But Now You Know

The search for truth in human action

Why Do Good People Hope Obama Fails?


che-obama-posterized

(caption: Hoping The People succeed often means hoping a specific politician's agenda will fail.)

There was a recent hue and cry about Rush Limbaugh saying he hoped that Obama would fail.

But he has plenty of people on his side…from all over the political spectrum. Why?

Look not at the words a politician uses to adorn his proposals, but at the things it will actually produce.

There is a huge gulf between the pretty things Obama promises, and the poverty and tyranny he, like his predecessor Bush, would deliver if successful.

Progressive “Universal health care”, anywhere in the world, produces universally short supply and slow progress of medical technology.

“Renewable energy” has been the promise of government for forty years, but all that it’s ever produced is renewable economic malaise.

“Comprehensive immigration reform” means bundling bad ideas with good ones, for an overall worsening of conditions.

Our economic depression was caused, in part, by high energy prices (because of Bush’s insane foreign policies driving the price of oil up 700%). Now Obama promises to drive up energy prices even higher, on purpose, in the name of “global warming” that ignores the past two years of global cooling…and we should wish him to succeed?

Canadians illegally sneak to the US to get health care, when suffering or even in danger of death, because it can be months, or even years, before their own system rations out treatment to them. Britain actually bans life-saving treatments it deems “too expensive”. You’re not even allowed to buy them for yourself, much less get them “free”. The whole problem with US health care, in the first place, is that government has been increasing the “universal” and “free” parts for over forty years, stripping consumer control from our hands, causing prices to go up and service to plummet…would we really hope Obama manages to make that rationing universal?

There are debates, in America, over:

* Whether jobs should be protected from new immigrants, or they will increase wealth and demand enough to be a net plus

* Whether people who have broken existing laws in order to sneak into the country, by tens of millions, should be given blanket amnesty, or have to go back home and start over legally, or simply be thrown in prisons or exiled permanently.

* Whether tax-paying, productive people should be forced not only to subsidize poverty and failure among formerly tax-paying Americans, but even for foreigners who show up illegally just to get the free handouts, as is helping bankrupt California right now. Should their children suffer for their wrongs, or just the children of people who pay taxes?

All of those debates should be settled, separately. Lumping separate issues together to force people to take the bad ones in order to have the essential good ones is one of the great crimes of modern government.

But we must hope he succeeds in this?

That’s not the kind of “hope” people voted for in 2008.

We hope THE PEOPLE succeed…which often means hoping a specific politician’s agendas fail, completely.

Advertisement

July 10, 2009 - Posted by | Economy, environment, Health, Politics | , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

10 Comments »

  1. As far as I’m concerned, all of the uproar about health care reform is a bunch of hot air…The Health Care Industry, Pharmaceutical Companies & Insurance Companies
    all stand to benefit from the legislation. On another note…

    There’s an element in this country that has figured out a few things:
    1. That all they need to do is make people afraid of
    possible outcomes. The government has played this game
    for a long time by creating “bogey men” for us to
    fear. A perfect illustration of this is the “War On
    Terror.” With the “terror alerts” and the dramatic
    news coverage, people get afraid & are easily
    convinced that the latest development justifies yet
    another infringement on their rights & freedom. I
    discussed this with my landlord and she said she
    didn’t care what was done as long as she was safe.
    This was surprising to me given the fact she grew up
    in Nazi Germany. You’d thing she’d think otherwise…
    However, it’s sad but true, that people who let
    themselves get emotionally manipulated are easily
    deceived even if there’s a lot of facts out there that
    show what the truth really is.
    2. Another tactic is keeping our attention on
    something else while something else is happening. In
    the military, this is called a diversion. A good
    example of this is the press keeping your attention
    focused on Bill Clinton & Monica Lewinski while Ron
    Brown, Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce is ferrying
    U.S.corporate executives around the world brokering
    business deals on their behalf.
    3. Finally, there’s the “divide & conquer” tactics.
    The reasons a lot of “tree-hugger” legislation got
    passed in the 60’s & 70’s was because there was a lot
    of awareness of how taking care of the environment was
    best for everyone. The companies started to divide
    the workers from the rest of us by telling them that
    the rest of us were jeopardising their jobs and it was
    necessary to inform people about what could happen.
    This was then taken to the next level by actually
    relocating some of the companies overseas to reinforce
    the point. Then they took it up yet another notch…
    They sponsored people like Rush Limbaugh to “preach”
    their “Gospel” so people would “get religion” and
    support their agenda. The latest version of this
    tactic is “The Tea Party” and other “splinter
    groups”…The whole idea is to thwart any
    possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way
    by trying to keep the power of the vote diluted.
    Think about it…If Sarah Palin didn’t have enough
    influence to make John McCain’s presidential campaign
    successful, why should she be a viable candidate for
    any office? The fact is, she isn’t. No amount of
    media exposure, book sales or websites should be able
    to make any difference. If they do, it’s only because
    people aren’t willing or able to see the truth.

