Our readers saw right through Sarah Palin's pretense that concern for her children's welfare in "corrupt" Washington is the reason she won't run for the U.S. Senate. Not only that, they voted it the most outrageous quote of the week.
Palin won a healthy 56, or 25%, of the 220 votes cast for this bit of outrageous baloney:
I think it really takes someone who has the stomach for - the patience necessary to live and delve in that cesspool that is Washington D.C., is quite corrupt. I have young children and I want to keep them nice and pure, if you will, and Washington, D.C. would be a very tough environment for them, I will tell you honestly.
You can view the full results here.
Congratulations to Ms. Palin for an award well deserved!
Stay tuned for another Outrageous Quote of the Week poll over the weekend.
This is the same guy who said that he had spent a life time ‘paying it forward’ and doing ‘entrepreneurial’ things all over the world.
Oh, my new favorite statement:
“the rich soak themselves if they indulge in ostentatious consumption, but pay no tax if they save all their income ….increased savings means more resources available for businesses to invest by borrowing with lower interest rates (not propped up by quantitative easing), or more available risk equity capital.”
Oh, certainly!
Life is so simple to some, eh?
You’re right about one thing, though, ‘David’: you are not an American.
“Not sure where you’re going with the whole paragraph about big government and fear, but you’re ignoring something close to 150 years of this nation’s history. By your reckoning, having a safety net somehow stops people from taking risks. That’s an untenable notion. The point of a safety net is to make sure that people don’t wind up with nowhere to turn at all, and even with what little net we have, that’s still not an assured prospect these days, thanks to the cuts made during the Reagan Administration. The point of having regulation is that our history shows us that unregulated business and investment results in these boom and bust cycles. The cycles are driven by short-term interests of people who want immediate gratification and a quick return rather than anything that would help grow or nurture a society. After multiple cycles of this, our nation learned that regulation was necessary to keep the problem from continuing in as severe a manner as before, and to keep various unscrupulous businesses from exploiting people quite literally to death. (I refer you to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire if you’re going to talk about the good will and good nature of unregulated businesses.) And this is something that went hand in hand with organized labor, which for decades was the only opposition to a completely unchecked version of capitalism that ran roughshod over all the employees.”
You’re not much of a student of the history of economics either. Sheesh. Consumption taxes invariably hit the poorest a whole lot harder than those who are better off.
Do you really think it’s acceptable to make it even harder for a family to put food on the table, clothe the kids, pay for health care, etc.?
Progressive taxation based on income is sanctioned not only by history but also by every system of civilised ethics known to man (“let those who have the most be generous to those who have the least”, or something like that, is part and parcel of every known religion).
Why does the above allow me to suspect that you are not a fan of historical analysis? It’s been quite a while since I read anything so extraordinarily lame.
This is an easy matter for you to resolve. Do you think it’s okay for right wingers to engage in “the politics of personal destruction” while you castigate left wingers for that behavior? I have issues with both sides doing so. You apparently do not, which is a surprising position for you to be taking. Could you please clarify the matter for all of us here? Thanks.
Also, after you read the extensive discussion of Sarah Palin’s issues at John Ziegler’s “The Sarah Palin I Know”, would you please be good enough to explain how she is above reproach, particularly after more of her own people have corroborated Mr. Ziegler’s points? And how do you answer the fact that Ted Cruz is not the fine unblemished person you wish him to be when we look at the multiple attacks he has made on politicians with whom he has disagreed? Keep in mind that he has had plenty of time in his career to make these attacks and not just the 21 hours he attempted to monopolize the microphone and the Senate’s time during a critical moment for our nation’s budget. And finally, I’m still waiting to hear how you were able to follow every minute of those 21 hours of Ted Cruz’s moment in the sun? Did you DVR the whole thing? Did you take breaks? Or did you show solidarity with Cruz and stick it out with him for 21 hours without stopping?
