The Obama Temptation

[L W HALL]

Thanks, Barbara. I've read this before, but it bears repeating. Those who repeat the canard "Bush Lied" forget that implicit in that verb is that ones lies to someone about something. Those variables always remain unstated, unsupported and unexplained. The only lie here is the Big Lie - a falsehood repeated so often even some Objectivists end up repeating it.

It's totally irrelevant to me whether he made up lies, cherry picked the info or is just a bumbling fool led around by others the result is the same. He was elected POTUS to make sound decisions. I do not believe he has done so. The list of things he said concerning Iraq, the threat it posed and then what really came to pass is lengthy.

I spent his first term taking up for him, but after I voted for him the second time and things continuously came out about the decision to invade Iraq and how it was made I put on my glasses and started examining the criticisms with a more objective view. To say that what I see now is grossly dissimilar to what I saw just a couple of years ago is an understatement to the nth degree.

I also thought that with a Republican President and a Republican Congress we could embark on a path of true fiscal responsibility and that sure as heck has happened. We have spent money we didn't have like a credit addict on a binge. What we do have is a party that is under the influence of neo cons and the Religious Right. Or to put it in simple terms pretty much a damn disaster.

[L W HALL]

I'll also ask each of you taking up for him a question:

Would you put him in charge of a business you have worked your whole life trying to build?

[Roger Bissell]

I'll also ask each of you taking up for him a question:

Would you put him in charge of a business you have worked your whole life trying to build?

To make the question somewhat related to the real world, I will reframe it in two parts:

1. You have to select someone to run a business you have worked your whole life trying to build. The only available candidates are George W. Bush and Al Gore. Whom would you select? Bush, hands down.

2. Same question, in re George W. Bush and John Kerry...Bush, hands down.

This does ~not~ mean that I would not be worried about the fate of my business, just that I would have ~greater~ reason to fear for it if Gore or Kerry were running it.

Nor does this mean that I do not wish that any of the other people who would like to run it instead were viable candidates. But we're talking about the real world here, about the lesser of two evils.

Again, guys, I did not say Bush was a ~great~ President. But this mantra of his "string of failures" or bad decisions is a bit over-wrought and a bit under-exemplified.

His "No Child Left Behind" and Prescription Medicaid for Seniors were nasty programs, and the Iraq War was a costly mistake, as was the Wall Street bail-out. No argument there.

But on the other side: his tax cuts (which grew the economy, as well) and his attempts to privatize Social Security (as Barbara pointed out) were really ~good~ things. Particularly the latter was a truly ~courageous~ position to take, politically. (It's not for nothing that it's known as the "third rail of politics.")

I feel somewhat the same about Bush Jr. that I did about Nixon. Nixon was atrocious in many ways. The Watergate scandal was totally uncalled for, as were his invoking wage and price controls when inflation was at the astronomical level of....FOUR percent!

Shades of all the moaning about our economy, whose unemployment and other "misery index" figures are a small fraction of what they reached during Carter's blessedly short reign -- and shades of all the moaning about the casualty levels of the Iraq War, which have yet to reach 10% of those from the Vietnam War, which itself did not reach 10% of those of World War II.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Maybe it was the drinking water. Or...all those tranq's and pot folks started ingesting in the 60s? I'm not faulting people for not wanting to have unnecessary "sacrifices" and suffering laid upon them, but there has been a disturbing general trend over the last half century toward more immediate gratification and unwillingness to accept temporary discomfort.

Perhaps it is the media exposing and exaggerating everything, hyping it up in order to manipulate public opinion in furtherance of their liberal political agenda. Interestingly, the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly in the tank for Obama, and the polls, which were consistently overstating Obama support, are now tightening -- i.e., returning to an accurate reflection of reality -- because it is in their overall interest for their final polls before election to be as close as possible to the actual outcome, so that they retain a semblance of credibility for the next exercise in voter manipulation.

Are you starting to see where I put the chief blame for our ills? Yes, the mainstream media, but more fundamentally, the intellectuals (you can preface that with "pseudo", if you like) who recruited/inspired them. Interestingly, the last three Democratic candidates have all been "smart" guys, intellectuals who would have made Bush or McCain administrations look like Barry Goldwater or Thomas Jefferson.