    Well, that’s all for now…Hope I gave you some food
    for thought!

    Comment by Just Another Boy Scout? | July 8, 2010 | Reply

  2. “Progressive ”Universal health care”, anywhere in the world, produces universally short supply and slow progress of medical technology.”

    LOL?

    Israel is a world leader when it comes to biology and medical science, and we have a fantastic health care system.

    I’m reluctant to even refer to your other far-fatch claims.

    I think Obama is a political rookie that actually jeopardize world peace and I find it amazing that you’ve managed to miss *All* the key points that warrant the FAIL tag beside Obama’s name.

    You, Sir, are full of Bullshat…

    Comment by Tuxu | November 13, 2009 | Reply

    • (laughing)

      If any other country were making an argument for its superiority, at least it would have to stand on its own two feet in the argument. At least compared to Israel, who steals so much money and technology from the United States taxpayers.

      Every single Israeli citizen, every year, gets about one thousand dollars from American taxpayers.

      That means that, in just a few decades, gets a free house out of the pockets of the actual, productive country.

      Meanwhile, Israel brutally represses part of its Evil Empire in a way that makes Apartheid or the American South in the 1950s look like candyland, by comparison…using American weapons and military funding.

      I’d have been more impressed even if it were someone lauding the success of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, than Israel. It has good people, but an evil government run by former terrorists, and an economy that is nothing but a leech on American productivity.

      Comment by kazvorpal | November 14, 2009 | Reply

  3. The age-old pesky U.S.-Mexico border problem has taxed the resources of both countries, led to long lists of injustices, and appears to be heading only for worse troubles in the future. Guess what? The border problem can never be solved. Why? Because the border IS the problem! It’s time for a paradigm change.

    Never fear, a satisfying, comprehensive solution is within reach: the Megamerge Dissolution Solution. Simply dissolve the border along with the failed Mexican government, and megamerge the two countries under U.S. law, with mass free 2-way migration eventually equalizing the development and opportunities permanently, with justice and without racism, and without threatening U.S. sovereignty or basic principles.

    Click the url and read the details of the new paradigm for U.S.-Mexico relations.

    Comment by TL Winslow | July 15, 2009 | Reply

    • We’d be keeping the governments separate, right? Because the last thing we need is more socialist idiocy than we already have, and that’s what occurs down there in Mexico.

      Comment by kazvorpal | November 14, 2009 | Reply

  4. “Renewable energy” has been the promise of government for forty years, but all that it’s ever produced is renewable economic malaise.

    Not to cherry-pick my points here, but you’re framing the issue. We might as well say, “All nonrenewable energy has produces is ecological devastation.” What’s so bad about economic malaise if the environments that actually sustain us are preserved. You can’t eat money. You can’t buy food if you can’t grow it.

    Comment by Joshua | July 10, 2009 | Reply

    • No, economic malaise is universally bad. It produces greater inefficiency, ergo more ecological damage…and, more importantly, it is bad for people. The individual members of society are the reason for its existence; if they do not benefit, then things are wrong.

      And, of course, the whole claim that we’re destroying the planet is a big, fat, hyperbolic lie. The point is to exploit fear, to increase the government’s power, not to “save” us from threats they know to be imaginary.

      To quote one of the people who’ve fooled you with these fear tactics:

      We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we’ll be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

      – Senator Timothy Wirth, Democrat, CO

      Economic freedom will NOT mean we all are going to die of starvation, or any other reason. In fact, “going green” is one of the great threats to our food supply, as well as the environment:

      * Organic agriculture requires FAR more land to produce the same food…land that could, for example, otherwise be a carbon sink for trees.

      * It increases the likelyhood of pathogens getting into our food supply

      * It can even reduce the nutritional value of the food, because the plants end up stressed from lesser nutrition and more parasites/pests.

      And no, non-renewable energy does not produce ecological devastation. Our tremendous prosperity is a result, in part, of the accessibility of the sun’s energy concentrated in fossil fuels. Trying to glean it a bit at a time directly from the sun, or cobble it together secondhand from wind, ends up with a sort of energy poverty, oppressing our society.

      And, as I said before, it doesn’t actually help anything. The earth is NOT in any actual danger. The “settled consensus” of global warming has turned into two consecutive years of global cooling, because they LIED, for their own political reasons.

