Contributed by: filbert Friday, August 05 2011 @ 07:48 AM CST
From Inside Higher Ed,[*1] something that needs to be said and repeated again and again:
Anger and indignation are aggressive defenses; they suggest the angry person cannot support his or her position with evidence or carefully reasoned argument; it is an unambiguous red flag. Anger, indignation and character attacks are used to enforce adherence to “sacred values” and for that reason they have no place in a community of scholars.
We are very gifted in the art of analyzing the behavior and motivations of other groups and institutions. Furthermore, we are intensely trained in the tools used to conduct complex inquiry; yet, we rarely bring those tools to bear on our own activities.
And not just in the context of academe, either . . . although after a while, anger at someone who simply refuses to comprehend what you’re saying in the first place becomes a natural human reaction. That’s where many on the intelligent right are today with the “progressives.” They simply don’t seem to understand–and don’t seem to want to understand–what we keep trying to tell them about how the world really works, vs. how they want the world to work. This gets really, really frustrating after a while.
Sounds like a 500 point, 4.3% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in one day. As Ace points out, the Dow is down 6% since Tuesday. Thats . . . um . . . three days ago.
What could possibly have happened–say–last weekend, perhaps–to tip the applecart over at just this exact time?
The only good news coming out of today is that — for now — the world’s investors have (improbably) flocked to U.S. Government securities as the only remaining relatively safe refuge. So it’s possible that the other shoe may not drop immediately.
But look at the cash burn rate of the Federal Government. Look at the unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in the next few years. The other shoe is dropping. It is dropping NOW. And thanks to Obama, the Democrats, and yes the Republicans in Washington, when the other shoe hits the American public on the head, it is going to hurt.
A lot.
The Federal government’s budget needs to be balanced. Not next year. Not in ten years.
Half-measures and politically-determined tactics designed only to win the next election won’t cut it any more. But nobody in Washington, D.C. seems to realize that. And what’s worse, it seems that most people outside Washington don’t realize it, either.
But reality has this really nasty habit of whapping inattentive people upside the heads, and doing it very, very vigorously.
Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, August 02 2011 @ 09:46 AM CST
The Lazy, Uncategorized version:
Debt-ceiling bill passes the House [*1] — “By a margin 269 to 161, with 66 Republicans voting no and 95 Democrats voting yes, the House passed the debt-ceiling increase with the accompanying package of cuts.” Note that “cuts” in Washington, D.C. aren’t really cuts at all, in the sense that you and I would consider a cut. If your employer chops your salary by 5%, that’s what we in the real world call “a cut.” If your employer raises your salary by 5%, that’s what we in the real world call a “raise.” But in the fantasyland that we call Washington, D.C. it would be a “5% cut” if you expected a 10% raise and only got a 5% raise instead. Keep that in the front of your mind the next time you hear somebody complaining about the eeeeevil Republicans and their plans to barbecue and eat Granny.
The New Tone: Biden Says Tea Partiers “Acted Like Terrorists” [*6] — Strangely enough, a lot of Tea Partiers seem to be of the opinion that the Terrorists are currently in charge of the Executive Branch . . . they’ve certainly put terror into the heart of a lot of good, decent Americans . . .
Budget talks in a word: ‘Ridiculous,’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘stupid’ top poll [*13] — Actually, I think you can use those words to refer to almost all of the media’s coverage of the issue, too. Which is a huge part of the problem. Most of the media, along with a large segment of the politicians, are economically illiterate.
Dems Plan Pivot to Jobs [*22] — The only thing Washington Democrats know how to do regarding jobs is how to destroy them . . . so pardon me if their renewed attention to the issue fails to fill me with breathless anticipation . . .
Contributed by: filbert Saturday, July 30 2011 @ 07:31 AM CST
I think that question says everything you really need to know about which party is actually trying to fix the problem, and which one is cynically using it as a political billy-stick against the American people.
Contributed by: filbert Friday, July 29 2011 @ 11:50 AM CST
This one’s delightfully lame:
Return-Path: (mm@charternet.com)
. . .Received: from mail.khpb.gov.tw (mail.khpb.gov.tw [210.241.113.3])
by (redacted); Fri, 29 Jul 2011 06:56:23 -0400 (EDT)
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by mail.khpb.gov.tw (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id p6T3idxM003492;
Fri, 29 Jul 2011 11:44:39 +0800
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Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, July 20 2011 @ 10:26 AM CST
The Democrats’ battle cry, in a nutshell.They are pushers–drug dealers–and the drug they push is dependency on government. They hook people on the drug. Then they can control them. They have no interest in making people better–making people able to live their own lives. All of their activities are focused on depriving people of the ability to live their own lives and instead making them dependent on “people who know better” to “take care of them.”
That’s what they do–that’s who they are. All the bluster and blather in the world from Obama and his enablers in the media won’t change who they are. Their “fairness” is the fairness of the feedlot.
