Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
User Journal

Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: Calling out the GOP elite 50

Journal by smittyoneeach

. . .what Ted Cruz is doing -- is signaling to the discontented that there really is another way. They can vote Republican in 2014; and, if they do so big time, there will be a correction of course.
The leadership of the Republican Party hates this. Like Jeb Bush in early 2009, they want "to get beyond Reagan." They want to surrender on immigration; they have designed a Republican healthcare bill that is little more than Romneycare writ large; and they desperately want to make nice with the Democrats. They do not really want a change of course. They merely want to take their turn as managers of the administrative entitlements state. They want to take advantage of discontent without having to commit themselves to a reduction in the size and scope of the government.

Conservatives have really been unsure whether to try to work within the GOP, or start a second national party.
Jury is still out, but stand by for RINO scalpings in the primaries.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Calling out the GOP elite More

Calling out the GOP elite

Comments Filter:

  • He was not a conservative, He grew the government and raised taxes. And some of us remember the hostage deal, Beirut (something you Benghazi people would prefer to forget), Iran/Contra, Central American death squads, Lincoln Savings and Loan (every bit as guilty as McCain), and his love for the very racist prison industry [wikimedia.org]. He was a horrible, horrible man. The worst in my lifetime. Maybe the worst since Andrew Johnson. Yeah, I know he was a puppet, just like Obama, and everybody in between. The real crimina

    • I'm a veteran. I remember Beruit, and a President who didn't throw an innocent man in the cooler.
      To be sure, there is significant overlap between the two incidents, but the differences are stark and cut to the truth that #OccupyResoluteDesk is a no-talent rodeo clown.
      The rest of your response, with just a little more Drano, could pass for Noam Chomsky. Bravo.

      • Your hate for Chomsky and Zinn are noted. Care to point out anything they have said that is historically incorrect? Or is this just another example of the cultural peephole through which you see the world?

        ...no-talent rodeo clown...

        Your internet meme-ing does not impress. His associates are perfectly happy with his talents. If they weren't, somebody else would be president today.

        • historically incorrect

          As in, 100% false? Come on; destroying a culture never works if you stand up and speak in the language of Bulungi.
          All of the facts are cherry picked, the context destroyed, the motives urinated upon, and the soup served sandwich style. But you know that.

          His associates are perfectly happy with his talents.

          Interesting question: when you reach a certain altitude of plutocracy, is happiness possible? Or are you just getting your Emperor Palpatine on all of the days of your vanity under the sun?

          • All of the facts are cherry picked, the context destroyed, the motives urinated upon, and the soup served sandwich style.

            Ah, exactly like the 'official' versions of history then. Well, about Zinn himself: *he said repeatedly that his goal wasn't to be unbiased, but to offer American history with a different set of biases. He told the Times of his People’s History: "It’s not an unbiased account; so what? If you look at history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated, it's a differen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arker ( 91948 )

      Reagan was not a perfectly consistent conservative, and his term in office the government was not very conservative at all actually, but it's hard to think of any better word to describe Reagan himself. Beirut was one of the best points to show this, in fact - although he at first fell for war party line and setup a foothold in the middle east, it didnt take him long to wise up and reverse course.

      The rest of the things you mention are blameworthy but I honestly believe he was mostly a patsy on those, he tru

      • You spelled it out perfectly. He was a patsy, whose acting talents worked to everybody's advantage. It's hard to say if he was aware of anything during his second term. When he said countless times, "I do not recall", he could have meant it. It is just as plausible to believe he never knew. As far as I'm concerned, the presidency is a ceremonial position, not much different than British Royalty.

        What Reagan 'lost' in Beirut, he more than compensated in other Middle East and Central American operations. He wa

        • Reagan/Thatcher were neoliberals, put in place by big business to serve big business, 'conservative' only for psychological effect over the voters, the real patsies.

          You are so demonstrably false, but a great troll. Reagan and Thatcher both had read and understood Austrian Economics. They grasped that capitalism is the only thing in human history that has ever lifted people out of misery.
          I realize that you have to deny historical truth, and offer fact-free smears of Reagan's second term to bolster your nonsense. Keep going. You funny.

          • "Capitalism" is all there is and ever was. Reagan and Thatcher simply handed the power back to their elites and utterly destroyed much of the prosperity and many of the advances made after the war (the Big One, WWII). Fairness and justice went right out the window. And the resulting degradation over the last 30 years is more than demonstrably and graphically obvious. The few that did actually benefit will of course deny that. *Greed is good* They are carpetbaggers, of the most despicable kind. You are indee

            • What, did you read "The Road to Serfdom" backwards?