      It is not worth destroying our well-being “just in case” there might be some ecological benefit…and that’s what Obama and McCain are trying to do with this Cap and Trade bill.

      It’s better for everyone (outside of government) if they fail.

      Comment by kazvorpal | July 11, 2009 | Reply

      • No, economic malaise is universally bad.

        Well, maybe there is a middle point between malaise and rampant, cancerous, full-speed charge towards the next crash. The current financial crisis is just one example of what happens when the attitude of “progress at all costs” is played out to its natural conclusion.

        Organic agriculture requires FAR more land to produce the same food

        I’m familiar with the arguments against organic agriculture. The flip-side is that agriculture based on synthetic fertilizer requires inputs of petrochemicals, and petrochemicals will eventually run out. When? Debatable. That they will run out eventually, undeniable. So, no matter what bad things you can say about organic agriculture, one positive thing is that we could keep doing it forever. That we will eventually run out of petrochemicals, to me, is a fatal flaw that trumps any flaws of organic agriculture.

        Our tremendous prosperity is a result, in part, of the accessibility of the sun’s energy concentrated in fossil fuels.

        I agree.

        Trying to glean it a bit at a time directly from the sun, or cobble it together secondhand from wind, ends up with a sort of energy poverty, oppressing our society.

        I like the analogy of a bond that pays out a small amount of interest monthly. The interest is solar energy. The bond has been paying into a savings account for millions of years and there is a lot of money stored up. That’s petrochemicals. We’re tapping that bank account now, giving us the tremendous prosperity that you speak of. But the bond only pays into the account at a small rate, and it’s inevitable that the savings account will eventually run dry. What then?

        To me, the “green energy poverty” that you speak of is the natural state of things. The prosperity that we currently enjoy is an aberration. It’s completely understandable for us to want to continue to enjoy the prosperity, but when the savings account runs dry, the party’s over.

        You mention global warming as an example of the way in which people like me have been hoodwinked. You might infer that I’m thinking more along the lines of Peak Oil, but honestly, I’m just thinking in basic, thermodynamic terms. Our prosperity is based in large part on the energy we can draw from petrochemicals. Petrochemicals are focused solar energy, and there’s no way to make more of them once they’re gone, except to wait for another million years. We are drawing them from the earth faster than they can be rebuilt, therefore we will eventually run out. When we run out is a political question, and is open to debate and deception, but that we will run out is a matter of basic physics.

        And no, non-renewable energy does not produce ecological devastation.

        Maybe not inherently so, but the way that we produce non-renewable energy often does produce ecological devastation. The most recent example that I’ve seen is mountaintop-removal mining of coal in West Virginia. What’s ecological devastation if not tearing off the entire top of a mountain?

        Comment by Joshua | July 11, 2009 | Reply

        • > Well, maybe there is a middle point between malaise and
          > rampant, cancerous, full-speed charge towards the next
          > crash. The current financial crisis is just one example of
          > what happens when the attitude of “progress at all costs” is
          > played out to its natural conclusion.

          Except that “the economy is too healthy” is a witchdoctor’s myth. You can have ANY amount of economic growth without a bust, as long as it’s natural growth from a free market, not artificial stimulus caused by a socialist government.

          The Keynesian theory of economic growth as a bad thing is like a “doctor” whose two main treatments are cocaine and poison: If you are “too healthy”, he gives you a little poison to rein in your irrational exuberance, if you’re not feeling well, he gives you some cocaine to make you feel great…then when it’s working “too well”, he cuts off the prescription and simultaneously gives you poison, then when you get sick he says “wow, lucky I did that, imagine how much worse you’d have felt if I didn’t do it in time”.

          > I’m familiar with the arguments against organic
          > agriculture. The flip-side is that agriculture based on
          > synthetic fertilizer requires inputs of petrochemicals,
          > and petrochemicals will eventually run out.

          No, they won’t. Another myth. Aside from the fact that oil is quite possibly a renewable resource:

          http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/279153

          …in a free market, any decline in oil supply would be offset by technological advances replacing it, driven by its shortage and the resulting, gradual increase in prices.

          > To me, the “green energy poverty” that you speak of is the
          > natural state of things. The prosperity that we currently
          > enjoy is an aberration.

          If only ALL greens were honest enough to openly admit the are anti-prosperity.

          Comment by kazvorpal | November 14, 2009 | Reply

  5. Well-said. Keep imposing common sense. Many were concerned 8 months ago. Now we’re scared!

    Comment by populiberpublic | July 10, 2009 | Reply


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: