis any longer, meaning many will go under because of completely irrational rules reminiscent of Freddie and Fannie (they HAD to give out loans even to people that they KNEW would default).
Anyone with HALF a brain can see how these things will work out, and turn a functioning country into a non-functioning country.
I liked your new nickname for the big O.
Captain Obama: the Ahab of healthcare. We must get it, we must, because we must, so we must get it, even if it kills all of us! we must because we must, it's because we must! It's a must! No thinking about this, no skepticism, damn it, Stubbs, full bore ahead!
"There are lots of mysteries behind these numbers I should think, and lots of other hidden statistics."
While finding yearly tax rates that showed the income-level and tax-rate for all brackets would be nice (anybody know where one could find that?...Stu would usually be good with finding these sorts of numbers, but he seems to have taken his bally and gone home) the simple fact of the matter is that for most of the 20th century, the tax rates for the rich were much higher than they are now... This includes years like 1956, when the rate was at 91 percent for those making 400k and over.
Imagine how you and JADL would react if everyone making over, say, 3 million dollars, was taxed at 91 percent. And those over 2 million were taxed 85%...
You'd go insane with classwarfaresocialismwharrgarrrbl.
Yet that's the way it was during those heady days of the 50s that the Republicans want so to return to...
Do you understand why I gets all confuseded by yalls sometimes?
The rates began in about 1913 and have varied a lot over the years. The problem now is that we have 9% unemployment, and it's not clear that taxing the rich at very high rates is going to help on that end.
We are also facing gigantic deficits for the first time in US History.
Obama continues to go after U. healthcare like Ahab after the whale, threatening to take us all down with him, as he pursues his bizarre obsession at a point when the economy is tanking.
Stu and I are still communicating by email.
He wore me out beginning with Loughner and I just couldn't keep up with it. He's far more brilliant than I am especially when the numbers start to enter the conversation, but there are simple problematics at work.
One is how can insurance companies stay afloat any better than banks when they are forced to take in just anybody rather than good risks? Fannie and Freddie promised to take up the slack, but then the whole economy went under and we had to print fake money to stay afloat.
Now the Dems are doing it again by forcing insurance risks down the throats of companies that would rather not assume bad risk.
To me, this is a clear example of Gospel intruding into the realm of law, dirtying both.
If we care so much for the poor that the rich go under, then we have no true economy left.
Obama is a very angry about wealth and wealth creation except insofar as he can tax it for his spending appropriations.
He's Ahab. Let's forget the long nicknames and just call him Ahab.
Somehow the country has to get back on track with regard to deficits to get our credit ratings in order. Where do we balance that. Ahab and the left want to go after the Plutocrats. The right wants to reduce spending, and go after the public unions.
Surf city for one is Serf City for the other.
Kirby - here is an in-depth table that shows marginal tax rates for all income brackets during the 20th century.
http://tinyurl.com/taxratesLS
What we were talking initially, Kirby, was the fact that you consistently claim Obama's plan to raise taxes was 'Marxist.'
My claim is that this is a wrongly-applied label - during the years that the conservatives look back to with nostalgia, our tax rates were Much higher, and Much more progressive.
It is purely and truly illogical to claim that tax-rates during the Clinton years were Marxist, and that tax-rates during the Ike years weren't.
How you can claim to want to reduce the deficit out of one side of your mouth yet be against raising taxes 3% on the rich to Clinton-year levels...that is beyond me.
It's not quite as bad as railing against Obama for being a Marxist in terms of taxes when Ike and Kennedy and Nixon had taxes at a much higher, much more progressive level...
But it's still bad.
The only 50s I want to return to are the 1750s.
Taxation is not my hobby-horse, it's the healthcare legislation.
I don't think I say much about taxation.
It's government takeover of industry that is Ahab's worst fault.
"Obama is very angry about wealth and wealth creation except insofar as he can tax it for his spending appropriations."
No, he isn't. Ike was much, much angrier about this sort of thing.
The tax rates Obama has are historicaly real darn low.
The tax rates he wanted were higher, true - but still real low.
Your surrender on the subject of Obama's tax policy is accepted, Kirby:-)
The government is not taking over the health insurance industry.
If you believe this, then you don't understand the way the HCR bill works.
And remember Kirby, a heavy, and heavily progressive, approach to taxes, is a Marxist idea - so you admit (right) that Obama is not a Marxist on taxes? (at the very least, he's less of a tax-Marxist than most of the presidents of the 20th century).
I don't think I have ever said that Obama's raising taxes is what makes him a Marxist. Maybe my brain has shut down. I say that his plan to nationalize industry is Marxist.
