Comments on: The Plot Thickens

By: gerrysh

gerrysh — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:36:39 +0000

Ah, no one is paying attention to the troll – boo friggin’ hoo!

Barry O is trying to avoid reality. You’re right, It can’t be done. No company is “too big to fail”, but many are too weak to survive without bailouts – and they need to be expunged from the economy.

By: Cavosie

Cavosie — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:17:54 +0000

Good, provocative post. Thanks.

By: JJWFromME

JJWFromME — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:39:41 +0000

But actually, I’m an epistemological conservative. But you’re right, I appear not to be getting many converts…

By: JJWFromME

JJWFromME — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:33:04 +0000

Alan Colmes made me what I am today:
http://policingwingnutwelfare.blogspot.com/2009/01/which-milquetoast-will-play-next.html

By: buzzricksons

buzzricksons — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:52:21 +0000

Query why JJWFFME even bothers with this site, given his obvious and repetitive disdain for conservatives, Republicans, and “you guys” generally. Is he being paid to be here or something? If not, I can’t see why anyone of his bent would bother racing to populate these comment threads as he does, with repetitive points about Rush Limbaugh’s on-air tantrums and the rest of it. Given the abrasiveness of his writing, only a naif would think he’s trying to persuade anyone here. And no, I don’t really care what he’s doing here or that he’s here at all. Free world and all that.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:06:08 +0000

JJWFromME: Upton Sinclair was not a liberal, so to state that “there are no liberals today like Upton Sinclair” is to raise a strawman. Upton Sinclair was a self-described out-and-out socialist who advocated government takeover of factories and farms, which would be converted into worker-owned cooperatives. Today, his ideas live on in the Green Party USA.

By: JJWFromME

JJWFromME — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:05:52 +0000

The problem is that you guys don’t even acknowledge certain important problems even *exist.* It’s like Sam Tanenhaus wrote: “The issues that have provided conservatives with victories in the past particularly welfare and crime have been rendered irrelevant by success, Michael Gerson, the Bush speechwriter turned columnist, wrote last week. The issues of the moment income stagnation, climate disruption, massive demographic shifts and health care access seem strange, unexplored land for many in the movement.

In fact these issues of the moment have been with us for years now, decades in some instances, but until recently they were either ignored by conservatives or dismissed as the hobby-horses of alarmist liberals or entrenched special interests.

The key word in Mr. Gersons analysis is movement, a term more applicable to moral or spiritual crusades than to the practical matters of governance, particularly governance in a two-party system, where success almost invariably requires compromise, consensus and a mind open to all manner of workable solutions.

These have not been, historically, the strength of movement conservatives, who prefer arguments built on first principles often expressed in supercharged rhetoric.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06repubs.html If you’re not going to acknowledge reality and solve these problems, get out of the way, so we can.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:58:41 +0000

JJWFromME: You’re wrong. The present crop of liberals doesn’t just want those two goals alone. All of us but the hard-right ideologues can agree on those things—you, me, McCain, and David Frum. But what liberals want, is to restart the long-term move of this nation toward a left-wing society that was really started by President Lyndon Johnson and the Earl Warren Supreme Court, both in the 1960s. And arrested by the arrival of GOP dominance in the 1980s and 1990s. Amazingly, U.S. liberals really admire the socialist welfare states of Western Europe, and want America to “catch up” to them. Unlike them, I don’t think America will improve by attempting to emulate the European models. My ancestors came to America to get away from Europe, and they never looked back.

By: JJWFromME

JJWFromME — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 18:02:55 +0000

Also, “intellectually out-of-it ideologues” is a not-bad description of the Liberty League, members of whom hatched something called the “business plot.” Again, I think FDR was up against some more extreme elements than BHO is now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Liberty_League
…even with high profile people like Rush Limbaugh sounding this unhinged: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/02/12/paranoid-style/

By: JJWFromME

JJWFromME — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:14:02 +0000

“However, he did not face thirsting liberals on his left…” Um, no. You might try The Google:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/sinclair.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0679748547/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books By the way, there are no liberals today like Upton Sinclair–and that would include me. You guys just like to generally work yourselves into a lather that each present crop of liberals is uniquely Scary and Unprecedented. Well, they’re not. The present crop just wants 1) their country back from the crazies that have been running it for the past several years, and 2) to fix it so that it once again reflects the values of normal, sane human beings.