              • Heh, now that you mention it, that's exactly the road Reagan/Thatcher put us on. And their successors add a new lane every election cycle.

                • I'll take that to mean that you didn't read "The Road to Serfdom" in either direction.
                  It's central premise is that you never have enough information to make the nanny-state collapse-proof. Never. Ever. This side of full-on divine omniscience.

                  • Regardless of what's inside the book. The title is a good description of Reagan/Thatcher philosophy. If the state is the nanny, the corporation is the parent which hired the nanny to watch over the plantation.

                    • I really wish you'd read it. It's far more important than Ayn F. Rand. Also, shorter.
                      You have an Austrian who happened to be in London at the outbreak of WWII, writing at the end of that conflict.
                      He's telling the Allies: "Woo hoo, have another victory lap. And do note that the seeds of everything you thought was wrong with fascism are alive and well within your systems."
                      Hayek is quotable on a per-paragraph basis, and all the more tragic for the way the Progressives have ignored him, to their detriment.
                      I

                    • Again you have it wrong. Reagan/Thatcher is where our present ongoing decline greatly accelerated, not paused. By '83 it was in full swing. It really began with Nixon.

                    • See my other recent comment. Woodrow Effing Wlison.
  • The link you gave before shows us that the republicans would produce the same "health care" bill. Of course, this makes sense as they wrote this disaster themselves and then walked away from it hoping it would sink Obama.

    The real question is why would you expect a republican to do anything else? The Bailout Act aligns well with the "free market" mantra and other related bullshit in that it reiterates the value of the invidual not as a key player in the economy but rather as a commodity that should be

    • Of course, this makes sense as they wrote this disaster themselves and then walked away from it hoping it would sink Obama.

      That's a fairly hefty accusation. Could you be more specific as to who "they" are, and maybe offer a link to "their" plan, sir?

      the best way to ensure that the market can run at 11 is to ensure that all the goods are being traded on it, which is what mandatory health coverage does.

      Again, you seem unclear about the real effects of letting the government manage scarcity. I point you to the Soviet Union, and beg you to have a look at Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics". Or at least print out this thread for review while you're standing in line waiting to buy aspirin, as this is the kind of problem that sodomizing the market surely begets.

      • Maybe you weren't paying attention when JC brought up the point that the individual mandate idea came from the "conservative" Heritage Foundation. And politicians (notably your oh so faithful to his wife, Newt Gingrich) from both factions took it and promoted it themselves. "Obamacare" is very much a "conservative" plan, one which props up a very corrupt system of entitlements for the industry. Quid pro quo. That's just how the game is played.

        • The Left continues to peddle that. There is some basis for it [usatoday.com].
          The chief reason I find it a pile of malarky is that your accusation asserts that people cannot learn.
          That is, I find your ideas, overall, akin to a sort of Calvinism, saying that people are doomed to hold the ideas they hold.
          In my personal case, I'll admit to having wandered from sort of a neo-Con acceptance of American hegemony and big business more toward the libertarian conservative position, which figures the likeliest way out of our curr

          • Please, enlighten me, when did this 'limited government' within enumerated powers ever exist? It sounds entirely like a figment of your (or Rush Limbaugh's) imagination.

            I laugh at your Josephus-style acceptance of the neo-aristocratic status quo.

            LOL.. You really are a funny guy! Though it was funnier when Pee Wee Herman said it on stage.

            • You're denying that (a) the federal government didn't undergo a transformation ~100 years ago, and (b) with the Information Age, we have enough information diffusion to do something about it?
              Throne sniffer.

              • Are you really trying to tell me that things were better before Wilson? How you figure that, pray tell?? This I gotta hear...

                • I'm saying that,
                  - holding the size of the little Senate constant since 1910
                  - giving DC eminent domain over your wallet in 1913 (Amend. 16)
                  - removing the voice of the States as such in 1913 (Amend. 17)
                  - and setting up an inflationary printing press in 1913 (Federal Reserve Act)
                  Combined with an invasion of Godless Commies in the 1930s [youtube.com], we now have the mess in which you seem so pleased to wallow.
                  The task for the clueful is to unwind the last century of idiocy in this country, and redistribute power, not

                  • ...we now have the mess in which you seem so pleased to wallow.... redistribute power, not wealth.

                    :-) I give up. You win the internet. I'll have to be content watching you spin your wheels. Go ahead and have your fun with that other windbag.

