having screwed up everything over the 1995-2007 period, conservatives have nothing useful to add to the public debate, so they are reduced to the equivalent banging pots and pans in the street. Media abhors dead air, so the public discourse is filled with this crap rather than positive policy discussions.

“A lot of white Americans are seeing the future, and I think it scares the crap out of them. And if there is anything that conservative politicians are good at, it is seeing the fear in people’s hearts, playing on it, setting it afire, and then capitalizing on it.”

And if there is anything that liberal politicians are good at, it is calling opponants of their policies racist and describing legitimate concerns as hidden racism. How can the accused deny it? Merely denying the accusation gives it (usually unwarranted) legitimacy.

70% of Americans oppose the Ground Zero mosque. So 70% of Americans *must* be Islamaphobic racists. To the liberal mind, there is no other explanation. Surely, the families of the deceased won’t associate *these* Islamics, with the ones that killed their families. Why would they do such a thing? It must just be discrimination.

You’re absolutely right that a lot of White Americans are scared of the future. *They* can’t get promotions or even jobs, and yet they’re still attacked and reverse-descriminated as “privledged.” Liberals could eliminate a lot of this animosity just by eliminating “affirmative action” and recial preferences. Do you think they’re in favor of this?

Many see a future where their taxes bankrupt them, and still the Government pays out benefits it can’t afford to anyone who can sneak across the border. They see a future where the only good jobs are Government jobs–and “connected” minorities and Union members get them first. A future where the American ideals of freedom and enterprise are crushed under the weight of taxes, regulations and oppressive government.

As for the continuing “Blame Bush” movement, Obama has been president for two years now. If it’s still broken, than it’s his fault now. The sooner he takes some responsibility for this like an adult, the sooner Americans will start to have an iota of respect for him. If he’d implemented Reagan’s policies instead of his own, we’d have a real recovery by now instead of the phony jobless one that the “stimulus” managed.

But in one way, I think you’re right. The minority left has gotten so outspoken, strident and outrageous in their behavior, that people have finally started to say “enough”. Maybe you think that Gates telling off a police oficer doing his job was Ok. Or the Black Panthers threatening and turning away White (maybe Republican) voters was harmless. But a lot of people think it’s outrageous.

Has Obama made things worse? Well, th fact that he’s so incompetant certainly makes other blacks look bad. And the fact that his race is treated as an untouchable subject in the media problem makes discussion of other racial topics more difficult. But race was already a nearly taboo subject in America, so it’s difficult to say.

Do you really think immigration from Mexico is primarily a racist issue? When there is over 10% real unemployment? That goes to show why it’s so impossible to have an intelligent discussion on the subject.

Well, if they criticise the president, then – in their own words they are “unpatriotic”.

Screw them

I think of Geoff K as one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xxHGCSjejE

you know what he’s going to say before he posts, but it’s a semi-useful exercise to address what he says.

But of course since he is apparently brainless it’s not really an enjoyable task.

And if there is anything that liberal politicians are good at, it is calling opponants of their policies racist and describing legitimate concerns as hidden racism. How can the accused deny it? Merely denying the accusation gives it (usually unwarranted) legitimacy.

Geoff wants to deny the racism in the Republican-Conservative axis. So he does by attacking liberal’s motives in pointing out the facts.

70% of Americans oppose the Ground Zero mosque. So 70% of Americans *must* be Islamaphobic racists.

Strawman, and questionable use of a questionable public poll.

To the liberal mind, there is no other explanation.

Personal attack on “liberals” instead of addressing the argument.

Surely, the families of the deceased won’t associate *these* Islamics, with the ones that killed their families. Why would they do such a thing? It must just be discrimination.

Or idiocy, or being a victim of misinformation. Bigotry is bigotry and this Islamic center is a prime example.

You’re absolutely right that a lot of White Americans are scared of the future. *They* can’t get promotions or even jobs, and yet they’re still attacked and reverse-descriminated as “privledged.” Liberals could eliminate a lot of this animosity just by eliminating “affirmative action” and recial preferences. Do you think they’re in favor of this?

“Affirmative action” was modified 30+ years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke

and does not operate in corporate America, only our educational system.

Many see a future where their taxes bankrupt them, and still the Government pays out benefits it can’t afford to anyone who can sneak across the border. They see a future where the only good jobs are Government jobs–and “connected” minorities and Union members get them first. A future where the American ideals of freedom and enterprise are crushed under the weight of taxes, regulations and oppressive government.

