Tag: Conservatism

Pleading The 4th

As most of my regular readers know I live in the state of confusion…..my bad…that should be the state of Mississippi….and I realize that unless you live here then much of what I read about means nothing to you….sorry for that….but there are some things that I need to write about and the 4th congressional district of Mississippi…..

In the last election a long time Dem representative, Gene Taylor, lost his bid for re-election….I could go into the election in detail but to save time click on the link for the post on that election…

lobotero.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/blu…..

I post this because with all the debate on the budget I wanted to see where the present Rep, Steven Palazzo, was having his town halls and wanted to see what he had to say about the battle being waged…..

This guy was seldom in debates or even in large groups….his campaign tried to keep him away from voters until after the election…instead of pressing the flesh, his campaigned depended instead on attack ads and the link between Taylor and Pelosi…the strategy worked…Taylor was defeated and now we have this guy…Palazzo…

I am not sure what to make of this guy…..three of his inner circle have resigned since January….with NO real explanations……sorry, I digress…….While searching Palazzo’s website I could NOT find any mention of town halls only that he would talk to my group if I set it up……I did find that he voted for the Ryan budget….and that is a direct fly into the face of the seniors in my area, which are many, it is a retirement spot…..I see voters remorse……..

If I had to guess this guy may be a one termer….he will most likely have a Dem challenger and a Repub one also…he is an idiot and NOT long for the Congress…….unlike Taylor…he is NOT and I repeat NOT voting in the best interests of his constituents……and he avoids face to face with crowds that he knows will be hostile…there is a word for that……

And then there is the state’s junior senator, Wicker……he was interviewed on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown, about the storms that ravaged north Mississippi and he spent most of the time giving GOP talking points on the budget, debt and basically blaming Obama for the damage of the storms….he ignored the destruction and suffering of his  constituents in the aftermath of terrible storms……so he could repeat some lame ass talking points……and this is the PEOPLE, and I use the term loosely, that Mississippians traditionally vote into office…….maybe NOW they will wake up and get over the Civil Rights crap of the 60’s, maybe now they will get over the fact that Dems gave blacks equal standing and start thinking before they vote!

To be honest….I doubt it….but it makes for a good post (at least in my mind)…….

The People Vs The Tea Party

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Political Theory/Political Parties/

NO Irene…this is not a case that will go before the Supreme Court…but that is an idea that I would not be opposed to in any shape……

First, I would like to say something….Will you conservs STOP using the term “limited government”!  Very little of what you are doing is “limited”…..they are pushing further and further into the lives of Americans and that is NOT “limited”…..thanx for letting me vent…..

Finally!  The American people are starting to wake up to the fact that NONE of the Reps in Washington are working in their best interests….and thanx to CNN we have some proof of this……

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday indicates that 32 percent of the public has a favorable view of the two year old anti-tax movement, which also calls for less government spending and a more limited role for the federal government in our lives. The 32 percent favorable rating is down five points from December.

Forty-seven percent of people questioned say they have an unfavorable view of the tea party, up four points from December and an increase of 21 points from January 2010. That 47 percent is virtually identical to the 48 percent unfavorable ratings for both the Democratic party and the Republican party in the same poll.

NOBODY has a favorable appearance to the people or should I say….the voter….but will it translate to fresh thinking….or fresh faces….or possibly a new party?  If the total Congress and the parties have such a negative rating, what can we do as voters to change that?

To me….I will look for a NEW direction for the government and the country….I may be alone in this search but I will do it anyway……The country needs new ideas…new Reps….new parties….the stuff we have now is NOT working!

I am up to the challenge……are you?

P.S.  Keep in mind an observation from an observer in the UK on the Tea Party…….”It’s the same in 2011 as it was in 1776 ( I hate to contradict my UK friend but the Party was in 1773 not 1776)  when a Boston mob was incited to throw a cargo of tea into the city’s harbour: a bunch of rich folk getting poor folk to help them avoid paying their fair share of tax. Nowadays they don’t even have to get their feet wet. It’s all done on junk TV.”

Will The South Rise Again?

Well, I am talking about the Dems in the South…..the last mid-term in 2010 pretty much crapped all over the conservative Blue Dog Dems……the last remaining parts of the old Dem Party of the South…..the world was lost to the Dems with the passage of the Civil rights Act 0f the 1960’s……and the Party has never rebounded from that situation……

There is an old bumper sticker that says…”The South Shall Rise Again”…..total crap but I think that the Dem Party has shot its wad in the South……never to return as a viable alternative to the GOP…..

A little history for those not in the know….from the Economist…….

