Read it and weep
Bookworm on Feb 10 2009 at 10:22 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Randall Hoven summarize the President’s actions during his first three weeks in office and sees some strong patterns emeging.
J.R. Dunn is equally good at targeting the Obama pattern.
Related posts:
- A graphic novel I might read
- Was the media right all along?
- In case you find yourself with some time to read
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19 Responses to “Read it and weep”
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There’s small comfort in being able to say “I told you so”…
No, I think there’s a necessary duty, rather than a small comfort, in holding Obama voters accountable for the grief and misery Obama has caused and will cause.
The funny thing was, everybody on the Left kept saying “wait until Obama does something” and we were like ready to go off the mark days after the election. Weeks before the inauguration. Why? Because we knew. Some of us knew, others suspected, even more both knew and suspected.
Obama was a “moderate” they told us. Obama would rule like Clinton, straight down the middle, they told us.
They didn’t have a clue. Makes sense ,they also didn’t have a clue on Iraq, either. Can’t improve foreign economy and security? Now want to take your hand at US economy and security? Right.
Just read a headline on comcast’s home page:
“Obama Fed Up with Criticism”
After only three weeks — what a joke!
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090210/Obama.Analysis/
Post-script: They changed the headline to:
“Analysis: Obama says GOP can’t criticize stimulus”
It’s going to be a longer 4 years than I had feared.
Post-script: They changed the headline to:
I believe this is the work of the editors. The writers themselves may have put a headline like that up, but the editors really are more politicized.
To clarify, I mean the writers would have written the origin, not the changed, headline.
You _must_ read this. Can you say “Soros”???
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-700-billion-averted-end-of-our.html
Y –
I am TOTALLY with you. I want Obama voters to be made to feel personally responsible for the damage that is and will be done.
I know we touched on this subject several days ago but this is something I feel so strongly about.
Two days ago, I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine, who is a Democrat. I mentioned how furious I was with Obama’s attempts to appoint various people who had not paid their taxes.
His response?
“Deana, it’s no big deal. I know folks at work who say they haven’t filed their taxes for several years.”
Of course, they all voted for Obama.
I responded, “So, I guess it is just us dumb folks who pay taxes nowadays, right?”
And he laughed and said, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”
Y, my head almost exploded. These people want all of these cursed government programs and largesse but others are supposed to pay for it.
I’m furious. There has never been a government decision or action that has made me feel anywhere near the fury I feel right now: at Obama, the Democrats, many Republicans, and every person who voted for all of this.
My mom called me last week after she found out that she owes several thousands in capital gains taxes due to selling some farm land she inherited when my grandpa died last year. She was so dispirited – not because she can’t afford it. She can pay the taxes. It’s just that my grandparents worked that land for over 50 years and paid taxes on their income in full from that land every single year.
But that is not enough for the government. They have to take even more and then turn around and waste it in less than a blink of the eye.
And Obama has the fall to say that the time for discussion is OVER???
And Obama supporters don’t think it is any big deal that the President believes it is ok to appoint people to major national offices who are willful tax cheats???
I’m sorry. I know I’m ranting. But while half of American women are fantasizing about having sex with the President, I’m fantasizing about forcing Americans who voted for him to take remedial math and economic courses and listen to speeches by Joe Biden on their off time.
Deana,
i really can’t believe half the American women fantasize about having sex with the pres. Some of us find him reeeeally unappealing (physically as well as on other levels). I do think that half the journalists have that fantasy though, male and female.
>>”I know folks at work who say they haven’t filed their taxes for several years.”>>
The joke may be on them, if it makes you feel any better. It’s not against the law not to file as long as you don’t owe any taxes. It’s true that some people lie on their w-4 forms and don’t pay what they’re supposed to, but most employers withhold what they’re supposed to. Generally, that means that most people are owed money which they get as a refund when they file. If they don’t file, obviously they don’t get a refund. Of course, you don’t know who’s lied and who hasn’t – who says they have 10 dependents when they actually don’t have any – but if you _assume_ (I know..I know!) that they filled out their W-4 correctly, then not filing probably is not to their advantage.
>>…she owes several thousands in capital gains taxes due to selling some farm land she inherited when my grandpa died last year.>>
She may need to go back and even pay a lawyer for reworking that. The property is supposed to be appraised at market value when someone dies, and is then inherited at the appraised value, and theoretically subject to inheritance tax at that value. If it’s sold fairly currently after it’s inherited, there really shouldn’t be any capital gains to speak of. Since inheritance tax these days doesn’t start until somewhere over 1 million dollars, most people don’t have to pay any tax on inheritances. If it’s over a million (or whatever the dollar value was at the time your grandfather died), then she’s better off with capital gains tax (about 15%) than inheritance tax (about 40%).