Some of these fears are valid, some not. Particularly the fear of a Government-centric job market. This year the government at all levels is spending $6.5T, exactly double the level of spending ten years ago. If it weren’t for this government spending we wouldn’t even *have* a private economy any more. And it is true that unchecked immigration and government benefits do not mix well.

This stuff is obvious and no liberal worth the name would disagree with it.

As for the continuing “Blame Bush” movement, Obama has been president for two years now. If it’s still broken, than it’s his fault now.

Incorrect. He is not our Fuhrer. He has to work within existing Constitutional and legislative limitations And even if he did have autocratic powers he’d have to work through the existing layer-cake of Federal executive bureaucracy, full of Reagan-Bush and Bush II appointees still.

We’re still in Obama’s first fiscal year budget. The State runs a slow ship. While I don’t know exactly what the charge is that we liberals are “Blaming Bush” for, it’s not trying to avoid responsibility for the problems, just explain all existing problems aren’t going to get solved in the first half of the first term. Shit takes time.

The sooner he takes some responsibility for this like an adult, the sooner Americans will start to have an iota of respect for him.

Geoff, you often pepper your argument with speaking for all Americans instead of yourself when it embiggens your rhetoric. This is an argumentative device and not very seemly or intellectually honest.

If he’d implemented Reagan’s policies instead of his own, we’d have a real recovery by now instead of the phony jobless one that the “stimulus” managed.

Wow. General failure of marshalling relevant fact here, where reality utterly demolishes the assertion. Anyone alive in the 1980s like Luis and me would know that first three years of Reagan’s administration was total shit, economically.

And if Geoff actually knew anything, he’d know that Reagan and the Democratic congress DOUBLED the national debt in real terms (and tripled it in nominal terms), and also greatly benefited from Volcker finally backing off on fiscal policy.

http://imgur.com/ldP6B.png

shows that interest rates were pushed to historic highs when Reagan entered office and were then steadily lowered to relative lows by the mid-80s. This was a large part of the success of the 80s economy.

But in one way, I think you’re right. The minority left has gotten so outspoken, strident and outrageous in their behavior, that people have finally started to say “enough”. Maybe you think that Gates telling off a police oficer doing his job was Ok. Or the Black Panthers threatening and turning away White (maybe Republican) voters was harmless. But a lot of people think it’s outrageous.

Geoff’s fangs are beginning to show here.

Has Obama made things worse? Well, th fact that he’s so incompetant certainly makes other blacks look bad.

I’m just going to leave this here without comment. It speaks for itself, really.

And the fact that his race is treated as an untouchable subject in the media problem makes discussion of other racial topics more difficult. But race was already a nearly taboo subject in America, so it’s difficult to say.

This too.

Do you really think immigration from Mexico is primarily a racist issue? When there is over 10% real unemployment? That goes to show why it’s so impossible to have an intelligent discussion on the subject.

We can still try. Takes two to make an intelligent discussion. More importantly, it takes honesty, a quality that is often not fully present in your posts here.

Thanks for exposing who you are, Geoff. It will hopefully make the discussion less personality oriented and more topic oriented.

I am impressed with your resume and clearly you are no idiot. To enhance the atmospherics here, let me describe who I am, hopefully briefly.

I am in my 40s like you, and studied computers, Japanese, and Political Science at UCLA, finishing my degree in 1992, but educationally this was only about 1% of the work of getting a law degree and being admitted to a state bar.

I then heading off to Japan due to the general drawdown in tech at the time and failure to land jobs with my interviews at Microsoft and Atari Games.

I had a college bud who went off to Japan a year earlier and he helped me get into his private school which Luis then joined within a year. We worked together one day a week IIRC, and Luis took over my bud’s job after he quit to found an Eikaiwa school with me in 1993. That met mixed success due to several “unknown unknowns” (like the critical importance of marketing) but it was a good education for me.

The general plan was to teach English while waiting for something better to arrive, and before three years in country I managed to grab a good job doing virtual reality programming, and I did this for five years before heading off to Apple to work on their graphics stuff. My best wasn’t good enough there — I love Apple deeply so my failure was about like a divorce — so I had to bumble around after a couple of years until I found Mac and PC development work and I did that for a while. Now I’m working on my own stuff trying to capitalize on the burgeoning “App Store” market model.

