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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

 
 
okie
 
  1  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 01:14 pm
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:

The real question here is, does okie exist?

Yes, I exist. You are not imagining it, as you may do some things, ci.
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 02:32 pm
Sampling of the week's political cartoons:

On impending government healthcare:

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/ca0624ad20090624041850.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/tmdsu09062220090623115706.jpg

And referring to the President's admission that he is still smoking:

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/aria09062520090624062259.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/sk0623ad20090623034844.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/holb090625_cmyk20090624021123.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/cb0624wj20090624041925.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/varv06242009a20090624030838.jpg

And among LOTS of very large flies representing different things. . . .

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gm09061920090620115711.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/Gamble_T2009062420090623072322.jpg

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz061909bdAPR20090623023553.jpg

On Iran

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gm09062320090623115706.jpg
And finally, not political but in honor of one who added to our lives as well as being a war hero, philanthropist, and all round good guy:

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/payn090622_05_cmyk20090624021125.jpg
0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  5  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 02:47 pm
Quote:
SC Gov. Mark Sanford admits he's had an affair
(By JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press, June 24, 2009)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) " After going AWOL for seven days, Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday that he'd secretly flown to Argentina to visit a woman with whom he'd been having an affair. He apologized to his wife and four sons and said he will resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.

"I've let down a lot of people, that's the bottom line," the 49-year-old governor said at a news conference where he choked up as he ruminated with remarkable frankness on God's law, moral absolutes and following one's heart. His family did not attend.

The woman, who lives in Argentina, has been a "dear, dear friend" for about eight years but, Sanford said, the relationship didn't become romantic until a little over a year ago. He's seen her three times since then, and his wife found out about it five months ago.

He told reporters he spent "the last five days of my life crying in Argentina" and the affair is now over. Sanford, a rumored 2012 presidential candidate, refused to say whether he'll leave office.

"What I did was wrong. Period," he said.

Questions about Sanford's whereabouts arose early this week. For two days after reporters started asking questions, his office had said he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trial.

Cornered at the Atlanta airport by a reporter, Sanford revealed Wednesday morning that he'd gone to Argentina for a seven-day trip.

When news first broke about his mysterious disappearance, first lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press she did not know where her husband had gone for the Father's Day weekend.

Sanford's announcement came a day after another prominent Republican, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, apologized to his GOP Senate colleagues after revealing last week that he had an affair with a campaign staffer and was resigning from the GOP leadership.

Sanford, first elected governor in 2002, has more than a year remaining in his second term and is barred by state law from running again.

He emerged Wednesday afternoon at a news conference and it took more than a few minutes into his address before he got to the crux of what had happened. He spoke of his love of hiking and how he used to guide trips along the Appalachian Trail " and only then tearfully apologized to his wife, his staff and his friends.

"I hurt a lot of different folks," he said, occasionally choking up throughout the news conference that lasted about 20 minutes.

A former three-term congressman, Sanford most recently snared headlines for his unsuccessful fight to turn aside federal stimulus cash for his state's schools. His vocal battle against the Obama administration " and libertarian, small-government leanings " won praise from conservative pundits. Ultimately, a state court order required him to take the money.

Sanford was born May 28, 1960, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the eldest of four siblings. He earned a bachelor's degree in business from Furman University in 1983 and a master's of business administration from the University of Virginia in 1988.

After working for a couple of years in the financial world in New York, he returned to South Carolina and said he was shaped by his summers working on the family plantation. He served in the U.S. House for three terms before honoring a term limits pledge and leaving office in 2001.

In 2002, he defeated incumbent Democrat Jim Hodges by 4 percentage points to become governor and won re-election in 2006, beating Democratic state Sen. Tommy Moore.

As governor, Sanford has had seemingly endless run-ins with the GOP-dominated Legislature, once bringing pigs to the House chamber to protest pork barrel spending. He also put a "spending clock" outside his office to show how quickly a proposed budget would spend state money.
ehBeth
 
  3  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 03:37 pm
@wandeljw,
Argentina/Appalachia. An easy mistake to make. They both begin and end with A.
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 03:45 pm
And for Ron Paul fans--I was a fan on parts of his agenda and not a fan on other parts--he is one member of Congress who cannot be faulted for swaying in the political winds or switching his convictions depending on the poll of the week or lying for poltiical expediency. The summary of his radio address this week provides a lot of food for thought, discussion, and consideration for those who care:

Quote:
Ron Paul: Obama 'Goal' Is Economic Collapse
Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3:08 PM
By: Rick Pedraza

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, says he was dismayed that Congress passed the war supplemental appropriations bill so easily last week.

