Subprime Nation
Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United States triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.
Last week, Moody's warned that if the United States fails to rein in the soaring cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's credit rating will be down-graded within a decade.
Our political parties seem oblivious. Republicans, save Ron Paul, are all promising to expand the U.S. military and maintain all of our worldwide commitments to defend and subsidize scores of nations.
Democrats, with entitlement costs drowning the federal budget in red ink, are proposing a new entitlement—universal health coverage for the near 50 million who do not have it—another magnet for illegal aliens. Moody's is telling America it needs a time of austerity, while the U.S. government is behaving like the governments we used to bail out.
California has already hit the wall. With an economy as large as a G-8 nation, the Golden State is looking at a $14 billion deficit in 2009 and a $3 billion shortfall in 2008. Gov. Schwarzenegger has called for slashing prison staff by 6,000, including 2,000 guards, early release of 22,000 inmates, closing four dozen state parks and a 10 percent across-the-board cut in all state agencies. The Democratic legislature is demanding tax hikes, which would drive more taxpayers back over the mountains whence their fathers came.
Meanwhile, Washington drifts mindlessly toward the maelstrom. With the dollar sinking, oil surging to $100 a barrel, the Dow having its worst January in memory, foreclosures mounting, credit card debt going rotten, and consumers and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow, we appear headed into recession.
If so, tax revenue will fall and spending on unemployment will surge. The price of the stimulus packages both parties are preparing will further add to the deficit and further imperil the U.S. credit rating. This all comes in the year that the first of the baby boomers, born in 1946, reach early retirement and eligibility for Social Security.
To stave off recession, the Fed appears anxious to slash interest rates another half-point, if not more. That will further weaken the dollar and raise the costs of the imports to which we have become addicted. While all this is bad news for the Republicans, it is worse news for the republic. As we save nothing, we must borrow both to pay for the imported oil and foreign manufactures upon which we have become dependent.
We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy.
We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called "isolationism."
And the chickens of globalism are coming home to roost.
We let Europe to get away with imposing value-added taxes averaging 15 percent on our exports to them, while they rebate that value-added tax on their exports to us. Thus, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar in the Bush years, as NATO Europe begins to bail out on Iraq and Afghanistan.
We sat still as Japan protected her markets and dumped high quality goods into ours and China undervalued its currency to suck jobs, technology and factories out of the United States. Now, China and Japan have $2 trillion in cash reserves. The Arabs have an equal amount of petrodollars. Both are headed here to spend their depreciating dollars snapping up U.S. assets—banks, ports, highways, defense contractors.
America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world.
Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank.
Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore.
Bain Capital is partnering with China's Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers.
This self-indulgent generation has borrowed itself into unpayable debt. Now the folks from whom we borrowed to buy all that oil and all those cars, electronics and clothes are coming to buy the country we inherited. We are prodigal sons, and the day of reckoning approaches.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
Digg this sobering article here:
http://digg.com/political_opinion/Subprime_Nation_Pat_Buchanan
Allen
Once again Mr. Buchanan has knocked one out of the park. The depressing thing (to me) is not that we have all of these self induced problems but that we refuse to do anything about them.
We may be living in the "crazy years" Heinlein talked about. I am at a loss to explain it any other way except as a mass "liberal psychosis" I just hope there are enough of us to pick up the pieces after our ruling elites destroy this country.
What will historians make of this wildly self-destructive behavior? We may never know because they'll probably be writing in Mandarin.
The elites behind the facade of the general government in Washington steal our labor and our wealth through the three I's: Income Tax; Interest on Debt of State-Borrowed Money; and Inflation, a debasing of the currency which drives down the value of the dollar and up the prices of goods and services.
The elites of the general government need this flow of fiat (counterfeit) money to buy off their domestic constituency with welfare - corporate, agriculture and entitlements - and to wage war from sanctions, to dropping bombs to invading in order to punish their enemies (usually their old friends), to gain new friends (who will likely become future enemies) and to enhance the power, prestige and pecuniary well-being of the elites.
