Rebane's Ruminations
November 2012
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George Rebane

In general, liberals are not stupid; many of them just have bad luck when they think.  This cannot be said of California liberals.

Recently I have encountered a literal flood of observations and events that provide more insight into the workings of the now-dominant national liberal mind.  This small compilation is by no means comprehensive.



Regarding the Fiscal Cliff, President Obama assures his innumerate supporters that in “raising revenues” through closing “loopholes” (aka, the other guy’s legal deductions) will not be sufficient to bring in the mysteriously needed $800B added taxes during the next decade.  Raising tax rates on the “rich” is required, otherwise “the math just does not add up.”

Meanwhile, the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute advises us that the Republican plan to cap deductions at $50K would raise $750B over the same interval, and decreasing the cap to $25K would raise $1.4T – all without raising tax rates.  It is clear that the President needs to remediate some of the arithmetic he was supposed to have learned in grade school.

But as any mildly interested American knows, the objective here is visible class punishment, no matter how many businesses it hurts and jobs that get cut and/or are not created.  You see, it’s a liberal thing.

In the meantime, the striking workers’ union at Hostess are holding fast to their demands for increased compensation that is now causing the company to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy – i.e. shut down.  This will remove 18,000 plus workers from the nation’s payrolls.  (I’m told that somewhere there is an old law that says if a union job action causes a company to go out of business, then the newly unemployed union members do not qualify for government unemployment benefits.  But that’s another matter.)

The butt stupid union leadership – liberals all – don’t understand the difference between striking a government supported oligopolist, and striking a business operating in a competitive free market.  For the latter there is no slack from the dollars and cents that define the real world.  But again, habitually shooting yourself in the foot, and then wondering where the shot came from is a liberal thing.

SecState Hillary, that hard-traveling statesman and diplomat, is again on the road and not available for congressional testimony on Benghazi.  (One of these days we’ll do a summary of her architecture of global foreign policy failures, but not now.  For an early snootful, read here.)

Apropos to that, recently unemployed CIA chief Petraeus has apparently given another version of events transpiring after 11 September 2012.  It turns out that he knew from the gitgo that it was an Al Qaeda terrorist attack, and claims to have said so at the time.  Moreover, it turns out that then everyone at State, FBI, White House, and maybe even MSNBC knew that the video had nothing to do with the murder of four Americans that night.

And here’s the kicker, UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s now notorious and shameful Sunday performances on national TV are excused by liberal members of Congress because the globally known attack was still being considered as “classified” information on 16 September by the WH, whose occupant today invites the media to give him their best shot, since it was he who told Rice to say what she compliantly said.  No one seems to be picking up that, if the ‘still classified’ BS was in effect, then Rice could have simply demurred on that ground, and not launched a blatant fabrication to make the electorate believe the President’s lies that he had vanquished Al Qaeda.

And even more mysterious is why legislators having attended both Petraeus’ testimonies must rely on their “recollection” of the first testimony to contend that Petraeus has changed his story in the interval.  Didn’t someone, like Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, have a goddam recorder going during these critically important closed door hearings?  We’re now relying on fond memories of month-old conversations about what Petraeus said?!!  Must again be a liberal thing.

Finally, a true insight into liberal thinking, that re-surfaces as regularly as the sunrise, is the gross misunderstanding of how individual liberty and social equality are strongly linked.  Astute political philosophers have pointed out for more than two centuries that those two notions, or attributes of governance, are inversely related – you cannot increase both concurrently, raising one inevitably lowers the other.

Yet this almost tautological truth is not accessible to a mind embarked on the now much-traveled liberal road.  In order to sell the unread on the benefits of collectivism, the liberal must constantly dredge up and re-decorate his rhetoric with the great propagandist bamboozle of the French revolution – ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité!’ – that formed the foundation of the modern miscreation called socialism.  To demonstrate the strength and spread of this myopism, I was recently saddened to see an otherwise rational RR reader succumb to this most liberal of tenets.

