The Republican Thread

[southsider2k5]

Ok, this is something of a public service announcement for everyone's benefit - I understand conservatives protesting high taxes and having "tea parties," but please don't go talking about how you're about to go out "Tea Bagging" because that has a very different meaning than it had in 1776.

 

Just saw someone say that and I felt like I had to get that out there.

 

Would you like one nut or two?

[southsider2k5]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ope...3,0,19700.story

 

It's your country too, Mr. President

 

Charles Krauthammer

April 13, 2009

 

WASHINGTON—In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

 

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

 

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7—"binding," as it were—UN resolution prohibiting such a launch?

 

The obligatory emergency UN Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a UN statement that dared express "concern," let alone condemnation.

 

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the UN—a fiction and a farce, respectively—what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles. Such is the "realism" Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

 

He certainly has a vision. Rather than relying on America's unique technological edge in missile defenses to provide a measure of nuclear safety, Obama will instead boldly deploy the force of example. How? By committing his country to disarmament gestures—such as, he promised his cheering acolytes in Prague, ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

 

Really, now. How does U.S. ratification of that treaty—which America has, in any case, voluntarily abided by for 17 years—cause North Korea to cease and desist, and cause Iran to turn nukes into plowshares?

 

Obama's other great enthusiasm is renewing disarmament talks with Russia. Good grief. Of all the useless sideshows. Cut each of our arsenals in half and both countries could still, in Winston Churchill's immortal phrase, "make the rubble bounce."

 

There's little harm in engaging in talks about redundant nukes because there is nothing of consequence at stake. But Obama seems not even to understand that these talks are a gift to the Russians for whom a return to anachronistic Reagan-era strategic arms reduction talks is a return to the glory of U.S.-Soviet summitry.

 

I'm not against gift-giving in international relations. But it would be nice to see some reciprocity. Obama was in a giving mood throughout Europe. While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was trying to make his American DVDs work and the queen was rocking to her new iPod, the rest of Europe was enjoying a more fulsome Obama gift.

 

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

 

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

 

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

 

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

 

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

 

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

 

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just [Franklin] Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy." And then added: "But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in."

 

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.

 

Washington Post Writers Group

[bmags]

one, does that article ignore the 1 trill to the IMF fund?

 

but second, oft said; complained, modern columnists are bleh. Here is a conservative columnist (only in grad school) who absolutely fascinates me.

 

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/

[BigSqwert]

huffpo doesn't do any original reporting

They actually announced a few weeks ago that they were hiring reporters to do original reporting.

 

[bmags]

well they can slag off, those reporters are being paid in stolen bullion.

[southsider2k5]

 

From the Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1934

[bmags]

HOW PRESCIENT THEY WERE!

[Balta1701]

Gosh 2k5, usually we don't see such explicit endorsements of "Hoover was right!" these days.

[Cknolls]

and of course RedState.com always has 100% reliable and unbiased reporting?

If you track the links, RedState links to TheMinorityReportBlog (reliability of this site?), which gets its info from Floppingaces.net (a site I've never heard from) who gets it's info from an unnamed source.

 

Great reliable reporting if you ask me.

 

And I get ripped for referencing the HuffingtonPost. At least they do some actual journalism instead of linking through different blogs.

 

 

So your proof that this didn't happen is what exactly? You are calling the Sgt. a liar? Whare is the MSM? They never lie about this kind of thing, right?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/weekinre...;partner=GOOGLE

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/weekinre...y%22&st=cse

[HuskyCaucasian]

So your proof that this didn't happen is what exactly? You are calling the Sgt. a liar? Whare is the MSM? They never lie about this kind of thing, right?

I'm not calling him a liar. I'm saying how do we ever know there was a real person to begin with? It's very easy for an unknown blog to just make something up.

[mr_genius]

so i heard Obama got tea bagged

 

sounds unpleasant

[BigSqwert]

so i heard Obama got tea bagged

 

sounds unpleasant

I've always been confused with the slang definition of teabagging. If someone gets teabagged, are they dropping their teabag into someone's mouth or do they get a teabag inserted into theirs?