“An economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” Paul said during his weekly radio address Monday.

“Washington spends with impunity, domestically bailing and nationalizing basically everything they can get their hands on,” Paul said.

Mocking the idea that Obama was a “peace candidate,” Paul pointed out that his administration will be sending another $106 billion it doesn't have "to continue the bloodshed in Afghanistan and Iraq without a hint of a plan to bring American troops home."

Paul noted that many of his congressional colleagues who previously voted with him in opposition to every war supplemental request under the Bush administration seem to have changed their tune. He maintains that a vote to fund the war is a vote in favor of the war.

“Congress exercises its constitutional prerogatives through the power of the purse,” Paul said. “As long as Congress continues to enable these dangerous interventions abroad, there is no end in sight: that is until we face total economic collapse.”

Paul noted that, as Americans struggle through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the foreign aid and International Monetary Fund appropriations in the spending bill passed last week can be called an international bailout:

The emergency supplemental appropriations bill sends:

$660 million to Gaza

$555 million to Israel

$310 million to Egypt

$300 million to Jordan

$420 million to Mexico

$889 million to the United Nations for so-called “peace-keeping” missions

$1 billion overseas to address the global financial crisis outside U.S. borders

$8 billion to address a potential pandemic flu, which he said could result in mandatory vaccinations “for no discernable reason other than to enrich the pharmaceutical companies.”

Perhaps most outrageous, Paul said, is the $108 billion loan guarantee to the IMF.

“These new loan guarantees will allow that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt leaders and promote harmful economic policies overseas. Not only does sending American taxpayer money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help.”

Paul said that IMF loans require policy changes called “structural adjustment” programs, which amount to “forced Keynesianism.”

“This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that has brought our own country to its knees,” Paul said, “and IMF loans act as the Trojan horse to inflict it on others."

Leaders in recipient nations tend to become more concerned with the wishes of international needs than the needs of their own people, he said.

“Argentina and Kenya are just two examples of countries that followed IMF mandates right off a cliff. The IMF frequently recommends currency devaluations to poorer nations, which has wiped out the already impoverished over and over.”

Paul noted a long list of brutal dictators the IMF happily supported and propped up with loans that left their oppressed populaces with staggering amounts of debt with no economic progress to show for it.

The continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan does not make America safer at home but, in fact, undermines national security, he said.

“We are buying nothing but evil and global oppression by sending [our] taxpayer dollars to the IMF " not to mention there is no constitutional authority to do so.”
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/ron_paul_obama_economics/2009/06/24/228873.html?s=al&promo_code=8224-1


H2O MAN
 
  -1  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 05:42 pm
@wandeljw,



This episode would be considered a resume enhancement if Sanford was a democrat.
genoves
 
  0  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 11:34 pm
@H2O MAN,
H2O man. You are correct. However, since Slick Willie has been on the scene, the public is blase. How could anyone match Bill?

Juanita Broadderick allegedly accused Bill Clinton of raping her.

They had a special official in the Clinton White House who was in charge of warding off attacks and giving "Bimbo Alerts" since there were so many women who indicated that Bill had, in some way, sexually harassed them.

Bill was able to buy off Paula Jones after he exposed himself to her. Unfortunately, Bill had to pay $800,000 to the court!

Bill famously lied his way through the Impeachment after the little blue dress showed up with his DNA on it.

No, H2O--no matter what happens with regard to politicians and their sexual peccadillos, no one will ever be able to outshine Slick Willie.
0 Replies
 
genoves
 
  0  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 11:39 pm
Herr Hinteler wrote:

Re: okie (Post 3686514)
okie wrote:

H2O MAN wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Well, obviously the news from Germany isn't of much interest in the USA.


Maybe you could start a thread titled: German conservatism in 2008 and beyond

The first question would be "Does it exist?"


I suggest that you read Epstein's Genesis of German Conservatism and/or Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945, edited by Jones/Retallak.

(Unfortunately the -IMHO- best available book is not translated, Schildt, 'Konservatismus in Deutschland'.)

But it's certainly an adequate question, especially, since the British Conservatives left the conservative bloc in the European Parliament and formed with extreme right-wing parties a new group.

It certainly might sound outlandish that our conservative party [parties] is called Christian Democratic Union of Germany resp. Christian Social Union [of Bavaria].

But they are members of the International Democrat Union* like your Republican Party.