Getting to your latest post, which did not address the critical questions shown herein above, I find it strange that you’re continuing with the notion of abolishing the IRS and adopting a flat tax that would never be paid by anyone but the middle class individuals who couldn’t afford to avoid it. I actually did respond to your notion when I pointed out to you that it was unworkable. Please re-read the posts to check the longer statements of my reasoning. The short version is that under your scenario, the wealthy would never show purchases more than 50K in a year, thus avoiding paying any taxes. (And they can do this via corporate shelters and offshoring of their money so that nobody can be held responsible for these purchases.) So under your scenario, you’d have almost no money coming into the treasury and a situation where there wouldn’t even be enough money to pay the refunds you’re promising everyone. Which leads us to the other question you are continuing to avoid answering: Do you believe that public servants (Mayors, police, firefighters, congresspeople, Presidents) should all work as volunteers? Or do you believe that these should be private services? And in that case, who would pay for them, and what do we do about the millions of people who would be unable to afford to do so? Still waiting for your answer on that one too.
Your history of the 19th Century and of the New Deal is a bit sketchy, to use your own verbiage. The New Deal was by no means a failure other than for right wing pundits who hated the idea from the moment it was announced. (Curious coincidence that this is the same notion of Limbaugh’s desperate scream of “I HOPE HE FAILS!!!” about President Obama. Just because the right wing wishes something like this were true does not make it so.
Not sure where you’re going with the whole paragraph about big government and fear, but you’re ignoring something close to 150 years of this nation’s history. By your reckoning, having a safety net somehow stops people from taking risks. That’s an untenable notion. The point of a safety net is to make sure that people don’t wind up with nowhere to turn at all, and even with what little net we have, that’s still not an assured prospect these days, thanks to the cuts made during the Reagan Administration. The point of having regulation is that our history shows us that unregulated business and investment results in these boom and bust cycles. The cycles are driven by short-term interests of people who want immediate gratification and a quick return rather than anything that would help grow or nurture a society. After multiple cycles of this, our nation learned that regulation was necessary to keep the problem from continuing in as severe a manner as before, and to keep various unscrupulous businesses from exploiting people quite literally to death. (I refer you to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire if you’re going to talk about the good will and good nature of unregulated businesses.) And this is something that went hand in hand with organized labor, which for decades was the only opposition to a completely unchecked version of capitalism that ran roughshod over all the employees.
Your assumption about skills leaves out the point that an unregulated business (whether that be by government or by labor contract) will pay the least it possibly can for whoever it can get. The person with the skills whom you refer to would be exploited for as much as the company could imagine, and if the person were to object, the company could throw that person away and find someone who didn’t complain. This isn’t a matter of “fear”. It’s a matter of the big guy stepping on the little guy. These are quite different issues, and your assumption leaves out the crucial material that plays those issues out in the real world.
I have now repeatedly asked you: Do you agree that it is reprehensible when anyone tries “the politics of personal destruction” – whether that person is on the left or on the right? In simpler language, do you condemn the behavior of right wingers who do this with the same vehemence that you condemn the left wingers? If your position is to have any merit, you must repudiate the activity and not just one kind of person that engages in it. Your response before appeared to give some kind of an excuse to Rush Limbaugh and you’ve tried to say that Ted Cruz gets a pass because you didn’t hear him say anything untoward while you were listening to his entire 21 hour attempt to monopolize the Senate’s microphone and business. By the way, I congratulate you on your ability to have watched Cruz’ entire speech. For you to make such a definitive statement about it, we must believe you watched the full 21 hours while Cruz was doing it. How did you manage this feat? Were you DVRing, so you could take a momentary break and then resume? Or did you stand in solidarity with Cruz and just watch for 21 hours without any breaks?
I have also repeatedly asked you how you believe we should deal with public services. You have indicated you want them to be privatized. I asked if this meant you wanted people to directly pay private companies for their police, their firemen and for any other public services they might need. I asked if you would prefer for public sector workers all the way from city staff to the President to all be volunteers. I’m still waiting for answers to these questions.
Regarding John Ziegler, I did not ask you to attack him. I asked you to carefully read his material on Sarah Palin. As he was her biggest defender, and continues to say as much in his discussion at “The Sarah Palin I Know”, his comments about her conduct and her behavior are quite telling. I don’t know that he’s “clearly in the minority when it comes to those who have worked closely with Palin.” How about Rebecca Mansour, who was clear that Palin’s quitting of her Governorship in the middle of her term destroyed her political career. This doesn’t mean that Palin doesn’t have the right to quit her job and make a lot of money from Fox News and TLC. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the right to get her supporters to give her money for political campaigns she won’t be running so she can have a more lavish lifestyle. It just means that she doesn’t get to have any political credibility while she does so. Ziegler and Mansour understand this. Why don’t you?
