Understanding Narcissism is Understanding Obama
It’s often quite difficult to talk about once having been an abused spouse because it elicits expressions of sympathy and overshadows the point of the posts or articles. It’s not about sympathy for me but looking out for my country. I’m okay. We are not okay.
There have been a few times when I’ve said that Obama reminds me of my ex-husband. My ex-husband is not a black man. You see, I lived with a narcissist for 23 years. That experience is why I recognize the same in President Barack Obama.
Narcissistic personality disorder symptoms may include (Source: Mayo Clinic):
- Believing that you’re better than others
Fantasizing about power, success and attractiveness
Exaggerating your achievements or talents
Expecting constant praise and admiration
Believing that you’re special and acting accordingly
Failing to recognize other people’s emotions and feelings
Expecting others to go along with your ideas and plans
Taking advantage of others
Expressing disdain for those you feel are inferior
Being jealous of others
Believing that others are jealous of you
Trouble keeping healthy relationships
Setting unrealistic goals
Being easily hurt and rejected
Having a fragile self-esteem
Appearing as tough-minded or unemotional
You can look at that list all day long and not understand what you’re seeing in Obama without some examples.
During the last months/weeks of finalizing my divorce from the narcissist in my life, one of my friends confessed something to me one day. She lived on a hill in a wooded area that had been discovered to have old Indian burial grounds. I seemed to have a knack for finding things like that. One time when my husband and I were visiting I had gone off looking for something. She and he struck up a conversation about me, her telling him things about me he apparently didn’t know but should have after 23 years of marriage. The problem was, he didn’t recognize those qualities in himself and I was not a separate person from him in his world. It was when he asked her who she was talking about when it dawned on her that he didn’t even know me.
The narcissist sees everyone in his life as extensions of himself (or herself, although clinical narcissism is more common in men). They are not recognized as separate entities with individual strengths and weaknesses. This country as a whole, is now an extension of Obama. We are not separate beings with our own thoughts and failings or strengths and weaknesses.
The matter of the terrorist trials being held in New York give us an example via Politico.com:
“I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.
When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn’t trying to dictate the result.
In Obama’s mind he’s setting right a wrong, according to the view of his world. It’s inconceivable that his right thing would be very wrong for those whom it most concerns, namely those who experienced deep loss from the attack on the World Trade Center. 9/11/2001. And he exhibits no understanding they would feel any different about the issue.
“What I said was, people will not be offended if that’s the outcome. I’m not pre-judging, I’m not going to be in that courtroom, that’s the job of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I’m absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”
Read the rest of the article for other issues discussed in the interview.
The narcissist’s world is all about him, his self image, having invented himself from “whole cloth” he. Because he is an invention of his own design, he can redesign, or reinvent himself at will. Nothing exists outside his own mind(Buzzle.com).
The buzzle.com article was chosen because it is in plain English and is a short sweet version of living with a narcissist. It is an absolute must read. As the writer notes, it is a nightmare.
Looking at the mechanisms by which the narcissists seeks, gains, and maintains control, any solitary mechanism could possibly be explained or excused away. However, the more you read the more realize that it becomes increasingly difficult to explain them all away:
Unpredictability: As the article notes, the narcissist keeps himself stable by destabilizing everyone else. Remember the now famous words of Rahm Emmanuel, “never let a good crisis go to waste”? How about inventing some? How many crises have we had in 11 months?
-
The Banking Crisis
The Auto Bailouts
The Economy
Climate Change
The Olympics
The Terrorists trials in New York
Healthcare Reform
The War in Afghanistan
And only he can solve these problems… with talking. And then, we move onto the next crisis, which only he can fix.
It’s harder to order a narcissist’s world when the world becomes as large as a whole nation. There is resistance. Resistance is bad because it upsets the balance of the world according to the narcissist. Has to rid himself of resistance and will use any means at his disposal to regain control, including tactics such as fear (job loss), intimidation (Fox News), threatening (banks and pitchforks), insulting (middle America commonly known as flyover country. teabaggers, and racists, or if you happen to be black you’re a race traitor), and devaluing (Ft. Hood Massacre, assault on our civil rights) .
What he can’t directly, he’ll do by proxy: ACORN, SEIU, Mainstream Media, and more. The links between Obama with these and other organizations are clear.
If I have made the case plainly, what do we do about it? What we’ve been doing; protesting, obstructing, and debating. What won’t work is petitions to Obama. No form of begging will work. Begging merely signifies to the narcissist he has regained control.
He will continue what he’s doing but we can combat him better by understanding the how and why he’s doing it. He will not listen to reason and pleas will fall on deaf ears because his world is all that means anything, not how others feel about it. It won’t be easy because he’ll continue to assault us directly or indirectly through his connections but if we stay resolute, he will fail. The narcissist’s world cannot withstand reality when reality will not be denied.
During those last months of marriage to my ex-husband, it was really ugly. The final straw was when he obstructed and refused to help me pack up the car in order to help my mother during her final few weeks on earth although he’d promised that I could do that. It’s the only thing my mother ever asked of me and he did his best to prevent it. I went anyway and he responded by moving his girlfriend into our house with our children.
He didn’t get the expected reaction. Instead, I called his bluff (she wasn’t his first mistress) because he didn’t want a divorce, only to rein me in. He did score a victory of sorts because I had to leave Mom to go back and attend to the crisis he created but in the end, he was stuck with the girlfriend and out of the house. He also sabotaged my last few months of grad school, told the children not to contact me about moving his mistress into the house, didn’t pay any bills while I was gone, broke a window, broke the washing machine, and royally trashed the house. It came with the territory.
It didn’t stop with the divorce, either. It takes a long time to get a narcissist out of your life, usually when they latch onto some other person to fill that position you once held.
It will get uglier. Expect the unexpected but don’t give in. We can fight back and win.
Crossposted to Sidetick and RedState.
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November 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Well said, as usual!
The article is GREAT, and I LOVE the last line: We can fight back and win.
If you love this country, then WE MUST fight back and win. This POTUS will go down in history as one of the WORST EVER!!! Crisis after crisis after crisis that has to be fixed, and then fixed again, and then fixed again.
Thank you.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Charlotte, I think there might be a part 2 coming. It seems that there is no end of material to make comparisons. We can fight back.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:24 am
Well you wouldn’t address my point on redstate (which I now realize is a RINO site disguised as a conservative site) I will give you a chance here. Obama is lame. No doubt of that. However, many of the great men of history such as Winston Churchill were narcissists. So you think Winston Churchill is the same as Obama? If conservatives are to win, we need to make sense.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Since you have no point except to make an unsubstantiated claim and you ignore direct questions, why bother?
November 24th, 2009 at 9:23 am
You want me to substantiate that Churchill was a narcissist? I figured you knew that. I would be happy to elaborate otherwise just let me know. Are you saying no great men are narcissists?
November 24th, 2009 at 9:36 am
It has been asked and you prefer to plead ignorance of the fact. If you can’t, or won’t, or think you’re playing me, don’t bother. This is my site and I can ban you rather than put up with stupidities. I’ve never done it before but there’s always a first time because I tire of the mind-games you libs play.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:46 am
If you mean Bush, yes I think he, Clinton, Carter, Kennedy all narcissists. I dropped that point because it would clearly end up consuming the argument because most redstaters love Bush. I was happy to say it is debatable Bush is a narcissist and dropped it because that is not my point. But I angered the Bush loving gods I guess.
Here is what I think is not debatable: many great men are narcissists. Most narcissists are not great men (e.g., Obama). OK, your turn to address my point as I believe I have addressed yours.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Boy, are you wrong on a lot of counts. We give Bush credit where credit is due but hardly anybody on RedState loves him because he carries as much of the blame as does Obama for what is happening now.
The difference is Obama has done nothing for which we can give credit for, except making things worse.
