Lickety-Split Links (082809, Morning)
Barely scratching the surface:
- A relatively prominent (for a lefty) lib talker yesterday claimed that Ted Kennedy’s older brothers JFK and RFK were murdered by “the right wing.” Facts: Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed JFK, had a “commitment to Marxism and communism.” Sirhan Sirhan, who killed RFK and is still in prison, was motivated by Bobby’s support of Israel. Sirhan is so “right wing” that longtime Obama pal and Weather Underground founder Bill Ayers dedicated his 1974 book “Prairie Fire” to him. Too many on the Left won’t even face the truth about who killed their heroes.
- Carol McKinley’s “Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way,” which appeared here at BizzyBlog and at Carol’s Lead Us Not Into Temptation blog on August 3, was published at Judie Brown’s American Life League blog on August 17. Carol’s Reax: “As far as I’m concerned, the only place better to defend life in all of Christendom than having your column featured at Judie Brown’s ALL is a spot on the Pope’s piazza!”
- Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu uses misguided reasoning (HT to an e-mailer), but for the moment, I’ll take it — “I’d like to cover everyone — that would be the moral thing to do — but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so.” One can go to quite a few places with this quote, but the best points to make are that first, what ObamaCare envisions won’t cover everyone, or even come close; and second, there’s a big difference between “covering everyone” and the state controlling the health care system.
- “Great” moments in statist health care — “‘Cruel and neglectful’ care of one million NHS patients exposed; One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.”
- Oops (HT MKH at the Weekly Standard) “Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation’s health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO) told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday.” B-B-B-But Obama said there would be no cuts in Medicare benefits ….
When she says she wants to “cover everyone” is she including illegal immigrants and those legal Americans (especially younger folk) who for the moment and for whatever reasons don’t want/need to be covered?
Comment by zf — August 28, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
It seems we are in a bear market rally and the rise in the DOW and S&P are merely the result of “animal spirits” but totally lacking the underlying basis of reality. We are in a W shaped economy and soon we shall reach the peak and begin to see the next shoe drop…
http://www.news-to-use.com/2009/08/why-investors-need-to-slow-down.html
“Here’s a really important point we have brought to bear when President Obama mentions “Animal Spirits” in one of his speeches. Obama and the rest of the liberals love this concept because it dovetails nicely with their belief system. Remember what that liberal system of belief is?
Utopia is the endgame of the agenda. ->
The agenda is the truth. ->
All assertions to support the agenda are the truth. ->
Only facts that support the assertion are relevant, all
other facts are a distraction from the truth. ->
Reality is what you make of it; therefore perception is all that counts. ->
Selling people on the agenda is the duty of all liberals. ->
Lying and misrepresentation are acceptable in selling the agenda because only perception is truth.
This is classic, though rather an elaborate, form of circular reasoning.
Now do you now see why Obama and the liberals continually sell a vision of the future that has no rational basis in today’s reality? Utopia doesn’t exist, they believe by ignoring reality they can bring Utopia into existence. This is why the book “Animal Spirits” is wildly read and accepted by the Obama team, it confirms their faulty Keynesian worldview. This is also why all their actions to date are irrational, as they have no basis in reality. The entire premise of their belief system rests upon an extreme fallacy: “Anything can be made to work if you spend enough time, talent and money on it.” Reality says there are some things that cannot be done due to the laws of physics or nature. Common sense says that if you can accomplish the same thing spending one dollar, it is better than spending ten dollars.”
http://www.publiusforum.com/2009/05/19/another-example-of-central-planning-failure/
Comment by dscott — August 29, 2009 @ 10:45 am
#1, you are close, ask the right questions and you get the right answers; ask the wrong questions and you get the wrong answers. http://www.publiusforum.com/2009/06/16/Healthcare-Reform-Flim-Flam/
The real question is, why do the Democrats want to cover illegal aliens with Health Care if they are here illegally being a cost center to society? The answer I suggest is another question, what’s in it for the Dems? The naive and desperate are easily lead, and they require leadership…
…a starving man will do anything you ask for a loaf of bread.
Interesting that Jesus repudiated such followers.
“Much has been made of Marx’s use of the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. A close study of his references to this idea shows that he meant something very different from our modern understanding of dictatorship as totalitarianism exemplified by Hitler and Stalin. To understand Marx’s use of the term we must ‘return to the original Roman institution of dictatura… the classic dictator held extensive but not unlimited powers, powers to cope with an emergency but not to be left entirely unchecked’ (Hunt, 1974: 286). With this interpretation in mind we may note Marx’s remarks in a speech on the 7th anniversary of the International in 1871:
‘the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat… In destroying the existing conditions of oppression by transferring all the means of labour to the productive labourer, and thereby compelling every able-bodied individual to work for a living, the only basis for class rule and oppression would be removed. But before such a change could be effected a proletarian dictature [Fr. Dictatorship] would be necessary, and the first condition of that was a proletarian army’ (Marx, Engels and Lenin, 1975).
The hard line expressed in those words can scarcely be denied. Engels, too, foresaw a violent revolution, though he wrote of English workers being driven to the use of violence rather than choosing it:
‘A revolution by a peaceful path is an impossibility, and only a forcible overthrow of the existing unnatural conditions, a radical ouster of the titled as well as the industrial aristocracy, can improve the material situation of the proletarians. They are still held back from this violent revolution by their peculiarly English respect for the law; but the conditions in England described above cannot fail shortly to produce general hunger among the workers, and then their fears of starvation will be stronger than their fear of the law. This revolution was an inevitable one for England (Werke, Germanversion of Collected Works, quoted in Hunt, 1974: 111 ).
B
The revolution wasn’t inevitable, of course. A socialist speaker was nearer the mark in claiming that a starving man doesn’t want socialism – he wants a hot meal. The last word on this subject may be left to Marx himself ‘As long as other classes, and the capitalist class in particular, still exist; and as long as the proletariat fights against them … it must employ coercive measures, that is, governmental measures; so long it is still a class itself, and the economic conditions which give rise to the class struggle and the existence of classes have not yet disappeared and must be forcibly removed… With its complete victory, therefore, its rule also comes to an end’ (Collected Works I: 321-3). ”
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/WestLothian/Marx-Engels&Socialism.html
Comment by dscott — August 29, 2009 @ 11:16 am