Are Conservatives Losing Their Minds?

A Voice of Sanity - RobertRinger.com


A little sermon from the "greed is good" church.


Not that I dislike Ringer, but his moralizing won't work. Of all people, he should know better than this:

It’s painful to break this to you, Ann, but the Constitution doesn’t grant any rights to anyone. The primary purpose of the Constitution is to protect the natural rights of all citizens — specifically referred to in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you don’t possess the right to not buy something, the corollary is that the government can force you to buy anything. [comment: emphasis mine]

Comment:

Dear, dear, dear.  Nobody gives a flying fig about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence anymore, got that?  If you can make the rich pay "their fair share" and win on that, who cares who's rights get violated in the process?  As long as number one gets taken care of, none of that matters one whit.

GOP has an uphill battle

Why? It is because persuasion does not work as well as bribes. Why do women and minorities vote for Dems? It is not because of superior argumentation, nor from impeccable logic and reason. Nor is it from superior moral authority. It comes from who will promise them the most, and who is the most credible in delivering.

Update:

A different take:

Pennsylvania tall order

Excerpts:

• Stimulus signs that dotted highways after a trillion-dollar federal spending spree became signs to mock when the economy failed to improve
• The data from a yearlong measure of his approval rating, conducted by Gallup in Pennsylvania, aren't promising: 45 percent approve of his performance, 48 percent disapprove.
• Obama needs Pennsylvania to win re-election. Yet his Electoral College calculus is complicated by his failure to poll well among Jacksonian voters
• Even the class-based populist attacks that Obama emphasizes in his political rhetoric, traditionally thought to appeal to Jacksonian white voters, are falling on deaf ears this time around.
• For Obama to win here, his coalition will need to maximize the minority vote, keep single women and the youth vote firmly in his corner, eke out a win with gentry whites, split the independent vote and hold down the losses among Jacksonian whites.

Comment:  But that is still close to 50%, and that is all he needs for re election.

More here:  GOP Finally Discovers Obama's Achilles Heel: Just Let Him Do What He Does... And Encourage It!

Comment:  But giving him everything he wants just makes his followers happy.  Does making them happy make them less likely to vote for Obama?

The above discussion assumes that people give a damn about anything other than their own concerns.  If Obama can keep them happy enough for long enough, he will win.

Update:

A perfect case in point:

Obama's 2013 Budget: A Monument To Irresponsibility

Excerpts:

• What do you call a budget that boosts spending $227 billion, adds $329 billion to an already huge deficit, and does nothing to fix the entitlement crisis? If you're President Obama, it's called "fiscal responsibility."
• Obama ignored the warnings of every serious budget expert — including his own bipartisan debt commission — that without meaningful entitlement reforms the nation's fiscal crisis will never be resolved. 
• Obama also says his budget plan will "strengthen our economy and boost job creation," but it contains a $1.5 trillion tax hike on businesses and investors most likely to actually grow the economy and create those jobs.

Comment:

But Democrats believe that spending more will boost the economy.  About the deficits?  Just raise taxes.  The point is that each side believes what it believes and all talk just goes past each other.  Democrats don't care if the economy suffers, as long as their own interests are served.  They believe that the economy is better if their own case is better, what happens to businesses is of no concern to them as long as the government checks keep coming.  If you argue against raising taxes, you are only for the rich.  So, the assumption is that everybody is only for themselves, so it must be okay to keep being excessively selfish.  A moral argument falls on deaf ears.

Update:

One last comment.  If politics is completely amoral, as I think that it is, then the sales pitch that may have a chance to work must also be amoral.  Therefore, it comes down to this:  is the government the best insurer of your personal financial well-being, or is it the private sector?  You have to make this choice this time, because the government is set to expand significantly in the years ahead if Obama is re-elected.  A defeat for Obama may stall the march towards greater government involvement in the economy for now, at least.

Tyler Cowen's 'Great Stagnation'-- Joseph Friedlander Perspective and Thoughts on Related Subjects

nextbigfuture.com

I've read a portion of this, not all of it.  Based upon what I've read, I think it is a good post.  Worth reading.

Update:

I'm correlating this post with an earlier post on my other blog

Cheat You Fair: Who Is Buying This Market?: seekingalpha.com h/t Free Republic There's probably a long answer and this post is probably it. The shorter answer is here: The answer ...

Plus, Obama is on record as opposing lowering capital gains taxes even if it means more revenue. He justifies this on the basis of fairness.

Conclusion:

Economic growth is not desired. Redistribution of wealth is preferred. Also, a zero growth policy is the basic idea. It is based upon the notion of limited, finite resources.

In the end, the left will blame everybody else for the problems that they are creating.

Chuck Norris: Why I chose Newt over Santorum

wnd.com  h/t Free Republic

• Just three years ago in his interview with radio host and conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Santorum also emphatically told millions of listening Americans: “If you’re a conservative, if you’re a Republican, there is only one place to go, and that’s Mitt Romney.”
• As noted by the Club for Growth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the South Carolina Hotline Blog, and other watchdog and news sources, here are the reasons that my wife, Gena, and I gave our endorsement to Newt, not Santorum: [ comment:  over 20 points follow, won't list here]
• It’s no wonder in January that Rep. Ron Paul accused Santorum of having a “very liberal” political record.

