The Conservative Political Action Conference.

This year whenever I hear "CPAC," I can't help thinking of CPAP.  It's like the Right is on a breathing machine nowadays!

Joe the Plumber, whose name isn't Joe and he's not really a plumber, has become the poster boy for a paper-thin faux populism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfoC0mv71_I

Ann Coulter, our resident Ava Braun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwjUX6IRX80

And Mitch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKm5QzZeRvQ&feature=related

The whole thing is on Youtube by now, including 11 parts Rush Limbaugh, which you are welcome to sit through, say hi to him for me.

In the past 20 years, the right wing has appeared to me as smug, aggressive, bigoted, mendacious, angry, and jealous; however, this is the first time I would ever describe them as "pitiful." 

Only the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc has in my lifetime paralleled the repudiation of an ideology the way the events of the past year has shown Reaganomics its place on the scrap heap of history. 

It's bunker days now for the American Right.  Look at the CPAC footage.  The world economy is faltering under excesses deregulated markets and all these guys can do is spout the same cliches about entitlements, class envy, family values, and old-fashioned work ethics we've heard since Reagan's 1980 campaign.  Do I have to mention no class of people behaves more entitled than Wall Street billionaires?

The Democrats must remember they are not responsible for the defeat of the ideas the far right hijacked as "conservatism."  The Dems were at best a impotent opponent of the right wing bullies  and more often co-conspirators with Wall Street Knows Best.  The Democratic Party certainly did not kill the conservatism initiated by Reagan; rather, it got hoisted on its own petard.  Well, petard was not quite the word I was thinking...

Anyway, Ben Stein says if we say our economic troubles will be over by the end of 2009 and we REALLY believe it...it will come to pass!  You know what that is?  Stein himself spelled it out in FBDO: "George Bush called it something D-O-O economics; voodoo economics!" 
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Oh dear, we're back to that again!

Those guys are so delusional it is unreal. The Republican Party is in shambles thanks to the Neocons and neither (both the Republicans & the Neocons) want to admit that. They don't have ANY leadership nor do they have any direction. The only thing they have is the belief in no taxes. Other than that, what? Nothing. 

I think it is very interesting how Karl Rove was instigating a "permanent Republican Majority" only instead, it destroyed the Party completely. It should be interesting to watch how they regroup. 



Cat

There is one faction of the Republican party that may actually rejuvenate them.

Ron Paul and Peter Schiff are examples of true conservatives -- true advocates of smaller government.  They aren't the ridiculous neocon types that have turned the GOP into a farce.

There is one faction of the Republican party that may actually rejuvenate them.

Ron Paul and Peter Schiff are examples of true conservatives -- true advocates of smaller government.  They aren't the ridiculous neocon types that have turned the GOP into a farce.



That's why I said the GOP hijacked conservatism.  The Republicans are a party for the rich.  The hamfisted tokenism of the Joe the Plumber only makes this more painfully obvious.  Ron Paul would ask the rich to live by the same rules the rich are telling the rest of us to live by.  If you run your bank into the ground, don't expect the taxpayers to give you a billion dollars.  That's really not what the Newts of the world stand for!

Rush Limburger said to CPAP, "Conservatives really like people!"

When I was growing up, that was job interview no-no number one! 
"Why should we hire you?"
"I like people."

It's something you say when you're not qualified for the job!

Are Rush Limburger, Joe the Plumber, Ann Coulter, and Sarah Palin the smartest conservatives in the country?  Of course not.  It's just that nobody else wants to be the face of the "conservative movement"! 

That's why I'm surprised Ron Paul went over to CRAP.  Thing is, call it the liberal media's fault, but I'm not seeing Ron Paul's speech on TV!  They keep showing Rush and Joe! 

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Well, to be fair, the Democrats are also responsible for bailing out the rich -- as they're currently doing.

Ron is one of the few politicians completely against all bailouts.

Well, to be fair, the Democrats are also responsible for bailing out the rich -- as they're currently doing.

Ron is one of the few politicians completely against all bailouts.


No argument from me there.  The entire political class had 25 years to figure out Reaganomics was a sham.  They didn't.  Now they have no choice because they played the Ponzi scheme to the last sucker!
::)

Well, they do have a choice.  It's just not an easy one.

The public has come to expect the government will rescue them whenever they need help.  Because of this, Congress feels like it has to do something.

The problem is that the more the government interferes with the market, the longer it takes for the situation to correct itself, and the more painful the correction becomes.

If we had just let these banks fall, it would have been very painful in the short run, but our currency would be in much better shape than it is now.

What we're doing now is setting the economy up for an even bigger fall by slowly depleting the world's confidence in our currency.  If you increase the money supply past a certain point, certain nations will start calling in the debts we owe them, and one by one, they will start to switch to other currencies and invest in other countries.

Hopefully, I'm wrong and this bill will work, but I don't put much faith in Keynesian economics.  It's failed in the past...

The public has come to expect the government will rescue them whenever they need help.


Hold it, hold it.  Where did you hear this?
???

Ann knows how to work a crowd....

Unfortunaly.

Some one needs to through a shoe at her.

;D

Some one said it best....

Is she a political commentator or a failed standup comedian. I really can't decide which and I don't think Coulter can either.

Joe The Book Writer?

;D

Ann knows how to work a crowd....

Unfortunaly.

Some one needs to through a shoe at her.

;D


I thought she was going to take off her own shoe and start pounding the podium with it.

On the other foot, if you threw a shoe at her, she could catch it in her jaws and bring it back to you!
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My favorite line from her CPAP rants is on the subject of the low ranking the historians gave Dubya among presidents.  She sneered, "They're historians; they're not Americans!"

