Friday, October 30, 2009

Why do we bother with Peggy?

by Smitty

Look, Peggy: go read some history. While you're doing that, let's flog your latest drivel.
The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers.
It's not a religious question. Forget faith. It's a tacit admission that we all know the numbers are a godforsaken lie, a propaganda move, a fart in a thunderstorm.
The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.
Nitwit. Forget the mood ring: its color is a function of heat. The chief threat to the country the last century continues to be its slide in the direction of aristocracy. Take Newt's endorsement of Dede. Out back. Ventilate the endorsement with your weapon of choice.
Having some bozo who claims to be smarter than you decide who goes on the ballot should induce a chorus of vomiting from All Real Americans. The river of bile hasn't quite been the GOP-cleansing flood for which one would hope, but the direction of the level over time goes up up up.
I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call "the drug companies" until we decided that didn't sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early '80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope. Here's why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, "If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!" Others said, "If we follow Reagan, he'll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we'll be America again, we'll be acting like Americans again." Everyone had a path through.
Peggy, have you seen the National Debt Road Trip? Three minutes might wash the filth from your eyes, so that you can see the threat:

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.
Absolutely, they can. Just not by you, not by elite North Easterners, not by Progressive thinking. Get the [debris] out of the way. You're part of the problem, not the solution, Peggy.
Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our federal government, from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won't work. It's not a way out. It's not a path through.
Oh, it's going to work all right, Peg. For certain sorry-about-your-liberty, sovereignty-was-overrated, meet-your-transnational-plutocratic-overlords values of "work". The demolition of the States and creation of the Imperial Fed in DC paves the way for the theft of all we hold dear via the Federal Reserve.

Once federal entitlements have finished turning the United States into Europe, imposition of real rule via agreements of the Copenhagen variety can commence. So that's the destination, and thank your flaccid analysis for helping get us there.
When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?
Peggy, you article goes sailing majestically over the shark here. The only thing our aristocratic overlords feel is boredom at how long it's taking to subjugate the American people.

But let's switch to Janet Daley for a rebuttal, as her mood seems less peevish than mine:
Well America, welcome to the place where Britain and Europe have been for roughly two generations. What you have discovered are the limits of Big Government – the no-hope, tried-everything, dead end of centralised formulae for ever more socially-engineered national "happiness". Please don’t give up. If any nation in the world is capable of seeing the real lesson in this, and of saving itself from the despair and cynicism which are now commonplace on this side of the Atlantic, you are. You could still teach the world to sing.
Janet, it's not going to be easy. We've a century-long bout of Constitutional illiteracy from which we're awakening. The root of every evil before us can be traced to willfully ignoring the advice of our Founding Fathers. About the only thing the Progressives can note with validity is that we've been steering this course these many decades and administrations. They can claim precedent.
That doesn't mean we have to stack up the ship of state in the shoal water, ye Americans! Listen to this and get behind real, American, conservative candidates like Hoffman: The Warrior Song


Dan Riehl also weighed in on Peggy.

Update: A Newly Conservative Lesbian offers similar thoughts, though Cynthia takes a Reagan turn at the end.

13 comments:

  1. Believe me, I'm against the Progressive movement. Obama's economic program is abominable. His social policies are racialist and destructive of individual liberty. His advisors are eugenicists and worse.

    But lets' be honest conservatives. The Republican Party has failed us, too. We had a Republican Congress. They spent like drunken Democrats in a Shanghai whorehouse.

    There is a path forward, but it's not through the Republican establishment. Smitty's take on Newt's endorsement of Scuzzyfuzzy is a bulls eye. But it's far, far worse. By and large the GOP is an apparatchik of rich monied interests, just as much as the Democratic Party. The only difference is that the GOP still has a base that believes in limited government, even if the party leaders don't

    We must bind the RNC in the chains of popular will, drive them naked in the streets so all can see their perfidy, and imprison them in a salt mine full of the rabid dogs they favor over their base.

    We must take back the Republican Party to defend the Union and the Constitution. That is our first battle. The RNC is enemy number one. They are collaborators and traitors. We are led by the enemy.

    Only when the RNC and their collaborators languish in ignominious banishment will conservatives be ready to demolish the monstrous edifice of the Progressive State.