The worst thing about Bush is not his errors, but the fact that he is the excuse for Leftists to scapegoat liberty, capitalism, and libertarianism -- and that "our side" apparently does not have adequate resources to successfully combat this barrage of lies. Tibor Machan had a nice piece in today's Orange County Register, and I know others are speaking out, but the Big Lie of "laissez faire has been tried and failed" is difficult to fight. We can only keep trying.

In other news, Becky and I are taking our (just about) 14 year old daughter Rachel with us tonight to hear Craig Biddle speak on "McBama vs. America." (Biddle's talk is also in the current issue of The Objective Standard.) As does Peikoff (see his recent podcast at peikoff.com), Biddle says that neither candidate is worthy of a vote, and that we should concentrate instead on intellectual activism and hope that decent Presidential candidates emerge by 2012. (Apparently ARI ~now~ thinks that Democrats do ~not~ automatically get a vote in order to stop the evil theocrats from gaining power. Heh.)

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but at least you won't have to read bits and pieces of it elsewhere!

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

It is interesting the distance ARI now has from Rand.

She knew perfectly well what Nixon was, yet she knew he was a different animal than McGovern. So she endorsed Nixon.

McCain is a different animal than Obama. ARI refuses to see it because Peikoff cannot be wrong to his flock. So they prefer not to endorse McCain in the face of blatant Marxism.

This is pure vanity and lack of principle.

Give me an Obama-endorsing liberal acting on principle over that any day. I mean it. You can convince mistaken people who care. You cannot convince the vain and the weak-willed.

Think about this. If Rand were still alive and said about McCain/Obama what she said about Nixon/McGovern, what do you think the speech titles of the Biddles of this subculture would be? Would they still be things like "McBama vs. America"?

Heh.

America means more than personal vanity and follow the leader. Let that apply to whomever it applies to.

I have my own mind. I like to use it. This applies to regular OL members, too, from what I have read.

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> There are many, many stories on record about his advisers pushing employees for the supply of a certain kind of information from the USA information gathering/analysis services and for shelving information that contradicted it. [MSK]

Michael, you have a tendency to fall for one aspect of the "Big Lie" technique. It's called the megaphone effect:

The NYT comes out with a story and then it is copied by the rest of the press, relying (mistakenly) on the nyt to have done fact checking rather than relying exclusively on statements from opponents or those shown the door.

SOOPOV: Seek Out the Opposing Point of View. Whenever you read stories from the left-leaning press, always go and click on nationalreview.com and see how those same alleged "facts" can seem very different.

You need to ALWAYS do this before you form a conclusion on any politicized issue. That means every single time.

Here's the point, on political and economic issues...or even on politicized science matters such as "scientists agree on global warming": The Mainstream Press is Heavily Biased. You are naive if you think you can trust them on even the simplest matter.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

I find it amazing that you know for a fact what I read since I didn't mention it.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

> There are many, many stories on record about his advisers pushing employees for the supply of a certain kind of information from the USA information gathering/analysis services and for shelving information that contradicted it. [MSK]

Michael, you have a tendency to fall for one aspect of the "Big Lie" technique. It's called the megaphone effect:

The NYT comes out with a story and then it is copied by the rest of the press, relying (mistakenly) on the nyt to have done fact checking rather than relying exclusively on statements from opponents or those shown the door.

SOOPOV: Seek Out the Opposing Point of View. Whenever you read stories from the left-leaning press, always go and click on nationalreview.com and see how those same alleged "facts" can seem very different.

You need to ALWAYS do this before you form a conclusion on any politicized issue. That means every single time.

Here's the point, on political and economic issues...or even on politicized science matters such as "scientists agree on global warming": The Mainstream Press is Heavily Biased. You are naive if you think you can trust them on even the simplest matter.

Philip, regardless of what Michael does or does not read, YOUR POINT IS WELL TAKEN. I have to keep the salt shaker handy at all times, when reading the newspaper or watching tv or listening to the radio. SOOPOV, "fair and balanced," however you characterize it -- it is essential to avoid being taken in by "talking points" and "Big Lie" and "megaphone effects." Thank you for pointing this out.

REB

[Philip Coates]

For the New York Times in particular, it's more than bias.

It's systematic, repeated dishonesty.

I can't count the number of times during the Bush years that they published a story in which the claim is made on some factual matter the Administration hid or distorted something. But when you check elsewhere, it turns out the NYT cherry-picked the allegations, misstated the facts, or failed to report those insiders who said something *exactly the opposite*.

[Philip Coates]

> I find it amazing that you know for a fact what I read since I didn't mention it.