*The IDU provides a forum in which political parties holding similar beliefs can come together and exchange views on matters of policy and organizational interest, in order that they might act cooperatively, establish contacts, and present a unified voice toward the promotion of centre-right policies across the globe. The group was founded by several prominent heads of state and government, including Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher, then-Vice President of the United States George H.W. Bush, Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl and then-Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac.
****************************************************************

Who gives a ****? And who are you, to give people in the US your ubermensch ideas about how WE should run our government?

Go take a vacation at Buchenwald and meditate!!!!
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  4  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:27 am
Entering this site after time away can be a tad like cracking open a time capsule you buried out beneath grandma's petunias.

The Republican Party, so heavily invested for so long in conservative movement extremisms, is proving to be incapable of reflection and reform. That was predictable (just go back and read the first ten or so pages here). As a consequence, the party's standing with the American public is at historic lows and any viable way out of their dilemma is being thwarted by those lingering (institutionalized now) extremisms. Nearly 100% of what the party is up to centers on attempts to create situations where the present administration is inhibited in achieving successes or in attempts to forward narratives which portray administration failure. It is nearly entirely a negative enterprise.

That this is the shape of the present was pretty much inevitable. Where a Manichean understanding of the world is promoted with such unceasing vigor and intellectual/moral carelessness, how could any other result have come about?

Sowell's projection of a possible future where the people in Grand Junction, in Houston, in New Jersey, in Battle Creek, in New Orleans and Manhattan's Upper West Side might fall under sharia law is completely detached from any sane assessment of the real world. And I mean that quite literally. Sowell himself is suffering from some significant level of pathology or he is trying to bring about such a state in those who he hopes will read his writing.
Setanta
 
  2  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:43 am
@blatham,
I trust, Mr. Mountie, that you are not so foolish as to expect that any of the conservatives posting here will have understood what you've written?
0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  4  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 05:54 am
@blatham,
Thanks, blatham. Excellent assessment!
0 Replies
 
Yankee
 
  2  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:02 am
@blatham,
Quote:
Nearly 100% of what the party is up to centers on attempts to create situations where the present administration is inhibited in achieving successes or in attempts to forward narratives which portray administration failure. It is nearly entirely a negative enterprise.


The present administration is in the same bed with Corporate Lobbyists as every administration prior.

Among the largest donors to the Democrats and Pres. Obama are:

Goldman Sachs
Citigroup
JP Morgan
UBS
Morgan Stanley

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638

Do these names look familiar?

Pres. Obama told us he would not appoint lobbyists to his Administration. Yet some advisors and members of his Administration have direct or indirect ties to Goldman.

"Beyond Paulson, Goldman’s reach in this crisis is virtually unending. John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch was a former Goldmanite. So was Robert Rubin, the Chairman of Citigroup. Then there’s Robert Steel, the head of Wachovia, Ed Liddy, who Paulson put in charge of the nationalized AIG, Mark Patterson, the current Treasury Chief of Staff, Neel Kashkari, the guy in charge of allocating TARP funds…

heck, even Tim Geithner was mentored by the afore-mentioned Robert Rubin."

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/174885-graham-summers/9865-the-fourth-branch-of-the-us-government

I still find it AMAZING how many of you think the "Parties" are responsible for all the good or bad in this country. You could not be more wrong.

Take a read of the article below and you will see how BOTH parties are controlled by the same thing, greed for money and power. You might find there is little difference between the 2 "Parties". They are not even the owners of their "CLUB" that you nor I will ever be a member of.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html



parados
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:31 am
@Yankee,
Perhaps you should check out the biggest contributors to John McCain Yankee..
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?id=N00006424&cycle2=2008&goButt2.x=11&goButt2.y=6&goButt2=Submit

These are McCain's top contributors in ORDER of their contribution..
All are corporations but employees of the US government.

Merrill Lynch
Citigroup Inc
Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs
JPMorgan Chase & Co
US Government
AT&T Inc
UBS AG

It is a little different compared to Obama where you left out the contributors that were NOT corporations.

University of California
Goldman Sachs
Microsoft Corp
Harvard University
Google Inc
Citigroup Inc
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Stanford University

I would hardly call Microsoft or Google entrenched lobbying corporations.
0 Replies
 
Foxfyre
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 07:32 am
@blatham,
blatham wrote:

Entering this site after time away can be a tad like cracking open a time capsule you buried out beneath grandma's petunias.

The Republican Party, so heavily invested for so long in conservative movement extremisms, is proving to be incapable of reflection and reform. That was predictable (just go back and read the first ten or so pages here). As a consequence, the party's standing with the American public is at historic lows and any viable way out of their dilemma is being thwarted by those lingering (institutionalized now) extremisms. Nearly 100% of what the party is up to centers on attempts to create situations where the present administration is inhibited in achieving successes or in attempts to forward narratives which portray administration failure. It is nearly entirely a negative enterprise.

