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Why Republicans Can’t Fix the Big Problems

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Here is why Republicans will not be willing or able to seriously address the real problems in our country.  The moral sentiments of the population determine what political leaders are willing to do.  The moral sentiments of a country may be consistent with reality or may be based on Utopian fantasies, but, either way, they control public policy.

Some people say that America’s problems are solely the result of people abandoning morality.  But some of our biggest problems are actually the result of widely accepted, but irrational, moral ideals that are destructive in the long run.

To illustrate, let’s examine the concepts “earn” and “deserve”.  In reality, material products and human services are the product of human labor.  Food and shelter, for example, do not exist in nature ready for your use.  Medical care does not exist in nature.  Humans must work to create these things. Poverty is the default position.

This is not a situation that was devised by mean people.  This is not a situation that can be wished away.  This is just reality.

Earning the material things you desire means producing them by your labor or trading what you do produce in a free exchange with others for the things they produce.  I will give you my eggs for your potatoes.  Money was invented to make this exchange easier.  “Earning” is the name given to your required productive effort.

Personal responsibility is the name we give to the acceptance of reality’s demand that work is required to get the things we desire.  In Americas past, this was a widely understood virtue.

In America today, a corrupted concept of “deserve” has replaced the concept of “earn”.  In its original usage, deserve meant to do things or show qualities worthy of reward or punishment.  So, if you did all the things necessary to grow a crop, you earned the resulting harvest.  Today, “deserve” is completely divorced from that meaning.

Today, deserve is a utopian term pertaining to a world of wishes, detached from reality.  You may have the moral sentiment that all people deserve (have a moral right to) free housing, free food, free medical care, etc..  You could also say that you think it would be wonderful if fairies delivered these goods to people.  Reality does not allow for either free things or fairies.  These two wishes are equally unrealistic.

But reality is not a relevant concern to Utopian dreamers who imagine that, with the right leaders in charge, everyone can have everything they really need for free…..  somehow.

That is our current situation in America.  The prevailing moral sentiment is that everyone deserves all the basic things they want whether they earn them or not.  Only mean people would argue or think otherwise.  All Democrats and most Republicans accept this utopian moral ideal.  This determines what legislative initiatives are even possible to discuss.

Here is an example of how legislating utopian ideals works in practice.  Progressives believe that everyone deserves to own a home.  Community organizers (including Obama) organized protests demanding that banks drop their standards for making home loans.  Increasingly, the government required banks to make irrational home loans to people who had little possibility of ever paying the loan.  In the mortgage crash of 2008, reality reasserted itself, as it always does.  The mortgage plan that had no possibility of working, stopped working.

The point here is that moral sentiments can require politicians to follow a path that is certain to fail.  Do not confuse utopian actions with benevolence.  Utopianism leads to chaos and destruction. Truly benevolent actions help people in the long run, in the real world.

Consider more examples of destructive policies that are supported by popular moral sentiment and are therefore unlikely to be successfully challenged.

A study, recently released by the Food and Nutrition Service, showed how the recipients of food stamps spent their money at one grocery chain, so this is just a small sample of what was spent nationally.  For this chain, the amount spent in 2011 for soft drinks was nearly $358,000,000; for candy, $134,000.000; for cakes and cookies, $146,000,000, and so on.

The proper way to look at this policy is this – we are borrowing massive amounts of money from our grandchildren for the purpose of harming current welfare recipients.  It is a lose-lose policy, bad for people at both ends of the transaction.  I don’t believe there is much chance of replacing policies like this with better policies because current moral sentiments do not allow restriction on people who ‘deserve’ to eat whatever they want.   Doing the right thing for our grandchildren would not be allowed.

One of the primary things that should bring people down from their utopian fantasies is thinking about the immorality of placing debt on the next generations.  Except for emergencies, it is clearly immoral to consume for our pleasure now and give the bill to our grandchildren.

Short-sighted politicians simply avoid thinking about our unbelievably massive debt in any serious way.  They buy votes by borrowing from the future and spending now.  “Debt limits” are not limits at all.

Politicians of both parties, when confronted, admit that this wild spending is “not sustainable”, but then they cast that thought aside and spend more.  Things that are “not sustainable” will end.  Politicians who expand all of our big government programs pretend they are the good people who care.  They are, in fact, the people who are guaranteeing great harm from the coming collapse of unsustainable utopian programs.