Like Luis, I’ve been arguing on the internet since dialup days. I almost never go into the conservative pits, preferring to stay on the lefty side to preserve what’s left of my sanity. But I am certainly open to rational debate from any quarter.

Nice post, Luis. A very thoughtful analysis.

I also had the same reaction to that youtube video of Birthers demanding
“their country back” with their fake birth certificates and lynch mob support group. Many of us made the connection that she was upset to see that a black person was now in the position of power that had previously been taken by a white person. I wondered where those people were when Dubya was in power, taking “our country’s” civil rights away, ruining American’s international image and stealing “our money” for personal gains. The silence from the Right was overwhelming.

I have also heard that the number of death threats against the US President surged multi-fold once Obama took office. Suddenly guns were a regular addition to Obama political speeches. People must be upset about his lack of political experience, maybe??? No??? Just can’t figure out where all that hostility came from…

At any rate, I know it’s too early to declare the entire Tea Party movement as Racist because I can’t back it up with evidence. But one only needs to take a quick glance at the people at their rallies to gather that they contain VERY few people of color. I have heard that the Tea Party consists mostly of White Conservatives who moved away from the cities because of the influx of non-whites. They took to the small towns in droves for the slow pace, quiet streets, less expensive real estate and Right wing talk radio/TV stations because people out there speak their language and share their disdain for other races.

–kensensei

My two bits:

1) Nothing, nothing every happens in America unless money is behind it. There is almost no such thing as a grass roots movement anymore. All “grass roots movements’ are really “astroturf movements”.

It takes money to have a movement.

2) The modern Republican party is an alignment of Big Money and Empty Brains.

A)
The Republican movement is controlled by Big Money. Big Money has only one agenda: the ever greater concentration of wealth and power.

i)
Big Money values only big money. In that sense, they have no values.

ii)
The U.S. is based upon one governing principle – Free Contract. This means bargaining power is everything. Big Money knows this, it is how it got to be Big Money in the first place, and how they stay Big Money in the second place.

iii)
The founding fathers actually intended for there to be class warfare when they established the Republic based upon Free Contract – they hoped that democracy would balance the playing field upon which bargaining takes place.

a)
The Founding fathers ended the culture wars by implementing the bill of rights.

b)
The founding fathers did not anticipate the modern limited liability corporation and its effect on the balance of economic and political power and the creation of Big Money

i) The limited liability corporation was invented in the 1860s, and within two decades lead to the creation of Big Money

c)
The founding fathers did not anticipate the affect Big Money’s ability to create Big Media and use it as a tool to manipulate Empty Brains.

d)
The current culture wars is a fake artifice constructed by Big Money to manipulate Empty Brains into voting for Big Money’s agenda

iiv) Empty Brains is easily manipulated by Big Money through emotionally charged issues like culture wars.

B)
Big Money, by definition, does not have the numbers necessary, even in a psuedo-democratic system, to pursue and achieve it’s goals.

C)
Fortunately, Big Money is value free, and so can align with almost any agenda that doesn’t get in the way of there agenda – Racism, Wedge Politics, Slander, Hatred, Anger, it’s all Good!

D)
Big Money is at war with the middle class. Why? Because they have some money and some power, and if Big Money is going to increase their take, they have to get it from somewhere.

i) The poor have no money and no power, so Big Money is more focused on undermining the middle class.

ii) In 2-A-ii above I point out that the U.S. is based upon Free Contract, which means Bargaining Power is everything. A bunch of rich liberal church ladies created ACORN to help the poor make use of the existing legal means available to them to help them improve their bargaining power and thus there situation. Eventually, Big Money went after this with gusto and stomped it out.

E)
Big Money has control of Big Media.

i) Big Media attempts to air the interest of Big Money.

F)
Big Money is engaged in class warfare, however, it is vital to their agenda to hide this.

G)
Big Money pursues culture warfare as a way to advance their class warfare.

E)
Big Money has ALWAYS been pro-immigration, because it undermines worker bargaining power and enhances theirs.

F)
Big Money nevertheless loves to inflame the brainless with the threat of immigration in order to drive them into voting Republican. It’s a great way to get the brainless to surrender their bargaining power.

G) similarly…
Values (i.e. Morality) is a middle class characteristic. The poor can’t afford it, and the rich don’t need it. When the middle class shrinks, i.e. the rich get richer and more people become poorer, values and morality decline.

i)
When values decline, it scares &/or enrages the existing middle class,… who then vote in even larger numbers for faux-value politics of the Republican party.