We the people have been, are and, it seems, given what one can observe in this election cycle, utter and complete fools, who, nevertheless play our own sleazy game in that most of us are in some way part of one of the entitled classes: farmers getting subsidies, students getting loans and grants, businessmen getting government loans and grants, powerful corporations getting sweetheart contract deals with the government and entitled welfare folks. So, one reason that we cannot get ride of the bums is that we are addicted to the bums.
Sobering facts. I'm just tickled that Pat finally gave Ron Paul some props.
It baffles me each night listening to these so-called "conservative" talk show hosts on AM radio, who cry and cry that the economy is headed for disaster, and that the whole problem comes from the Democrats, yet they all worship the Iraq War, promote our policing of other nations and endorse Guiliani for president in 2008, who Im sure you all know has said he would use military force in Iran. Great job guys! Lets cry about the economy and then endorse policies and candidates that will drain trillions more from the country.
Great article Pat. Im glad that you finally gave RP some support too!
Even if this quote is fictitious, it still tells it like it is:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." ~ attributed to Alexander Tytler, late-18th-Century Scottish historian
If Tytler is right, friends, America as a "great civilization" is living on borrowed time.
For Paul Alexander and Pat Buchanan....
America .... tick ... tick ... gone
If Mr.Buchanan had chosen 'monetary policy' over his focus on 'raising tariffs' (which are de facto raised via monetary policy that he is now attacking), the paleo-right would have been coherent rather than broken. Better late than never, but the bailouts particularly for un-employment bennies which Buchanan supported back in the day, are for a proletariat that has sided with the elite against the Middle Class for hundreds of years.
At least a dozen times every week I read that American society is teetering on the edge of a financial abyss - or, as Mr Buchanan puts it, faces a day of reckoning, etc.
I believe it; but nobody has a clue what to do about it. Please send any constructive suggestions to the US Treasury, Cc every government in the Western world.
Chicken Little isn't always right. Some day, however, she could be.
Answer to Post 9
Get rid of the Federal Reserve and that detestable enslaving practice of Fractional Reserve Banking!
Digg it!
If you don't have a Digg account sign up. Articles that quickly receive diggs can get on the front page. Imagine the profile!
Mr. Buchanan, looks like New Republic, in their effort to wipe out Ron Paul, is getting to you, too..One of Ron Paul's greatest faults(according to NewRepublinc) is that supported you in the past...Ha-ha-ha...I wonder what MSNBC is going to say about this: they like you, but they apparently like New Republic too, allowing their crazy pseuo-jurnalists to appear Live on some segments...
And, by the way, The New Republic reminds me too much of the Mussolini's Republic, name-wise...I don't know why
Alex @ 9
Turn on the conditionvision, the day of reckoning is here with maximum culture rot. Woops! gotta' go, American Idol is on..
Paul @ 6
Fiticious? Tytler was right on the money. The only question: where on the progression is Amerika?
What if the democrats have to choose between war in Iraq or universal health coverage?
What if the republicans had to choose between an attack on Iran or oil surging to $200 a barrel?
Would these choices bring the politicians to their senses?
If the United States goes broke, maybe she would have to stop waging wars all over the world.
Maybe there is hope for the world after all.
I think Roger has a point. It seems to me that countries that once were big overexpanded empires and now are not, are happier and better off than they were when they were empires.
Well, maybe not Britain, they have a lot of problems. But Spain, Portugal, France and even Belgium Holland once had colonies and were mired in all sorts of stuff all over the world. Like the French got their clocks cleaned in Vietnam before we did and got chased out of Algeria like we will be chased out of the Middle East.
This is not to say they don't have problems with stuff like immigration and runaway entitlements and such. But they just don't seem to be on the ropes and hated the world over like we are.....
#8:
What the paleo-conservative movement doesn't need are blue-collar bashers like you, Mr. Bowen. What utter nonsense to claim that only the "proletariat" use government benefits. And since when did working-class people side with the elite? They created the organized labor movement, a thorn in the side of the elite for decades, which only went into decline after elitists like the Ruether brothers infiltrated and took over major unions.