Michael, wake up. I'm not making a factual claim about what you -do- read. I'm telling you what you -need- to read. If you do read nro consistently, you could have simply said so. And suppressed the sarcasm.

Do you read nro or the equivalent consistently in the way that I suggested????

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you guys are really interested in the issue, here is a Wikipedia article that gives an overview. I am giving this here because I don't have time to go back and try to remember all that stuff and what I read from before. Some of it is in the article.

Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq

As you can see, it was not NYT and the conclusions are all over the place, as befits a mess like that.

You are free to believe that a politician like Bush would not use backstage political influence to get what he wanted once in power. I choose to believe otherwise. (I am once again reminded of that suicide by 6 bullets in the head reported by the Brazilian police, with the statement that no one has been able to provide evidence that it was not suicide.)

btw - I agree that the New York Times is not a good source of anything these days.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

It is interesting the distance ARI now has from Rand.

She knew perfectly well what Nixon was, yet she knew he was a different animal than McGovern. So she endorsed Nixon.

McCain is a different animal than Obama. ARI refuses to see it because Peikoff cannot be wrong to his flock. So they prefer not to endorse McCain in the face of blatant Marxism.

This is pure vanity and lack of principle.

Give me an Obama-endorsing liberal acting on principle over that any day. I mean it. You can convince mistaken people who care. You cannot convince the vain and the weak-willed.

Think about this. If Rand were still alive and said about McCain/Obama what she said about Nixon/McGovern, what do you think the speech titles of the Biddles of this subculture would be? Would they still be things like "McBama vs. America"?

Heh.

America means more than personal vanity and follow the leader. Let that apply to whomever it applies to.

I have my own mind. I like to use it. This applies to regular OL members, too, from what I have read.

Michael

Michael -- TO BE FAIR: I would very much expect Biddle/Peikoff/et al to take into account the most recent revelations about Obama's EXPLICIT MARXIST COMMENTS in both 2001 and 2008, and to cut McCain a bit of slack. In other words, I'd think that they would line up more like Rand did in 1972: "Anti-McGovernites for Nixon."

As I recall, the fear in 1972 was rampant that McGovern was an out and out socialist, and that we had to oppose him "at all costs." (Including holding our noses and re-electing a paranoid fool who not only authorized burglaries against his political opponents but also imposed wage and price controls to combat the horrendous inflation rate of 4%. Amazing to consider that he's the same guy who made and kept the promise to end the military draft.)

I will follow up on this tonight, after hearing how Biddle modifies (or doesn't modify) his talk, and how he answers questions about the latest Obama stuff.

BTW, I think you are overly optimistic and generous-hearted about "convincing mistaken people who care." In my experience, there are LOTS of people out there who, for all the world, seem to care STRONGLY and to have principles, but they are so caught up in their SELF-JUSTIFICATION and DESIRE NOT TO BE WRONG, that they CANNOT reconsider their entrenched positions.

See the fascinating book (recommended by Barbara): Mistakes Were Made -- But Not by Me. You might even see YOURSELF in this book! ("You" as in: any or all of you reading this.)

What matters is not THAT you care, but WHAT you care ABOUT. Fundamentally, you have to care about the TRUTH, regardless of whether it meshes with your cherished beliefs and vested interests. If instead you "passionately care" about social justice or saving the environment or helping the downtrodden or fighting religion, you will NOT be amenable to reasonable persuasion.

Such people will only change if/when, like an addict, they "hit bottom" and reality will no longer let them get away with their irrational fixations. And with such people, you will be spinning your wheels trying to change them or fix them -- just as you are with addicts. (I learned this in Al-Anon, when I was married to a raging addict.)

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

To be blunt, I am not naive and I have no idea why you keep on this theme. You take care of your own mind. I'm perfectly fit to take care of mine. Disagreeing with you is not the equivalent of being naive.

That unpleasantness aside, McCain says he will put a freeze on government spending and not increase taxes. I didn't believe Bush the Elder, but I do believe McCain. (Bush the Younger's flat-out wreckage of the budget and astronomical increase of government spending takes him out of consideration in my book. He is what he is and I don't like what he is.)

Obama says no one under 250K (or is it 200K or 150K?) will not get a tax increase. I do not believe him.

That is my assessment of character.

Michael

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded harsh. I skimmed over the "("You" as in: any or all of you reading this.)" part and it did not register.