In addition, you minimize that which afflicts our current dear leader with normal narcissism which we all possess, some more than others. And that was the point of the argument on RedState. I don’t know if Clinton is a narcissist in the mold of Obama.
The difference between the two is not their ideology but the fact that Clinton could be reined in by outside pressures. I’m seeing no indication of such with Obama because he is determined to advance his agenda and ideology against the will of the people or who is damaged by his policies because we are merely extensions of him; extensions he doesn’t particularly like so our demise would be no great loss to him.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am
OK Stef. If what you are arguing is degree and not whether they possess the disorder, then I can see you might be onto something. I will ponder that.
As for redstate disliking Bush, I didn’t get that impression, but I am glad to hear it. Deficit spending and nation building are not conservative principles.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I’m not arguing “degree.” What I’m saying is you are confusing the everyday usage of the word with the clinical definition.
Everybody has some narcissism under the general description. To have none… we wouldn’t survive very long in this world because we would act against self-preservation. However, we can and do interact with the rest of the world as separate entities not under our control and sometimes that means a choice between them and us.
We loved his stand against terrorism. We didn’t love the deficit spending and Congress got a shellacking for enabling it. Just because we don’t excoriate him as the left does, doesn’t mean we worshiped him.
Nation building is a gray area. Sometimes, issues don’t have clearcut answers. Bad intelligence or not, at the time it appeared Hussein was a threat to us. So, should he have been left in place because of the fear of being accused of nation building? Should he then have taken out Hussein and left a void for Al Queda or Iran to fill? In that, I believe he made the best decision he could make under the circumstances.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Thanks Steph but no I mean the real thing– here are diagnostic criteria:
1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Churchill had 1-6 and 9 in spades.
Note I can’t stand people with this disorder (they are surprisingly common) and one of my best friends is also divorced from a NPD, so I don’t like them. But I am still contending it is worth considering it could in some cases be adaptive or at least not prohibitive for being a great leader.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Also Steph I make the case against the Iraq war now that I did then. Either one of these reasons was enough:
1. Iran loved us invading Iraq– let them become the dominant regional power.
2. We needed to hit Afghanistan harder. Nobody has ever successfully occupied that “country”.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Sam, whether he was or wasn’t you provide no evidence that he was; only claims. And whether he was or wasn’t is really beside the point since it is a post mortem discussion and has nothing to do with the post except as a way to provide cover for Obama.
How does saying Churchill was narcissistic benefit anyone in the present time?
So do you want to continue obfuscating or go direct and either support Obama or work on ways to defeat his agenda? The choice is yours but I’m really tired of the sidetracking. Save it for a post about Winston Churchill.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Steph,
It’s been a while since I have commented here. I have been on the road quite a bit this last couple of months. I missed you and I have a need to fan the flame that I hold in my heart for you. (You know that secret crush). I find the conversation between you and Sam interesting (who is this guy anyway I’m a little jealous). You make big claims that Obama is a narcissist (did I spell that right) and he claims that all or most great men are and you want proof. So where is your proof???? Because the way I see it anything short of clinical diagnosis from either of you is just as you said “no evidence only claims”. And I thought you only dealt with the issues….
Black in America Baby The revolution has been televised
November 24th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Thanks Steff for the reply. I really don’t think I am obfuscating. I was merely trying to engage on the more general topic of leaders with NPD which I find quite interesting.
Obviously that topic is not of interest to you, so I will engage the specific theme of your article that fighting Obama’s policies involves understanding his NPD. I’d say that it will be important for him to get a health care “victory” by any means necessary. Best for us is if he gets something weak with 60 votes because what he could get “temporarily” with 50 votes is scary. So here is my question: what medical reforms do WE actually want. I pretty much want three things: 1) if my doctor recommends a diagnostic scan and it falls within AMA guidelines (e.g. a colonoscopy at 50) my insurance must pay, 2) that insurance costs are based only on my age and gender– the private insurance companies can set the price wherever they want, and 3) there are no geographic boundaries to who can sell me insurance. If we got those, we would be no closer to socialized medicine, it would be easier to become self-employed, and Obama would have the “win” his ego needs.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Well, we’ll save that discussion for a time when we don’t have to work so hard to save what little freedom we have left in this country.