If any paleo-cons think they are going to have a viable movement by attacking the working class, they can forget it. Its the white-collar, upper middle-class professionals who've joined forces with the elite, as most of them are deluded enough to think that they are going to get rich someday and become members of the elite themselves.
To #17 and #8
Both classes are adherents to majoritarianism as enabled by our debased democratic political system and both are adherents to an egalitarian philosophy pushed by our education-media system. Therefore both groups largely believe that they "deserve something" and that the all mighty care-taker government should give it to them if they so demand. Neither class realizes that the game is a detriment to them both and that the upper most class of rich are the real winners. It would be true to say, though, that the disproportionate burden is indeed carried by the most productive middle class who is most divested of its productivity via taxes, reserve banking schemes, inflation, invasive regulatory bodies, etc. The whole game is approaching such an extreme now that we not only risk destroying the dynamic that allowed the working class to ascend to the middle class, but risk destroying the middle class itself as a viable economic and cultural strata in our society. In other words: third worldization brought on by the economic gamesmanship discussed in this thread and cultural gamesmanship discussed in many other threads on this site. This is the path that radical, revolutionary anti-traditionalism has set us on. I will leave it to the better-informed philsophers here to hash out whether its roots were in the Enlightenment thinking that gave birth to the French Revolution or to some other dark, insidious human traits that long preceded that movement. However, as long as we are discussing class strata and historical conclusions, I would note, as others have at this site, that there once existed a "rich" class in America, but most especially so in Europe, that was not merely wealthy, but had aristocratic tendencies. While they too were human and, as such, imperfect, they, as a class, had aspirations towards the maintenance of "nobility" which as part of a code meant they believed they had some resposnibility towards their lower classes and their group. Now, we may argue as to whether medieval nobility was superior to nineteenth century nobility and what role faith played in the ways in which they conducted themselves, but I believe it is largely inarguable that those aristocratic classes at least believed they owed some allegiance to "their own" wheras today's global class of rich sees no allegiance to anything other than their own pocketbook and (maybe) to some half-baked ideology or pet cause of the day that makes them seem and feel "involved".
Thomas Miller
I completely agree with you. There is a tendency among paleos to bash labor/working class Americans who want protection from the more brutal aspects of the free market. They always respond with very vague and genral abstractions like in post 18. Paleo- Libertarians view the working class are bunch of parasites with no culture. For Paleos ,it is the men of means-,modern versions of the plantation owners- that represent everything that is good about society.
I would describe these models of Paleoconservative perfection as parasites who live off the labor of American workers.
Unions,unemployment compensation are labors response to the bossman's-men of means-big whip and bloodhounds.
Since Bismark figured out the politics of Conservative Socialism which wed the land owning elite to those on the bottom of the socio-economic scale, the Middle Class has suffered and the elite, in this country, has been in place for a century.
While #18 is appropriate with Taki entering the pages of Chronicles, I think noble obliges was cynical and dangerous politics.
Obviously, the White Middle Class were easily seduced with 'free 'Schools, Drugs, Healthcare, Pensions, and Self-Esteem Building Interventions Abroad, but the answer is not to purchase the loyalty of the lower classes, but to cut-off the cheap credit before they become slaves. Boosting un-employment bennies in a time of crisis is a means to bribe the lower classes from realizing their own interests which most importantly as it relates to the paleo-thing, is labor protection at the lower ends of the spectrum.
If that is 'blue collar' bashing, well, I suppose "no interest for 6 months" is an ethical position that insures Mr. Blue Collar will have as nice a tee-vee as his Middle Class neighbors.
Take a sharp look at 19, folks, a fantastic use of class baiting and even a plantation owner reference.
To sustain a civilization, or one's own genes, life takes a series of learned behaviors passed on down through the ages. Practice them, and you'll survive the lean and high times, just as one's ancestors did. Ignore them, or if the habits have been erased from from the cultural capital, it's likely you'll be in the same spot, as water seeks its own level.
If every home-owner working class American had purchased life insurance over the past ten years instead of squandering the equity in their homes on what-not, oh, what a different world it might have been.