Comment:

After this, you have to wonder- who's left?  Santorum has said that he had to represent Pennsylvania.  That's the same type of argument given for Romney.

Perhaps it's a matter of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Somebody has to win.  And Obama must lose.

Confirmation bias masquerading as evidence to support the climate change church

I tackled the issue of the belief in climate change awhile back.  Then I went on to discuss "churches" in the generic sense, as it is just a small leap to get from there to the climate change church.

Science and religion get confused often and what you end up with is a church.  How can you tell a church from science?  Perhaps a way is through the understanding of the concept of confirmation bias.  That is to say, people will focus on what they want to believe, and whatever they find that supports this is what they'll cite as scientific evidence of what they already believe.  I think that is what's happening in politics with respect to the global warming issue.

If the science behind global warming was really science, they wouldn't be looking for it, per se.  But that is what the politicians are looking for.  They will approve science projects that only look for the existence of global warming and bingo!  there it is.  Why should anybody be surprised by the finding of global warming when politicians spend so much money looking for it?

If you believe it's there, you will pay money in order to find it.   If not, you'll spend money on something else. It can work the other way too.  For example, if cold fusion is a fraud, the government won't "waste" money on it.  Whatever is your bias in the first place is what determines the way you act.  It has nothing to do with truth, but what you believe is the truth.  The quest for the truth is not a quest for truth, but to confirm what is already believed.

That's not science. That's a church.

But what if cold fusion is not a fraud and it would solve the global warming issue?  What about all that spending on finding something that was already believed in the first place and what about that spending that might have solved the problem that you say you believe?  If each were explored with an open mind, the truth may have a chance to come out.  Not only that, but more.  For an open mind to situations may lead you to answers to problems.  Therefore, there is no need for denial, but there is a need for open minds.  Instead, what happens is that money gets spent on confirming what is believed and a possible solution for a possible problem gets starved for funds.

In any case, you will need energy.  Why not find that?  Even if fossil fuels caused global warming, what could that information do for anybody?  Stopping the use of fossil fuels will not happen regardless of any cause and effect with respect to the issue.

In the end, money gets spent to support a church. It doesn't get spent to solve problems that exist or may exist.

Civics Test Compare Your Score with College Professors and Elected Officials.

I took the test.  And I posted the results along with 500 other people.

I wonder how many didn't do so well and didn't post the results.  The average score is rather low, and the average for college professors and elected officials are no exception.

But these people think that you are the idiots.

The left's Moby Dick Moment

h/t Transterrestrial Musings

There was something about this post that struck me like the scene in First Contact, the Star Trek movie. It was the theme about revenge, like Captain Ahab wanted with respect to the whale and what it came to mean for him.

Instead of the Borg taking over the Enterprise, this is with respect to the phenomenon which the left is pleased to call "climate denial". But it isn't about climate at all, it is all about race.

Let’s remember what is too rarely discussed in polite company: Climate denial is largely concentrated among conservative white men. And not just conservative white men, but old conservative white men, otherwise known as the GOP base. The average age of a Fox News viewer is 65. A 2008 survey found that Rush Limbaugh’s audience is 72 percent male, 80 percent conservative, and an average age of 67.

So, it can't possibly be about the science.  No, it is about race.  Just to be sure about this, it isn't the issue of climate, no, it is the entire range of issues amongst the left.

This is a cohort that has convinced itself that bike paths are a U.N. plot. And I don’t mean “bike paths are a U.N. plot” in some sort of satirical, poetic-license sort of way. They really believe bike paths are a U.N. plot. They’ve convinced themselves that Obama is a Kenyan socialist with no birth certificate who apologizes for America and wants to fundamentally transform it into Europe, where they loll about all day on welfare, having homosexual sex while the Muslims take over. They believe in death panels and reeducation camps and giant North American mega-highways and creeping Sharia.

So white men are like the great white whale, who do all this damage to their treasured beliefs.  The damage has been done by the white men, who stand in for the role of the white whale- Moby Dick.  They, on the other hand, are like Captain Picard, who doesn't know when to quit.  There's nowhere in the piece about the science.  It is about politics and beliefs- those who disagree with the left are evil and must die and will die eventually.

I will make them pay for what they have done.

The white man has destroyed their world and they will have their revenge.  Don't interrupt them while they hunt their whale.

Update:

I wanted to add that this conflict seeking behavior is the opposite of what I've been trying to put forth on this blog.  The blog isn't about conflict over global warming, or what have you, it is about solutions to problems that exist in the here and now.  Amongst the problems indicated by the post mentioned is this conflict seeking behavior.  If climate change were the issue, the solutions exist within the parameters of what we already know.  But it isn't about climate change, it is about "the other".  But if it is the conflict with "the other" that you seek, the solutions to the problems mentioned aren't wanted.  It is  "the other" that is the problem.  Eliminating them is the solution in that universe.