Your recounting of the New Deal forgets some 70 years of history after it, and forgets about all the multiple economic disasters this country suffered throughout the 19th Century, when your idea of an unregulated business environment existed. You should look up the history on this era – a couple of highly regarded novels from the time you might want to try are “The Octopus” and “The Jungle”. I wouldn’t eat before reading those books, as they are pretty harsh accounts.
I’m also surprised that you are unaware of Ted Cruz’ penchant for making unfortunate statements about politicians with whom he disagrees, and with his unreliable record as shown by Politifact Texas. You might want to look into these issues before defending him with such stridency.
As for your defense of right wing pundits who have been attacking President Obama since he announced his candidacy for President, there are way, way too many examples preserved here at this site and elsewhere for your claim to hold water. You are presenting an opinion that right wing criticism of President Obama is solely based on his record. That would be news to people who have heard all kinds of comments about President Obama. For courtesy, I’ll let you look up all the Michelle Malkin comments on your own, and I won’t even try to count the number of times Hannity has referred to the President as the “Whiner in Chief”. I’m sure you’ll remember gems like James Taranto referring to the President on Fox News as “a pathetic little man.” I’m sure you’ll remember Ed Klein’s vicious attack books on President Obama. If you lived in Los Angeles, as I do, I’m sure you’d remember right wing radio station KFI regularly attacking the Obama candidacy and Presidency. As one example, in August 2008, host Bryan Suits confidently predicted that Barack Obama would not be elected because he knew that the liberals who said they would vote for him were all lying and would secretly vote for the white man once they got into the ballot box. Around the same time, Wayne Resnick at that station addressed the candidate on his own show with the comment “You’re NOT going to be President!” And we could go on for days about Donald Trump’s insulting references to the President and his life history. This wasn’t about his record, and it never was. Pretending otherwise just gives cover to people who have been behaving in a disreputable fashion for years.
In 2008, the right wing media, including Fox News, spent as much time as it could attacking Barack Obama and vainly trying to pretend that George W. Bush’s presidential record was exemplary. (There’s a great clip you can find on this site wherein Sean Hannity desperately tries to claim that the economy is doing great in the fall of 2008…) Now, what happened once Obama became President? Did the GOP and Fox News decide to try to work with him and see what they could accomplish? Of course not. Instead, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and others led a meeting wherein it was decided that the GOP would vote in lockstep AGAINST EVERYTHING that President Obama and the Democrats attempted to accomplish. Rush Limbaugh publicly and proudly stated “I HOPE HE FAILS!!!” The right wing media then set out to prove that pre-hypothesis to be true. For the entire intervening time, Fox News has set out to misconstrue nearly everything President Obama has done or said, to portray him as incompetent or a failure or both at the same time. That’s not people looking over someone’s record dispassionately. That’s a group of people acting in a childish manner, and frankly, I don’t know why you would want to support public tantrums such as these.
By the way, it’s interesting that you would accuse President Obama of only having a career in academia, when his resume is quite different. But even if you were to take that bizarre position, you might want to look at your presidential history. Woodrow Wilson became US President after having been President of Princeton University. Like Barack Obama, Wilson had a law degree, but contributed, among other things, as a professor before his political career took off. Are you arguing that Woodrow Wilson was unqualified to be President? I would hope you are not.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion of how the US economy would have looked had there been no regulation of businesses and investment since the 1930s or before then. The history unfortunately doesn’t bear out your reasoning. What we’ve seen is that when investors and businesses do whatever they want with no accountability, they will regularly go for short term gains and gratification, with disastrous results for most people’s economic, social and environmental well-being. The result throughout the 19th century was a series of depressions that would regularly crater our economy and cause massive devastation before the next boom cycle would begin. The result in the 1920s was a crushing depression that nearly destroyed our economy completely. You are correct to note that it was World War II that completed our recovery from the Great Depression. But you’re forgetting that it was the New Deal that stabilized the country and made it even possible for us to be involved in WWII in any meaningful way. Had FDR not taken the steps he did, the USA would have been flat on its back at the time we were needed to work against the Axis. I’m sure you’re not advocating the lack of action taken by Herbert Hoover when everything fell apart for years during his disastrous presidency. Or are you? Do you actually believe that Herbert Hoover was a more effective president than FDR? Really?
