Thursday, March 12, 2009

Karl's Weekend Reading

Oleg at The People's Cube has a great write-up: Contradictions of Socialism (I Have Seen the Future and Ran Away).

After the number of "caring," bleeding-heart politicians in Washington reached a critical mass, it was only a matter of time before the government started ordering banks to help the poor by giving them risky home loans through community organizers. Which resulted in a bigger demand, which resulted in rising prices, which resulted in slimmer chances of repaying the loans, which resulted in more pressure on the banks, which resulted in repackaging of bad loans, which resulted in a collapse of the banks, which resulted in a recession, which resulted in many borrowers losing their jobs, which resulted in no further mortgage payments, which resulted in a financial disaster, which resulted in a worldwide crisis, with billions of poor people overseas - who had never seen a community organizer, nor applied for a bad loan - becoming even poorer than they had been before the "progressives" in the U.S. government decided to help the poor.

As if that were not enough, the same bleeding hearts are now trying to fix this by nationalizing the banks so that they can keep issuing risky loans through community organizers.


Poetic.

Dan Henninger writes in today's WSJ opinion page, The Obama Rosetta Stone. Obama's "moral argument for raising taxes on the rich":



[quoting from Obama's budget] "There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few. . . . It's a legacy of irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it."[end quote]
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The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.
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This presidency is going to be an act of retribution.


Jonah Goldberg comments on how Obama's supporters are buying his 'tax cuts for 95%' line, and will suffer for it. Townhall article, The Waiting Game:

Obama brags -- albeit dishonestly -- that he's only raising taxes on rich people. Ninety-five percent of the American people will get a tax cut, the president insists.

Well, which is it? Do the times demand shared sacrifice from us all, or from just 5 percent of Americans?

If I say to 10 co-workers, "We all need to chip in together to get this done," and then say, "So, Todd, open your wallet and give five bucks to everyone else in the room," it would sound ridiculous. But when Obama says the same thing to 300 million Americans it's called "leadership."


In his Real Clear Politics article, Deception at Core of Obama's Plans, Charles Krauthammer outlines what we all know to be true about Obama's slight-of-hand communications style, but have had a hard time explaining. Specifically, why focus on health care, energy and education during a banking crisis? Krauthammer is the pioneer who touches on what will soon be labeled 'Obamaesque' or 'Obamaisms':

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
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Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy - worthy and weighty as they may be - are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.

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