Confused about the way things are going in Washington? Here's a quick guide to help figure things out.
Barack Obama is half-way through his first 100 days in office, and the country is a mess. The stock market continues to tank, and the best advice our illustrious leader has for the nation is to just suck it up, because things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
Campaign promises for complete transparency have become completely opaque as life-altering bills are negotiated in Congressional back rooms, and signed into law without even the formality of a public hearing. Promises to veto pork-laden legislation and curb earmark abuse have given way to blaming yet-to-be-signed legislation on a previous Administration; and when that excuse doesn't pass the laugh test, to re-define an end to pork and earmarks as a theoretical goal, not an actual policy objective.
Barack Obama promised us hope and change. We've seen very little real change as far as the process of government goes, and virtually no hope that things are getting better anytime soon. So, are you confused about the way things are going in Washington? Don't be. In fact, it's all rather simple to understand.
I. Growing vs. dividing the economic pie
First, remember the off-script comments of Candidate Obama in his famous Joe the Plumber confrontation. The proper role of government isn't to facilitate the growth of wealth. Rather, it's to spread the wealth. Growing wealth means increasing the size of the proverbial pie, which is a harder thing to do than spreading the wealth, which simply means cutting up the existing pie differently. Thus the need to define the "rich" as families (or small businesses) making more than $250,000, or $200,000, or $180,000, or whatever arbitrary number is needed to make this redistributionist formula work.
All this focus on $250,000 "wealth" will have the desired effect of capping people's expectations. Once the target has been identified, those in the blast zone do everything they can to mitigate their exposure. If you're a small businessman like me, it means sidelining any intention to expand my business interests. This means jobs lost when people get laid off, jobs never created when people don't get hired in the first place, and a focus on personal wealth preservation rather than expanding the economic pie.
Because I don't have an offshore account or am not a Democrat party official, there is only so much tax avoidance I can manage. I'll do what I can with the limited resources I have at my disposal, but in the end I'll still wind up in the top tax bracket. So mission accomplished from the government's perspective.
II. How limiting private wealth helps Washington
Why mission accomplished? Because putting the damper on private wealth creation serves two purposes. First, it "equalizes" family incomes by dramatically reducing the gap between those who have and those who don't. Never mind that those who have worked, saved, scrimped, educated themselves, sacrificed, and took risks to secure that advantage (that is, unless they were born Kennedys, at which point it's okay to inherit one's money).
The fact that I have more money or property than you do is inherently unfair. Like the right to privacy which can't be found in the Constitution but has been theorized to exist, and therefore is real, the notion of fairness now becomes a quasi-Constitutional benchmark. Is the private accumulation of capital permitted by the Constitution? Technically yes, but it isn't fair to have really "rich" people (i.e. those making $250K, $200K, $180K etc.), so we'll just tax the living hell out of them to destroy their incentive to make more wealth, and confiscate the "excessive amount" of wealth they've already unfairly accumulated.
Second, by destroying private wealth accumulation, the only way to actually grow the economy is to have the government do it. Since that greedy bastard Phil Jackson is no longer willing to hire people and create new businesses (the unsuccessful ones causing him to lose his investment, and the successful ones having their profits taxed away in the name of fairness), then by God the Government will step in and fill the vacuum.
These jobs, of course, will either be civil service positions, thus the employee owes his/her continued economic well being to continuing governmental support; or they'll be good paying union jobs, where the employee will owe his continued economic well being to continued support of the union. Individual initiative plays no role here in wealth creation. In fact, in the name of fairness, those who have the talent and ability to make more of their lives will just have to suck it up and take comfort in the knowledge that those who don't have your talents or abilities, or won't make the sacrifices or take the risks you would, will not be denied the fruits of the nation's collective labor. After all, it's only fair.
This is why in the face of a crashing stock market, the Obama Administration has no interest in following the daily ups and downs (or more precisely, the daily downs and down furthers) of the New York Stock Exchange. As it plunges, so does the disparity between rich and poor as the "rich" people's 401K's and other investments crash along with it. And in keeping with the maxim that no good crisis deserves to go to waste, two additional "benefits" occur.
III. The additional benefits of an economic downturn
First, don't expect to hear anything for the next decade or two about privatizing social security. Never mind that privatization was only intended for the young, who had a 30-40 year horizon; not for old farts like me in their fifties and sixties. It's the government's role to take care of you – and thus control you — in your old age, and we can't have anything interfere with this natural order of things. You'll take your 1-3% annual growth in benefits and like it, and expect no more.