[Dennis Edwall]

Roger: "But on the other side: his tax cuts (which grew the economy, as well) ..."

No question that tax cuts have favorable consequences in the short run. However, when considering longer time, I think you over-emphasize their importance in the face of the rampant spending increases, so that the tax cuts simply mean that in the long run the deficits will be all that much higher. Bush's legacy will be the huge increase in deficit spending, not his tax cuts.

Dennis

[L W HALL]

To make the question somewhat related to the real world, I will reframe it in two parts:

1. You have to select someone to run a business you have worked your whole life trying to build. The only available candidates are George W. Bush and Al Gore. Whom would you select? Bush, hands down.

2. Same question, in re George W. Bush and John Kerry...Bush, hands down.

This does ~not~ mean that I would not be worried about the fate of my business, just that I would have ~greater~ reason to fear for it if Gore or Kerry were running it.

Nor does this mean that I do not wish that any of the other people who would like to run it instead were viable candidates. But we're talking about the real world here, about the lesser of two evils.

Again, guys, I did not say Bush was a ~great~ President. But this mantra of his "string of failures" or bad decisions is a bit over-wrought and a bit under-exemplified.

His "No Child Left Behind" and Prescription Medicaid for Seniors were nasty programs, and the Iraq War was a costly mistake, as was the Wall Street bail-out. No argument there.

But on the other side: his tax cuts (which grew the economy, as well) and his attempts to privatize Social Security (as Barbara pointed out) were really ~good~ things. Particularly the latter was a truly ~courageous~ position to take, politically. (It's not for nothing that it's known as the "third rail of politics.")

I feel somewhat the same about Bush Jr. that I did about Nixon. Nixon was atrocious in many ways. The Watergate scandal was totally uncalled for, as were his invoking wage and price controls when inflation was at the astronomical level of....FOUR percent!

Shades of all the moaning about our economy, whose unemployment and other "misery index" figures are a small fraction of what they reached during Carter's blessedly short reign -- and shades of all the moaning about the casualty levels of the Iraq War, which have yet to reach 10% of those from the Vietnam War, which itself did not reach 10% of those of World War II.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Maybe it was the drinking water. Or...all those tranq's and pot folks started ingesting in the 60s? I'm not faulting people for not wanting to have unnecessary "sacrifices" and suffering laid upon them, but there has been a disturbing general trend over the last half century toward more immediate gratification and unwillingness to accept temporary discomfort.

Perhaps it is the media exposing and exaggerating everything, hyping it up in order to manipulate public opinion in furtherance of their liberal political agenda. Interestingly, the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly in the tank for Obama, and the polls, which were consistently overstating Obama support, are now tightening -- i.e., returning to an accurate reflection of reality -- because it is in their overall interest for their final polls before election to be as close as possible to the actual outcome, so that they retain a semblance of credibility for the next exercise in voter manipulation.

Are you starting to see where I put the chief blame for our ills? Yes, the mainstream media, but more fundamentally, the intellectuals (you can preface that with "pseudo", if you like) who recruited/inspired them. Interestingly, the last three Democratic candidates have all been "smart" guys, intellectuals who would have made Bush or McCain administrations look like Barry Goldwater or Thomas Jefferson.

The worst thing about Bush is not his errors, but the fact that he is the excuse for Leftists to scapegoat liberty, capitalism, and libertarianism -- and that "our side" apparently does not have adequate resources to successfully combat this barrage of lies. Tibor Machan had a nice piece in today's Orange County Register, and I know others are speaking out, but the Big Lie of "laissez faire has been tried and failed" is difficult to fight. We can only keep trying.

In other news, Becky and I are taking our (just about) 14 year old daughter Rachel with us tonight to hear Craig Biddle speak on "McBama vs. America." (Biddle's talk is also in the current issue of The Objective Standard.) As does Peikoff (see his recent podcast at peikoff.com), Biddle says that neither candidate is worthy of a vote, and that we should concentrate instead on intellectual activism and hope that decent Presidential candidates emerge by 2012. (Apparently ARI ~now~ thinks that Democrats do ~not~ automatically get a vote in order to stop the evil theocrats from gaining power. Heh.)

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but at least you won't have to read bits and pieces of it elsewhere!

REB

Why wouldn't the question I asked be relevant to the real world? Is Bush not called the "Chief Executive" of our county? What larger enterprise could you put someone in charge of other than the country with the greatest GNP in the world? The Question is highly relevant to my point. I wouldn't put this man in charge of a business I had built based on his current track record and if I had it to do over again I wouldn't most definitely have voted for Al Gore as much as I disliked the Democrats at the time.