See how that works nicely for Big Money.

H)
Big Money will use any culture war to divide the electorate: Gays, Immigration, Racism, Islam, … it really doesn’t matter.

The fact that anyone talks AT ALL about the NY Mosque issue is to surrender to Big Money’s framing device.

I)
Emotionally charged culture war issues only come up during an election year.

i)
Big Money uses Big Media to keep the culture issue du jour in the news.

ii)
Big Money wants you to be thinking of the mosque in New York City when you enter the voting booth, not thinking about how wealth is more concentrated than ever and as a result the commercial economy is in a state of cascading collapse.

iii)
The Tea Party(s) were created by Big Money to help Empty Brains manifest their hatred without voting outside the Republican Party… it is a relief valve.

J)
Big Money doesn’t care what its politics does to the country. They don’t care if it destroys the country. They can’t get past the greed thing.

K)
Anybody who votes Republican is either Big Money or a tool of Big Money. Big Money is playing Empty Brains for the chumps that they are.

L)
Everything Empty Brains thinks they stand for: patriotism, values, the middle class, the constitution, etc… is undermined by their masters, Big Money which they dutifully vote for every election cycle.

M)
This is not just a one time thing, but rather a universal set of principles. This was true in Ancient Egypt, Roman Empire, Medieval Japan, Byzantium, Bourbon France and Romanov Russia.

N)
Big Money’s agenda, if they succeed, will lead to epic collapse,

i)
Epic collapse means possible collapse of society, the nation, the civilization, the international order, etc…

a)
As Big Money succeeds in its agenda, there will be more and more things to fear.

O)
All we have to Fear is Fear itself

i)
We need to disenthral ourselves and let our brains prevail

a) Empty Brains may not be capable of allowing their brains to prevail over their emotions.

ii)
You can’t be the land of the free if you are not the home of the brave

P)
The United States is well on its way to totally destroying itself, its way of life, and its civilization, because Big Money has amassed critical mass, and so their power can no longer be reversed.

i)
In truth, the best thing an American can do is either amass their own Big Money quickly, or move to another country.

ii)
America’s collapse could possibly look a lot like the Roman Empire’s collapse.

a) The Rich will accumulate so much money that the commercial economy collapses. The rich will use their power and influence to avoid paying taxes. The state then will not have enough money to function properly.

b) In 410, Roman Legions left Britain to fend for itself, this will be a similar fate for American Empire’s Far Eastern Provinces: Japan, Korea, Taiwan, possibly Australia and New Zealand. The native Britons didn’t know how to defend themselves and were quickly over run by Angles, Jutes, Frisians and Saxons.

c) The Western Empire (North America) will desolve into mini states. For the next two hundred years their will be an attempt to reunify.

i)
We can imagine some of these mini-states: New England East of the Hudson. The South east of the Mississippi, The Southwest of the Mississippis, A half-gringo half hispanic Southwest, A Midwest and Northwest that might align. The best outcome would be New England, MidWest and NorthWest join the Canadian confederation.

ii)
Just like in the Roman Empire, the older eastern provinces (Europe) will survive another half millenium in good form.

iii)
Globally we’ll enter another era of fractured regions.

iv)
Guys like Geof will still blame Obama, immigration, homosexualism and immorality in general for the collapse that they helped to create.

d) Anyone that carry’s water for the Republican party, is either Big Money or Empty Brains, by definition.

Tim, I agree with what you say and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Anyone that carry’s water for the Republican party, is either Big Money or Empty Brains, by definition.

There is also the Straussian social engineering going on to manage the public diplomacy of US support of the present State of Israel. That’s an ideological motivation, one that ably got us to occupy Baghdad, no mean feat.

The Straussians are right out of Asimov’s Foundation series and/or Herbert’s http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Missionaria_Protectiva where Fundamentalist Christian End-Times Armageddon belief feeds into substantial popular support for the Israelis in their not-so-cold war with most of their neighbors.

I couldn’t figure out FOXNEW’s game so much until I learned that Murdoch was Jewish.

Then I was able to pencil in some connections that made a lot of sense as to how they operate and why. This is all highly weighted by conditional probability factors but I see no contrary evidence to the hypothesis here yet.

^ alas, I’m going to walk back my last two paragraphs above. Murdoch’s ancestry is not so clear cut and so is not really worth speculating/making insinuations WRT familial influences.

There’s the moneybag angle of tilting pro-Israel, but with Arab oil money even that is not so clear. ~nevermind~

I really hate doing point by point dissections of things. Not because it’s impossible, but it just seems like a nit-picky reactive way of writing. Since writing in broader strokes seems to be opening me up to endless complaints of how I am “recycling talking points” or “avoiding the real arguments”, I’ll give you what you apparently want:

An interesting take I’ve heard spoken here and there recently is that at least part of the focus on immigration, “anchor babies,” and the repeal of citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is on “demographics.” In this case, “demographics” is a very polite way of saying “race.”

In part. But the issue also focuses on culture. America is successful because people from numerous cultures have assimilated to become Americans (“the Melting Pot”). There is some concern that recent immigrants are less likely to do this. The insistence of Hispanics on speaking Spanish is one thing that make people suspect this. In any case, the immigration issue is probably more about economics than racism, despite what liberals would choose to believe.

A famous factoid most people know about is the projection that by 2050 less than 50% of the country will be non-Hispanic whites. That projection seems to be pretty significant to some people. I remember back in the 90’s, reading the posts of a right-winger on GEnie who was unabashed in his expressions, stating baldly that such trends scared the crap out of him. And while few in this day and age will say it outright, I think that this is a more and more common sensibility among conservatives in the nation.

When I say what I think liberals believe I get criticized for it. But for when you say what you think conservatives believe (based on a 15-year old rant) that’s no problem… I think that Conservatives are concerned in general about the direction of our society. I think that concern is caused by increasing permissiveness and sexuality in the media, a decrease in initiative and increasing passivity among many, poor educational standards and the totally wrong direction that Government has been taking recently. I don’t think that there is *any* explicitly racial aspect to this concern, except in as much as some bad elements (e.g. glorification of guns and “gangsta” culture) have ethnic origins.

The sense of persecution among whites, especially white male Christians, has been marked for some time now. Despite currently holding disproportionate power and influence, we hear complaints of the opposite–that this demographic is being persecuted mercilessly.

This is the heart of the liberal logical fallacy. *Some* white males have power and influence. Therefore *all* white males have disproportionate power and influence. The result of this warped thinking is that poor whites from the South have a harder time getting into college than the sons of rich Black doctors. But Republicans who call for racial preferences to be set aside are called “racists”. And yes, they *do* feel persecuted, mostly because they are. If you’re a white male, than officially you’re starting with a disadvantage in hiring, getting into school, getting a loan and many other areas. All because folks like you think that all White males have “undue influence”.

It does not really seem like too much of a coincidence that soon after a black man became president for the first time, that we started hearing right-wingers angrily exclaim, “we want our country back.” This was a kind of scary thing to hear, because in pretty much every decent sense, we had never “lost” the country so that it had to be taken back. Even when liberals had won the presidency and controlled Congress, I don’t think I heard anyone but political strategists put things that way, and they meant in a purely political sense.

If you go looking for racism, you can find it anywhere. Most of the Republicans that I know hate Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid just as much as Obama. And for the same reasons. Not because he’s Black; because he’s a big-spending, Big Government Liberal with terrible foreign and domestic policy.

Here, there was the strong, undeniable implication that a national identity had been lost. Not just a political identity, but one of color. Our jobs were white, our leaders were white, our country was white–but now we’re seeing the non-whites start to take over in very real ways. These people had felt it starting to slip away, and then Obama gets elected.

And this was revealed to you by…? See above. Our country is going down the toilet and, yes a Black person is partly to blame, but he has a lot of white help. From Pelosi, Barney Frank, John Kerry, etc. There are no rational arguments against what the Tea Party believes, so the racist bogeyman is used to tar them instead. On the proof of your gut instincts.

Suddenly, key issues that right-wingers used to focus in on begin to fade, issues like abortion, gays in the military, prayers in the schools, and the pledge of allegiance.

Well, when you’re unemployed and hungry, economic issues tend to come front and center, which is mostly what we’re seeing. Except in cases of deliberate provocation, like the Ground-zero mosque.

Instead, we saw the emergence of a completely new, radical political surge, one which was almost purely populated by whites. A party who believed the president was an alien, his birth certificate was not legitimate no matter what, that he was born in Kenya. And we started hearing more and more and more about three issues: immigration, blacks, and Islam.

The birther movement is easy to understand. A lot of people hate Obama because they recognize he’s a liberal elitist who shares none of their beliefs and concerns. They’d do anything to see him out of office, and they’re looking for anything that can do it. Sadly, he probably is a citizen, but you can’t fault them for hoping. I think people don’t relate to Obama, not so much because he’s black but because he’s a cold-blooded liberal “intellectual”. He’s Mike Dukakis with a tan.

Really, why immigration? Of all topics to gain prominence, why that one, and why now? It’s not because of the recession–it’s not as if there are many whites who want to pick strawberries, become nannies, do yard work, or sew garments in sweat shops but are turned away because the damned immigrants have pushed them out. It’s not as if our economies are actually taxed by illegal immigration–on the contrary, all the evidence says the opposite. Maybe it could be the result of exhausting other culture-war issues and this one was imply next in line, but I doubt it.

Really? People out of work for 99+ weeks, people who would do anything for a job–they’re turning away work? if so, immigration is the least of our problems. But the truth is that there aren’t jobs to go around, and Americans really are hurt by illegal immigration–at least until the economy gets a heartbeat again. And aside from jobs, schools, social services, hospitals–everything is feeling the strain. Its worst in the states near the border. Which is why people *in* Arizona strongly support the new law. Besides, a lot of Americans think that enforcing the law and keeping our borders secure are worthwhile goals in themselves.

And the New York mosque? Muslims in general? Even after 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment didn’t seem as high as it is right now. Where did that come from all of a sudden?

Pushback. The Muslims feel secure now and are flexing their muscles. That’s why they proposed a Ground-zero mosque (which they refuse to relocate). Islam is an aggressive religion and they are taking the usual aggressive role in forcing it onto Americans. And Americans aren’t buying it. Unlike the President, they can see that there is an agenda to spread their views until they dominate the debate.

And how about all the stuff about black people? Why did ACORN take on such sudden significance when it had been around for about four decades? Why so much intense focus on the NAACP recently? Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones, Henry Louis Gates, the “New” Black Panthers… strangely, black and white race conflicts were front page news, and were focused on intently. And most of them involved a negative public up-swelling, accusing them of wrongs, calling for their ouster.

Maybe it’s because they got *caught*. Acorn and the new Black Panthers and Gates are all crimes and scandals that would have been even bigger stories if a Republican had been involved. Frankly, all of them are getting the kid glove treatment *because* they’re Black and Democratic.

Strangely, most of the top issues were in some way related to race, to aliens in our midst, and how they are making things wrong.

And, strangely, all have less than six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Seriously, you can make up whatever imaginary relationships that you want. It doesn’t make them real.

There was the abrupt, almost jarring about-face on problems that have existed for years and the right-wing considered tame, but suddenly they are crises and, somehow, all Obama’s fault. No matter that deficits truly started getting out of control under Reagan and Bush 43; Obama’s to blame. Unemployment was clearly a Bush artifact–but since it did not magically dissolve under Obama, he’s to blame. The debt, suddenly, will wreck us, as if it weren’t going to before, and since the right wing suddenly realized this under Obama, he of course is to blame. This recession could not have more clearly started under Bush and the stimulus could not more clearly have started to reverse it–but of course, Obama’s to blame for it all. And our rights–despite the fact that they were decimated under Bush, and Obama at worst has perpetuated some of Bush’s policies that threaten them–somehow Obama is the one who has deprived us of all our rights. And our money! He’s stealing our money! Doesn’t matter that taxes are at a historic low, that he has actually cut taxes for most of us, nor that the worst he would do would be to allow taxes for the rich to return to where they were in the 90’s like the Republicans planned; no, he’s taxing us to death!

Maybe Obama is to blame for *current* problems because he’s the *current* President. Only for Obama the buck doesn’t stop here–it stops two years ago with Bush. When does the Statute of Limitations on blaming Bush run out? I suppose if it’s more than four years, we’ll probably never learn.

And yes, the stimulus “worked” in the same way that “crystal Meth” “works” to provide your body with energy. The problem is that the Meth isn’t really helpful and when it runs out you’re worse off than before. Which is happening now to the economy.

This is also why news like Afghanistan, at any other time a big opening for the opposition, is not an issue–the president pushing a war, against Muslims, no less? That doesn’t fit, so they act like it doesn’t exist.