This would come as a surprise to H.W. Brands,  Doris Kearns Goodwin, Alan Brinkley, Joseph Ellis,  Laurel Ulrich, Daniel Boorstin, Richard Wade, Gordon Wood, Gary Nash....

But you see, when the Right designates a person as an "American," they don't mean a person who was born, raised, or naturalized in the U.S.A., they mean "American" as a shibboleth for "a person who agrees with our ideology."  I was born in Boston and my ancestors arrived on the shores of Cape Cod in 1620...but I'm not an "American."  So I guess I can jest geeeeit out!!!
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As I saw on one right wing blog:
"Most historians are liberal, so they can't be objective."

They say the same thing about another group of un-American pantywaists: Scientists.

So if historians tend to be liberal and scientists tend to be liberal, what does that say about conservatism? 
::)

Hold it, hold it.  Where did you hear this?
???


Look at the bailout plan and the stimulus bill.  They're the most obvious attempts at the government appeasing the public in the face of a crisis.

The economics of these bailouts and the stimulus bill aren't very sound, because they have a Keynesian basis.

Yet, if the government actually let the market clear itself, people would look at the immediate damage done without considering the long term.  By consequence, these politicians would lose re-election as a result.

The problem is that the government and the public aren't thinking about the long term.  They want a quick fix.  What we're going to get instead is a quick fall.

I don't agree with you on Keynes, but I think we can both agree that the government was interfering with the market just as much on the way up as it is on the way down.  Either way, it's too late for no government in the market!
::)

I don't agree with you on Keynes, but I think we can both agree that the government was interfering with the market just as much on the way up as it is on the way down.  Either way, it's too late for no government in the market!
::)


I support increasing regulation in certain areas, but throwing trillions of dollars at industry isn't the kind of intervention I support.

I support increasing regulation in certain areas, but throwing trillions of dollars at industry isn't the kind of intervention I support.


We've had this debate before.  We could let the economy go down the drain (or in your words sort itself out) or we could do what FDR did and save the system in spite of itself.  If it were only the Wall St. types and the big time financiers who were to suffer I'd agree to let them go the way of the dodo, but the rest of us would go9 down the tubes with them.

Man, I thought you were talking about the Canadian Public Affairs Channel, which is basically the Canadian CSPAN. I was like, what the hell could these people possibly have to say about CPAC!

http://cpac.ca/_images/gui/header_logo_e.jpg

We've had this debate before.  We could let the economy go down the drain (or in your words sort itself out) or we could do what FDR did and save the system in spite of itself.  If it were only the Wall St. types and the big time financiers who were to suffer I'd agree to let them go the way of the dodo, but the rest of us would go9 down the tubes with them.


The Great Depression was very different from what we're currently experiencing.  Our economy was also quite different back then.

I don't think the same techniques are going to work this time.  If anything, I think the resulting inflation from all this will actually set us up for a bigger fall than what we would've initially had to suffer.

The Great Depression was very different from what we're currently experiencing.  Our economy was also quite different back then.

I don't think the same techniques are going to work this time.  If anything, I think the resulting inflation from all this will actually set us up for a bigger fall than what we would've initially had to suffer.


I don't know.  Bank failures, home foreclosures, rising unemployment, and a deflationary cycle, sounds the same to me.  But I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

The Great Depression was very different from what we're currently experiencing.  Our economy was also quite different back then.

I don't think the same techniques are going to work this time.  If anything, I think the resulting inflation from all this will actually set us up for a bigger fall than what we would've initially had to suffer.


Yeah, hyperinflation is a threat we should not trifle with.  And here are are some of those differences:

In 1930 the United States was emerging as an industrial power in the world.  We had strong labor unions.  We had a manufacturing economy.  We were a creditor nation.  We couldn't forge enough steel, mine enough coal, or cut enough timber to keep pace with the demand of industry.  It was an ecological nightmare to be sure; however, I am talking just about the economy.

The term "rust belt" has been familiar to me since childhood and now we don't even manufacture furniture and textiles in the South anymore.  We are the biggest debtor nation in the world.  We live in a world of strip malls and Internet ether.  We trade Monopoly money back and forth on Wall Street.  We had a speculation bubble in 1929, but at least our currency was backed up with gold and we could turn to our infrastructure for recovery.  If we had to marshal the same resources we did to win WWII today, we couldn't do it.

The character of our people is also different.  On the positive side, we are more tolerant and cosmopolitan than were were 80 years ago (in spite of the Christian right's best efforts to turn back the clock).  On the negative side, and what will be much to our detriment when our magical world of petrochemicals and silicon vaporizes, we don't know how to make do with local resources the way our grandparents did.  Our suburban landscapes are bereft of gardens and livestock.  Most of us would consider it beneath us to get up at 5:00 in the morning to milk the cow.  Nowadays a tailor shop means Men's Wearhouse where you got to get fitted for a prom tux.  We don't have community haberdashers.  Come on! 

The amount of "stuff" our grandparents expected to own in 1930 would seem very meager to us today. 

It's not like I'm any more prepared to cope with privations than the next guy.  I can barely sew a button on my own shirt!  I'm just saying as I've said before, we were much hardier folks 80 years ago.  When the Great Depression came on, we sure had a hell of a tear in our collective pants, and it there were some scary times; however, it we were to face the same plight today, I think there would be suburban militias toting semi-automatics trying to find your secret stash of Swanson TV dinners!
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Good points Max...

I know this is going to sound weird coming from me, but honestly...  at this point, I think I'd be willing to accept nationalization of banking and maybe even of automakers if it means that it will fix our economy.  One thing is for sure though...  it doesn't seem like throwing all this money around is doing much.

BTW, I use "grandparents" as a generic term.  Some of you might have grandparents who were born in 1955!
;)