The politicians are following the moral sentiments of our society which demand that people get everything they “deserve”.   When reality reasserts itself, the people will get what they deserve and they will get it good and hard.  Reality always bats last.

Another big social problem that cannot be addressed honestly is the “quiet catastrophe” of millions of men who choose not to work.  There is explosive growth in the number of men who want to live as children for their entire life, letting others work to provide the things they need.  There are currently 2 ½ times as many infantilized ‘men’ in this ‘don’t care about work’ category as there are men who are reported by the government as unemployed. This is truly shameful behavior and should not be tolerated, but it will be tolerated and even defended by today’s moral arbiters.

How many people do you think can hop into the wagon before those pulling the wagon refuse to pull?  There is a limit.

An even more important issue where politically correct morality does not allow honest policy discussions is race relations.  No person who honestly assessed the problems in the black subculture would say that ‘racist white policemen shooting blacks for no reason’ is their most significant problem.  It wouldn’t even make the list of the top 50  problems.  Yet we grant the moral high ground to a well-funded racist hate group which makes this absurd claim in destructive protests across the nation.

In reality, a subculture that celebrates violence, denigrates women, does not value education, ignores the responsibility of caring for their children, and ignores personal responsibility in general, has no chance of success.  Melanin offers no protection from this fact.  It is true for all people.

People who really cared about black lives would concentrate on the changes that would help the most.  But the things that would help the most cannot be honestly discussed.  Even black people who talk about black cultural values are attacked and silenced by the PC thought police.

The enforced moral position regarding a significant subculture in the black community is that nothing at all is their responsibility and none of their problems are their fault.  The problems are all the fault of white people and police.  If you are paying attention, you see that white shaming is rapidly being institutionalized in education, government bureaucracies and popular culture. This is an extremely destructive trend.  Following Alinsky’s advice to “rub raw the sores of resentment” may achieve his desired goal of revolutionary hatred, but it is not what decent Americans, black or white, want to see.

Decent Americans seek to follow the moral advice of Martin Luther King, who had “a dream that one day people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin”.  I believe that the vast majority of white people accept this advice and fully respect and honor all people of good character.  They cheer the success of black people.

Sadly, King’s dream was crushed by the so-called ‘black leaders’ who followed him.  To them, any judgement of character is absolutely forbidden; skin color is everything.

White people, at some point, will rebel against the false charges of racism that are relentlessly hurled against them.  When they have had enough and start to answer the charges rather than meekly ignore them, the left will say, “See, we told you they are racists”.  The left will claim the moral high ground and they will continue to shape destructive social policy.

 

Mao sent moral crusaders into the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.  Young, idealistic monsters purged China of “wrong thinking”.    We have similar, self-righteous moral crusaders at our colleges and on our streets.  They will not tolerate opposing viewpoints.  Wise and thoughtful people like Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald were recently silenced by organized mob violence at Middlebury and Claremont colleges.   By the thousands, social justice warriors are Organizing for Action. We will see much, much more of them in coming months, with increasing disruption and violence.  Their actions will have the moral support of the media, the universities and leftist politicians because these are the very groups who are creating this army.  It remains to be seen whether the majority of Americans will tolerate the violent intolerance.

The recent Obamacare debate should have made clear the reasons why Republicans cannot do what needs to be done to create a long-term sustainable system.  Our utopian moral ideals have already closed that possibility.  Whatever legislation happens next will be an entitlement program involving massive government spending and promising much more than can be delivered.  The people will demand it, the politicians will say they can deliver it, and time will prove that rationing and low quality care is the inevitable result.

Thinking that government bureaucracies are the key to managing anything efficiently and inexpensively means that you have not paid any attention at all to how the world works.

Government run health care is a black hole for debt that will consume resources beyond our wildest imagination. And we already have more in debt than any nation in history.  By some estimates, our debt, including unfunded obligations, is two hundred trillion dollars, which is more the twice the yearly economic output of the entire world!

It simply cannot work, long term, to add a massive new entitlement to all of our other unfunded obligations.  But current moral sentiment will require that we do it.