Insofar as how his tax cuts have worked it's as spoken of below. When you balance it against his out of control spending it amounts to little or nothing.

I see where you and Phil speak of reading and researching unbiased sites and I would ask you what makes you believe you are the only ones that are doing so? The reason I have came to where I am is I quit feeding into the neo con bs and started reading a variety of sites with a more open mind about what I was reading.

[Philip Coates]

> a Wikipedia article that gives an overview...I don't have time to go back and try to remember all that stuff and what I read from before. Some of it is in the article. Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq. As you can see, it was not NYT and the conclusions are all over the place...

I'm a big believer in hard evidence. Or at least SOSOV. Wikipedia, esp. on politicized or emotional issues, is a victim of whoever posted last. The Congress with its alleged 'bipartisan' reports is also not a reliable source of hard evidence.

In fact, since the NYT has the biggest corps of researchers and reporters, the whole intellectual culture tends to assume (and build upon) what they 'authoritatively' report. At least insofar as political or politicized issues are concerned.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Phil,

(whispering)

Look at the sources in the Wikipedia article. You might learn something...

(speaking normally)

My point is that your presumption that I only got my information from NYT (and only one article at that) is wrong. You should be more accurate when you tell a person what's in his head. If you don't know something about someone, I do not advise using the tactic of trying to address a subject by trying to claim his lack of preparation, then making a statement that shows your own lack of familiarity with the issue.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Roger: "But on the other side: his tax cuts (which grew the economy, as well) ..."

No question that tax cuts have favorable consequences in the short run. However, when considering longer time, I think you over-emphasize their importance in the face of the rampant spending increases, so that the tax cuts simply mean that in the long run the deficits will be all that much higher. Bush's legacy will be the huge increase in deficit spending, not his tax cuts.

Dennis

Dennis, are you not aware that the tax (RATE) cuts generated higher tax ~revenues~? By growing the economy with the tax cuts, Bush and Congress helped ~grow~ the economy and create more taxable wealth than existed previously.

We might well lament the statists having more tax revenues to spend, but the tax cuts are NOT the reason for the deficit. The increase in deficit ~spending~ is the cause, and that is ~not~ due to tax cuts.

You say "the tax cuts simply mean that in the long run the deficits will be all that much higher." That is a Democrat argument and fallacious on the face of it.

REB

P.S. -- Full disclosure: Dennis was my roommate in college, and is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We frequently had rough and tumble discussions back in "the good old days."

[Roger Bissell]

Roger,

To be blunt, I am not naive and I have no idea why you keep on this theme. You take care of your own mind. I'm perfectly fit to take care of mine. Disagreeing with you is not the equivalent of being naive.

That unpleasantness aside, McCain says he will put a freeze on government spending and not increase taxes. I didn't believe Bush the Elder, but I do believe McCain. (Bush the Younger's flat-out wreckage of the budget and astronomical increase of government spending takes him out of consideration in my book. He is what he is and I don't like what he is.)

Obama says no one under 250K (or is it 200K or 150K?) will not get a tax increase. I do not believe him.

That is my assessment of character.

Michael

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded harsh. I skimmed over the "("You" as in: any or all of you reading this.)" part and it did not register.

Touchy, touchy.

Michael, where did I call you "naive"?? If you want to holler at someone, holler at Phil. (Though I'd rather you didn't.) :no:

And I'm not calling or even implying you are "naive" because you disagree with me. Good grief! How many marriages and sabotage with this kind of below-the-belt kind of tactic?? :poke: (See, I can do it, too. Full disclosure: I've been happily married to my third wife for over 18 years now. 18 out of 27 ain't bad.

Now, if you're still reading and not pissed again, please consider what I said previously:

I think you are overly optimistic and generous-hearted about "convincing mistaken people who care." In my experience,

there are LOTS of people out there who, for all the world, seem to care STRONGLY and to have principles, but they are so caught up in their SELF-JUSTIFICATION and DESIRE NOT TO BE WRONG, that they CANNOT reconsider their entrenched positions

.

See the fascinating book (recommended by Barbara): Mistakes Were Made -- But Not by Me. You might even see YOURSELF in this book! ("You" as in: any or all of you reading this.)