AFTER President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he reportedly turned to his press secretary and lamented that Democrats “have lost the South for a generation.” Johnson’s judgment was optimistic. Despite brief flashes of strength during the presidential elections of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats—particularly white Democrats—have been losing ground in the South for half a century.In the Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the eleven former Confederate states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia—had a total of 128 senators and representatives, of whom 115 were white Democrats (see chart). In 1981 Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time since 1953, but most Southern elected officials remained white Democrats. When Republicans took control of the House in 1995, white Democrats still comprised one-third of the South’s tally.

Some have argued that such conservatism dilutes the Democratic brand: that Democrats lost in November because voters knew what Republicans stood for but could not say the same of Democrats. Ari Berman, author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics”, wrote in the New York Times that “Democrats would be in better shape and would accomplish more with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus.” If by “accomplishing more” Mr Berman means “make liberals feel better”, he might be right; but if he means “pass more legislation”, he is wrong. Moderates and conservatives outnumber liberals in Congress, among congressional Democrats and among the electorate at large. Democrats built their 2006-10 majority by extending their reach into traditionally conservative districts. Abandoning those areas, many of them Southern, after the first mid-term election of a new president’s term—when the president’s party tends to lose seats anyway—would probably be a blunder.

The black population in the South will stay loyal to the Dems….unfortunately they do not vote heavily, as a rule…..but the whites will now be totally behind the GOP and its conserv platform….even though the Dems offer more in the way of services to all Southerns….they will continually vote against their own best interests……not the sharpest pencils in the political box…..

I mean come on!  There are still Southerns trying to sell the Civil War as a matter of state’s rights and not slavery…..you can try to sell that piece of mis-information for so long…..why?  History contradicts that argument……

However, the Declaration of the Immediate Causes for Secession, an official document that was published alongside South Carolina’s declaration of independence, mentions slavery 31 times and cites the election of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery,” as one of the main reasons for secession.Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/SOUTH+rises+again/4028880/story.html#ixzz19bdj6AjW 

The Dems have been losing in the South for decades….but this last election may have finished it off with a fatal shot to the head…..

So, You Are A Conservative?

College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Political Philosophy/Government/Conservatism

Paper #33

Well, answer the question?  Why do you think you are a conservative?  Because Dad was?  Or maybe Uncle Bob?  Maybe you like Sarah Palin or you think Cantor is a cutey?  By the way, none of those are actual reason that someone would be a conservative….as much as you may like to believe it is…it is NOT!

A “true” conservative views things in a certain way…but because of the total lack of understanding a classical conservative has little in common with the so-called modern conservative…..

A classical conservative…the conservatism of Edmund Burke, that is holds a special belief in issues and situations…..first let us look at ideology….they view this as a manifestation of the arrogance of rationalism.  The see ideologies as elaborate systems o0f thought that are dangerous and unreliable.

Second, the concept of freedom…..conservs have this weak view of freedom as a willing recognition of duties and responsibilities…..with freedom comes democracy and conservs see this as the need to protect property rights and traditional institutions from the untutored will of the masses or “the many”….and with freedom and democracy there is the human nature…..which they see as limited security seeking drawn to the known, the familiar, the tried and the tested and that human rationality is flawed and unreliable and moral corruption is implicit…..and now the issue of equality….conservs have traditionally viewed society as necessarily hierarchical and dismiss equality as an abstract and unachievable goal……

How about the nation….what would a true conservative think of the nation?  They see it as a an organic entity bound together with common ethnic identity and a shared history; it is the source of social cohesion and a collective identity…..they will see the nation as the most important of all the social organizations.

The state….no not the same thing as the nation…conservs want a strong state to protect us from chaos and disorder with authority and discipline……that brings us to the concept of authority…they see it as rising from natural necessity from above by those of unequal distribution of experience, social position and wisdom And that it fosters respect and loyalty and social cohesion……

More simply put…if you are a conserv then you see the needs of the country (or state) are best met by the elites of the nation and that authority and strong government (does not necessarily mean big government) is essential for the state to survive.

Who Is That Masked Populist?

College of Political Knowledge

Professor’s Classroom

Paper #26

Here is a subject that absolutely NO one has any idea what I am talking about!  In 2008, Obama was a semi-populist and Edwards was the populist voice and now it is Palin and Bachmann and the Tea Baggers, as a whole that is the populist voice of America.  But what is the Populist Voice?

Populism is a political stance, basically, that means an appeal to “the people”.   It is a modern device of political activity. And as an extreme form tries to use the US Constitution in a way to block any and all legislation that they do not agree with.   A voice against a supposed opponent, like foreigners, outsiders and especially the “elite”.  The later describes that appeal; of the populist voice of today….they are fighting against the elite, as they see it.

One way to fight the elite, in the populist frame of mind,  is to state that they speak for the “people”…the use of unclear expressions and catch phrases with NO clear decisions on how to repair a situation.