If disaster is the certain outcome of an action, how can it be considered ‘good’?  Beware of ‘good’ people who cannot think.

There is an imaginary world where the laws of economics do not apply, where wishing is more powerful than facts, where debts never come due, where racist police are the biggest threat facing black communities, where politicians can control the world’s climate with a vote, where open borders and a welfare state are a desirable combination, where Islam has nothing at all to do with Islamic Jihad,  where you can load ever increasing freeloaders into a wagon, whip the ever decreasing horses, and expect the horses to pull the load forever.

Progressives live in that world. They believe that reality can change its nature to fit our desires.  But there is an objective reality that is indifferent to our wishes.

We are going to keep racing toward the cliff because it is the ‘right’ thing to do.  And by ‘right’ I mean right in the Utopian dream world that shapes our moral sentiments.  In the real world this can only be destructive.  Just wait and see.

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First published at American Thinker.

 

The Most Important Thing…

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Alexandria – June 30, 2013

Alexandria – June 30, 2013

The most important thing that happened in the world on New Year’s Day may be an event that our media ignored.  If you believe that the future of peace and freedom in the world rests heavily on the ability of the Muslim world to reform itself in a way that rejects violent fundamentalism, then the January 1 speech by Egypt’s President al-Sisi is a cause for some celebration, or at least some positive press coverage.

With 88 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world.  In the battle between the violent, supremacist view of Islam and a more peaceful moderate view, al-Sisi and current Egyptian leadership have boldly, and fearlessly, taken sides against the Muslim Brotherhood and in favor of moderation.

Al-Sisi’s speech was an impassioned call for a “religious revolution”.   He noted that the fundamentalist view of Islam, “is antagonizing the entire world.”   Addressing the clerics directly, he asked them to, “step outside of yourselves and be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective…  Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants…   Impossible!”

He boldly added, “You, imams, are responsible before Allah.  The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move.”

This great man deserves all of the support our nation can give him in his quest to reform Islam.  But he will get very little support from the current administration.  This administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in many ways and in many places, including Egypt.  This fact is not lost on the Egyptians.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to a business executive from Egypt on a long flight inside China in the fall of 2013.  He and his family had been part of the largest political demonstration in the history of the world, just two months earlier in Egypt.  An estimated 88 million people took to the streets protesting President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  They wanted a real Arab Spring, not Morsi’s move toward religious oppression.

My Egyptian flight partner said the people in his country were shocked that our President was, “on the side of the terrorists, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.”  He said most Egyptians think of Americans as friends, but they were very upset that America was on the wrong side of this issue and popular opinion was definitely turning against us.  He thought this mistake would give Russia an opening for greater influence in his country.

It was a disturbing conversation because I shared this man’s goals for greater freedom in his country and it was undeniable that the leader of my country did not.  For the Egyptian freedom fighters, just as for the Iranian freedom fighters, America’s beacon of freedom looks dim.

Excuses For Fools

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headup

The Obamacare rollout is a world-class failure.  The most expensive website in history doesn’t work and those who battle through the website to get to the cost of the policies are most often shocked to see expensive policies with very high deductibles.  So it’s time for the well-used Obama Excuse Machine to start pumping out excuses.  Consider the following stories we have heard from Democrats:

 

 

1. Our problems are caused by the fact that Republicans said our plan would not work. They said government could not manage this gigantic health care takeover in an efficient or inexpensive fashion.  That’s the real cause of our wildly expensive and inefficient plan.

2. The Republicans didn’t give us enough time or money to get this right.  Three and a half years and hundreds of millions of dollars were simply not enough.

3. People should not have wanted the policies that they are losing because of Obamacare.  They should want the much more expensive policies we offer.  Our policies are so desirable that we decided to make them mandatory.

4. It’s the insurance company’s fault that millions of people are losing their insurance coverage.  Obamacare made the old policies illegal to sell, but it’s the bad insurance companies fault that they are not allowed to sell them.

5. Capitalism is the reason people are being forced out of their old plans.  When the government intervenes in markets and limits choices, that’s capitalism.

6. The website has not really crashed.  It’s just a little slower than we would want.

7. Our new insurance market has been very popular.  We are completely unwilling to tell you how many people have bought our wonderful new plans.

8. You may have heard that our website security measures are sub-standard, but your personal data is completely secure with us.

