I am not just disappointed. I feel something close to mourning. Or, perhaps, it’s just that, mourning. I have to sort it all out before I return to this blog (except, perhaps, with a non-political story).
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FACTS MATTER 
Your words echo my private pain. It has been a long hard crusade, and I too am weary and full of despair. You were recommended to me by a close family member, and I would like to stay in touch.
It will be some time before I return to my blog, too, (http://uslibertyjournal.blogspot.com), but we cannot give up the fight. Our brothers and sisters have given the supreme sacrifice for our great country, and we owe it to them and our children and theirs. God bless Patriot, Daezy.
Sorry Jacques. Look at the big picture, for all of you that feel a sense of mourning there’s roughly 2% more of us that are thrilled and relieved.
Focus on the future, not the past. Here’s my advice: teapublicans lost because Romney wasn’t conservative enough, ditto in the senate. In the 2014 midterms, doubledown on social issues like a human life amendment, defunding planned parenthood and banning birth control coverage in health insurance plans when employers don’t like birth control. Vagina-Americans love old white guys controlling their life choices. Mourdock and Akin should be available and Ryan has a bully pulpit in the House of Representatives.
Make sure that immigration policy includes important components like English as the official language of the U.S. and elimination of ‘anchor babies’. Hispanics & Latinos will appreciate it. Most important of all: teach the 47% moochers to take personal responsibility for their lives. People like my 95 year old mother-in-law that paid into social security for close to 60 years. She needs to get off her ass and get off the publi teat.
The crucial issue of banning sharia law might have to wait till 2016.
This is a response to Terry’s November 10th comment. It got into the wrong place in the queue, somehow.
I have been shocked but not surprised. You might remember that I made no prediction at all.
The top marginal tax rate is just another red herring, from an economic standpoint. It’s quite relevant from a moral standpoint.
It’s about the government taking by force from some to give to others, from the 20-year old cafe waitress earning $9/hr to give to obscenely overpaid public servants, for example. Of course, statists are seldom stupid enough to begin raisins taxes with the waitress. They start with filthy rich millionaires who probably stole the money anyway. (Like my heart surgeon, the bastard!
It’s true that the majority of the American people have voted decisively in favor of such practices. That’s why I am depressed. I too am not too interested in the unhappiness of rich people who will be condemned to pay higher taxes (and won’t).
I haven’t looked up Terry’s reference to a study of the effects of top marginal rate of taxation on etc. I don’t feel like it right now. There are more important things to attend to. I suspect, based on my long acquaintance with academics, that it’s a cherry-picked study. I could be wrong. I wish someone else would look it up and report on this blog.
The idea, as emitted by Terry, that Pres. Obama’s economic policies have been pretty good is so absurd that, for me, it’s not worth discussing. Anyone should feel free to do it though. Go to town!
Daezy: Thank you.
Terry: You are one of the reasons why I am discouraged. You have the equipment but you leave it in the attic most of the time seemingly by perverse choice.
Mostly a tissue of misrepresentations. (Though you have more than a point on the treatment of Hispanics.) Nevertheless, I don’t think you are lying. It’s thinking with the gut at its worst. That’s why it’s difficult to accept this particular defeat. I think there is a tipping point phenomenon I need to think about.
Supposing everything you said were 100% correct. Does this mean that Pres. Obama’s economic policies have been pretty good, or good enough to allow for the luxury to follow one’s ill humor? Women, for example, are not affected by persistently high unemployment, right.
While I agree that one of us isn’t using the ole’ grey matter I disagree about the culprit. Only one of us was shocked by the election outcome. I’ve been following the statistical analyses of the poll aggregators like the Princeton Election Consortium and 538 at the New York Times from the beginning of the election. You can see what math and facts can do at
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Apparently part of the alternate reality teapublicans live in involves a fundamental rejection of….facts….of all kinds. All those polls with inconvenient facts? Skewed by liberal conspiracy pollsters. Those inconvenient unemployment numbers last month? Manipulated by liberal conspiracy economists [it turns out that those numbers were adjusted…employment was BETTER than initially reported].
I’m curious to see what the new teapublican alternate reality will be. Ballot box stuffing by Kenyan/Muslim/Socialists? Election fraud by millions of illegal immigrants with papers provided by unions? It will be entertaining no doubt.