Obama is terrified of getting Afghanistan labeled as “his” Vietnam. He does everything he can to keep the war out of the news. And, frankly, I think he isn’t sure what to do about the war. He can’t just quit (although that’s pretty much what he’s doing in Iraq), but he’s basically a pacifist who isn’t suited to running a war. His solution is to try to forget that he has one. Sadly, he seems to be doing a very good job of keeping it out of mind.

No, there seems to be a special reason why immigration, Islam, and color, of all hot-button issues, have suddenly catapulted to new heights, and why all things economic are suddenly of notice. The country is changing color, and it’s suddenly ruining us. It’s their fault. It’s because of that threatening, polysyllabic prognostication of doom: demographics. just look at the president, for chrissakes. Everything was going fine before he took over.

Gee, maybe “all things economic are suddenly of notice” because 10% of folks are out of work and the economy is in the toilet? And yes, I think the President gets a lot of (justified) blame for screwing it up. But they’re angry because he’s an incompetent, not because he’s a *black* incompetent.

A lot of white Americans are seeing the future, and I think it scares the crap out of them. And if there is anything that conservative politicians are good at, it is seeing the fear in people’s hearts, playing on it, setting it afire, and then capitalizing on it.

We’re scared that the country is moving the wrong way. And the Democrats have the gas pedal floored. But it has very little to do with race and more to do with economic mismanagement, lousy foreign policy and a rapidly decaying and degenerate culture. But hey, let’s just cry “Racism” and watch everybody get all defensive. It works every time!

And to Troy:

Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett give *way* more money to Democrats than Republicans. Most of the East Coast/West Coast Elite are Democrats. The Republicans are largely a Southwest and Midwest party these days, with many middle-class members and contributors. So who’s the “Big Money” villain here?

Geoff, there are two populations of rich people, the liberal and the conservative. Big Finance, Software, Entertainment all tend to trend liberal and redistributionist.

Then there are the actual rich people who got that way through privilege, resource rents, military, and cheap labor. These tend conservative in the Goldwater “got mine f— you” sense.

Eisenhower of course had a pithy comment about this latter category:

“. . . This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Unfortunately the Republican Party of Ike’s day has now been entirely captured by this formerly negligible element.

As for the Republican Party’s focus on the middle class, for that to be the case they sure have an odd desire to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/GR2010081106717.gif

with many middle-class members and contributors

this is a patently . . . odd . . . assertion to make. Not for its falsity, but for its hamhanded attempt at giving the party’s pro-wealth bias cover. For not being a troll you sure wheel out some feeble arguments.

The insistence of Hispanics on speaking Spanish is one thing that make people suspect this.

All first-generation immigrants prefer sticking to their own language. As an immigrant yourself you should understand and be sympathetic to this.

In any case, the immigration issue is probably more about economics than racism, despite what liberals would choose to believe

Please stop classifying liberals as being a monolithic bloc of wrong. This is just an attempt at rhetorical point scoring and add less than nothing to the discussion.

If you’re a white male, than officially you’re starting with a disadvantage in hiring, getting into school, getting a loan and many other areas.

While you’re entirely correct that “affirmative action” would be better structured on family economics than skin color, you are entirely not correct about white skin color being a disadvantage WRT hiring and loans. I live and work in the Silicon valley and have yet to see a black or latino working as a peer in 10 years here. So much for that assertion. And as for loans, banks mostly care about the color of your money.

There are no rational arguments against what the Tea Party believes

guffaw.

A lot of people hate Obama because they recognize he’s a liberal elitist who shares none of their beliefs and concerns.

These people are morons who have bought into a very harmful ideology. As Alan Kay said, “Perspective is worth 80 IQ points”, and the perspective you and your Tea Party friends bring to the table is making you really reality-challenged and, frankly, intellectually crippled.

Obama, Pelosi, Frank, Bloomberg, and all the other Democratic/Rational bugbears you can care to name are centrist-right on the global scale of politics. Only in the twisted funhouse-mirrored world of right wing crank propaganda (that you continuousy regurgitate into Luis’ comment section) are they “liberal elitists”.

NRO and the WSJ OpEd page work the Overton Window like masters and what was conservative just 20 years ago is now ultra leftist.

The Muslims feel secure now and are flexing their muscles.

Bullshit framing.

That’s why they proposed a Ground-zero mosque (which they refuse to relocate).

Why should they?

Islam is an aggressive religion and they are taking the usual aggressive role in forcing it onto Americans.

Pure Bullshit in the case at hand.