9. Obama did not lie when he guaranteed you could keep your plan and your doctor if you wanted.

10. MSNBC reports that Obamacare is “so positive” and “tremendous” that reporters  “are having a hard time saying something nice about it or positive about it because they might be viewed as journalistically compromised”.

These are arguments aimed at people who cannot think.  The arguments are aimed at the Democrat voting base.  Democrat leaders must have a very low opinion of the intelligence of their voters.

— Published on American Thinker —

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obama_clear

obamacare gecko

The Confident Liar

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obamacare web

The fact that President Obama is a confident, skillful liar is not a surprise to any objective observer.  His personal history is fiction in many key respects.  He lied about his membership in the socialist New Party in Chicago, he lied about the extent of his relationship with Bill Ayers.  He lied about an open and transparent administration.  He lied about letting the public review legislation for 5 days before any vote was taken.  He lied about cutting the deficit.  He lies about being a non-partisan President who is always open to consider proposals from his opposition.  When he is caught in lies about the growing list of administration scandals, he lies more.

When he lies, he usually assumes his pose of moral superiority.  He begins many lies with the phrase “Let me be clear”.  You can see video samples of 21 lies here:

Obama’s lies about the Unaffordable Health Care Act were so blatant and were repeated so many times that even the mainstream media is noticing and publicizing the bait-and-switch pitch.  The lackeys at NBC are reporting that  Obama knew his sales pitch was a lie.  Obama repeatedly said things like:

  • “You can keep your doctor and keep your plan.  The only thing we are going to do is lower costs.”
  • “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
  • “No matter what you’ve heard, if you like your doctor or your health care plan, you can keep it.”
  • “This will not increase the deficit by one dime.”

Some key employees, like Kathleen Sebelius, are also comfortable lying.  In this recent whopper, she repeated the Obama phrase, “regardless of what you’ve heard”, which is meant to denigrate the people telling the truth.

SEBELIUS: “In every state in the country, regardless of what you hear. In every state in the country, there will be a new health marketplace open for business on October 1. There will be online availability that now is up and running.

After the rollout disaster, Sebelius explained the cause of the 700 million dollar website failure:  The problem was that,  ”the majority party at least in the House was determined to stop this any way they possibly could”.           This is truly sick and pathetic.

Obamacare was designed to fail.  The insurance company and union fools who supported the plan will suffer greatly under it.  Many millions will lose insurance coverage that they liked.  Younger people who were supposed to sign up for much more expensive coverage won’t do so.  Revenue will be much less than expected and costs will be much higher than expected.  The plan, as written, will fail.

Then we will be told that the only solution is government control of all health care.

In 2003, Obama said, ”I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer healthcare system for America, but as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.”  In 2007, he said,  ”But I don’t think we will be able to eliminate employer-based coverage immediately. There is potentially going to be some transition time.”

Illinois Representative, Jan Schakowsky, explained to a group of supporters that private insurance would be destroyed by Obamacare.   She said that the public option would, “put the private insurance companies out of business and lead to single-payer.”  Her audience cheered.

In 2008, Yale Professor Jacob S. Hacker openly explained the deceitful strategy.  He said, ”Someone once said to me this is a Trojan Horse for single payer. It’s not a Trojan Horse, right? It’s right there! I am telling you. We are going to get there. Over time. Slowly. But we are going to move away from reliance on employer-based health insurance, as we should, but we will do it in a way that we are not going to frighten people into thinking they are going to lose their private insurance.”

Harry Reid has already explained that the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care.  On a Las Vegas PBS’ program, Reid explained, “What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever.”

When then asked  whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”  

This law was passed without anyone even knowing what was in it.  It was a step toward government control, and that is all that mattered to them.  It was passed against the will of the American people.  Mr. Reid “deemed” it to be law without even a vote on the actual bill.  They argued forcefully that it wasn’t a tax and then they argued in court that it was. The entire Obamacare endeavor has been a deceitful scam played on the public for the purpose of extending government power. It will severely damage the greatest health care system on earth, but, to them, that doesn’t really matter.

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Hitler finds out about Obamacare Exchange problems -

 

The Battered Public Syndrome

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Alfred E Bama

The battered wife syndrome is a well-known psychological malady in which an abused partner stays with her abuser, thinking things would be worse without him.  They think the separation would be more painful than the beatings and can’t really imagine life without their man.

For some victims, there finally comes a time when they have had enough and they face the reality that this man is not good for them.  He lies to them.  He hurts them.  Eventually, even his sweet talk falls on deaf ears.

Watching the news this week, I have seen clips of our President lying smoothly, comfortably, and repeatedly in his bait-and-switch sales pitch for the comically named Affordable Health Care Act.  “You like your doctor; you can keep your doctor.”  “You like your plan; you can keep your plan, period.” “You will have much better insurance for less money”.  “Your insurance costs will go down by an average of $2,500.“ “This plan will not increase our deficit by one dime.”

All lies.

The public is being battered on health care and that is becoming increasingly obvious.

Bill O’Reilly played clips of the President responding to various administration scandals.  After the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, after the Benghazi disaster, after the IRS was used as an instrument of political intimidation, after the Obamacare rollout debacle, the President assured us that he would “get to the bottom of this” and “hold people accountable”.  He comfortably played the role that was required at the time.

Then he endlessly stonewalled, held no high level officials accountable, and eventually said it was time to move past these “phony scandals”.  Scandals that he acted very concerned about had morphed into completely unimportant distractions.

His concern was an act, a lie.  He does not need an investigation to know what he did on the night of September 11, 2012.  He knows what orders he made and what orders he withheld.  He knows what he discussed with Hillary Clinton in their 10 PM conversation.  He knows why she used the video alibi immediately after the call.  Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were still fighting for their lives at the time of the alibi discussion.  And he knows perfectly well that the IRS targeting of conservative was a partisan operation. He knows White House officials were involved in the operation and the cover-up.

There comes a point where abused people just get tired of the obvious lies.  That may even be true of the mainstream media, a group deeply in love with Obama.  They easily forgive him for any abuse of conservatives.  In fact, they help him with that abuse.  But some were unhappy when it was discovered that reporter’s phone lines were being bugged by the administration.  And more recently, a NY Times reported admitted that this administration is “the most closed, control-freak administration I have ever covered.”  The abuser promised that it would be “the most open and transparent administration” ever. Some in the media are reporting honestly about the Obamacare rollout debacle.

Another group that has been fully in love with Obama is the black community.  But blacks have been disproportionately harmed by Obama’s policies.  PBS host and Obama supporter, Tavis Smiley, recently admitted the truth, saying , “The data is going to indicate, sadly, that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category. At some point, this group may realize that this man is not good for them.  At some point, reality may overpower the imagined significance of half-blackness.

King disappointed

I am seeing signs that a battered public is tired of the lies and tired of the economic destruction.  It is becoming clear that their man is a con-man, unworthy of their trust.  This is a very tough transition for people who thought they were in love and had high hopes for the relationship.   If a significant number of those who thought they loved him become immune to the lies, then there is hope for the future.

 —  First published at American Thinker —

 

 

 

A Little Help For Team Obamacare

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obama-soviets

On Tuesday, President Obama issued an appeal to his permanent campaign organization, Organizing For Action, to get activists out there on the street selling Obamacare.   The video appeal urged his utopian dreamers to form the “Team Obamacare” army to tell people, “what the Affordable Care Act will mean for them.”

In the interest of helping Team Obamacare with that effort, I have compiled a list of talking points that they could use to explain the real-world effects of this law:

  • If you like your Doctor, you may not be able to keep your Doctor,
  • If you like your insurance plan, you may not be able to keep your insurance plan,
  • If you like more expensive premiums, you will be happy to know that for the vast majority of people, your premiums will go up — for most people way, way up.
  • If you like high deductibles, many of you will find that your deductibles will be so high that your policy is almost like having only catastrophic coverage.   The first 10 or 12 thousand dollars of medical expenses will come directly out of your pocket.
  • If you like losing your full time job and becoming a part-time worker, this transition is happening to many workers across the country as a result of Obamacare.  Many others are losing their jobs completely.
  • If you like consuming things for your personal benefit now, but asking your children and grandchildren to pay for it in the future, Obamacare may accomplish that better than any legislation in history.  It will be the black-hole of future debt, costing much, much more than the original projections.
  • If you like the idea of your personal medical records being on government computers where they may be accessible to government bureaucrats who may be interested in seeing them, this law makes that possible.
  • If you like the idea of having a greatly enlarged IRS enforcing a significant part of Obamacare, you will get that, too.
  • If you like a law that will be applied unequally, with special favors being granted to favored groups, this law has already shown that it can easily be used that way.  We can punish our enemies and reward our friends.
  •  If you like the idea of limiting you choices in insurance coverage, this law makes it illegal for companies to offer policies that may suit the desires of some groups of consumers.  Politicians have decided what you should want in a policy and if that makes the policies more expensive, just remember that they know what is best for you.

And now the best argument for Team Obamacare activists who understand the real game plan:

  • If you want the government to have complete and total control of health care, the coming Obamacare debacle is simply Step 1.  When this law fails, we will blame greedy insurance companies and greedy doctors for the failure and we will say the only solution is Single Payer.  Checkmate.

 

Letters From Ben and Barry

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These recently leaked letters from Ben and Barry shed some light on our President’s secret strategy -

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Ben Bernanke  -  Federal Reserve Chairman

 

President Barack Obama                                                                     August 6, 2013 The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500                                     —  Confidential —-

Dear Mr. President,

I am ever more worried about the path we are taking in dealing with the nation’s debt and our money supply.  As we have discussed on several occasions, creating money in massive quantities, which we are doing every month, is like giving drugs to a drug addict.  We produced the drug-induced euphoria in the markets that you wanted and government expansion is being financed with the borrowed money, but a day of reckoning is coming.

The world has never seen debt at the levels we are creating it.  Nothing even comes close.  Every thinking person knows that our present course is not sustainable.  Honestly, Mr. President, if you just do the math you will see that our current unfunded liabilities cannot be paid.  You simply cannot tax our grand-children at the rate that will be required and still have a productive economy.  We are putting such a load of obligations in this wagon that future generations will not be able to pull it.

The further we go down this road, the more painful the correction is going to be.  You see what happens when I even suggest that I may slow down on my “quantitative easing”.  The markets panic.  So I can’t do that without a very serious contraction.  You and I will be blamed.

But I can’t keep printing billions of dollars endlessly without destroying the value of the dollar.  I am already having trouble finding buyers for our bonds.  And the interest rate on the debt is sure to rise as the bonds become less desirable.    That will wreak havoc on our budget as debt service takes an ever increasing share of tax revenue.  We are going to get blamed for that.

I know our goal has been to push this trouble down the road, and I am still manufacturing fake prosperity as fast as I can, but I just don’t know if I can push the coming economic chaos off into the next President’s term.  For that reason I am submitting my resignation and would like to be replaced soon.

I have the luxury of jumping ship, but you must remain.

Regretfully,

Ben Bernanke

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President Barack Obama

 

The Honorable Ben Bernanke                                                                 August 14, 2013
Chairman
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
20th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC  20551                                                    — Confidential —

Dear Ben,

I am sorry to see you go and I appreciate your concern for me, but you worry too much.  We have a plan to manage the problems you describe.  You need to understand that the economic problems ahead are not the issue.  The issue is who gets blamed for them.

Don’t you see, Ben, if you control The Narrative it doesn’t matter what happens.  The Narrative is shaped by the mainstream media, popular culture and the education establishment.  They are all cheerleaders for big government.  They are firmly on my side.

Look at Obamacare.  I sold this program with bold lies.  I firmly promised people that they could keep their current plans and their current doctors.   I assured them it would all be much less expensive.  I said it would lower the deficit and help businesses.  I told them it would improve the quality of medicine.

In reality, every claim I made was the opposite of the truth.  The law is so horrendous that many of my supporters have demanded exemptions.  But look, Ben, The Narrative has not changed.  Those who shape public opinion still sell the dream and ignore the reality.  Those who oppose Obamacare are demonized.  Don’t you see the power in that?  The facts don’t matter.

The current Obamacare legislation is just Step 1, anyway.  It was designed to fail.  When it fails, the extremely messy failure will be blamed on greedy insurance companies and greedy doctors.   From this crisis we will create a clamor for Step 2 – the complete government control of health care.  I win.