As a side note, this has the additional salutary effect of helping to control medical costs. When we adopt a Canadian or European-style national health system that assigns medical benefits on a triage basis, there's no temptation to dip into your private savings for a medical procedure to save the life of a 70-year-old person, because you will have no unfair, extra money available to pay for such an operation. Society's resources can be better directed to treating a much younger voter, I mean person, while you take comfort in the fact that you've lived a wonderful life and now need to move on. (And I don't mean changing government-subsidized apartments.)
Second, as the stock market plunges, the value of American companies plunge. This, of course, requires the government to step in at some point and "rescue" them. However, don't think of this as a Coast Guard cutter tossing a drowning man a life preserver. Rather, imagine a government bureaucrat holding a thirty-page personal services contract requiring you to make major lifestyle changes before you'll be thrown a rope. Government bailout money comes with strings. For the States, it's those pesky requirements to enact new laws Washington likes, or overturn existing laws the Federal Government doesn't appreciate. For the private sector — using Detroit as an example — it's building the kind of car Barney Frank wants, whether there's a real market for it or not.
The more the government gets to bail out the economy, the more it controls the economy. The more the government ruins the economy, the more there is to bail out. This is why the first Obama stimulus package contained no stimulus at all. It was a vehicle to enact thirty years of pent-up liberal legislation. The more the business community studied it, the deeper the Dow Jones sank.
IV. When the private sector actually has to be helped
Stimulus II has been proposed for this summer because, by then, about half the market's value will have vanished, and unemployment will start to hit double digits. American business will have exhausted its reserves, and what is now simply damaging to the country's future will become really damaging. This is when an actual bail-out law could see the light of day that contains limited private sector inducements, enough to stop the decline and maybe creep things up a little.
Once Stimulus II works its magic, whatever is left of American private enterprise will become the new foundation for the US economy; one that is firmly under the control of elected officials and the bureaucrats that support them. Presto-chango, in less than a year we'll go from market capitalism to state socialism, and thanks to the media, with the ignorant American public hailing the people who wrecked the economy as the ones who saved it.
V. Can the present trend be reversed?
Now let me get you really depressed. I don't see any way out of this situation. Counter-action requires two things: awareness and leadership. The media will do its best to hide or excuse the Obama administration's duplicity and incompetence. What they can't hide, Congress will address through a reauthorization of the Fairness Doctrine (albeit by another name). Even in the best of times, when information is readily available, most people would rather watch MTV or a sporting event than try to understand what is really going on in Washington. Suppressing what little truth exists magnifies this ignorance a thousandfold.
As for opposition leadership, even if the message could successfully get out, I don't see where it would come from. Yes, the Republicans held together for the most part in blocking the first Obama stimulus package (or more accurately, the Pelosi-Reed stimulus package), claiming that it had too much pork and wasteful spending. But when it came to advancing these same principles in the recent continuing authorization of government services, the Republicans were just as pork-filled as the Democrats. No one seriously believes that if the majority of current Republican Congressmen and Senators were suddenly to gain power, anything fundamental would change. Sure, we'd have less overt anti-capitalist legislation, but as for eliminating government waste and pork, it would be like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic time.
Add to this the fact that liberals with money are willing to spend their money on acquiring power, while conservatives with money are in it solely for themselves. I'm not speaking here about the Obama-rich conservatives making $250,000 or so. They'll write a check for a thousand or two every once and a while. Rather, I'm comparing the George Soros' of the world to the Boone Pickens' of the world. Soros pumped in bazillions of his own dough to create Moveon.org to achieve a political goal. Boone Pickens pumped in $25-50 million of his own money to educate the country about the benefits of wind power and natural gas — two commodities he just happens to have a direct financial interest in promoting.
The wealthy Left aspires to power to exert control over others, and reshape the country into its image. The wealthy Right uses the acquisition of power as a means to further line their own pockets. Until the ROWGs (rich old white guys) on our side look beyond their own immediate interests, we're going to keep losing this battle.
VI. When the cure is as bad as the disease
But all is not lost. There are two ways the Socialist Express can be stopped, neither of them appealing.
The first involves the same thing that typically brings down Liberal Democrat administrations: reaching too far, too fast. By cramming cap and trade, some version of the Kyoto treaty, radical health care reform/rationing, and other life-changing social and economic programs down the throats of the American people all at once, they risk a backlash.