That this is the shape of the present was pretty much inevitable. Where a Manichean understanding of the world is promoted with such unceasing vigor and intellectual/moral carelessness, how could any other result have come about?

Sowell's projection of a possible future where the people in Grand Junction, in Houston, in New Jersey, in Battle Creek, in New Orleans and Manhattan's Upper West Side might fall under sharia law is completely detached from any sane assessment of the real world. And I mean that quite literally. Sowell himself is suffering from some significant level of pathology or he is trying to bring about such a state in those who he hopes will read his writing.


I would agree with you if Sowell had said anything like that. He didn't.

The comment re Sharia law was within this context:

Quote:
A quadrupling of the national (deficit) in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism like Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.

Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender " especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.

Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their grand-daughters to live under sharia law.


I knew what he meant, but rather than speak for him, I asked HIM to clarify his intent with that comment. He replied:

". . . .once you have surrendered, you have surrendered. No one may have expected, when France surrendered in 1940, that it would have to turn its own civilian citizens who were Jewish over to the Nazis to be sent to concentration camps."

The comment re Sharia law was obviously a metaphorical illustration of what kind of consequences that can result when you turn a deaf ear or blind eye to unspoken intent. He, like many of us, is distressed and alarmed at how quickly and passively so many of us seem to be willing to turn over our lives and destiny to an unknown entity of more and more powerful government. And once it is done, and we don't like it, it will be too late. We won't be able to take back our surrendered freedom.

Perhaps the Republican Party has already surrendered its principles past the point of no return. Sowell seems to think it might, but he does hold out a glimmer of hope that it has not. But if we sit silently back and allow a runaway power-hungry government to take control of everything in our lives, we do not deserve the freedom that we cherish.
Foxfyre
 
  0  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:09 am
@Foxfyre,
Addendum to Dr. Sowell's comments, he forwarded a subsequent e-mail to clarify further re Sharia law and added: "It is a possibility after surrender, though not as something that we are likely to drift into otherwise."

He at other times has also noted that the final column as printed is somewhat different from the one he submitted. In our recent correspondence, he couldn't say for sure whether the 'debt' vs 'deficit' issue was his mistake or the editors, but he emphasized again that he intended to say 'deficit'. But phrases are omitted or restructured to fit a given space in the newspaper and, while editors do attempt to keep the integrity of the writer's intent, they do sometimes confuse things, and the writer has little control over that. (I can testify to that from my own newspaper experience when what I thought was a necessary paragraph or phrase was cut in the interest of allotted space.)

wandeljw
 
  3  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:29 am
@Foxfyre,
Does Sowell actually believe that Obama will surrender and that the U.S. will fall under sharia law?
Foxfyre
 
  0  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:35 am
@wandeljw,
He didn't say or imply that. He only used that as a metaphorical illustration for the way things are going. Surely conservatives are not the only ones capable of understanding that form of argument?

You can naively insist that he be taken literally as Blatham did, or take the intellectually honest route of accepting the metaphorical illustrations that Sowell uses in his writing. I won't bother him again with this, so will say that I believe that he is saying that capitulating or passively accepting a nuclear Iran and 'making nice' with them on the theory they will then 'make nice' with us is a fool's path. And, given the President's and the Democratic Congress's track record so far, he doesn't think it would take much to get them to surrender to just about anybody or anything.

His point is that whether it is economic matters or healthcare or relationships with other countries, you better know what you are buying into before you surrender to it. Once you surrender it is too late.
cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:35 am
@wandeljw,
I just wonder how many conservatives really believes in this crap!
0 Replies
 
cicerone imposter
 
  0  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:41 am
@Yankee,
Yankee, Although you didn't show "how much" they contributed to the republicans or democrats, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that both parties received money. They cover their bases pretty good to ensure they have some influence in both parties; those are givens in the world of politics.
old europe
 
  2  
Reply Thu 25 Jun, 2009 09:49 am
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre wrote:
He only used that as a metaphorical illustration for the way things are going.


So the current situation in the United States is comparable to the situation in Japan after the US dropped two nukes on two major cities? Or does "metaphorical illustration" not actually mean "metaphorical illustration" when you use it? Just like "debt" actually means "deficit" when Sowell uses it?

You know, for such an experienced apologist for the conservative cause, you came up with a pretty lame excuse here....
 

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