So chaos is my friend.  You need to read Saul Alinsky or the Cloward-Piven plan to understand how this works.  The economic turmoil you fear does not frighten me.   Managed properly it is the perfect tool for the fundamental transformation of this country.

I will show you another example this fall when we approach the debt ceiling negotiations.  I will accomplish 3 things with relative ease:

  1. I will humiliate the Republicans in the budget showdown.  They may have a winning hand if you look at the facts about debt and spending, but the facts will not be discussed.  The story will be that extremist, jihadist Republicans want to shut down the government and hurt people.  The media will herd these Republicans around like sheep.  It’s just fun to watch.
  2. I will single out the Tea Party for special humiliation.  Their power in 2010 was a serious threat to my plans, so we have had a multi-agency attack on them since that time.  They simply must be marginalized.  Those of us in power in Washington understand the threat they represent.
  3. The coming shut-down fight must last long enough to be painful.  You and I know the economy is not doing well and blaming Bush is a weaker argument with each passing year.  If I can force something that is damaging, and blame the Tea Party, I will be in a perfect position for the critical 2014 elections.  I’ll say, “The economy would be great now if those Tea Party extremists had not wrecked everything for you.”  It’s easy if you control the Narrative.  And I do.

That’s the plan, Ben, and it should work fine.  I am sorry that you don’t have the stomach for it.  I will find a replacement for you who is comfortable borrowing more money from our grandchildren.  That level of heartlessness is required.

Thanks for all you’ve done,

President Barack Obama

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I’m Aiming Straight For China

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I will be in China for the next couple of weeks and may not be able to add anything to the blog during that time.  I look forward to seeing a nation that is being transformed by the spirit of free enterprise.  China has a long way to go, but it is headed in the right direction.  We should wave at the Chinese people as we pass them going the opposite direction.

They are leaving the poverty of “socialist paradise” and heading toward prosperity.

The following story caught my eye a few days ago.  It’s about Chinese entrepreneurs trying to solve an age-old problem with a new product.  I don’t think I will invest in the company, but it did make me smile…

 

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Having trouble with your aim? Chinese contraption helps you ‘Pee Straight’CFPSaleswomen touting the “Pee Straight” contraption hold up signs that read: “Pee Straight: 10 Yuan for one, 100 Yuan fine for peeing in the wrong place. Why not buy a Pee Straight? Save your money for peeing straight, peeing freely! (Enjoy peeing).”

By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC NewsBEIJING – An entrepreneur in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has unveiled a contraption designed to help those who miss the mark at a urinal: the ‘Pee Straight.’The invention came in the wake of a new law known as the Shenzhen City Public Toilet Management Act, which allows sanitation managers and other officials to slap a $15 fine on those caught making a mess of municipal toilets while relieving themselves.

The Pee Straight is a simple contraption. A standard funnel affixed to what appears to be a 10-inch piece of tube pipe, the device comes in his and hers versions — hers has a shorter pipe — and is being marketed to those who have trouble with their aim….

via Having trouble with your aim? Chinese contraption helps you ‘Pee Straight’ – Behind The Wall.

He Had A Dream

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“It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967

Today is the 50th anniversary of the great “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr..  This should be a day of uplifting speeches about self-empowerment and personal achievement.  We should hear speakers expand on King’s dream of a colorblind society where people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  We should hear speeches about the character traits that lead to success and we should hear warnings about the character defects that lead to failure.  We should be reminded to be grateful that we live in a land of opportunity, where people who work hard can achieve their dreams.

We should hear all that in todays speeches, but we won’t.  We will hear a series of false narratives which are actually designed to foster racial divisions and keep blacks on the Democrat Plantation.  King’s legacy has been hijacked by race hustlers who profit from racial divisions.

We will hear that Republican racism is what is keeping black people down.  Despite the fact that the KKK was closely associated with the Democrat Party and the fact that it was southern Democrats who fought for segregation to the bitter end, Republicans will be portrayed as racists who, in Joe Biden’s words, “want to keep y’all in chains”.  The nation’s only black Senator, a Republican,  was not invited to speak, nor were other prominent black conservatives.  The goal today will be to reinforce the walls around the Democrat Plantation.