Best if we get none of it on health care. The thing you have to understand is the more you play to the ego, the worse it will get. Giving him a victory of any kind doesn’t help because he will take it as a sign that we lack resolve in our quest to preserve our freedoms. You can’t beg a narcissist, you can’t bargain with a narcissist, or anything else people might otherwise do to reach a compromise. Compromise means he wins, you lose.
That was the point of the post. Either you stand firmly against him or you join him. He won’t have it any other way.
I’ve yet to see an insurance company refuse to pay for preventive medicine such as colonoscopies, mammograms, and other such procedures. Under the new health care bill, that will be up for debate once the feds are paying the bills. I don’t think Congress cares as long as they get to order everything to their liking and as long as it’s not one of them who isn’t getting that preventive medicine.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Bruce, I gave specific examples using Obama’s own words.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Oh, Sam, I’d be happy to hear about Churchill’s narcissism off post if that makes you feel better.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Well suppose I am right that we will get something with 60 votes or something broader but “temporary” with 50. Which is better? Now is it really practical to kill something with 50? I hope so, but I am betting against it.
By the way I have had Cigna refuse scans. Overall Medicare is much better run in my experience than Cigna (which aint saying much). I am against Medicare for cost however– the feds do no understand cost containment. So I would like more insuree’s rights. Some states have these laws for colonoscopies and mammograms, but mine does not. Cigna also said if I paid for my own scan, anything found might not be covered. I would like to see some system where I have real choice in health insurance. Right now to get away from Cigna I would have to move jobs. So decoupling private insurance from employment would do that, but that would require reform on pre-existing conditions etc.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Is Cigna your only choice? If possible I’d get rid of them. When I was looking for individual insurance, I passed them over because it seemed like they wanted a lot for very little coverage.
Medicare is broke, Sam. It’s broker than broke. The problem with giving the government that power is they never know when to stop spending and no matter what the money is supposed to be for, they’ll spend it until it’s gone and then we get the death panels and the worst restrictions you can imagine.
Promises don’t mean a thing… and that’s both sides of the political fence.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Yes, like most employers in my industry, my company has one insurance plan.
I agree medicare is broken. Seniors have no incentive not to spend on marginal or even unneeded treatments. Ironically, their problem is that they don’t ration care, and with current medical technology there are just too many ways to spend money.
I think the main reform I proposed– the price of insurance is only based on age and gender– would solve most current problems. Then I would get real choice.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sam, there are no guarantees in life. You oughta know that if you’re 50. I have high blood pressure and almost died from it because of shoddy doctors when I had insurance. This was several years ago. Now, because of shoddy doctors, I’ll have that “preexisting condition” of congestive heart failure for the rest of my life in spite of the fact that I beat it. Perfect ekg’s and the works. I didn’t do that by going through the insurance companies. We have to take responsibility for ourselves. The government can’t do it for us and when they try it’s always a big mess like right now. The more government grows the less able we become to take care of ourselves until the only choice we have left is total dependence. I can’t live like that.
The insurance companies use actuarial statistics to determine things like that. The government has already proven it can’t do basic math. I’d hate to see how they’d mangle those kinds of statistics.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Steph I think my proposal would still keep the government out of health care but would also provide anyone working the ability to get sensibly priced group health insurance. The market can operate and you would be in a risk pool with everybody your age. It would also make new products available; I for one would opt only for catastrophic insurance. If we take the full actuarial slippery slope, a baby with a DNA defect may be uninsurable their whole life.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Sam, give the government an inch and you may as well give them the whole.
If the government would get out of the medical business, you’d see the cost go way down. Free market principles would take care of it because competition will dictate costs.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Steph I don’t agree with the all-or-nothing principle. When i doubt I like the government out. But there are some things I do think the government should do:
1. military
2. police
3. FDA
5. Post office
6. Regulating banks on maximum leverage
7. Research funding for universities
In the spirit of 6, I would like health insurance regulated with a (literally) one line bill: private health insurance can set costs and coverage at will, but the price of each policy shall be based soley on the age of the policy holder.