But as populism has grown it has become more about political opportunism than anything else.  The use of “the people” as a tool to further an agenda….not necessarily for the good of the country but rather the good of a political movement….it depends heavily on the fact that most Americans are low information voters or one issue voters and as such can be molded into political force….a force that has NO foot in reality.

For instance, the populist Tea Party is still having people echo that the present admin is raising their taxes….when in actuality most Americans taxes have gone down….but that does not matter to these people……if Obama is a Dem then he MUST be raising taxes, is their thinking……..

As usual, today’s populism is short on solutions and short on principles but long on slogans, generalities and misinformation….none of which is good for American democracy.

Does Thatcherism Return?

I have spent many hours in conversation with Quin of Quintessential Havoc (blogroll will get you to this insightful blog) discussing Europe and the UK….I will admit that I am a bit confused with the politics in the UK and especially the EU and he tries desperately to help me understand……..

I remember (damn I am old) the days of Reagan and Thatcher……the 80’s were an interesting time at least in global politics, but (there it is again) I had a hard time trying to recall some of the policies of the Thatcher admin……sooooo…I had to go a hunting…..

I found an article by Chris Marsden which compares, at least somewhat, Cameron policies with those of Thatcher…..

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” programme offers an ideological justification for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition’s efforts to impose between £85 billion and £100 billion in cuts over the next four years.

Cameron is Thatcher’s heir, but he cannot display similar candour or malice, given the bitter experience of millions of people with the results of Thatcher’s slash-and-burn strategy. Instead, he cynically portrays cuts as opening “opportunities” for charities and local communities and privatization as a means of facilitating “greater local democracy.”

The paucity of the actual programme Cameron announced was in inverse proportion to the scale of the rhetoric employed. Describing the “Big Society” as a “huge cultural change,” and employing words such as “freedom” and “empowerment,” he offered up four “vanguard” schemes—in Liverpool; Eden Valley, Cumbria; Windsor and Maidenhead; and the London Borough of Sutton. These involve such initiatives as reopening a closed local pub and a volunteer programme in local museums, involving unemployed youth.

The objective of voluntary work is to force down wages, a central component of a vast privatization campaign. Last week, the Guardian reported that under the guise of an efficiency drive, ostensibly aimed at boosting productivity in the health service and elsewhere, billions of pounds are being made available for private companies.

“Outsourcing firms are preparing for a bonanza of local authority contracts to provide everything from binmen to back office bureaucrats and have reported a doubling in the number of deals on offer this year,” the newspaper reported. “Private health companies are also expected to earn billions of pounds from the planned overhaul of the NHS in which GPs would take over responsibility for spending £70 billion.”

Just a few points in the article that I found interesting……some of it sounds feasible and some of it sounds like the privatization crap of the Reagan years, which has NOT been that good for the people…companies have made out like bandits but Main Street has seen a slowing of wages and opportunities……

I would like to ask my friend Quin to comment on the return of Thatcherism…….oh crap!  An overhaul of the health system…hopefully the Brits will be more adult about the debate than their American brothers…

Pick One From Column “A”

Inkwell Institute

Subject:  Governance/Political Philosophy/Conservatism

Paper #17

I want to be fair to the conservative movement….I have spent much time explaining and the like on Liberalism and now I want to do the same for the Conservs…..

There has been many arguments in the press, on discussion forums, among political pundits about the ideology of the people…..for this paper I will zero in on conservatives.  I am sure that they are feeling left out of the dialogues and God forbid that I have the wrath of the Right come down on me.

So you are a conservative?  Which type of conservative would that be?  I know, I know….HUH?

Let us step into the “way back” machine…my time machine to the days of high adventure….the Age of Enlightenment and one Edmund Burke, who has be called the Father of Conservatism…..He accepted the liberal ideals of private property and the economics of Adam Smith, but thought that economics should be kept subordinate to the conservative social ethic, that capitalism should be subordinate to the medieval social tradition and that the business class should be subordinate to aristocracy.  A short definition but one that explains the movement…..and there are a wealth of variants to conservatism…..we have religious conservatism or Libertarian conservatism or fiscal conservatism and on and on…but those are the most prevalent in these times.

Let us look at some of the doings within the conservative movement…..first of all there are a few common beliefs within the conservative movement…..Tradition, Human Imperfection, Organic Society, Hierarchy and authority and Property…..first of all you will ask what is an organic society, right?  Human being are dependent and security seeking creatures that cannot exist outside of the boundaries of a society, that people desperately need to belong and seldom separate themselves from society.

The two most outstanding belief systems within the conservative movement are the “pragmatic” conserv and the Libertarian conserv…..the “pragmatic conserv believes in traditionalism, social duty, moral responsibility, natural order, a ‘middle way’ economics and a qualified welfarism……..to the contrary a Libertarian conserv believes in radicalism, egoism, meritocracy, self-help, economic rights, market order, Laissez faire economics and anti-welfarism……

And then there is the insurgent “New Right”, to which the Christian Right is a piece of the action, is more concerned with the what we shall call authoritarian populism with principles of social order, public morality, law and order and national identity……this type of conservatism seems to be the conserv movement most politicians are trying to project in the US…while it has its good points but by NO means reflects a true conservative way of governance.

That is enough said…..oh Hell….there is NEVER enough said……

The Class of ’94

I remember the day, as if it was yesterday, wait it was yesterday or a couple of days ago, or…….anyway, another sex scandal, another Repub and another Class of ’94 alumnus…..

The Class of ’94…..the GOP was swept into office in the Congress by a tidal wave of ultra-conservatism on the backs of “family values” strong words during the presidency of Clinton and his many sexual accusations……Newt and the boyz went about changing the game in Washington…to the point of shutting the government down for awhile…..this was the beginning of the hyper-partisanship on the Hill and it eventually lead to the lies, misinformation and BS from both sides……and it trickled down to the masses, where they insult anyone who does not think like the ultras…..and it continues today….

Now that the history lesson is over….let us speak on the “Class of ’94″…….What have these whacky guys been doing for the last 16 years?  Well, let me see……(pause for effect)……..about 15 of those members of Congress seem to be doing as many people as they can…..what do you mean Professor?

It seems that the class of ’94 and its family values repartee was just that…….a lie to gain political advantage….huh?  At least 15 GOP members of the House of Representatives have been caught with their pants down…not literally but actually….names like Foley, who want to play hide the pickle with male staffers and Sanford, who hikes the Appalachian Trail and Ensign, who plays around with a staffers wife and then tries to bri9be his way out of the situation and now the latest Mark Souder.

Newser, I thank you for the excerpt……

Souder, a strong “family values” guy who made videos preaching about abstinence education with his married mistress (see video here). In one, he equates sex with smoking, and laments how tough it is to get them to abstain. “Nothing works very well,” he says. She nods sympathetically. She can relate.

In his resignation news conference he went about blaming the toxic atmosphere in Washington as the cause of his adulterous actions…..once again it is NOT his fault…it is the atmosphere in the Capital……yet again another Repub that will NOT take responsibility for his actions, but yet wants everybody else to do so.

The people that believe this a/hole need to demand their money returned from his paycheck….and next time try not to be so damn gullible!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Primary

2010 Election series

Yesterday was the BIG test, the mini mart of political contests…..the 2010 primaries…..are the American people angry enough to throw the bastards out?

In Kentucky the GOP endorsed candidate loses to Tea Party candidate Rand Paul; Penn. Dem fav Spector loses to up start Sestak and in Arkansas the Dem fav has a run-off with a more progressive candidate….so to answer the question……it appears that the voters, at least in the minin mart of primaries, are tired of business as usual in Washington….

We can talk about ideology or we could talk about pragmatism or we could talk about the weather…..

Is it just me or does the GOP wait for each new poll before they have an opinion on any given issue?  Especially with the next election.  They seem to be very flexible or is it they are just pragmatic?  Pragmatic…now there is a word that haunts politicians….

Maybe that what a pragmatist is….someone that has NO really ideology but someone that chooses one that is most advantageous to their political aspirations.  I am sure that there are those that think that a smaller less expensive government is their main belief….if so, what happen between 2000 and 2008?  I guess we could say that they have seen the err of their ways, right?

I think NOT!  Thanks to Obama and the Dems, they now see they have an opportunity to dismantle ALL programs that they do not like….most namely the ONLY retirement fund that most Americans have, Social Security or the ONLY medical plan that they have, Medicare or Medicaid.  These two programs have been the most uncomfortable for the GOp since their beginning and the GOP has worked for decades to lessen or eliminate them all together.

Sorry, I digress…….

Repubs are going with the flow to get elected so they can jump on their dislikes with both feet.  They are trying to tap into the populist feelings of the electorate…..especially the economic populism.  They are embracing the anti-incumbent feelings and the Tea Party mentality….this could backfire on them as it may in Kentucky where the GOP backed candidate is losing to the Tea Party back candidate…..

Because of the latest election, the GOP has a good chance to pick up control of at least one house in the US….but they are making the same promises that they always make and do not deliver…..so any gains will be short lived, but that gives them time to attack the working people of this country in favor of the corporate shenanigans of the past.

It does appear that the American people are truly angry and tired of the BS in Washington……but will the anger continue until the November elections?