He did talk about redistributing Joe the Plumber's income, I guess.
Is that what you mean?
Yes, Kirby - that, and it seems to be part of the litany of offenses you give for why he's a Marxist...that he's engaging in class warfare and will redistribute wealth in an extreme way.
Maybe you haven't been as intent on that line of attack, but when it comes right next to your schtick about HCR, I may have misattributed the intensity of your claims to what it's surrounded by.
In any case, we both agree that Obama is not a Marxist when it comes to taxes or redistributing wealth. We both agree that he's not engaging in Marxist class warfare. (we do, right?)
And agreeing is good!
So I'm glad we've got that figured out for the most part, so we can focus on where we Do disagree...
Which, at the moment, concerns his plan to nationalize industry - as I have said before, this point has some credence to it because of the emergency actions taken to save the American auto-industry. The action was successful as far as I can tell, and the return on investment seems to have been good.
However, it's an issue that the media, the administration, and prominent conservatives haven't addressed too regularly, so again I don't know what's really going on there at this point - If that move becomes a pattern of behavior, and if the gvmt doesn't relinquish control in due course, then it will be an instance of socialism similar to what we see in Canada with liquor stores.
I would argue that calling this Communist or Marxist would be hyperbole, but at least it would be based on reality.
The other issue that conservatives bring up is simplifying the way the government deals with student loans, which seems to just be an intelligent, cost-efficient way to distribute money more efficiently.
The student loans already came from the government, it's just that now they've taken out the unnecessary and expensive middle-man.
That's what I remember of the issue, but again it's been a while...am I wrong? Anyhooch, that doesn't seem Marxist to me either...
And then there's the biggie, the HCR bill, and I feel like here we might hit an impasse - I can only say 'it's as Marxist as Bob Dole in the 90s' so many times - I can only say 'private insurance companies' stocks rose after this bill' so many times. I can only say 'the individual mandate and health exchanges were Republican ideas' so many times. I can only say 'This is a compromise of a compromise away from the hard-left 'single payer' system' so many times. I can only say 'people need to be held responsible for their own healthcare and need to be able to have converage instead of wasting taxpayer money by going to the emergency room.' so many times.
You can disagree with the HCR bill - that's fine. We can argue about whether or not it adds to the defecit (a no, that one...)
But you can't say that it makes Obama a Marxist. It would have to be a Marxist HCR bill, and the lack of government takeover of industry in the bill makes it not-Marxist.
People can do the same thing for different reasons. People can marry for love, for money, for status, because they got someone pregnant, or for any of another two thousands of reasons (friendship, healthcare insurance, on andon).
Similarly, people can try to pass universal healthcare for a variety of reasons. Dole's reasons and Obama's reasons aren't the same just because they wanted to do more or less the same thing.
Glad the intensity has come down a bit here.
With Obama's background, he doesn't seem to have any other motivation than Marxism.
It may end up being some kind of modified Marxism (he still wants nationalism of some kind, he still wants a multiparty system, he still wants to leave private industry relatively intact).
Not sure where else we can go with this.
I do see Obama as a kind of Ahab, chasing the white whale. I don't know quite what the white whale represents for him.
For Bush, another kind of Ahab, it was Saddam. It was almost hilarious how when the twoers got knocked over he went after Saddam. It was a kind of kicking the cat syndrome. He couldn't get Osama, so he got Saddam.
It was still a White Whale.
I'm not sure if all our presidents from now on will be Ahabs.
McCain was one, Palin is one, and lots of those in the wings all the way from Anchorage to Boston are probably Ahabs.
Osama himself is an Ahab.
It's just generally what people are when they are motivated by anger, and anger is a great motivator.
It would be fun to have a more diffident president, but I'm not sure there is another motivation as profound as hatred of some White Whale.
My White Whale is Marxism. I hardly know what I would do if it didn't still exist. Thank goondess for Kim Jong-Il and the few Marxist dictators still left, and the screaming Marxists like Michael Berube in academe.
Otherwise, I would have to think clearly again, or at least think about something else. Oh la la!
One thing in general: aside from Ahab, who is a better character, a more rounded character, that can still pursue with great and intense ferocity?
We need instead of that someone with a sense of eternal norms, like Lincoln. What he did was really cool. He got Lee and Davis on the ropes, and then tipped his hat to them, and invited them to share the world with him again.
At which point another Ahab, who saw him as a White Whale, shot him.
The problem with ferocious anger as the motivator is that it's hard to think clearly when that's your motivation.