This could in the long run get rid of medicaid and medicare as well. I also think if the Republicans would come up with something so simple and practical, they could scuttle all the pork-laden 10 inch thick bills the Dems are pushing.
PS– hilarious video you just posted– thanks!!!
November 24th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I didn’t post the video. Susannah did.
What are your reasonings behind those issues you chose? I’d like to know before I opine.
November 24th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Oh, yeah. You might be interested in this:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=112309A
November 24th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Here is my basic reasoning:
1. military (don’t want to outsource it– we’d end up with French Foreign Legion– but argument could be made for that)
2. police (harder for me to justify– but I like the idea of centralized 911. that being said, a weaker case than for military)
3. FDA (the market is only efficient when people have information. I like product labels and mandatory drug disclaimer sheets).
5. Post office (cities subsidize rural communication– farms are part of national security– I say we get mail to the stix even if the market wouldn’t do it)
6. Regulating banks on maximum leverage (see 2008:). I wouldn’t borrow 50x my net worth and invest it in dodgey schemes, but banks do. I don’t know why, but it aint the first time, so they lost their car keys.
7. Research funding for universities: we have silicon valley, the a bomb, jets, rockets, from this. It is a national defense issue, but has great side effects for
economy. Think of it like West Pointe– it is a good investment.
Note I do not include schools, medical care, social security, and my military would be smaller. So I think the tax rate would be around 5-10% for the above. For number 7 it is a big time negative tax rate net.
And thanks for the correction– my bad.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for link. Interesting article. Note I am not in favor of the public option. Only not letting the insurance companies define the pools. I agree we haven’t had a market system for health care since 45 as the article points out. The vet care industry is market based and it is not clear it works worse overall, and it is MUCH cheaper.
November 25th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Sam, you mistook my all or nothing to be a blanket statement about government’s involvement.
The military is the government’s responsibility and so is the post office. By the way people in the sticks get their mail the same as anyone else.
As for the others, there are pros and cons. Take the university research funding, for example. A lot of university get funding for useless stuff and as long as they can get the funding whatever they’re doing stays useless. Applied research, possibly there could be made a case for some funding with a deadline to produce something useful or desired.
Bigger is not always better. Sometimes it simply means inefficient. The FDA, for example has grown so big in scope that it can’t do the job it was initially intended to do while costing more and more tax dollars to operate.
Nationalizing the police force is a really bad idea. You might want to rethink that one.
As it is the day before Thanksgiving and I do the whole works, comments and blogging will be light here and other places until the weekend or next week.
November 25th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Thanks Steph. I didn’t mean nationalizing the police force– I meant that as a local government responsibility. And as for the stix, in a market driven post office the costs would be more for those users. Instead the federal taxes/fees of urban people subsidize the rural people. I am ok with that income transfer.
As for research, all that I have read (which is a lot) indicates you are incorrect. Curiosity-driven (as opposed to applied) research yields more bang for the buck. We need both– a diversified portfolio is great. When we let the Russians get ahead of us in rocketry, the US did some introspection and found out that the Soviets let 14% of their scientists work on whatever they wanted. We let far less than 1% do the same and when the threads of invention were traced many (if not all) great military/industrial inventions owe their roots to curiosity-driven research, with the A and H bombs being exhibit numbers 1 and 2. The NSF and DARPA budgets for basic research is MUCH less than 1% of the federal budgets, and yet they are why we have Silicon Valley, whose wealth is thousands of time more per year than those research budgets.
I myself work in a high-tech company where we are a decade ahead of the Chinese. Almost all of our lead has its roots in government funded research, and the tax revenues we generate annually are more than 10x the total spent on all that research over all years. My company is far from an isolated incident. Note that my opinion shared by every scientist, generals, and CEO I have heard speak or write on the subject. Their is a fad among some so-called conservatives to try to blast research by grabbing a single project out of the the 10s of thousands funded each year but that is just the cynical playing to the ignorant and is unworthy of the word “conservative”.