Everybody loves health care reform, until they have to wait 3 months to see a doctor about a non-life threatening injury. Everybody wants to save the planet, until their heating and gas bill reaches stratospheric levels. Then, there's a backlash — and if the opposition party actually appears to stand for something, they have an opportunity to win despite the media's efforts to swing the election.
Second, there are exogenous events that can change the public's mood. The Left/Media took Katrina and transformed a natural disaster amplified by corrupt Louisiana politics (which neglected the levies and had no real evacuation plan for New Orleans) into a Bush Administration problem. The Right will have no such help re-defining Obama's legitimate mistakes, until the mistakes can no longer be excused away.
If this country is attacked again in a significant way on Obama's watch, no amount of backtracking and fancy dancing will explain away the current administration's complicity. Their focus on undoing many of the Bush Administration's security measures, from closing Gitmo, to watering down terrorist surveillance, to trying to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as they can, will in the words of an anonymous Obama supporter, finally "come home to roost."
So there you have it. Short of a man-made economic disaster or enemy attack, we're totally screwed. But, at least now you can understand how it got this way, and why short of war or economic collapse to change the nation's course, things will never be the same again once we implement our Obamatopia.
Phil, it sounds like you are finally coming around to the position that the Republican party is dead and action is needed under some other banner. Where we go is problematic when faced with a huge portion of the population on the receiving end of redistribution largesse. This suggests that the liklihood of winning elections (when we finally find candidates willing to put the country first instead of their political careers and resultant power) becomes increasingly unlikely. It appears to me that the already enacted Omessiahonomics has begun a death spiral that cannot be arrested due to a lack of candidates and political organization.
Once the internet and radio has been constrained there will be no outlets for communication remaining to those with opposing views. Maybe we will end up with a King?
I do remember, when I was stationed in the UK in the early 60s, pirate radio stations. Maybe that is the future of the conservative movement, hiding in dark places and attempting to communicate with each other through illicit means.
Remember, your article only addresses the broken promises and things the Omessiah has already completed to destroy the country. Get ready for the tests of his lack of courage (voting present is about as much a coward in elected office as I have ever encountered so I do not expect much when tests come). Korea, China, Russia, and Iran are already on the move while the Messiah shakes in fear at his evening cocktail party. Oh well the Kobe beef sales are going well.
> it sounds like you are finally coming around to the position that the Republican party is dead and action is needed under some other banner.
Mickey:
The leadership of the Republican Party is dead, as are the majority of itss elected officials. But the solution is not to promote another party, but rather to get rid of the corpses and re-invigorate it.
The Republican party has certain legal and organizational/structural assets. It has money, it's on the ballot in all 50 states at all levels (local to national), it has millions of people who identify with it, etc. You don't abandon the airline company and start a new one (or support a very small one instead) because their management or pilots are substandard; you replace them and use those assets effectively.
Like I've always maintained, we need to throw the bums out of office in primary battles (starting with Maine and Pennsylvania), and put in people who actually stand for something. This is the way ww win, not by joining a different, lesser party and trying to build it up while trying to win elections.
Phil, I agree with your pragmatic comments about existing organization, however I am not sure of the practical implications.
Seems to me that the corpses represent almost all elected Republican officials as well as large numbers of state chairmen and committee members. For example McCain is one of the corpses although not as far decayed as Spector. Elimination of poor representation on this scale is very little different from starting a new party and may take longer. Where will the new candidates come from? How will they be financed? How do we know they can be trusted?
Both the country and the Republican party is spinning through a death spiral, except the Republican party probably can't recover.
Phil
Quite right.
Reality is the enemy of socialist ideology.
Reality is a measurable force, like gravity, ever present. But like gravity, we tend to notice it only when we trip.
After just 50 days, many Obama supporters are realizing that reality has nowhere near the respect for their president that they do (did).
I am not a fan of John MacCain, but any fool could see that he has a better grip on the realitis of our economic situation and terrorism than the guy we ended up with.
We got a guy with no resume beyond socialist activism at the community level and a short legislative career that included no important legislation bearing his name, not to mention a cowardly record of voting "present" to avoid taking a position, and an actual voting record that earmed him the title of most liberal in the nation.
What did anyone who voted for him expect? They voted for an empty slogan and a guy whose promises about how he would people and run his office are just as empty.