      • Again, you seem unclear about the real effects of letting the government manage scarcity.

        First of all, the conservatives clearly were not concerned iwth any such problem when they proposed it both years before Obama was ever a candidate, as well as during 2009-2010 when they were insisting that no other option was viable.

        That said, the government is not managing anything here when they say "go buy a product". You are free to purchase from any of a list of lousy products that were already available. Furthermore once you purchase one you are not forced to use it; hence if the scarcity you ar

        • That said, the government is not managing anything here when they say "go buy a product". You are free to purchase from any of a list of lousy products that were already available. Furthermore once you purchase one you are not forced to use it; hence if the scarcity you are eluding to is health care itself - rather than health care insurance - then the scarcity is not likely effected by those who will continue to not use it.

          What you're, oddly enough, NOT free to do is refuse to participate in this fiasco. And you seem blithely unaware of the damage already caused [conservativehideout.com]. And, unable to avoid it, I'm sure you'll blame conservatives for failing to play along/sabotaging it, rather than having the courage to admit that universal healthcare is the most expensive fools errand, short of war, imaginable.

          I'm curious as to how you made this massive leap of faith.

          Mainly it involved a bit of Google [examiner.com]. But I grasp that we're dancing about a matter of faith here; I'm just going to have to wait until realit

          • What you're, oddly enough, NOT free to do is refuse to participate in this fiasco

            An argument could be made that we weren't previously either. Even more so, there are plenty of conservative groups running various advertising campaigns encouraging people to willfully not participate.

            universal healthcare is the most expensive fools errand, short of war, imaginable.

            Being as every country with universal health care spends less per patient than we do, and gets better results than we do, I don't know how you come to that conclusion. Even as cheap as death is, our system still makes that expensive as well.

            I'm curious as to how you made this massive leap of faith.

            Mainly it involved a bit of Google.

            Smitty, you can do better than that. It actually requires a leap

          • I neglected to enquire about another leap of faith, though. The article specifically makes up shit about chemotherapy and other expensive prescription drugs somehow having their supply manipulated by the Bailout Act of 2010 (prior to it actually being in effect for anything of significance, no less). You then jumped from that to making claims about Aspirin. Aspirin, as I'm sure you know, is made by a large number of companies for OTC sale throughout the country and beyond. This is dramatically different
            • You don't have to agree with me.
              For reasons of confidentiality & propriety, I can't introduce you to my wife. (Who, BTW, holds a Master's in Public Health, in addition to 15+ years in pharma both here & in Europe.)
              So you're buying an opinion second-hand, sight unseen.
              And it may be that rational, free-market capitalists lose the struggle for liberty on ObamaCare.
              (a) I won't stop struggling for liberty while I've motion remaining in my flesh.
              (b) In case of failure, and our society goes the Full O

              • You don't have to agree with me.

                Nor you with me. However I know you are capable of actually processing facts and making decisions based on them. This is why I am puzzled that you took a 100% fact-free and self-referencing article and parrotted it as if it were researched and referenced. Beyond that you went off the deep end by taking their hypoerbole and extending it further with no logic to support such a notion.

                Smitty, you're better than that. You're smarter than that. I don't know why you are allowing your partisan blinders t

                • I'm just trying to challenge you to start thinking again. I know you can do it.

                  The interesting angle on your appeal here is that you cheerfully toss 100% of the burden for producing facts on me.
                  And then you can just sit there and decide that you dislike a particular link, and remove it from consideration.
                  Am I not supposed to notice your rhetorical game here?

                  • I'm just trying to challenge you to start thinking again. I know you can do it.

                    The interesting angle on your appeal here is that you cheerfully toss 100% of the burden for producing facts on me.

                    When you are declaring that something is factual, you should be able to support that declaration. You are throwing around a declaration that the Bailout Act of 2010 has apocalyptic intentions - or at the very least is has already put in place apocalyptic changes - but you provided one link to support that declaration and it is 100% incapable of doing so.

                    It doesn't appear that I could convince you of anything else even if I wanted to. However if you are trying to sell me - or anyone else - on your not

              • I have supreme confidence in the human mind's capacity ignore reality at all costs.

                Well, you should :-) You are a living/breathing confirmation of the study I linked. You fit right in with all the rest, especially in your denial that it happens to you. And note that many of those with all the fancy diplomas on their walls are more vulnerable. When confronted with facts they fortify their preconceptions, instead of necessarily reassessing them, which to me, implies no small amount of arrogance. They use the

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Close