But who owns life insurance these days but the morbid?
And, Horace, you realize that one can purchase 'unemployment insurance' in the private market and get a far better rate of return than getting the 4% they take out every week but don't bother to tell you.
To #19
Well general abstractions can indeed be useful. Are your posts any more or less abstract or generalized than my response? What exactly is "vague" about my post?
Let me ask you and #20 straight-forwardly then:
1. Does society naturally split into classes?
2. Which type would any thoughtful member of society, be they the working or middle, prefer to have in their wealthiest? Today's noveau-riche silicon valley types concerned about far-away people's unprotected fornication or the bygone nobleman who may have had some concern with the survival of his own peasant class, cynical though some of those concerns may have been? Tell me, is there a distinction? Or are we all Marxists now who despise any of those that have greater material means, regardless of their behavior?
Gentlemen, mine may well be generalizations, but those generalizations are realistic assessments of how we have long ago discarded useful and, while imperfect, on the whole healthier arrangements by which to live. And, just in the case these arguments need to be backed up by some analysis of my own standing (which they should not have to), I am the product of working class peoples by any definition of the term.
The general government in Washington and the elites who control it could not maintain its agenda of the welfare/warfare state, i.e. the state that enriches and empowers the elites, without fiat money and the mechanisms which enable it, namely the fed, including the entire banking system and network, and the income tax.
The purpose of the welfare system - corporate welfare, farmer welfare, and basic entitlement welfare - is to buy power and, particularly at the upper corporate level, to provide a cascade of income to the elites. (While one might be able to make a historical case that the Caesars mobilized the lower classes with bread and circuses against the middle class, that is no longer true, if it was ever really true and not a myth of the middle classes to expunge their own culpabliity. Almost all of us are on the take from federal grants for gardens in the shopping district, to massive military bases for our region, to generaous farm subsidies for farmers as well as landbank schemes, to student grants and loans, to social security, to government underwritten "private" pension plans, to the medical and legal cartels, and to the whole licensing schemes of government. So, let's indeed not get too holier than thou in this matter!) The purpose of the warfare system is for expansion because no single nation state can accommodate the needs at a fiat currency mandates. It must ever expand or collapse on itself. I would assert that the geopolitical expansion is reaching its limits. War also provides a market for those in on the take - worth trillions, used to be billions.
This is the real story; not the blatherings of Hillary, Obama, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Giulinani, or Thomspson. They are all merely disposable mouth pieces for the two faces of the Establishment which runs Washington.
Even the neo-cons are the water boys of much more powerful people.
Meanwhile, the masses are entertained by Survival, the fornicating of the Spears sisters, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the ranting of O'Reilly, the machinations of Rush, the writers' strike, the New England Patriots, baseball players and steroids, or the latest serial killer/wife killer. (I often wonder how the press chooses which one of the hundreds of missing/dead girls to titilate us with.) Why, we are even asked to take the goings-on in Congress seriously.
The problem is that when this ship finally goes down, the elites will be making off in the only lifeboats available, sipping their champaign as the rest of us, to the tune of the band, scurry around, once again, to rearrange the deck chairs by exercising our "civil right" to vote in some rigged election.
Oh I see, we are supposed to pretend that there is no class warfare going on in America.
How foolish of me to think that someone making 60 grand a year and few paychecks from the streets-the majority of Americans-has very little in common with BIG OIL COMPANY BOSS MAN and owner of the Dallas cowboys...Jerry Jones.
Slaves and plantation owners one big happy family. Sorry about the tansgression masta.
Mr. Buchanan,
Sir, if you do not stop writing these high quality articles I am going to end up economically ruined buying printer ink at $17 a
pop so I can print them for my files. [Archives, don't forget the archives.]
You're killing me.
I'll be an economic basket case if you don't do something about
your astute insight into world and domestic politics, and get it lowered down just a tad. Thanks. :-}
PS
I have noticed that your critics NEVER actually answer your arguments. As all intelligent people know, "You're a prophet of doom," is not an argument and not a rebuttal to an argument.