November 25th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Oh yeah, and thanks for the thoughtful exchange. It has been interesting. Happy Thanksgiving.
November 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am
“Is Cigna your only choice? If possible I’d get rid of them.” Yes. My pension paid to BC/BS for the last six years. Then, my old company (sold?) the plan to
Cigna, through 3 other companies..all of them good for my old company, no doubt. Cigna is a poster child for single payer gov’t healthcare.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Agreed. I don’t see how any single-payer system could be worse than Cigna. I assume the feds will be incompetent, but I have had less trouble with the post office in my 46 years than I have with Cigna in any quarter. And it is clear Cigna is also evil. The patient advocate that has been helping me deal with Cigna used to work for them and said she “switched sides” because of all the immoral things Cigna did to avoid legitimate payments. I did some reflection over the Holiday yesterday and have decided to register as a Democrat for the following reasons:
Democrats : more likely to balance budgets (though they still suck at it)
Democrats : actually make health care proposals (even if they suck)
Democrats : don’t start wars to settle personal scores when our troops are needed in Afghanistan
I liked Nixon, Ford, and Bush Sr., but have come to realize that the more conservative party (in the sense I am a conservative) is the Democrats. I hope the Republicans find their way.
November 28th, 2009 at 5:01 am
You see, Sam… The Republicans have health care proposals but the meme is they don’t have any because they’re not being allowed to offer them to the public.
Do you know how Clinton reduced the deficit? He took funds from social security and issued IOUs that are now worthless. He wasn’t the first president to raid those funds, either. I’d like to go back in time to the Congress and president who made social security part of the general funds and shoot them but I think most of them are alreaady dead. Now social security is bankrupt. So is medicare.
Do you really think they’re going to do any better with all these new taxes?
On the war, it wasn’t a personal beef, regardless of the Democratic meme. Nor was it for oil, another favorite meme.
I’m surprised you have to register as a Democrat. I assumed you already were.
BB, sorry about Cigna. When I was searching for individual plans they looked like they sucked and not much cheaper than other plans that were much better.
November 28th, 2009 at 9:04 am
No– lifelong Republican. Guns and abortion are still a big problem for me, but the Republicans were “allowed” to fix this mess anytime in 2000-2006. Instead they squandered trillions. This Cigna thing has made me see up close just how little the Rs care about America. I think the Dems are a mess, but at least they are trying.
I was waiting to see whether Bush was an blip, but it looks like the “core” Republicans now see ignorance as a virtue (Palin and her ridiculous death panels and the idiots that can’t see the death panels at Cigna are FAR worse than anything the feds could dream of– the feds like to spend money and Cigna knows you are cheaper if you die). How did the party of Eisenhower and Nixon start to see being curious and educated as a flaw?
November 28th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I could almost buy that but for one thing. The Republicans didn’t have the House until 2003 and lost it again in 2007.
Bush was no conservative and Palin… well, whether you like it or not, she’s right. The only defense the Democrats have is: “well, the insurance companies do it” and that justifies our government doing the same. It also begs the question of why this reform is necessary if the government is going to act as a defacto insurance company while demonizing said companies.
If you were ever a Republican, you sure do like to parrot the “liberal” memes and you sure don’t look at reality very well. No child left behind was a Ted Kennedy special. So was the immigration act which is commonly known as Shamnesty.
But that’s all okay, you know? You keep believing it’s all the Republicans’ fault while Obama, his cronies, and the Democratic Congress clean you out because when you start insulting as you have done, that’s when I call it quits. I’ll debate anything and even change my mind if the evidence is clear but when you call me ignorant, incurious, and uneducated, that’s where I draw the line because your purpose here is clear: to put down and bully to make others see it your way.
And pretending to be a Republican, former or present, makes you a Moby.