We will hear that wealth inequality is the result of racism.  It has nothing to do with differing degrees of productive achievement, just racism.  We will be a racist country until everyone has equal amounts of everything.  We will hear that the failed ’War on Poverty’ must be renewed, and the entire emphasis will be on taking from the “haves”.  Those advocating increased confiscation of wealth will pretend they have the moral high ground.

We will hear that our racist culture puts large numbers of young black men in prison just because they are black.  It can’t be because they commit more crimes.  It must be the racist Republican’s fault. Or maybe it’s the cops fault.  It’s just not the criminal’s fault.  Ice Cube explains this narrative in his song, “Why We Thugs” .  He sings: “They give us guns and drugs, then wonder why in the f*ck we thugs”.  It’s always “they”.

We will hear that black failure in schools is the result of not enough money being spent.  Staggering amounts of money have been spent on black education.  It has been shown in places like Washington, DC. that spending more does not increase achievement.  Good charter schools do increase achievement, but our government does the bidding of the teachers unions, so charter schools are fought at every level.  Obama closed an excellent charter school in Washington, D.C..

The false narrative of the Zimmerman/Martin case will play a prominent role in today’s speeches.  The narrative, which bears almost no relationship to the known facts of the case, was designed to create racial animosity.  It continues to serve that ugly purpose.

One person who will speak today is a master at creating a problem and then posing as the problem solver.  It is a technic that seems to work well for him.  When the Cambridge police were called about a possible burglary at the home of black Professor Luis Gates, Gates objected to the officers insistence on seeing his identification and he was charged with disorderly conduct.  President Obama, who admitted he didn’t know all the facts, decided to inject himself into the case anyway.  He said the cops “acted stupidly” and implied that racism caused the problem.  This resulted in the “Beer Summit” where Obama posed as the great healer.

When Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011, another entirely inappropriate accusation was made.  Sarah Palin and talk radio were immediately blamed for the assault by the entire Democrat machine.  The story was everywhere that Gabrielle was shot because a climate of hate was created when Palin listed several Democrat districts that should be ‘targeted’ in the upcoming election.  Yes, it was just that absurd.  But this Democrat created nonsense gave the Pompous Pontificator in Chief a chance to speak to the nation as the moral healer who could absolve Palin and other hateful conservatives while pretending to be above petty partisanship.  The whole narrative was a creation of petty partisanship.  All of it, including the morally superior pose of his speech.

Obama and Eric Holder are both deeply involved in the ongoing effort to create racial animosity with the Zimmerman/Martin case.  Both behind the scenes and right out in the open, they are mining this case for all the racial division they can get out of it.  It’s called ‘securing the base’.  My guess is that Obama will use his speech today to pose as a racial healer.

He builds a fire.  He heroically arrives to put it out.

Walter Williams wrote a good column recently pondering the question of how great civil rights leaders like King would feel if they saw black culture today.  Would they be proud?  This seems like the right day to reproduce a good share of the column:

Most of the parents and civil rights leaders whose sacrifices and courage made today’s educational opportunities possible are no longer with us. My question is: If they could know what many of today’s black youngsters have done with the fruits of their sacrifice, would they be proud? Most schools identified as “persistently dangerous” are predominantly black schools. To have a modicum of safety, many schools are equipped with walk-through metal detectors, security cameras and conveyor belt X-ray machines that scan book bags and purses. Nationally, the black four-year high-school graduation rate is 52 percent. In some cities, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, it’s considerably lower — 20 percent and 24 percent, respectively. In Rochester, N.Y., it’s 9 percent.

What black politicians, parents, teachers and students have created is nothing less than a gross betrayal and squandering of the struggle paid in blood, sweat and tears by previous generations to make possible the educational opportunities that were denied to blacks for so long.       [snip]

Would those black Americans who fought tooth and nail against Jim Crow, segregation, lynching and racism be proud of the findings of a recent Rasmussen poll in which 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists and 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racists? Among whites, in the same Rasmussen poll, 38 percent consider most blacks racist, and 10 percent consider most whites racist.

Black people don’t need to have a conversation with white people on matters of race. One first step would be to develop a zero tolerance for criminal and disruptive school behavior, as well as a zero tolerance for criminal behavior in neighborhoods. If city authorities cannot or will not provide protection, then law-abiding black people should find a way to provide that protection themselves.

Amen.