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  2. We also have a corruption problem that is openly and arrogantly thumbing it's nose at us. Both parties are involved and it's just the way business is done inside the beltway. When Maxine Waters told house members that Rangel wasn't the only one of them who was guilty of tax evasion, effectively quashing any official action, there should have been a cacophonous hue and cry from republicans but barely a peep emoted.
    The people have to get rid of these politicians and the only principled movement is from the right. All, and as broad as that is, all movement from the left is a well heeled media driven phenomena.
    The republican party is a sham too. Just the other face on a crooked, trick shop, coin that always comes up heads and the political masters always the winners.
    It has to start by doing what Hoffman is doing and then too in the primaries. Finding some reasonable citizen who can suffer the outrageous treatment from the DNC and RNC and stand up to these monsters.
    I fear we are already too late.

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  3. David Brooks and E.J. Doinne said that Hoffman is a mistake for Republicans and that Newt is right. They said Dede is a moderate to conservative candidate and that the GOP will fail doing that. And they said it on NPR.

    So there.

    Yeah, Newt, that is really polishing the whole conservative credentials you so love, you got Brookie and EJ on your side!

    I will give them this little nugget, it makes sense to support Cristie in New Jersey rather than the third party candidate...because Corazine is terrible.

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  4. Peggy's still useful, Smitty. She's just switched from being a true commentator to a fascinating relic of old ways of thinking.

    Back in the days when you learnt about the day over your cup of tea and gossip at the country club, before it was tooth and claw but also true spirit and pride.

    She's a thermometer for how the old guard is continuously confused by all this and who is in the White House; how they don't understand that we're all so educated and don’t believe in their games all of a sudden. I can’t tell you how many times my Dad has given Obama the benefit of the doubt solely because of his respect for the office without even realizing it.

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  5. Smitty I love ya!
    "It's a tacit admission that we all know the numbers are a godforsaken lie, a propaganda move, a fart in a thunderstorm."
    How true.
    In 1963 I was taking an advanced Micro (economics on a country level) class. One of our (many) tasks was to figure out how much the 1963 inflation rate the gumit reported would have been had JFK not rigged the weights. the 1963 inflation rate using Ike's weights would have been 5.9% Using the "new improved" weights it was only 2.5^! JFK knew his tax hikes (do not let liberals, including collectivist GOPers fool you. JFK was a GWB tax and spend man. One example: because Social Sec was in serious danger (has anyone heard this before?)he tripled the tax from $45 to $150! Knowing that raising taxes (unless you raise them to the extreme) raises prices aka inflation he changed the weights to minamixe the impact of his tax hikes on inflation.
    2 years earlier in a basic Econ class one of the recommended books was FIGURES DONT LIE BUT LIARS CAN FIGURE i know not if the book is still in print but think it is well worth the read. Its not any longer than ANIMAL FARM not as much fun but just as informative.
    Gumit lies Alway has always will

    An old esJarhead
    Cerritos, Cal

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  6. Smitty...just who is this "we" you keep referring to anyway?
    Peggy who?
    I gave up on that simpering idiot a long time ago.....

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  7. Hmmm. I get the impression you don't like Peggy much. I used to read her regularly until she trashed Sarah Palin before the election.

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  8. 'The Javelineer' was much too kind to the GOP in his post above.

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  9. Anonymous,

    That seems to be the incident on which the story turns. Conservatives took it really badly when she noticed that Palin was a fucking train wreck, and still seem disinclined to give her any credence despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fact that she nailed it.

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  10. Kn@ppster, you're only half right. A lot of conservatives got pissed off at her over Palin, and the other half when she started slobbering all over 0Bama like Parker, Frum, Chris Buckley, and the rest of the RINO intellectualoids.

    Me, I'm inclined to cut her some slack if she's showing some signs of returning to her senses and realizing that the center of the GOP isn't Washington.

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  11. Smitty, awesome post for this line alone:

    "Nitwit. Forget the mood ring: its color is a function of heat."

    Love it.

    How're things in the UK?

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  12. @Track-A-'Crat,
    Trundled into Cambridge today for a bit of shopping, steak, and tea. GPS is golden.

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