But it is much easier than actually reading your books and doing the hard mental work of actually rebutting them.
Whereas, "You're a prophet of doom." only requires the mental capacity and hard-work effort of a child.
Message to PJB's critic-name-callers:
Let's learn a new word today, children.
ad hominem- attacking the person, instead of attacking the person's argument.
Seriously, Buchanan's critics have never rebutted his arguments.
But then, this culture war isn't really about arguments, is it?
It daily takes on more of the character of a street fight than a
serious and reasoned intellectual debate. Yes?
I believe if everyone in the US totaled up their overall taxes they will find over 50% of there income goes to someone else. I my opinion anything over 50% is a form of slavery. Apparently we traded one form of slavery for another via the 13th amendment in 1864.
I fear for the future! Remember, absolute power corupts absolutely!
Rob
Rob Hauling
Ordinary White Americans are justified in complaining about their taxes....and they do.
They have to be very clear about just what they funded want-student loans,good schools,SS,basic science and other goverment programs that most White Americans agree should exist.
Second step:figure out how to pay for all of this without placing a terrible burden on ordinary White Americans.
Third step:Step back,use common sense. If this is done, certain things will become patently obvious. Such as:if you want one set of programs paid for, other goverment programs are going to have to be scrapped. I can think of goverment programs /spending that ought to be halted. Think of the all the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ that has been spent destroying Iraq,afghanistan..to be spent destroying Iran...think of the billions spent on the state of Israel...the millions spent ondestroying Nicaragua in the eighties-this was a Reagan adminstration big goverment program that Pat Buchannan was and is still very found off..think of the billions being spent right now attempting to overtrhow the Cavez goverment in Venezuela..why the hell does Turkey recieve any of OUR tax dollars...AND THEN there is the very high cost of both legal an illegal immigration.
Step back and (meta)think, and certain obvious truths emerge. And one of the most obvious and elementary truths is this:shut down policies that increase the scale of prexisting problems. Problems don't become easier to solve when the scale of the problem is increased. Increase the scale of the problem and it becomes very $$$$$$$$$$$ to solve...which means no one is serious about solving the problem(s), and that with very high probability the problem will not be solved. Both Legal and illegal immigration increase the scale,the cost and the difficulty of solving prexisting problems in Amerian society. In fact, both legal and illegal immigration have created problems that previously didn't exist.
It comes down to thinking and acting like an adult and a Native Born White patriot.
I am for taxing the super rich and a much much greater scale than they are currerntly being taxed..if they don't like they can go live in Chad..without the infrastructure-like the internet...that WE paid for that made them super rich.
I am for abolishing the property tax..the propety tax at the present point in time is the cruelist tax of all. It is criminal theft of property.
My point is this:It was possible to pay for for goverment programs that ordinary White Americans wanted and needed without the taxes being punishing..with a rising real wage.
I don't know of this is possible anymore. Very likely, American society will implode,economically,socially and ecologically. Unfotunately we have becoome a nation of jock-sniffing emasculated White American males.
You make some good points, Mr Grady, but how do you propose to stop ever increasing government pork with all those special interests lobbying congress and using other means to influence government to get what they want? When the genie is out of the bottle, it will not go back in, and to say, 'well, we need this and this and this, and we want this, but not that or that or that' is futile. Government entitlements should never have been started, there were already means of caring for those in need, and they were nothing but crooked vote-buying schemes in the first place.
And no, I'm not sitting on my veranda drinking mint juleps while big jim picks my cotton, nor am I riding through the filthy streets on my white steed, wearing a lace collar, and mercilessly beating the starving children of the peasantry who thoughtlessly stumble into my path. I dont even make close to 60 grand a year. Paleos come from all walks of life, and we are not elitists nor do we have an obsession with plantation owners or nobility. We certainly are not 'blue collar bashers'. Regardless, what's going on today is far too complex to be called by the silly Marxist term, 'class warfare'. The disease of society - really a disease of mind - that is destroying us affects all classes, top to bottom.