Lincoln wasn't a Marxist. Marx was a Lincolnist. He was still a crackpot when he wrote the Manifesto, but after Das Kapital people started taking him seriously. America was his laboratory. He observed carefully and astutely what happened along race, class and gender lines when America dismantled the legal and financial apparatus of slavery. He presented it as a means by which serfdom in Europe could also be dismantled. Read in that context Marxist ideas aren't nearly as poisonous as some people make them out to be. It's an industrial revolution kit. You get it out and run it for a little while when the masses start getting grumpy. It makes them feel like some of their problems are being addressed.
I read on a blog yesterday that before Bob Dylan was famous he was writing songs that quoted Lincoln. Then he found out that he wasn't really quoting Lincoln. He was quoting Carl Sandburg, who in turn was quoting guys he'd met who used to write speeches for Lincoln. Dylan was so impressed he went to North Carolina and paid a visit to Sandburg. They talked for about twenty minutes on the front porch. Sandburg was getting pretty old by then. He didn't have a clue who Dylan was.
Sandburg got invited to talk with some school kids in his hometown in Illinois. The house where he was born had been turned into a shrine. When he got there the school authorities called the police and they kicked him out into the street. They said they thought he was a hobo. He was hoping people would mistake him for Walt Whitman. Apparently they did.
Surrender on tax policy: no. I just don't think it's the single thread through which to read Obama. Historically low, you say, Brett.
Well, but what would he ask for if he were dictator? What would he think reasonable? I'm thinking it would be close to 100%. He'd go Mugabe on the rich.
No way to prove that, of course, without letting him off his legislative leash to see. But that's not going to happen. He's got two years left to try to pull his tricks, and then he's done. So now he's going to have to pull in his teeth and act nice again, as the campaign is almost underway.
By next fall we should have the race fairly clearly decided as to who is going to run against who.
I'm hoping the Repubs will run that squirt Huckabee. He's fat, again, which won't make him telegenic, but he does have a good ability to make me chortle. That's a pleasant thing. The one with the best sense of humor usually wins these things.
Romney hasn't got that. Romney looks great until he speaks. Then he's just bland.
Mike Pence is too stern for my taste.
We need someone who can get off great zingers like Reagan and Bush 2.
Compared to the 20th century, taxes are now very low.
This is true. It's not just something I say. In any case, it's become clearer and clearer (and you are pretty much admitting) that you claim Obama is a Marxist because of the motivation that you ascribe to him, not because of his actions.
I simply don't believe that this is a sound approach to trying to understand something.
Your view of Obama comes from what you believe he would do in some imaginary world that doesn't exist.
Mine comes from the way I've seen him govern - the policies he's supported and signed.
We seem to be representing the usual divide between the fact-basedness of the Democrats and the gut-basedness of the Republicans.
(gut-basedness was my clumsy way of saying 'decisions made from the gut.' You Feel that Obama is Marxist, even though his actions as president say otherwise... This is the classic stuff Colbert jokes about all the time).
No, Marxism is a huge part of his background, and probably continues to form a large part of his worldview. At the same time, constraints keep him from revealing all his cards.
You focus only on the cards he's willing to show.
I focus on the cards he's not showing.
Remember, Obama was a champion poker player, even among politicians.
The funny thing about when you play cards - you don't know what cards aren't being shown, so you can believe that they are whatever you want them to be.
You have simply fallen into a trap of having a starting point wherein you are dissecting our political landscape falsely into two worldviews, and then ascribing motivation to the worldview you've ascribed to the Democrats even when the actions directly contradict that worldview.
It's all a projection coming from you, mixed with a few exaggerated claims of guilt by tenuous, longpast association.
I talk about what's there - you talk about what you want to believe/assume is there, what you infer is there.
You assume - Which is making an ass out of u...but not me.
This is would be like me saying that Bush Reallywanted to be a Fascist, but couldn't because of the legal constraints.
A few glimpses of it here and there with warrantless wire-taps and saying he'd like to be a dictator and having people sign loyalty statements at his rallies and chillin' with Saudi Princes and such...
But it would be a huge leap for me to Actually claim that he's Really a fascist, he's just not showing his cards.
You and facts just have a very tenuous relationship, Kirby - maybe it comes from being in academia too long. You talk about how Against Obama America is, yet his approval ratings are hovering around even - much higher than, say, Reagan and Clinton during similar points in their time in office.
Anyway, I'm glad we agree that Obama's not a Marxist wrt taxation, and the rest we seem to be, again, at an impasse - You admit to viewing the world the way you want to see it, not for what you actually see, and at that point it's pretty much impossible to have a conversation about a topic...
Anyhooch, I hear there're some revolutions or something going on somewhere, or whatever (as JADL would have it;-) ) so that could be fun to talk about.
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