Regarding your opinion about tax rates, I would point you to the tax increase under Bill Clinton, which presaged the best economic performance we’ve seen in this country in the past 20 years. I note that when Glass-Steagall was undone at the end of Clinton’s time, and when George W. Bush presided over a series of unfortunate choices and economic mismanagement, the country’s economy went into the worst bubble-bursting scenario we’ve seen since the days of Hoover. And frankly, it’s more than likely that George W. Bush will be seen by long-term history as a modern-day Hoover.
I agree that the discord between conservatives and progressives has plenty to do with social issues, as well as with principles. Conservatives have regularly upheld the idea of a limited government, except when it comes to social or medical practices with which they disagree. Conservatives regularly tell women they have the right to make their own choices with their healthcare, unless that choice includes deciding about their own pregnancies. Conservatives regularly tell government to stay away from people’s private lives, unless we’re talking about a gay couple that wants to have the legal rights of marriage. Conservatives regularly talk about equal rights for all, but then support restrictions that will make it as difficult as possible for populations they don’t like to get to the voting booth. Progressives actually do support everyone’s rights, but they don’t discriminate on who gets to vote, who gets to have health care or who gets to have the rights of a married couple.
You note that you don’t like that taxpayer funds are used for an organization that you don’t like and which right wing media tells you is evil, like Planned Parenthood. Let’s leave out the fact that taxpayer funds don’t support abortion at Planned Parenthood – and that PP actually provides health services that are helpful for women across this country. Let’s just stay with the fact that you don’t want tax money going to support them. That’s the same argument that’s failing in the Congress right now about the ACA. Do you understand that the left has plenty of government programs they’d like to see ended? The left would be very happy to see all military contractors removed from getting any money from our taxes. The left would be very happy to see a reduced military, a reduced defense department and a radically reduced intelligence community. The left would be very happy to see the end of subsidies for major corporations and businesses. Are you alright with removing the tax dollars from all those areas? Or do you just want the money removed from the programs you personally don’t like?
I agree with you that there is plenty of corruption and cronyism in our government. But this isn’t anything new. It’s been going on all the way back to the founding of the country and even before that. It’s not tyranny to have a tax code, particularly since this country has wrestled with taxes and funding since before the Revolutionary War. It’s tyranny to have one group of people throw a tantrum and try to hold everyone hostage because they don’t like the fact that they lost two presidential elections in a row.
However, the outcome was inevitable early on when ‘David’ stated “but starting with a proposition that Fox News requires laughing at Fox when it raises issues and awareness beyond the narrow perspective of liberal and progressive thought…”
Ya just can’t fix stoopit.
You also haven’t answered the serious issues I raised regarding Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. I again ask if you’ve taken the time to read “The Sarah Palin I Know” as written by noted conservative John Ziegler, who up to that moment was her greatest supporter.
To answer what you have responded:
The idea of having standards for education, energy, health and human services, as well as the environment, is something that transcends state lines and has to do with who we are as 1 country rather than as 50 smaller countries. As you know, many large businesses span multiple states, not to mention multiple countries. And to a certain extent, different states do regulate businesses within their state borders differently. For example, Utah is much stricter on various kinds of commerce than other states. (Anyone trying import alcohol into this country has long figured that one out.) But the overall object is to not have businesses trying to cope with 50 completely different sets of rules and standards. Unless your thought is for businesses to only exist within a single state, which would entail a much higher level of regulation than you wish.
When you refer to “privatizing delivery of services”, are you suggesting we’d be better off with just having private police, fire, schools, hospitals? Who would be able to afford these private services? And what do you propose we do for the millions who would not be able to afford them?
Your summation of your flat tax idea again forgets that wealthy people will shelter their money, as they always have. If the only tax on them is from what they spend locally, they’re smart enough not to spend that money locally. They’ll outsource their money through corporate shelters and just spend the minimum amount below your 50K limit. Which means that the only money coming into the government would be that which comes from people who make a little more than 50K and not enough to be able to afford the shelters we’re discussing. Which makes for a very small amount – potentially not even enough to pay for all the checks you’re generously offering. Under your suggestion, government wouldn’t be small enough to drown in a bathtub – it would be so tiny you could drown it in a cup of water. And again, you still haven’t addressed my question about whether you prefer for public sector workers to be volunteers. Do you have an opinion on this?