Allen
I don't believe class warfare is a silly Marxist term. Ordinary White Americans know that the filthy rich are stealing their wages. Ordinary White Amerians do talk about class warfare.
So, there there is no doubt that the wealthy are in a state of warfare against the rest of US.
Post-1965 non-white legal immigrants are waging warfare against White Americans of a racial nature. So White Americans are now having both class and race warfare waged against them.
What to do? Start with something. How bout not voting for the Republican party.
Look, there already have been several strong signals that have been sent out to White Americans that business as usual=death and destruction. Obvously, not enough White Americans are paying attetnion. The next time an even stronger signal(s) will sent...a greater level of pain and suffering....if this doesn't work, the next signal sent out will be even stronger and the subsequent pain and suffering will be even greater....The scale of the stupidity is monumental.
What did Rudi Giulliani say to New Yorkers when the two passenger planes smash into the Twin Coffins-muslim legal immgrants alreadsy tried knocking down the Twin Coffins seven years earlier in 1993-...take in a ball game...take in a play...business as usual.
White Americans will either revolt or at some point in time when they are a racial minority with no power: enslaved and murdered off-the White males at least-by hispanics,africans,hindus,sikhs,pakistanis and muslims. White Women will be the plunder.
Stop looking for "dear leaders-such as Ron Paul-who will save US. It is not going to happen. The revolt can only be bottom-up,populist and racial at the core.
Well, class warfare is not exactly a topic that a European would think of in connection with Americans but in one way it's relevant. Putting it very simple: the greatest wealth of the nation and it's citizens requires equal distribution of lifetime spending. Your dear government subsidizing companies and reducing taxes for the rich has done exactly the opposite. But don't you think that this is an American phenomenon exlusively, the difference are a number of assaults masquerading as wars. Soldiers certainly are not manufacturing anything but spend a lot.
americans
Kaj
This is a very interesting question. If you acept growing economic inequality as a good proxy for class warfare, then it is not unreasonable to conlcude that American society is in a much more advanced state off class warfare.
The Bush adminstration despises Western Europe because Western Europe has a much stronger safety net against the more brutal aspects of free market/neo-classical economics/plantation systems.
If Bush adminstration could get away with it,Western European countries would be turned into low wage scab labor economies. like they-and the Clintons-have done to Eastern Europe.
Western Europe unfortunately seems to be on the road to racial suicide.
My bet is that England will blowup before America. There is much less room in England. Far fewer places for English, Welsh and Scots to run away to.
I don't even have to read it. I will later. Remember how they hammered Miliken in the 80's (the Establishment) for his junk bonds which were in fact legitimate instruments rated for what they were highly risky - that's why they paid high interest rates. Saved companies like Safeway - launched otheres. Rudy Guiliani hunted Milken -attack dog, pit-bull for the bosses the establishment. They were jealous.
Now they sell subprime themselves but calling it triple A rated - as in the recent real estate debacle. Or conspire with companies like Enron to defraud the public and then get a free pass from none other than the Supreme Court - i.e. the Establishment steals... from save Cover. And that's who Guiliani is for example in cahoots with and whom he is called upon to attack - the basically good guys. He put Miliken in prison... for essentially getting to something legitimately first - prior to the Establishment.
Rudy is bush on a no-hair day someone has said. Yes.
But that's ALWAYS been 'Republicans' they love to steal for the Rich.
Subprime nation... subprime morality - that's "success" republican style... as for the Democrats not much better. Vote for Dr. Ron Paul.
"Rudy is Bush on a no-hair day..." Good one, Betty Silvers!
Who was it that put Bush into power to:
a) spend America into the poor house
b) entangle America in the unnecessary Iraq war with no resolution in sight (increasing the threat of terrorism at home)
c) allowing more illegal aliens into our country than ever in its history
d) grow the US's rich-poor divide by shifting ever more wealth from our poorest citizens to our wealthiest ones ??
I don't remember it being the Democrats.
Come on, everyone, let's just say it. The Republicans have to take responsibility for putting the US into its worst state in its history.