November 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Palin leans a bit liberal when it comes to wealth redistribution
…$3200 for each Alaskan. Just for living there!
November 28th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Steph you don’t seem ignorant or incurious. I was talking about Palin. Apologies if I implied otherwise.
November 28th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I also didn’t mean to put down or bully anyone. I do think Palin is incurious and ignorant (the former causing the latter). Nothing wrong with that as long as she doesn’t end up where decisions require knowledge. I cannot be in any party that likes Palin. If that means I am hitting “liberal talking points”, well, that is the most specious argument against me I can imagine.
No Child Left Behind is a disaster, as is Medicare drug plans. Dems could have stopped either of them. Plenty of incompetence to go around.
November 29th, 2009 at 5:51 am
BB, I got nothing at that link except a bunch of text ads.
Sam, you said “like the “core” Republicans.” You didn’t say any one person specifically. If core Republicans were incurious and uneducated, we wouldn’t be fighting as hard as we’re fighting now against both parties. Core Republicans are the conservatives, not the squishes who have been elected to office promising conservatism and then making deals to feather their own nests and pockets of power.
Anyway, what makes Palin incurious and uneducated? She’s smarter than Obama, who has a law degree supposedly in Constitutional law. Rahmie boy is the one running the White House while Obama plays.
What I hear is that you’re in favor of “doing something” even if the “something” is worse than doing nothing.
I remember the Carter years. It wasn’t pretty dealing with all their “good intentions” then. It will be worse now because Obama’s “good intentions” have gone further than Carter ever thought of.
If you want to sign onto that, I can’t stop you.
November 29th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Odd. Works for me, HB. Its a Bloomberg article on the big state tax on oil windfall profits in Alaska.
What does http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYdZoyTvFrTc&refer=home do for you, more text ads?
November 29th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Ah, okay. I thought it was something new.
Here’s one thing: Alaska has had that tax for a long time. It’s a traditional tax that dates back to attracting people to the state. It’s not something she started and there was nothing indicating it should end and it’s a set value rather than a percentage. So what?
Two: To impose something like that on a national level is insane which is why states rights are so important.
Three: Because Alaska does it, we should, too? As California does, so should the other states? Michigan? New York? Pick out any state and you’ll find something wrong with it that would not be applicable to the rest of the states.
This is the reasoning that the media and opposition politicians use to cut someone down when they have nothing concrete. But when it is the opposition, they laud those states that are in the worst shapes and which they had a hand in weakening. These people also want to set the “standards” by which others live and it’s not their place to do so nor is it written in the Constitution. The writers of the Constitution concerned itself with states rights enough to include them in that founding document for this reason.
The more weakened some of these states become, the more they look outward to bring more resources in thereby weakening the whole fabric of the nation rather than mending the part of the fabric which they make up and have torn. If every state is the same, the grass is the same on all sides and nobody can complain, right?
It’s also called holding others to higher standards than one holds oneself, misery loves company, double standards, or all of them at once.
You should also understand that standards are different from “qualities.” Trust me, you wouldn’t want me as President, or even a mayor. I’m a harsh taskmaster. I’d make Congress sweat for every little penny and revoke quite a few of the ones they’ve already tagged as theirs.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:58 am
” Pick out any state and you’ll find something wrong with it that would not be applicable to the rest of the states.” Right, we did that in 1861: birth of the GOP,
Lincoln, states rights, secession, slavery etc & etc. ‘Weakened states’, as I’ve gone over prior, are the red states: they get more back in Fed dollars than the blue states, which pay more than they get back. Most peculiar, they continue to vote against their financial interests, although I admit perhaps they stand on principle. (both red & blue) It is also true that some states possess mineral wealth (Idaho has dug and shipped 165.7 tons of pure gold over the years; Mississipi offers very cheap labor; Nevada, well what can I say?) So, in some ways, the discussion involves shall we lower the states to some common level, raise them to some common level, or leave them as is. The first is thriftiest,
the second expensive and the third, I think is where you are coming from?