Posted in , , ,

86 responses to “The Liberal Mind – A Recent Potpourri of Revelations”

  1. Russ Steele Avatar

    Here is another example of liberal thinking:
    Gov. Jerry Brown told attendees at an environmental conference Friday that climate change must be prevented or humans might one day be forced to live on another planet.
    Addressing the Greenbuild Expo in San Francisco, Brown lauded California’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gas emissions, which began this week. It was the formal launch of the nation’s most ambitious carbon-trading market, which for the first time established a market-based system to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.
    The Democratic governor said future generations will be living “indoors … or we’ll be living on some other planet.” He urged other states and the nation to follow California’s lead, saying the state can only do so much by itself.
    “Human impact on climate is real,” Brown said. “It is growing, and we need to take steps to stop it or there will be catastrophic consequences.”

    The “growing” referenced by Gov Brown stopped 16 years ago. The only thing growing is Brown’s anticipation that cap and trade will being in billions to fill legislators political slush funds. He wants to sell CO2 for $35.00 ton. On the EU Carbon Market you can buy a ton for $0.87. Only a liberal could craft a scheme to sell us clean air and then tax us for using it.

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  2. Russ Steele Avatar

    Some more lefty thinking, taxes are for the little people they do not have to be paid by the anointed:
    Thirty six Obama aides owe a grand total of nearly a million in back taxes. $833,970 in back taxes is owed to the government by Obama’s government lackey aides. But this isn’t limited to the 36 Obama aides. At the EPA for example, 413 people owe more than $19 million in back taxes! Nineteen Fricken Million dollars! At the FDIC, 185 employees owe more than $3 million; and five people at the U.S. Tax Court owe $62,508.
    You see this is why liberals are so eager to raise taxes, they don’t pay them anyway!

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  3. Billy T Avatar
    Billy T

    The liberal mind is a piece of work. The more we more toward socialism (be it slowly or quickly), the more we lose our personal liberties and freedoms. The libbowels get all up in arms with such talk and say “Or, so you think it is ok to poison your well and contaminate everybody downstream?” No. There is a reason we have stop signs and are not free to yell FIRE in the proverbial movie theater..
    The libs possess a twisted ideal of social justice. They judge social justice (their God) by outcomes, not opportunities. In pursing such a goal, they have to trample personal liberties and The Constitution of the United States of America to achieve their dastardly outcomes. They have no choice. Its the way they are wired. Except, of course, when it comes to legalization of pot and the like. Then they become staunch libertarians.
    The outlandish defensiveness and outrage by posters who have broken thinkers are evidenced by comments responding to Dr. Rebane’s recent posts. Doc, you hit too close for some and struck a nerve. Libbowels actually believe they are doing the greater good. Its more like a comedy of errors. Strike that. It is more akin to a Greek tragedy.

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  4. Billy T Avatar
    Billy T

    More broken thinking. President Obama said there will be 1 million electric cars tootling down our roads by 2015. The good news the Leaf is the best selling all electric car in the USofA. The bad news is they have not sold 7,000 Leafs year to date. Give them time. They might break 7,000 before the end of the year and maybe the Chevy Volt will sell half as much. How much do we pay the taxpayer to buy a Volt? How many thousands can the taxpayer write off this government subsidized car? 5K, or is it 10k?
    http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/11/16/nissan-leaf-wont-meet-sales-targets-in-2012/

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  5. Michael Anderson Avatar
    Michael Anderson

    Re. the items:
    * Fiscal Cliff–yes, class punishment. Elections have consequences.
    * Hostess–no worries, we can make our own: http://www.mnn.com/food/recipes/blogs/make-your-own-hostess-treats
    * Benghazi–yeah, bummer. It was a football game, they did the ol’ Statue of Liberty play. Faked you out. Plus sex with cheerleaders. Beautiful.
    * Liberty vs. Equality–I addressed this in my recent comment on the Ruminations – 13nov12 thread above.

