Tag: conservatives

It is NOT a Center-Right Country!

We may have a Center-Right Media.

We may have a Center-Right Punditry-ville.

But our Country, and the majority of the American People in our “Two America’s” are NOW decidedly a deeper shade of Blue!

Larger Map

Source: NYTimes

Tide of the Country has shifted … Dramatically!

For crying out loud….some people just make me shake my head and be disgusted.  As many of you know, there is a potential health problem of major proportions going on in Mexico.  Now for logical folks, commonsense says stay cool and find a way to help the less fortunate.  But oh no, you got some on the Right who think “hot damn, I get to bring out the racist in me!”

I’m not normally one to rant – among the scores of diaries I’ve posted over the course of the past three years, only a handful are of the “screed” variety.  The sort of diaries I usually do don’t lend themselves to soapbox-style indignation – there’s not much to be gained, legislatively or electorally speaking, from a knock-down, drag-out flame war over, say, assigning blame for the outbreak of the First World War.

Yet, as I’ve often stated, sometimes the worst thing about being an historian is that one often has a pretty good idea of what’s coming next, decline-and-fall-of-civilizationwise.  Certain patterns are discernable, and seem to play out each time a civ rises to a leadership role in human development or the exercise of might – and no civilization has ever shown itself immune to the degrading effects of time.  Since often an understanding of the events of the past can inform the shape of responses in the present, it’s here that this historian perceives a role for an historical rant.

Cross-posted from Progressive Independence

No, I’m not dead.  College and upcoming finals have eaten away at my time, but after next week I’ll have a few weeks to get back into the swing of things.  Now to business.  It’s no secret that since winning the recent presidential election, the left has been in an uproar over president-elect Barack Obama’s right-wing administrative-cabinet picks.  Complaints have been all over the blogosphere as well as mainstream news web sites such as Yahoo.

Obama’s creatures are pushing back, essentially telling people to shut up, drink the Kool-Aid, and line up behind the Obamassiah.  From the second link:

Responding to rising discontent on the left to President-elect Barack Obama’s centrist cabinet picks and early policy decisions, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand has told progressive critics to take a deep breath.

With a long list of tasks ahead of him, Obama needs liberals to stand by him as he deals with a faltering economy, home foreclosures, an auto bailout and two wars, Hildebrand wrote Sunday on Huffington Post. Even so, Hildebrand added, Obama was elected “to be the president of all the people – not just those on the left.”

‘This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making,” Hildebrand wrote. “Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn’t, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges.”

I’m inclined to tell fellow left-wingers to shut up and stop complaining as well, although for very different reasons.  It was obvious to many independent left-wing voters that Democrat Obama would govern no differently if elected than his Republican counterpart, John McCain.  More competently, perhaps, and with smarmier rhetoric, but such differences are in style, not actual policy substance.  Too many liberals, fearful of another four to eight years of GOP domination, cast their ballots for the first politician with a “D” after his name that looked like a winner, either in spite of, or many cases, ignoring, the Democratic nominee’s actual record as a legislator.

Well, guess what ladies and gentlemen: you got the president and Congress you wanted.  You who voted for Obama have no right to complain now that he’s doing the exact opposite of what you deceived yourselves into thinking he’d do.  YOU voted for this.  YOU are responsible for making it happen.

This is not to say that all is lost, or that because people voted for a right-wing Democrat he cannot be pressured into fulfilling the false hopes placed in him.  Everybody makes mistakes, and mistakes can be corrected.  The time for complaints is over.  The time for action, for marching on Washington and demanding genuine change, for not going away until we get it, is now.

Man oh man, if there ever was a prime example of a revelation of the greatest flaw in libertarian economic theory, it had to be Alan Greenspan’s speech.  For those not in the know, the former Federal Reserve Chairman spoke before a Congressional committee yesterday.  Long one of the grand proponents of laissez fair capitalism, his decisions, ironically, probably has lead to the complete discrediting of such economics.  

I am always amazed when in the company of other progressives and liberals how truly regressive and unwilling to change we can be. Diary after diary, comments by the thousands about what? How we can’t, how we shouldn’t and how Obama is going wrong. Well Obama hasn’t gone wrong, we’ve just stopped listening and started grinding the same old axes. We spend too much time bashing and not enough time listening, fear and ignorance is abundant on BOTH sides of the ideological divide. Follow me below the fold for hopefully some insight into how all the fears of your worst nightmares coming true are in fact the realization of your most heartfelt dreams for this country.

For anyone whose read my pieces in the past, knows that I hold a certain disdain towards former Reagan White House OMB Associate Director/conservative-libertarian Ayn Rand acolyte Larry Kudlow.  It’s nothing personal against the guy, it’s his ideas and economic policy objectives that I find fault with.  For the past couple of months, he’s been going on about this is the “Goldilocks economy.”  Essentially, that we’re worrying about nothing because one bad economic indicator is being offset by a good one (mind you, he’s often just used productivity as that one).  Well today, despite his claims that all is almost well, we got some news that just proves Larry Kudlow wrong!  

Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left

I spoke to a right-leaning homeowner yesterday, owner of the mansion on the huge hill we had to ball-cart four 8 foot Pines Trees at and plant on his acreage. I changed his thinking.

He was a talker.

Ultimately, I made a statement to him, which brought him into full agreement with me:

“No, Sir, I think the bigger problem is that Americans never want to worry about a fire hydrant in their yard until their house is on fire. Then and only then do they want to cough up the money and time and allow one to be put in their yard. Then its too late.“