I’m sure of the basic facts here but not of the particulars. If any of it applies, she’s allowed to revise tax returns back about 3 years, I think. It’s worthwhile checking, anyway.
All of which doesn’t mean I don’t agree with you in the general principle (# 8), Deanna!
I do. Definitely.
This link is to the same video as the directorblue article I posted in #7 but the comments are much better and definitely worth reading.
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/550b-lost-in-electronic-run-on-banks#comments
Lulu –
I can’t believe it either. The thought of it gives me the willies.
suek –
I can’t imagine someone simply deciding not to file taxes. Even if one were not concerned about having to interact with the IRS more than necessary, many people anticipate getting some sort of refund. Unless, of course, they lie, just as you said.
As for my mother, I don’t know all the details but I’ll ask her about it. The land was not sold very quickly after my grandfather passed away and that may have been the issue? Not sure. I know she had an accountant familiar with transactions and taxes involving farm property figure them but I didn’t ask her many questions – we were preoccupied with commiserating over the FACT of having to pay the taxes!!!! I will ask her, though. Thanks!
Deana
Y, my head almost exploded. These people want all of these cursed government programs and largesse but others are supposed to pay for it.
I’m furious. There has never been a government decision or action that has made me feel anywhere near the fury I feel right now: at Obama, the Democrats, many Republicans, and every person who voted for all of this.
The ones that defend a nation and a society are the ones most invested in it. Those that just suck off the public body like parasites don’t feel a need to pay their fair share. There are always somebody else that can be made to pay for them. While this attitude creates grand tax dodges amongst the high and mighty Democrats, it also produces little tax dodges amongst the adherents to the Democrat message of 100 dollars an hour by making slaves out of the rest of us.
That is how feudalism and aristocracy worked. The aristocrats looked down on trading and the “working man’s” profession. They had serfs and peasants to do that kind of work. The nobility just sat there and taxed their production and got rich off of it.
This social dynamic will always be with human beings because it works. There’s nothing to stop it, short of war, and that’s temporary in effect although grand in scope. The Colonies had a war with England precisely because England was milking the Colonies in the form of taxes. The South started a rebellion because ending slavery and the economic infrastructure of the South was too much to ask, until war eventually forced them to accept something even worse in terms of economic loss.
First and foremost, Deana, demand that they hold to wealth redistribution. Anyone who withholds their fair square from society needs to be scolded and publicly ostracized. They will not love capitalism until they are made to live under their socialist utopia. So long as they are getting the benefits of capitalism while not having to defend it, they have no incentive to pay taxes and support their nation. Just like Muslims have no interest in paying taxes to the British imperialists.
Holding people to standards, even if they are the corrupt and low standards of the Democrats, will either force social uniformity (because of a fear of ostracization) or it will produce a backlash reaction against that uniformity (rebellion). You want that backlash to be directed at Democrat wealth redistribution.
So call them on their hypocrisy. Don’t talk about it being unfair. Talk about the fact that they are guilty and should feel guilty, that they need to make repentance to their god (Obama). See how they react. They are money hoarders, hoarding money from those less fortunate.
There’s a link on that subject I should dig up.
This is what I’m talking about, Deana
Hold them to their own standards. Make them personally suffer or declare themselves open hypocrites. Since you aren’t advocating Republican values or conservative positions, their defenses cannot be erected normally. They can’t block you out by saying “oh that’s just Repub propaganda”.
Until people pay the price for their own actions, they will keep free loading. It is human nature. I know, I’ve studied it, and I know myself as well, in the bargain. No negative consequences to an action? I’ll just do more of it, if that action benefits me. All human beings are this way, except for those that have taken effort to inculcate virtuous habits. ANd that is why they need to suffer. It is only through enduring that one grows stronger.
Y, my head almost exploded. These people want all of these cursed government programs and largesse but others are supposed to pay for it.
There are two kinds of rage, normally. The hot and the cold version. The hot version makes you do things, makes you impatient and out of control. The cold version allows you to be supremely calm while angry. It allows you to harness the precise rational tools at your disposal and combine it with the fervour and zealotry of anger.
Cold anger is far stronger and useful than hot rage.