And Americans aren’t buying it.

Here you are wheeling out your rhetorical device of speaking for all Americans again. It’s really annoying.

Unlike the President, they can see that there is an agenda to spread their views until they dominate the debate.

How about Bloomberg’s support of the Islamic center? How do you reconcile that with your extremist opposition to their plans?

Acorn and the new Black Panthers and Gates are all crimes and scandals that would have been even bigger stories if a Republican had been involved.

More bullshit. ACORN was a tempest in a teacup. I don’t even know what the BP thing is nor do I particularly care since it too is just more agitprop from the right.

Gates got into an altercation at his own home. Whatever this was, it was neither a crime nor a scandal and for you to refer to as such betrays yet some more your completely untethered connection to facts and reality.

When does the Statute of Limitations on blaming Bush run out? I suppose if it’s more than four years, we’ll probably never learn.

This was addressed in my above. Serious problems take time to even figure out if they have workable solutions, let alone legislate them, implement them, and wait for the results.

And yes, the stimulus “worked” in the same way that “crystal Meth” “works” to provide your body with energy. The problem is that the Meth isn’t really helpful and when it runs out you’re worse off than before. Which is happening now to the economy.

I have addressed this several times and several times you just skate over the larger point as if it bounced off.

The Bush tax cuts were a ~$2T stimulus to the economy, but unfortunately they were structured to favor the wealthy so did not do much to pull us out of the 2001 recession.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/08/gop-destroyed-the-u-s-economy/

What *was* the major “stimulus” of the Bush Economy, at least for the middle class who did not get much of the tax cuts, was the housing boom/bubble, which pushed trillions of debt onto the American people, debt that was also new money that paid for a lot of stuff.

Here’s household debt by year:

2003: $9.8T (+$1.1T)
2004: $10.6T (+1.2T)
2005: $12.2T (+1.6T)
2006: $13.4T (+1.2T)
2007: $14.4T (+1.0T) ⬅ peak debt
2008: $14.3T
2009: $14.1T

In stimulus terms, this new debt creation from 2003 through 2007 was the rough equivalent of mailing EVERY household a $1000 debit card EVERY month THROUGHOUT the 5 year period!

That was one HELL of a stimulus! But the boom is gone leaving an immense crater of debt overhang, similar to the fukeiki condition you’ve been soaking in while living in Japan for the past 15 years.

Above you suggested that Obama follow Reagan’s example. I agree. Let’s triple the national debt by 2016 and drop interest rates from 4.5% to 1.5%. That oughtta really rip open the economy’s stops and well fly to the moon.

Obama is terrified of getting Afghanistan labeled as “his” Vietnam. He does everything he can to keep the war out of the news. And, frankly, I think he isn’t sure what to do about the war. He can’t just quit (although that’s pretty much what he’s doing in Iraq), but he’s basically a pacifist who isn’t suited to running a war. His solution is to try to forget that he has one. Sadly, he seems to be doing a very good job of keeping it out of mind.

This is crap thinking for the following reasons. 1) Obama ran on doing the surge thing in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan isn’t “Obama’s Vietnam” any more than Vietnam is Nixon’s. The situations are roughly parallel though since LBJ handed off a bad situation to Nixon and Bush handed a bad situation to Obama. As for Iraq, Obama is following Bush’s SOF playbook to draw down, and honor his campaign pledge for us to limit combat missions there to let the Iraqis fight their own damn civil war. The pacifist slur is just that and not worth responding to, as is your assertion that he wants to “forget” about the war. You are engaging in polemics and character assassination here and not rational thought. It is quite odious responding to it.

I think the President gets a lot of (justified) blame for screwing it up.

Screwing the economy up in the year and a half he’s been in office? What planet were you living on in 2008 when everything fell apart?

We’re scared that the country is moving the wrong way. And the Democrats have the gas pedal floored. But it has very little to do with race and more to do with economic mismanagement, lousy foreign policy and a rapidly decaying and degenerate culture.

Conservatism in a nutshell. Fearful of change, lack of a solid understanding of reality, and a totally distorted view of the other side.

Geoff, speaking of a distorted view of the other side, having lived in Japan so long, what, if any, is your experience with Japan’s single payer insurance system? This is the sort of change us liberals want to implement in the US, but this was shot down by Senate conservatives (key Dems).

Do you feel your compatriots fears WRT single-payer are justified given this experience or not?