Getting Perspective on Things

It's difficult to overstate the degree of detatchment these right wingers have become from reality.  Two weeks ago one individual told me when I asked about the Clinton economic robustness said, "Well back then we were still profitting from all the investments business had done during the Ronald Reagan era.  They say that business investments typically last twenty years".  I don't know who "they" is but I never heard that.  This statement ignored the fact that Bush lost the election in 1992 because the country then was not emerging quickly enough from a lengthly recession.  Rush Limbaugh back then was bemoaning all the doom and gloomsters.  In his book he even mentions "I'm tired of every Thanksgiving hearing how they don't expect this Christmas season to be a good one for confsumers".  Interestingly Rush also said in his first book "the middle class of over-taxed".  He's sure not saying that now.  Rush in his book, "The Way Things Ought to Be" said the national symbol for this country ought to be a pig with all the little piglets sucking at the government teats, referring to the poor.  Rush hated the poor back then.  There are numerous references in his book to the news of the day such as Anita Hill, and Rodney King, and Magic Johnson and AIDS.  Rush wasn't at all sympathetic twords people with AIDS.  He also advocated strongly in his book Against condom use.  There was the usual hatred of animal rights people and environmentalists in general.  And of course his feminist update song back then was that Sandy Posey song of "If you're born a woman, you're born to be Hurt", and Rush wanted to make you understand the word was indeed "Hurt".  Oddly there wasn't that much in his book about cutting taxes and particularly cutting taxes on the rich.  Now things are so strange that people remember  the economy improving under Clinton because Newt Gingrich got Clinton to cut business taxes and taxes in general.  Of course Clinton RAISED the top income tax level just Before the economic revovery began.  Rush a year or so Before the recovery began, was predicting a Clinton recession.  How many times can one man be wrong and still be listened to?  Last Saturday at my Mom's at the table my Mom said "If you ask me what I believe, I feel that the economy is picking up right now and that it will continue to pick up more".  I amplified on these sentaments saying that people would have money to spend, and therefore buy more things and therefore those who produce the things would hire on new workers, would have more money.  You have seldom seen Judy more insensed than this doctrine of Hope that I espoused this day.  To her America is doomed.  Of course she had predicted dire things in our future.  I asked her 'How does Newt Gingrich or any nominee propose to sell this notion of gloom and doom to the nation".  Judy just said, "The American people will understand because Newt Gingrich is a man who inspires confidence.  Judy prefers Newt because he has more experianced leadership and is a more carismatic speaker than Santaurum.  The reality that Newt is going down in flames in Iowa even as we speak and is in fact in fourth or fifth place now doesn't bother her.  Judy says there is a vast conspiracy in the media both to attack Newt Gingrich, and also to make President Obama look good and to prime him for reelection by planting all of these bogus favorable economic stories in the news.  I don't even think she realises the utter lunacy of what she is proposing is happening.  If these sorts of explanations are all the tea party can muster, then the movement is indeed doomed.  Some have tried to rationalize that "every Presidential year has good news".  1992 didn't have good news.  2000 was looking a little green around the gills by year's end.  The so called dot com bubble may have been the first biproduct of the recent laxing of Wall Street regulations.  And 2008 certainly did not look good.  So this argument just won't fly.  The reason why the media is saying things look better is because they ARE improving.  Saturday I came out and said the Right is hoping and praying for some crisis, like in Iran, to styfle this economy.  And I also said that I don't believe it's psychologically healthy to rout for your own country's demise.

Rick Santaurum may win Iowa now since he has risen so metiorically in the polls these past few weeks.  Right now it looks like a three way tie between Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santaurum.  However Romney appears to be fading just a bit.  Of course Michelle Bachman's chief campaign aid jumped ship and went over to Bachman, and so this may turn the tide in Paul's favor.  This is on top of the fact that Democrats can switch parties to vote in the caucuses and the libertarian democrats will turn out to vote for Ron Paul, and I think this factor will propel him to first place.  None of the other Republicans will like that but it's going to be something they will have to live with.

In case you are wondering, Glen Beck is gone but his beliefs live on.  The tea party right is still sticking to the marritive that President Obama has secretly surrounded himself with redicals such as Bill Ayres, whom he has secretly appointed to influencial positions without congress' concent.  The plan is still to "wreck" this economy and foment riots in the streets and utter chaos, and the outcome of that will be that "the people" will demand economic Socialism, which will be instituted.  They still to President Obama's speech in Kansas as a "Marxist manifesto".  They regard labor unions as evil.  They regard Teddy Roosevelt as a radical, despite the fact that conservative Taft, who followed him into the White House, pressed just as hard to break up corporate Trusts.  I also reminded Judy that bond yields actually went DOWN after the attempted debt crisis instigated by the republicans.  She didn't get it.  To her Down is Up.  There is continued talk of how the United States has always been a Christian nation and "National Days of Prayer" used to be called by government all the time, and that Congress used to be in the business of printing of Bibles.  Of course they believe that this country has a covenent with God and if we break that covenent with God, then God will punish us with all the plagues enumerated in Deuteronomy.  Of course I don't need to tell you what they think of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  They continue to talk about President Obama and the Occupy people of "Stealing from the real producers in this country".  There was talk about how   C E O's are worth every penny of their high salaries because they are such rare and tallented people who are exceptionally hard workers and bear an enormous responsability, for which they should receive just compensation.  Rush Limbaugh in his book predicted that Abortion would be the next big issue to come to the fore in this land and that it would become the basis of "The next Civil War".  At some point I asked why it was that President Obama is so hated above any and all other US Presidents.  I didn't date even broach the idea that it's because he's Black.

There was talk about the Supreme Court having too much power, and it does.  The Supreme Court was never intended to have the power to render laws passed by Congress as Unconstitutional.  Oddly Rush in his book saves some of his worth wrath for congress.  If Rush read his constitution he would realize that congress and particularly the House was meant to have the most direct power in that all 435 House members have to go before the voters for approval every two years.  But I know enough about the right to realize if they ever found that they agreed with Thom Hartman on anything, they would alter their position so that they did NOT agree with him.  My guess is that Ron Paul would be sympathetic to some sort of move to prohibit the Supreme Court from declaring laws passed by Congress in accordance with constitutional procedure- - as themselves Unconstitutional.  Judy says that property is an extension of People and therefore Corporations are people, and the Supreme Court agrees.  But no congress or any executive has ever agreed with this radical view that flies in the face of one hundred years of their own decisions.  (Selah)