What matters is not THAT you care, but WHAT you care ABOUT. Fundamentally, you have to care about the TRUTH, regardless of whether it meshes with your cherished beliefs and vested interests. If instead you "passionately care" about social justice or saving the environment or helping the downtrodden or fighting religion, you will NOT be amenable to reasonable persuasion

.

Such people will only change if/when, like an addict, they "hit bottom" and reality will no longer let them get away with their irrational fixations. And with such people, you will be spinning your wheels trying to change them or fix them -- just as you are with addicts. (I learned this in Al-Anon, when I was married to a raging addict.)

Talk about projection! This is not you disagreeing with me, Michael, but ME DISAGREEING WITH YOU, specifically on the issue of whether it is reasonable to hope that "mistaken people who care" can be rehabilitated, converted, persuaded, etc. to the truth. A few can, perhaps. But I think that most people are entrenched in their beliefs and feelings and have no ~motivation~ to look at the truth.

Why do you suppose that Rand et al argued that the vast majority of people in a society -- even ones who ~care~ -- are just "social ballast"? It's because they don't ~challenge~ their premises. And the vast majority of people who ~think~ about issues ~still~ don't challenge their premises; they just dig in and rationalize and spin and cling to their ideology/dogma.

As a general recommendation to the group, I repeat: please check out Mistakes Were Made -- But Not By Me. Barbara turned me and Becky on to it. It's an incredibly eye-opening analysis of the phenomenon of self-justification. MANY* people routinely do this. Even a few** Objectivists have engaged in it.

REB

* many, many, many, many....

** many, many, many, many....

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael, where did I call you "naive"??

Roger,

The poor impression started earlier in the thread. I presumed you had not change your mind by the latest post.

I think in concepts, not just words, so a condescending "naive" can be expressed in several different forms, each with its own load. I merely stuck with the first expression which involved the actual word "naive." In other words:

Sorry, I think you're being naive, as well as applying a double standard here.

Thar 'tis.

Anyway, who cares?

I am your friend. What's a little bickering and scratching eyeballs out between friends?

This crap happens sometimes. I even do it about once every decade.

Michael

[L W HALL]

Through all of this I am still trying to figure out the accomplishments of one George Bush.

Tax cuts and a growing economy you say!! If you haven't looked around lately you might be missing out on one of the greatest recessions this country has seen for awhile.

Keeping OBL and co. in line!! Last I heard the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been gaining strength in Afghanistan and are a threat to Pakistan and it's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Don't remember OBL's head on a platter either.

Maybe it's Iraq. Just maybe we squashed those bad ole Muslim extremists in Iraq. Only problem with that is although Sadaam may have been one sick mother he was fairly much a secularist and had at one time been our buddy when he was facing the real extremists in Iran. Did the great "Flypaper Theory" work or did we create extremists where there weren't any before we invaded.

Let's try oil independence or fiscal conservatism. Whoops no ground to stand on there.

Maybe, just maybe it is not those of us who are on the case of one George W Bush that need to wake up. Keep in mind I am not a Democrat and have not been for a long time. I am one of those who voted twice for the man. I woke up and I didn't like what I saw. Not only has he set the Rep party back a long way those bunch of book cooking crooks and CEOs who run their companies into the dirt and then walk away with millions have set Free Market Capitalism back to a point it may never recover in this country.

A plague on both houses, the Democrats and Republicans alike. I will write in the only candidate who talks like he may truly care just how much more money this country can borrow and spend before it goes bankrupt. I don't like some of the things he stands for but at least Ron Paul knows you cannot spend like there is no tomorrow without paying the fiddler sooner or later.

Or you can vote for the socialist of your choice in Obama or McCain.

[Dennis Edwall]

Roger: "Dennis, are you not aware that the tax (RATE) cuts generated higher tax ~revenues~? "

No, I was not aware of that. Assuming that that is the case, then you can forget everything I said (except that Bush will always be remembered for his profligate deficit spending). I will see what Cato has to say about this.

Dennis

[Selene]

I believe this is one of the most important articles written during this presidential campaign, If you agree that it's important, please, while there still is time, distribute it as widely as possible.

Barbara

The Obama Temptation '

by Mark R.Levin

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny. And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama.

But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good. The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual.

Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands.

The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others. And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

10/25 09:29 PM

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Z...I0MDRkOWFlMDQ=T

What an excellent thread.

This must have been in my more shy OL period...

A...