“Does this mean that Pres. Obama’s economic policies have been pretty good, or good enough to allow for the luxury to follow one’s ill humor?”
In a word: yes. He’s done a very good job dealing with the largest economic disaster since the great depression. A disaster caused by republicans. What about the [using the term very broadly] the “policy” proposed by the empty suit? The Congressional Research Service [by definition, nonpartisan] did an analysis which teapublicans demanded be pulled…those pesky inconvenient facts again….
Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945
Click to access 0915taxesandeconomy.pdf
“The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.”
Just because teapublicans are gullible enough to believe in trickle down and the tooth fairy don’t expect the rest of us to be equally silly.
Dear Dr. J
I will have to applaud Terry for outlining the reasons why America settled for bad economy. The price for the hope to have a better situation was too high to pay. Although I sympathize with you but yet cheers to Terry.
Sincerely,
Taleseeker: You may be right, or maybe not. I am not thinking through it because I am in deep mourning. I don’t see this as just a lost election. I think that the American society I love committed suicide. I fear it’s going to become another western European country, like France but with a higher debt burden and with mediocre food.
Maybe this will cheer you up. Excerpted from David Frum.
“Compare the United States of 2012 to the United States of 1962. Leave aside the obvious points about segregation and discrimination, and look only at the economy.
In 1962, the government regulated the price and route of every airplane, every freight train, every truck and every merchant ship in the United States. The government regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated the interest on every checking account and the commission on every purchase or sale of stock. Owning a gold bar was a serious crime that could be prosecuted under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The top rate of income tax was 91%.
It was illegal to own a telephone. Phones had to be rented from the giant government-regulated monopoly that controlled all telecommunications in the United States. All young men were subject to the military draft and could escape only if they entered a government-approved graduate course of study. The great concern of students of American society — of liberals such as David Riesman, of conservatives such as Russell Kirk, and of radicals such as Dwight Macdonald — was the country’s stultifying, crushing conformity.
Even if you look only at the experiences of white heterosexual men, the United States of 2012 is a freer country in almost every way than the United States of 1962.”
Here’s my own two cents:
Oh wait, somebody already said that (hi Dr. A).
These are my real thoughts:
Oh wait.
Bottom line: until conservatives become more libertarian, they will continue to get their asses handed to them in national elections.
“Bottom line: until conservatives become more libertarian, they will continue to get their asses handed to them in national elections.”
As you well know I don’t see eye-to-eye with libertarians on many issues but generally I agree. Without the baggage from the theocrats it’s possible that there could be coherent arguments about economic policies.
I agree with the tipping point comment, though I had thought we had around a half generation left before we got there and could buy some time if Romney had been elected. I also don’t think there’s much for the liberals to genuinely celebrate. Especially the liberal academics and intellectuals. They are of little value to the entitlement bunch, and what’s really sad is seeing how they inexplicably and ridiculously cover for the plunderers at all costs. America is at a crossroads. As Frederic Bastiat eloquently explained in 1850 in “The Law”:
With Obama we’re looking at four years of 1% GDP growth, high unemployment, and big government everything. The day will come when it’s more painful and dangerous for the takers to plunder than it is for them to get jobs and go to work.
Forgive me for being sentimental but suicide in this case means to scarify
Self and if it is for the better of our global community it is an act of nobility.
America has decided they have had enough of war as an economical incentive. Atlantis could only be an illusion at our times. I am saddened by your despair. Did you really think of Romney to be the savior of our faith? Why not celebrate the spirit of Democracy! By the way I really like Brandon’s addressing you (Dr. J) Hope it is O.K. To follow his league.
Best.
Talesseker.
I am not sure why you talk about suicide. (I surely don’t.)
Main answer to your main (rhetorical ) question: Did I think Romney was a savior of …. ? No, I did not. I don’t think in terms of saviors. That what differentiates me from Obama followers. There are no Messiahs, be they Hitler or some theatrical (and probably secretely homosexual) ayatollah, or a “magic Negro.” There are only more or mess rational actors. The deeply irrational won this time around. Hence, my sadness.
PS: I did not make up the expression “magic Negro,” a black journalist did, several years ago. I wish I had thought about it though.