My discussion of the Whiskey Rebellion wasn’t me advocating for a new sales tax on whisky. I was referring to the famous Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, which was in response to the federal government at that time imposing a whiskey tax as part of the way of paying the costs of the Revolutionary War. Some locals fought paying that tax but they lost and wound up having to pay anyway. This matter directly addresses your statement about the tyranny of the current federal government. Whiskey makers in 1791 would beg to differ with you about whether taxation and tyranny have not always been matters of discussion in this country.
Social Security is not going broke, nor is Medicare. What is happening with SS is the same thing we saw in the 1980s – where it was projected to have issues decades down the road, under the assumption that the economy went into a depression and stayed there for the entire intervening time. In the 1980s, Reagan approved making a minute change in the SS withholding that addressed the concern. A similar adjustment can be made now. One popular suggestion is simply to remove the cap on contributions. As for Medicare costs, it’s not an issue of Medicare going broke – it’s an issue that the health care industry continues to have spiraling costs. The fix for that starts with the ACA but will have to be completed by Single Payer, which we won’t get for another few years, by which point the costs will hit the level that not even the right wing will be able to defend them.
The US Senate was designed as an Upper House, where the landowners would vote for the Lower House members, and the state executives would appoint the Upper House members from their most influential businesspeople and lobbyists. But the US Constitution is a living, breathing document, and our country has adapted to reflect the changes we have seen since the late 18th century. The same founders also had it that women couldn’t vote and that slaves were not even considered a full human being. Over time, it became clear that the “Millionaire’s Club” of the Senate wasn’t working as a democratic institution, and before the 17th Amendment was ratified, 29 states had already made the choice you have decried – to make the Senators a publicly elected position.
As for your proposal about limiting the terms of judges, I actually don’t have a problem with that. Except that our current situation shows that if you have a hostile Congress, you will wind up with scores of unfilled vacancies, since the Congress can gum up the works and refuse to approve or consider judges. The reason the federal justices don’t have that term limit is that it already takes a ridiculous amount of time to officially get them onto their benches. Your solution would result in continuing chaos in the federal judiciary, far worse than the problems we’ve seen with this Congress. I note that right wing pundits normally favor this idea – but they tend only to voice it when a Democrat is President. If it’s a Republican making the judicial appointments, then it’s awful that Democrats are questioning the choices. If it’s a Democrat making the appointments, then it’s something we need to carefully look at and question. Granted, the right wing had issues with Harriet Miers, but that wasn’t because they were carefully questioning the idea – it was because they didn’t like that she was so closely tied to Bush and they didn’t like that she wasn’t outwardly conservative enough for their tastes. So we wound up with Alito instead, and after a truly unfortunate performance at his confirmation hearing, he’s shown himself to be the reliable partisan the right wing wanted all along.
Your comment about the founders, tyranny and income tax completely ignores what I just reminded you about the Whiskey Rebellion and taxes that go back to our government’s founding. Your comment about the Federal Reserve ignores that the USA went through some horrifying economic times in the 19th Century of booms and massive busts. The point of things like the Fed and Social Security was to help keep us out of the worst of the trouble. The system isn’t foolproof, but as we’ve seen in the latest crisis, it can keep a serious problem from becoming a bottomless pit.
The decision to elect senators rather than having them be appointed was actually a good step toward making that a more democratic process. When the senators were all appointed, the Senate was known as “The Millionaire’s Club” since it was the most influential lobbyists who got those appointments.
The Federal Government has long been involved in having all of the states follow the basic strictures of the United States. As has been pointed out, there are times when we are 50 states, and there are times when we are 1 country. It’s important to understand the difference between a single country with 50 states and a loose gathering of 50 separate countries. Keep in mind that it was a federal mandate that said that slavery was abolished. Do you believe it was wrong for the federal government to do this? It’s a federal mandate that created and funds Social Security.
I do agree with you that congresspeople have staffs that are way too big. I don’t believe it’s due to DC “usurping areas meant to be run by the states” but you’re correct that no congressperson needs a staff of 20 people by any means.
You recommend eliminating departments and bureaucracies, but you don’t say which ones. And that’s a very slippery slope. Because I guarantee you that the left has a whole bunch of departments they’d like to eliminate as well. And by the way, that’s the whole problem with the failed gambit the GOP has been making with our budget. You can’t just cut one program you don’t like and fund everything else. If you could do that, the left would have argued for eliminating the money going to companies like Blackwater, Haliburton and others over the past ten years. Everyone has a program they’d like the government not to fund. But then there are other people who do want those programs funded.
Your argument for reducing the tax collection to just a flat sales tax has some serious holes in it. In the first place, how would you confirm the 50K of sales? Who has those records and who keeps track of it since you wish to eliminate the IRS? And what would you do when the wealthy funneled their wealth into purchases outside of the country and via corporate shelters, so that they could spend a minimal amount and thus never have to pay the tax you’re advocating? The result would be that the government would have almost no funding – and we’re back to the question you have not answered about whether you would prefer for all government workers to be volunteers.
The emergence of Fox News has little to do with a “fair and balanced approach”. It has much more to do with two groups of people who watch the network, which is noted for its ability to polarize and anger rather than inform. The first group are conservatives who already agree with Fox News’ message and who wish to have their beliefs reconfirmed by pundits they like. The second group are people who disagree with Fox News and watch the channel for the same reason people flocked to the character of J.R. on “Dallas” back in the day. Other media news networks aren’t nearly as flashy about their ability to polarize. I would add that it’s more likely that you will see a liberal watching Fox News to hear what the arguments are than that you will see a far right wing person watching MSNBC. It’s not market dynamics, it’s actually more of a study of different psychologies. As an important sidenote, the fact that Fox News’ audience is now noticeably aging is something that’s of great concern to the people running the network.
Regarding Sarah Palin, I agree that she has been attacked multiple times, although she has actually gone on the offensive herself whenever she could. There actually has been plenty of focus on her record of public service – a record she herself tarnished when she quit her office before her term was completed in favor of bigger paychecks from outlets like Fox News and TLC. And you still have not answered the statements made by John Ziegler, which were both detailed and devastating for Palin’s credibility. I ask again if you have actually taken the time to read them. I can’t speak to everything Cruz said during the 21 hours he pointlessly held the microphone, but I don’t know that you can say that he has not engaged in personal attacks during the many other hours, days and months he has been in the public eye. For example, Cruz was scolded back in February for his vicious comments about Chuck Hagel during the latter’s confirmation. He made comments attacking John Kerry before Kerry was confirmed as well. I note that Politifact Texas has shown that Cruz has about a 2-1 ratio of false public statements to true ones in their monitoring, with four of them getting the coveted “Pants on Fire” status.
Your comment about the Great Society neatly ignores the question I was asking you about right wingers engaging in the “politics of personal destruction”. I directly asked you if you would condemn right wing behavior of this type with the same enthusiasm that you’d like condemn left wing behavior of this type. You still haven’t answered this question. Regardless of whether you enjoy Rush Limbaugh’s brand of satire, the question is whether you approve of his personal and mean-spirited attacks on people like Michael J. Fox, Sandra Fluke and Iraq War Veteran Protesters. Do you approve of Limbaugh’s behavior or that of Michelle Malkin or Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck when they call left wing people names? Do you believe it’s okay for Beck to muse on the air about violently murdering Michael Moore? I cannot believe that you do.
I think anyone who engages in personal and vicious attacks will have a difficult record to defend, whether that person is on the right or the left. From the nastiness I’ve seen over the past 20 years, I’d say the right wing has a lot more notches on that belt by now. But this isn’t a competition. Put simply, do you agree that ANYONE who engages in this behavior, regardless of whether they stand politically, is acting badly?
Finally, your recounting of government and economics over the past decades leaves out some crucial information. The fact is that our economy always works better in a balance. Left totally unfettered, we wind up with situations like the Great Depression and the Great Recession. If there are too many controls in place, big business screams and their lobbyists get Congress to back off. All things work best with a balance. The right wing talking points about this assume that business will regulate itself. History proves that it will not – the result of companies running amok has been multiple disasters – economic, social and environmental. The point of having regulation is that We the People do have the right to expect a responsible standard of conduct from businesses in our country and in our states.
To David Watkins, we should take each of your allegations in the order you presented them.
First, you refer to Washington DC as “filled with freeloaders living off other people’s money forcibly taken from citizens around the country.” Who are the freeloaders to whom you refer? Congress? The President? I would agree that the bureaucracy is too large and that there are far more staffers on payroll than I think can be justified. But I don’t know that I’d refer to all these people as “freeloaders”. But did you have a specific area in mind that you feel is not worthy of paying for? Further, when you refer to money being “forcibly taken”, are you referring to our taxes? And if so, how do you propose to fund the government? Or do you wish all government workers, including congressmen, presidents, firefighters, mayors, etc to all work as volunteers? Do you really think such a concept is tenable today?
You refer to “lying abetted by a compliant media”. Do you mean the untruths regularly spoken on Fox News, as have been repeatedly and exhaustively documented here? Or do you have something else you’re specifically trying to address? And you are aware that Sarah Palin is paid a lot of money by Fox News and other media outlets, right? Doesn’t that make her part of the exact system you are condemning? What “wholesome values” allow her to take money from giant media conglomerates who are as compromised as you are suggesting? Shouldn’t she be volunteering her time to appear on television, rather than taking money from people you condemn?
I actually agree with you that Sarah Palin has inspired a heck of a lot of vitriol, and I don’t personally hold with making those kind of comments about people. Doesn’t mean that I agree with her at all, but I think we can criticize her without any name-calling. The facts are strong enough without the emotion being attached.
You then go off on a tangent about what sounds like your opposition to tax policy. You’re assuming that you are entitled not to pay your taxes and then have no penalties for that failure. Back in the day of the founders, there were plenty of things that government agencies did that were unpopular and were enforced. The Whiskey Rebellion was specifically about such a thing, if you look it up. That was a tax, and it absolutely was enforced. I think if you look up the actual events around the first years of this nation rather than what some pundits have tried to tell you about them, you may find that the reality is very different. Frankly, I think the founders would find much of what they see quite familiar – political infighting, backbiting and bad blood at every turn. To think that Washington and Jefferson weren’t experienced in dealing with politics or with the nature of a centralized government versus states’ rights would be to very badly misunderstand our history. And by the way, the Whiskey Rebellion happened years AFTER the Bill of Rights was passed, so how do you reconcile that contradiction between the facts and your argument?
As for “the politics of personal destruction”, I agree that it’s a sad day when people resort to it. It diminishes everyone. I don’t like it when I see it on the left. But I also don’t like it when I see it on the right. Do you equally condemn the behavior of right wing pundits like Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and all the rest when they engage in that behavior? Or do you only find it offensive when you hear it coming from the left. I hope you’ll join me in asking people of BOTH sides to cool it with that kind of rhetoric. Will you?
Your recounting of your opinion about a “spiral of vanishing liberty and freedom” is strange. You make no mention of HUAC in the 1950s, no mention of the Red scares, no mention of the many efforts to impinge on labor organization over the past 150 years, no mention about statements by people like Ari Fleischer that Americans “need to watch what they do, watch what they say”. You instead focus on the 16th Amendment, as though that were the first time a tax were imposed in this country. It was not, and you shouldn’t be fooled into thinking it was. Taxes have been an issue in this country from the beginning. Again, if you don’t wish to believe me, please look up the Whiskey Rebellion and see how far back this stuff goes.
As for your opinion that Sarah Palin “lives by ingrained conservative principles”, I strongly encourage you to look up the work of John Ziegler, an extremely conservative pundit. Ziegler is the one who made the documentary “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted”, and who spent years defending her in public at every opportunity he had. In 2011, he put together a very different piece called “The Sarah Palin I Know” where he very candidly described the serious issues that needed to be addressed with her. If you really believe the statements you are making about her, you should look up that piece – it may prove to be a bit sobering. She does not appear to be the person you think her to be, and you may have better traction finding a more worthwhile candidate to support.
More like, the power of guns assaulting nature at every turn, or did David Watkins forget that Caribou Barbie is an unabashed moosehunter who approves of shooting innocent wolves from helicopters, and thinks that the solution to cutting the foreign oil cord is drilling for oil on public lands in her “beloved” Alaska? Oh yeah, Sarah Stoopid is a real nature lover.
My corruption is different frum DCs cuz mine costs less an effects lesser folks …