That stack of $20s with the eyeballs on it isn't the money we could have saved with Geico, it's the money we could have saved with McCain.
Phillip, Excellent points regarding revival vs. new party. I still wonder how long it will effectively take to get Traditionalists, Conservatives and Libertarian "Hybrids" to start running for and holding office.
Every year that passes will add significant numbers of probable voters to the Democratic party (illegal immigrants and their children are one big source).
I estimate that "O" will serve 2 terms. We have realistically about 6 years to get a viable candidate ready. Unfortunately, after what I have seen in 50 days, I quake at the thought of the rest of his potential 8 years of office.
I actually think that Glenn Beck is on to something. He has fired me up more than anything in my life. I am talking with family and friends daily about politics. We just need people with good principles and values to run for office, but who wants to step up to the plate under the current state of politics? Miserable.
Phil,
On the other hand, by implying that "a man-made disaster or enemy attack" are needed in order to change Washington-initiated policy trajectories that are ultimately damaging to the country, you also invigorate arguments in favor of displacing the Republican party with an organization that first articulates and then energetically pursues an agenda that is more ideologically committed to and consistent with American First Principles. To continue your airline company analogy, while the company may have many planes and many employees, complacent or corrupt company culture is typically only shocked into reformation at the prospect of imminent business failure. Sometimes the most substantial factors contributing to such imminent business failure may reside with poor management decisions as well as aggressive competition from other airlines who successfully implement innovative business models. The Republican Party does indeed have infrastructural assets, but its most potent asset, its message, has been so compromised and in some cases completely abandoned since the Reagan years that it is questionable at this point whether even the threat of the Party's "business failure" could successfully provoke its reform. Perhaps instead this is the very time to challenge its raison d'etre, possibly allowing it to fail and thereby encouraging assumption of its assets by more competent leadership operating under a different name. Otherwise, the country faces increasingly debilitating consequences of policies implemented by the political majority while, absent a national emergency, established political opposition continues to render itself ideologically bankrupt and politically ineffective.
Everyone: Really good comments.
Changing the Republican Party will not be easy. In fact, it will be incredibly difficult. This is why I am not optimistic about the immediate future.
However, if any real change in the political system is to come (apart from that stimulated by war, or as a result of the Dem's screwing things up so badly the Republicans stumble back in to power), then it must come by re-energizing the Republican party. Mayors, councilmen/women, State legislators, or private citizens who actually stand for something need to be encouraged to mount a primary challenge to these Republican office holders, and then supported with sufficient money (small individual will do if enough people really want change) and volunteers (again, it only takes a dedicated cadre initially) to throw the bums out.
We have a ready made vehicle to succeed: the infrastructure, assets, and voter rolls of the Republican party. We need to re-invigorate it, not abandon these assets and try to create something new, or take a minor party and try to get all the Republican voters to switch party ID while trying to duplicate its infrastructure and assets and win elections at the same time.
This is what Reagan did. He left the Democrat Party, and worked to take over the Republican Party, and used that party to win two terms in office.
By the way, regarding third parties, here's what I wrote a couple of years back.
Primaries are where we need to focus on philosophy and values. Instead of just backing the incumbant Republican, we need to ask whether they deserve our support. If not, we need to back a candididate that does.
However — and this is the part that's really important — if our guy/gal loses the primary battle, we're left with only two real choices: the Dem or the Rep candidate. As flawed as the Rep candidate may be (think McCain), it's either him/her or the Dem (think Obama). Ron Paul may have been a great theoretical choice, but he didn't get the nomination. And while Bob Barr may espouse a philosophy that's closer to yours than McCain, there is absolutely no chance he'll win.
So, focus on the primaries. If you can't win in 2010, then try it again in 2012, 2014, etc. If you can't persuade rank and file Republican voters to support your candidate, you'll never persuade them to vote for a non-Republican candidate in the general election. And sitting the election out only helps the other party.
***
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/10/12/who%e2%80%99s-running-for-president/
In the primary, vote for the candidate you see as best fitting the country’s needs, as you envision it. But once the primary season has ended, the choice is between the Republican and Democrat nominees. If your guy lost the primary battle, take the fight up again in 2012 — and help lay the groundwork for a successful campaign in the four years preceding the next election. But in 2008, there’s a different, concrete choice on the table. Walk away and feel good about yourself, or actually participate in the political process.