November 29th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
When it comes to Lincoln, etc. I usually turned to an expert on the subject. Contrary to your information, the war of secession was fought over secession which the states didn’t have the right of under the Constitution.
On Fed dollars, it’s a matter of matching funds. Any Fed dollar has to be matched with a like or a percentage of the funds available for the state. The current health legislation is no different. Each of the respective states will have to match federal funds and a whole lot of states aren’t buying it.
I remember having this conversation before. I also remember asking if those states are also places where the federal government owns something, such as the TVA in TN and if those dollars were counted per capita. The TVA services more than one state. I don’t recall if you had an answer for that.
As far as your three solutions, I advocate neither. The states can and should regulate themselves in order to not have to lower to a common level. The founders thought of the states as separate social experiments where they could test ideas and throw out bad ones. Unfortunately, the bad ideas seem to persist because nobody has the will to give up some of their own power for the common good of those they govern.
Would that Idaho still had those tons of gold. I think most of them are owned by the Chinese now.
November 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“Would that Idaho still had those tons of gold. I think most of them are owned by the Chinese now.” Yep. And they send us LEAD in their stuff!! Whatta deal..
Regarding causes of the Civil War, there were quite a few, including as you note,
the interpetation of Article VII vis a vis secession. IMO, the main problem was that new states were coming into the union, and the southern interests were losing clout to support their ’special institution’. Thus the newly formed GOP motto was ‘free labor, free land, free men’, referring to payed vs slave, the status of slavery in the new states and slave ownership respectively. You are right about per capita income bearing on state tax ratios, as well as “Other factors include whether states have powerful Members of Congress, the number of federal employees present in a state, and the number of residents receiving Social Security, Medicare and other federal entitlements.” , based on info at
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/topic/92.html ..so yes TVA, military bases, etc draw Fed funds. Tennessee and Idaho are almost identical at $1.27
and $1.21 per dollar paid in; we have a big air base and most of the place is one National Forest after the other. Now, then “Trust me, you wouldn’t want me as President, or even a mayor.” Given our mayor, we’ll give you a try..c’mon out!
December 1st, 2009 at 8:05 am
I don’t think James would want to move to Idaho.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Hey Steph sorry for ignoring your comments. My mother went into the hospital for thanksgiving with pneumonia. She just got out.
Obama– top student in ivy league but a LAWYER. How can anybody be a big fan jeez!????
Palin– took 6 years and several colleges to get a friggin lame degree that you don’t even need to be sober for?!!!!!!
Eisenhower– 5 star general that got Patton and Montgomery to work together. Cut back the conventional military in favor of nukes against intense pressure.
For the Rs to get me back, they need to find their Eisenhower streak. I will accept Nixon as well– his “crimes” pale in comparison to Bush/Blackwater or Obama/Acorn and he was a smart man with America’s interests at heart.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:48 am
Obama was no “top stucent.” Besides, I’ve met Ph.D.s who are dumb as a box of rocks.
And you’re a snob who thinks education replaces common sense and allows people a free pass because they’re “better.”
And I’m not even going to try to tell you anything about your talking points, most of which have been blown out of the water but you obviously have been living under a rock.
The R’s never had you. I’m not enamored of Bush. I think he did a lot of things wrong but what you bring up is the stupidest talking points of the left.
Otherwise, sorry to hear about your mother and hope she is doing well.
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:11 am
“Besides, I’ve met Ph.D.s who are dumb as a box of rocks.” Me too. But one of my girls has a PhD in Analytical Chemistry and the other is a PhD in Microbiology.
They are OK in the ‘rocks’ department.
December 5th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Steph maybe you missed my point. Eisenhower was no great student. He was a great man. The 4.0 club is for the birds. He is exhibit A for common sense trumping education.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:27 am
As long as they stick to what they know, BB, that’s okay. The ones who are trouble are those who brandish their Ph.D.s as if it makes them experts on whatever they declare they’re experts on.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Sam, if I missed your point, perhaps you should rephrase what you said. As written I don’t believe I did.