Iowa Liberal

I understand that the core of all the race baiting bullshit is to demonize the recipients of government expenditures that the Republicans view as undeserving. After all, that’s what the welfare reform act that Clinton and Gingrich championed was all about; making sure that “those people” weren’t getting something that they didn’t deserve. For instance, single mothers who needed to learn the value of hard work (because raising children isn’t considered work by our government).

Skipton is a town of around 14,000 at the foot of the Yorkshire Dales. The town features an exquisitely preserved castle that stood as a chief bulwark in the North against Parliamentarians during the English Civil War in the 1600s. In the castle one can view the enormous wood-fire ovens of the kitchens that were used to bake bread around the clock. The tour guide informs visitors that the Royalists who lived there long ago used bread not only for sustenance but as napkins to wipe their faces and hands with. If they chose not to eat it the noblemen supping at the table would throw this bread onto the floor at their dogs who would then fight each other over the discarded bread which would provide amusement for the entertained and also save a little bit of effort that would have otherwise been expended by the wait staff. Those that fixate on micro-scandals like ACORN are just like the dogs that fret over the scraps cast under the table. They’ve decided that fighting over the pennies that fell out of the register that Goldman Sachs just carried out of the front door is more important than addressing the larger crime. They claim to be worried about government fraud and waste but when they fixate on micro scandals like ACORN, doing so stands as proof of just how insincere they really are.

-mg

A Sullivan reader points out how short free market rhetoric falls when it comes to prescription drugs:

Sick people will consume only the quantity they need to stay alive/healthy, but will pay any price for that. If pricing was left up to the market, supply and demand for patented, life-saving drugs would reach equilibrium at about 100% of the consumer’s assets, plus five years of indentured servitude.

The reader also notes that the drug he needs, for narcolepsy, is only available because of government intervention.

“Keep the gubmint out of my Medicare!” sums up the fundamental contradiction of the right: protesting against government involvement, utterly dependent on government involvement.

-jb

Republican claims to fiscal conservatism are completely baseless. An actual conservative, Bruce Bartlett, explains the reality: No Republican has any serious plan to deal with the deficit. 54% of discretionary spending goes to defense spending, and they’re deficit hawks now?

In short, there is no evidence that it is politically possible to cut spending enough to make more than a trivial difference in our nation’s fiscal problems. The votes aren’t there and never will be. Those who continue to insist otherwise are living in a dream world and deserve no attention from serious people.

Even shorter: your choice is tax and spend, or borrow and spend. Republicans are neither able nor willing to make any serious budget cuts. They only talk the talk to get elected. Give them complete control of the government, as we did for most of the Bush administration, and you only get more spending and more borrowing to fund the politically easy tax cuts.

Meanwhile, Obama takes the slightest measures to reduce the frighteningly costly boondoggle known as missile defense, and wingers are already hyperventilating that he’s handing the keys to Eastern Europe to Russia. Again, hardly any thought, only what they think they can say to push voter buttons and keep their asses in office another term. Unfortunately, our discourse on foreign policy has become so suffocatingly dominated by neocon theology and military industrial complex campaign financing means that we’re again left with only one party able to merely discuss unnecessary spending, and Republicans standing firmly in their way.

-jb