The choice for president will be between the Democrat and Republican nominees. Wishing someone else was running is irrelevant. One of these two people will become president, and you must choose between the two of them. It’s a political contest, not a litmus test for True Conservatism or getting into Heaven. Ignoring that fact will help elect someone who is even more hostile to your views.
It’s not just the choice we face in 2008. It’s the only choice in 2008.
Phil, I'm even more pessimistic than you are: when there's another attack, the media and a surprising percentage of Americans absolutely will blame Bush. It could be the day before the next election, and they'll blame Bush.
Phil, if someone gets a paper cut a hundred years from now, the media will blame George Bush.
On the lighter side, your post contains the coincidental phrase "God the Government," which made me smile. How appropriate! Move over, God the Father and God the Son…there's a new guy in town!
Huston,
Not exactly a new guy in town. He was there in the garden, probably talked with a lisp, and said, "You can be like God…"
P
Your article is too depressing to think about. We’re being governed, & governed, & governed by a guy (surrounded with similar people) who symbolizes basically what’s wrong with America right now. An emperor with no clothes on where ignorant armies clash by night. So I'll….
But seriously, your article would indicate that the American booboisie is now suffering a, may I say, malaise & is just not concerned about the economic underpinnings, what we see as the economic verities, necessary to move us beyond this crisis, & thus there's really nothing to save us from disaster.
All I can say is that the MSM can't hide everything from the public like the fact that Americans have lost 18% of their wealth, which means to me that the people who are more affluent & able to save & invest have lost >18% of their wealth. And I would note that, based on anecdotal evidence of an unscientific sample (my friends & some MSM & TV Talkingheads in the chattering class), I don’t see that either (a) Republicans or centrists who supported him or opposed him less than enthusiastically or (b) even old-line Dems who supported him ritualistically as the un-Republican are now cheering him, even unenthusiastically, after his three score & one days in office. (Maybe they’re just not enthusiastic folks!)
Oh & BTW, The U.S. is being bullied (humiliated) as the hopeunchange guys now in charge try, in an example of hope triumphing over experience, to change the international order, the Pax Americana, by trying to reason with our irrational foes while acting most irrationally with our reasonable allies. (You should ask: What DVDs Would Jesus Give To His Disciples Today?) So far, yawn; the voters have more important better things to worry about.
More depressing anecdotal evidence: the other day I was in the lab for a blood test (it’s still 100% American!). Two ladies of an age were also there & one said to the other that Obama is trying to straighten out Health Care but “they” are stopping him. I can see her priorities.
So, back to earth: I don’t see yet that the writing’s on the wall, he’s headed for a fall, the voters disenthrall….
But, I remember that what looked like Dems forever in '64, '76, & '92, did not happen. Nor did all those post-2004 predictions of “Republicans Forever; it’s the demographics, stupid!” Right now, I wouldn't bet against the Dems in 2010, 2012, but if they keep screwing up & if high-minded Republicans, a/k/a Kool-Aid drinkers, keep waking up to the fact that Obama isn't really going to be like them & govern from the Center, maybe we'll have a Republican in spite of himself (apologies to Molière). Of course, as you note, if this Republican can't stop the pork, then we are doomed. Right now, I'm betting on doomed.
BTW (H/T Instapundit):,
(1) President Gordon Gekko: White House: Greed will help: The nation’s economy used to have too much greed and not enough fear of the future, but now has too much fear and could use a little more “greed” – spending.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19972.html
&
(2) The Emily Litella Presidency: Obama: Economic crisis ‘not as bad as we think’.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19972.html
Inwood: I want to believe that it will get better. But my hope (unlike Obama's) is grounded in reality. I think things will get much worse before things turn.
Phil, in reference to your #8, once the incumbent parties' primaries have slotted their respective candidates, then of course it makes no sense to sit things out. But in a greater sense it is important to seek an alternative to Orthrus. Whereas the the Repulbican party was originally founded as a base from which to pursue the policy of ending slavery expansion, the Republican party of today has become the Old Gentleman's club and is too widely (and some would say too correctly) perceived as the party of Corporate Interests. Much as that original ideological spark inspired establishment of an effective organized opposition to pro-slavery Democrats then, a firm belief against government expansion today is the most combustible ideological material available to fuel an effective popular opposition populated by Conservatives. I do not see that either incumbent party would be willing take an unequivocal stand in this regard and then be held to account. And I cannot imagine either party overtly expressing its intention to pursue any other similarly unequivocal policy such as, for example, your previous proposal to hold a new Constitutional Convention.
michaelbp: I understand your position. But look at the Republican Party in 11972-976, and then in 1980. It took only one man to turn things around and give it a focus. If Reagan had abandoned the Democrats to start a new party (or join a small party and try to duplicate the infrastructure and voter roll of the Republican party), we'd have had carter again in 1980, and Mondale in 84.
The "alternative" is not to abandon the Republican party, but to support people with the best vision for the country, particularly if it means a primary fight with an incumbent Republican candidate.
And if we don't win the battle in 2010 or 2012, we keep plugging away like Reagan did after losing to Ford in 1976.
If there are no Republican candidates anywhere with the right message and ideals who can gather a sufficient following of Republivan voters to win a primary battle, then we've lost, period. A third party effort would be even less successful.
By the way, regarding a Constitutional Convention, the States themselves can force this issue. It doesn't come from Congress. There are enough state legislatures in smaller or conservative states where this would be a real possibility. For every NY there is an Alaska. For every california there is a Georgia, and then some.
P
Make my Lincoln-esque reference "two score and 12 days" Obama was in 52, not 62 days. My Bad.
Michelle Malkin has this note re the two BTWs I referred to in #11:
"Laughingstock: President Doom does a 180, cancels fear-mongering".
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/12/laughingstock-president-doom-does-a-180-cancels-fear-mongering/
I don't agree with the laughingstock part. I think that the public & the business community wants to hear happy news rather than doom & gloom & that this, as explained & reinforced by the MSM repeatedly will help his image.
It's the image, stupid.
And you & folks like you (your #12)& me will be denounced as guilty of the sin of despair!
And anyway, it's all Bush's fault & the fault of deregulation & tax breaks for the rich. Give The One some time, for goodness sake.
Every American will be given 25 free DVDs.
Inwood. No problem. Apparently I have difficulty with writing the years properly (see #14).
Hit that one out of the park again. Total agreement with your comment to Mickey G. let's keep the GOP Banner and dump moderates and liberal Republicans at the ballot box. Glenn Beck had an interesting program where he rolled out http://the912project.com/ It's called Project 9-12 in recognition of how we were one after 9-11. It seems that we are all feeling quite scared and wondering what is happening to us. It's his contention that there are many millions of us and some 535 of them. They don't listen to us, they don't take our call or Emails, so he has provided a place where we can start talking and they will start listening. Call it the "If You Build it They Will Come" model. It's my hope that this project becomes as big of a hit as Drudge and that they start going there to notice that one of my themes will be if they are in and have voted for pork, vote them out. TERM LIMITS AT THE BALLOT BOX.
http://stopsocialism.wordpress.com J.C.
Re: 912 Project: Do to the overwhelming amount of hits at this site as stated by Glenn on the show, the server keeps crashing, even the one he has running on his page at FoX. They will be getting this resolved shortly. Please be patient, I've been on a couple of times, nice format. J.C.
P
I saw your "11972-976" but I just figured that you were a Trekkie! (WWTD?, or What Would Trekkies Do?)
I hate to be cutting & pasting, but this is too good to ignore about the 180º turn on the Economy by The One (H/T Instapundit)
“They told me that if I voted for McCain I’d have a President who was an out-of-touch cheerleader for the economy. And they were right!”
&
FROM “CATASTROPHE” TO “NOT SO BAD?” We must distinguish between “bourgeois truth,” which is concerned with sterile facts, and “revolutionary truth,” which is concerned with what will promote the revolution. See:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmE0MTY3YWMxYzI3ZWM1OGUyZWMzOGQ1ZjRhNTMzYWQ=
P
In an exchange of e-mails with a friend who doesn't blog, I sent him your article & all comments & we discused those who say that the GOP has to drop the social-con stuff or die.
He replied:
"Since we all know that at least 40% of Republican solons vote for pork spending and at least 3 agree with O's bailout solution, if we dropped the social issues what reason would there be to vote for a Republican?"
Well, I guess where we go from here is to find a way to protect ourselves from the hyperinflation [à la 1923 Germany] sure to come.
Sedona: One way I've decided to do it is to delay paying off a note that I intended to retire this year. The interest rate is relatively low, and with the hyper inflation that's coming, I can inflate my way out of the re-payment by paying it off in 2010 or 2011 with inflationary dollars.