 

urbandictionary.com is blocked at work so I can't check.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I've always been confused with the slang definition of teabagging. If someone gets teabagged, are they dropping their teabag into someone's mouth or do they get a teabag inserted into theirs?

 

urbandictionary.com is blocked at work so I can't check.

urbandictionary.com

1. Girl lays on her back, dude puts testicles in her mouth

2. Resting your nutsack in or on someone else's property for a comedic effect. Preferably with photographic evidence.

3. Where you put your ballsack on someones face, whether its their mouth, eyes, chin, nose. Whatever.

 

Not sure that clears it up.

 

Here is how i would use it. A a guy is teabagging a girl, and the girl gets teabagged.

Edited April 14, 2009 by Athomeboy_2000

[BigSqwert]

Here is how i would use it. A a guy is teabagging a girl, and the girl gets teabagged.

yeah, that's what I figured.

[mr_genius]

If someone gets teabagged, are they dropping their teabag into someone's mouth or do they get a teabag inserted into theirs?

 

on the unfortunate receiving end of the deal i believe.

[southsider2k5]

so i heard Obama got tea bagged

 

sounds unpleasant

 

More like half of the country is getting teabagged by the Obama administration...

[HuskyCaucasian]

More like half of the country is getting teabagged by the Obama administration...

oh snap. Actually, technically it's about 45.7%.

[lostfan]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/16/fee...ions/index.html

(CNN) -- I was talking to a close family friend during my vacation in Florida, and he was criticizing the governor there for taking the stimulus money that came from the federal government.

 

"Florida should just cut government spending, and not use the Feds as a crutch," he said with great vehemence.

 

Now, this family friend is not a wealthy guy, but he lives a comfortable life, made more comfortable by the fact that he gets a nice monthly pension check from the state. I didn't dare suggest to him that perhaps cutting back on his monthly pension might be one way to cut that spending, because if I had, I would have had a seven-iron flying at my head.

 

But what is most interesting to me about that conversation is how the attitude of this family friend reflects the attitudes of most Americans. Cut government spending, but don't touch my piece of the pie, the many cry out as one.

 

As federal policy makers grapple with the budget next week when Congress reconvenes, I challenge them to answer four uncomfortable questions that could bankrupt the country if unanswered:

 

First, why do we let people retire too early and then expect them to live so long without working? In 1910, the average retirement age in the United States was 74. In 2002, however, the average retirement age was 62. Average life expectancy in 1910 was around 55, while in 2002 it was 77.

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Throughout most of our nation's history, people were expected to work regardless of their age. Only over the last several decades has that changed.

 

Now it is assumed even if you are completely able-bodied and able-minded, you don't need to work and indeed you shouldn't be required to do so if you reach a certain age and certain number of years at one job. But that is crazy. We can't afford it. As people live longer, they should work longer, be productive longer, pay taxes longer, and be full participants in our nation's economy longer.

 

Second, why do most Americans spend so much of their health care expenditures in the last three months of their life? Fully 27 percent of Medicare is devoted to spending on end-of-life health (in other words, health care that doesn't work), according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

 

According to a Mayo Clinic study, "Older people with chronic illnesses have the highest rates of intensive-care-unit (ICU) use at the end of their lives. The country's aging population has an increased prevalence of chronic diseases, signaling that ICUs may treat more and more people in the years ahead. Intensive care costs comprise 30 to 40 percent of hospital spending and may continue to grow as the population ages."

 

In other words, we are paying a lot of money for health care that ends up with the patient dead. If we want to keep from going bankrupt, we have to have a more rational way to look at end-of-life care.

 

Third, why do so many people pay nothing in federal income taxes? According to the Tax Foundation, fully 32 percent of all Americans pay no federal income taxes while 42 percent of single Americans pay no federal income taxes. With President Obama's aggressive efforts to give more money to more Americans through tax credit refundability, many experts expect that over half of the people will owe nothing or may get back some money from the federal government.