#35: "Come on, everyone, let’s just say it. The Republicans have to take responsibility for putting the US into its worst state in its history."
You're absolutely right. Outside of Ron Paul and one or two other Republicans, the only decent men we've had in Congress in recent years have been Democrats, like Senators Hollings, Byrd, Dorgan and Congressman Taylor of Mississippi.
Bob Byrd is an opportunistic, avaricious, snake oil salesman. His only concern is naming everything in West Virginia after himself.
I'm not sure thats a fair description of him, Mr. Droney. Yes, he sure likes to bring the pork back to his home state, but who in the Senate doesn't? And thanks to him, West Virginia does have an outstanding system of highways, which has vastly improved the state of commerce there.
But I was mostly judging those guys on their voting records. They are most definitely not globalists, being staunchly opposed to illegal immigration and high-levels of legal immigration, as well as our foolish trade policies. Byrd and Hollings were also outspoken in their opposition to the Iraq War from the get go.
Just because everybody in the Senate does it, surely does not make it right. I live 30 minutes from WV, I spend a lot of time there hunting and fishing and I can say that Byrd was instrumental in making sure that under-used, un-needed highways to nowhere were built throughout the state, ruining pristine woodlands and allowing carpetbaggers to move in and track out subdivisions on the vistas of beautiful river valleys, like the New, the Gauley, the Potomac, etc.
I will, however, agree that Byrd has a good record on opposing illegal immigration and opposing the war. However, in my estimation, this is based less on principle and more on his wanting to stay in office until he is 100 y/o. He would do or say anything to stay in power, witness his transformation from staunch segregationalist to the "conscience of the Senate."
Mr Droney
That is all probably true. I must confess, I am partial to conservative, economic nationalist Democrats. But yea, pretty much no one in the Senate has an untarnished record. Thats because its notoriously "Fortune 500 occupied territory."
Well, we can definiely agree on that: The Senate is a wasteland. I too, would love to be able to vote for a true conservative, economic nationalist Democrat.
Mr. Miller,
With all due respect, highway building is a subsidy for the Big Box retailers (subsidizing transaction costs.)
We heartless paleos, either worshiping the marketplace as we are said to do, or contra, representing an interest for the small town, as we are want to do, cannot stand for that.
I don't expect you to change your mind, but at some point, you have to acknowledge that it is the nationalist who isn't making any sense, and his defense of the common man, contradictory.
It's time to throw some hard reality around here. For starters, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are blatantly unconstitutional. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that would have any employer practicing it in the private sector hauled off to the hoosegow in a pair of matching bracelets.
As for that English-torturing son of an SS officer, as well as the legislature of ANY state that would allow for the looting of their own citizens to provide social services for people illegally in this country (as well as their children, who ARE NOT U.S. citizens), I suggest the revival of the necktie party. If the Guvahnator is so g**-damned worried about the fiscal crisis in California, then why doesn't he set about booting every illegal out of that state, after having them robbed of every asset they own, in order to defray expenses? Why the hell aren't the people of that state telling the legislature that if they don't cut off social services for these people, something else will get cut off, and not just their salaries?
As for the comment about the Republicans being responsible for the mess this country is in, remember that Bush has NEVER been legitimately elected president of this country. That means the real blame goes to these insidious electronic voting machines. Any election official in this country that would certify these diabolical election-theft devices, when any first-semester programmer can be trained to steal an election on them in 20 minutes, and they aren't even allowed to view the source code, and they don't even produce a paper trail in case of doubt after the votes have been flipped any way the controllers want, should be hanged and left for the crows. Diebold (which recently changed its name to Premier Election Solutions -- you couldn't make this up) makes ATMs that are used by banks all across the country, and spit out a receipt that tells you exactly what happened, and they almost never make errors.
How stupid would a person have to be in order to think that it's just some unfortunate manufacturing defect that cause this same company's voting machines to continually miscount votes? Every primary thus far has shown ridiculous discrepancies between hand-counted votes and machine-counted votes.
Wherever the Founders are today, they probably tell each other they shouldn't have bothered.