These were the people who backed the argument that because we wouldn’t overthrow the dictators of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, that we wouldn’t send a military expedition to occupy Darfur and Rwanda, that we were hypocrites and non-credible concerning the liberation of Iraq. They got good benefits from holding us to their ridiculous standards of perfection. Should we not hold them to their own standards, especially since ours need not be perfect, but theirs definitely does aim to achieve perfection?
Obama, right now, said that Republicans don’t have credibility on the “fiscal responsibility” issue because Republicans and Bush increased the debt (but didn’t mention that he decreased the rate at which that debt was increasing). As if what Bush did make Obama’s policies right. No, it was just more convenient to attack than to defend.
And that’s a strategy we should learn from, for there are a lot of benefits there.
I hear you, Y. My anger is closer to the hot kind than the cold but as time passes and I watch what is going on, it is cooling down.
I don’t like being angry – it isn’t how one should spend their time at all. But I feel like I’m watching everything that facilitated our freedoms and happiness being torn apart, all to reach this never-neverland, a utopia that these people with no firm knowledge of history, economics, and yes, God, have constructed in their dreams.
I don’t want to go along with them. I guess I’m angry that I have to travel down this road with these fools.
Suek-
From my limited understanding of tax law, it is in fact illegal to fail to file your taxes, even if you don’t owe anything or the Gov’t would end up owing you.
However, it is rarely prosecuted unless you are discovered during a “random” audit.
>>we were preoccupied with commiserating over the FACT of having to pay the taxes>>
Well..it actually makes sense if you think about it. There are two parts to the tax assessment – the asset itself, and the earnings _from_ the asset. Think of it as your personal home. You don’t have a problem with having a capital gains (ok..forget reality and the one time no tax, or 18 month shift it into another house thing) on your house if sell it for twice what you paid for it, do you? Now, what if it’s a rental property? You’d have income from the property, plus a capital gain when the house is sold. Your grandpa’s farm is the same – he bought it for x, farmed it for many years and then your mom sold it. There was a gain in value, so capital gain is owed. Yes, your grandpa farmed it and earned a living (more power to him!), on which he paid taxes while he farmed it, but that has nothing to do with the value of the basic asset – the farm itself. So…if the farm increases in value (and since he owned it long term, it certainly did) then as a capital asset, the _increase_ is taxable.
It seems to me that some questions are in order even if she did have an accountant, since the accountant should have made her aware of that stuff. Maybe, though, since some time passed between the inheritance and the sale, it didn’t seem relevant to the accountant. Who knows! Still, questions never hurt.
Deana, when classical liberals blunder, they take personal responsibility and start setting out to figure out the solutions. However, if they have to fix somebody else’s problems or if they are going to suffer the consequences of other people’s mistakes, then anger will ensue.
That is what anger, as Aristotle described it, can be a just response to the witnessing of injustice and vice. The virtuous man or woman will grow angry at injustice.
The military has been described before as the group of people responsible for fixing the mistakes of diplomats and politicians. That is what they are for, that is why their duty is heavy and not just because of casualties and family. Their duty is to fix other people’s problems. Not just those outside the chain of command but the problems inside as well. If your commanding officer has ordered a suicidal charge that you know won’t work because you know your CO and you know your particular spot on the battlefield (where the charge is going to happen) then should you follow orders and get your people killed for no gain or should you “lose such orders” due to the fog of war?
A Leftist would then argue, based upon what I said (assuming he could comprehend it), that this means adults and people (like us) should keep on fixing other people’s mistakes because that is the Natural Order of things.
But the thing is, Deana, that is not the natural order of things. It cannot hold. Eventually, due to the authority wielded by the CO, the chain of command will fragment or people will die needlessly, battles will be lost, and then the war will be lost. Before that happens, usually mutinies, disobedience of orders, or numerous other tragedies may occur. A fragmentation of authority usually happens right when you need authority the most. And that is as true for a nation as it is true for an army on the field of battle.
You have to get rid of an incompetent Commanding Officer and replace him with somebody competent, before the lack of discipline and trust breaks the cohesion of the army, resulting in a defeat/rout on the battlefield. If you wait until after the defeat happens, the task will be much harder and you won’t get back the territory as easily and you will never get back the dead men. That could cause you to lose the war.
We work under the exigencies of the conditions we find ourselves in until we have the power or the opportunity to change the COC. The military is fast in jumping to the support of the office of the President because they know all the tricks. They know the ways to bypass authority, ignore authority, or misinterpret the orders of authority to get things done the best. At least, those who have served as NCOs under incompetent commanders. (BillT, Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot now training Iraqi/Afghan pilots, has great stories on this aspect)