 

Ironically, this trend started under George W. Bush, the president who supposedly ignored the poor. But taking so many people off the income tax rolls has two unfortunate consequences. First, it brings less revenue in to pay for a government that is already teetering on bankruptcy.

 

Second, it makes wholesale tax reform more difficult. Hey, if I ain't paying any taxes under the current system, why should I want to change it? But at some point in time, squeezing the so-called rich will become counterproductive to economic growth, and the pie will start to shrink. It is not fair that so many Americans pay nothing in income taxes to their government.

 

Fourth, why is it more profitable to work in the government than to work in the private sector? According to one study, public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, while private-sector workers got benefits worth $7.98 an hour. Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour, $11.90 more than in the private sector.

 

Democrats will argue this calls for more mandates from the government to increase the minimum wage. What it actually means is that government workers, who are paid by the taxpayers, are vastly overpaid, and with their benefits and their pensions, are risking the financial health of this country.

 

When Congress reconvenes next week, the talk will center on President Obama's budget, his plans to increase taxes on the wealthy and his ambition to spend more money on bigger government on programs that we can't afford. Let's hope that some courageous politicians somewhere will have the wherewithal to ask these kinds of uncomfortable questions so we can have an honest debate about what is really driving our nation over the cliff, fiscally speaking.

[Balta1701]

So, basically the argument there on health care is that it's simply cheaper to let people die earlier, so once their health care costs start rising, we ought to just let them go.

 

And the argument on retirement age is...if it was good enough for the gilded age, it's good enough for us. Presumably you've got your toddler set up with a job for when he turns 5 already, right?

 

They're dressed up in nicer language, but those are the arguments presented there. It's expensive to keep people alive, so health care reform should involve letting people die. And it's expensive to have people retiring, so people ought to never stop working.

[lostfan]

I posted that mostly for the "I want the government to cut spending but not my piece of the pie" argument.

[southsider2k5]

I just came across this... I don't know if there is a rebuttal to it, but it is interesting.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=new...id=a2PHwqAs7BS0

 

Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study

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By Gianluca Baratti

 

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.

 

For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal contains about $20 billion in tax incentives for clean-energy programs. In Spain, where wind turbines provided 11 percent of power demand last year, generators earn rates as much as 11 times more for renewable energy compared with burning fossil fuels.

 

The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills -- translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.

 

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

 

Spain’s Acerinox SA, the nation’s largest stainless-steel producer, blamed domestic energy costs for deciding to expand in South Africa and the U.S., according to the study.

 

“Microsoft and Google moved their servers up to the Canadian border because they benefited from cheaper energy there,” said the professor of applied environmental economics.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Gianluca Baratti in Madrid at [email protected]

Last Updated: March 27, 2009 07:58 EDT

[mr_genius]

Cut government spending, but don't touch my piece of the pie, the many cry out as one.

 

LOL

 

ok cut all portions, mine too. fine with me. not sure exactly what i'm getting (besides use of the roads and such, which everyone has) as my 'slice of the pie'.

[NorthSideSox72]

I just came across this... I don't know if there is a rebuttal to it, but it is interesting.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=new...id=a2PHwqAs7BS0

Look at the second graf:

 

For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

 

That is not the situation here, we don't force people to buy green energy and pay more for it that way. Our math isn't the same, so the situation is vastly different.

 

[southsider2k5]

Look at the second graf:

 

 

 

That is not the situation here, we don't force people to buy green energy and pay more for it that way. Our math isn't the same, so the situation is vastly different.

 

Not yet we don't. But we are heading down that path with Cap and Trade and carbon tax discussions. The current administration is NOT leading us down an "either, or" path.

Edited April 16, 2009 by southsider2k5

[NorthSideSox72]

Not yet we don't. But we are heading down that path with Cap and Trade and carbon tax discussions. The current administration is leading us down an "either, or" path.

Sure, and that would definitely change the math, again.