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  6. D. King Avatar
    D. King

    Well, it should have been the video what caused it.
    We can’t let circumstances get in the way of our perfectly sculptured narrative.
    Ah…….
    Big Oil, Big Tobacco, George Bush, Climate Change, Fair Share, RACISTS(!);………..Sorry, I panicked!

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  7. George Rebane Avatar

    MichaelA 1132pm – And hurting a large segment of your own constituency in order to pander to them just because they are stupid is a cruel way to maintain your aura of infallibility. The consequence of electing that kind of leader is what saddens even many in his own party.
    In these times the union’s message to Hostess’ 18,000 workers not to worry, that they can make their own, will probably go over like a fart in church. Nevertheless, the workings of such liberal minds remain totally beyond comprehension to the rest of us.
    The bottom line concern here is that Obama’s impact will have ramifications that may outlive our Republic.

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  8. Billy T Avatar
    Billy T

    Mr. Anderson. Class punishment? Exactly. That is the term I have been searching for. Perfect. Should add “class punishment” to Rebane’s dictionary of words and phrases.
    Mr. King. There is a racists lurking in every shadow and behind every bush in the libbowel mind.

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  9. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    This is what bugs me most about liberal thinking. There is a lot of endless chatter about the fiscal cliff. The talk is all one sided from the liberals. Its all about raising taxes. Period. WTF??? There is little to no talk about spending. The libs want mo money, mo money to keep things they way they are. We have a damn spending problem, yet they don’t want cuts in real terms. Not now, no way, not ever.
    Chuck Schumer wants another Stimulus spending program as his answer. The Dems and libbies left of Fantasyland say entitlement reform is off the table. No way, no how, not ever. Raising taxes is going to get us to the promised land??? Brain dead used tampons they are.
    We can not longer criticize Greece anymore. They are raising taxes and cutting spending so they can borrow mo money. We are raising taxes so we can borrow mo money. Its all about borrowing mo mula. Nary a utterance about living within our means. We are worse than Greece in debt to GDP ratio. We and Greece will do only what is required to get borrowed money.
    At first I could not understand the hate and vitriol against the Tea Party in 2010. Made libs spin their heads spewing green vomit like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. The Tea Party appeared to be a bunch on folks that avoided social issues and stood for smaller government and fiscal responsibility. Not even a political party. Smaller government, less spending, Pay-Go, if you will.
    Now I understand why the Tea Party is a dirty word in lib circles. The TP opposes everything the libs are for. The Tea Party is a threat to lib thinking. The libs see government as on top of the hierarchy pyramid and all things flow down from there. The Tea Party sees the people on the top of the hierarchy pyramid and the government on the bottom.
    I have not joined the Tea Party Patriots, but they are more in line with my worldview than any group out there. Now I get it. The TP must be destroyed by the libs as they are the antithesis to the libs’ broken thinkers.

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  10. earlcrabb Avatar

    Just wondering, Dr. Rebane, do you have a license to practice psychology?

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  11. George Rebane Avatar

    earlcrabb 1021am – No Robert, I got my doctorate the old-fashioned way. Not only did I have to learn a field (actually two fields) of practice, I, like all PhDs, had to demonstrate that learning by enlarging the field of human knowledge, and that to the satisfaction of my peers as had been the requirement since that level of philosophizing was recognized. Sadly, for the last two hundred years doctorates have been handed out to almost everyone for just learning a collection of tricks of their trade, some more considerable than others. They even give them to physicians.
    What little psychology I practice is done on the sly, hidden under the umbrella of ideology disbursement.

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  12. Steve Enos Avatar
    Steve Enos

    “Now I understand why the Tea Party is a dirty word in lib circles”… sorry, but that is very wrong. The Lib’s love the Tea Party and have from the start because they knew the TP would take down the R Party… the last election and the next elections to come make this clear.
    “TP must be destroyed by the Libs as they are the antithesis to the Libs’ broken thinkers”… sorry, but again wrong. It’s the R’s that are now in the process of destroying the Tea Party and hard right to clean up the mess they and folks like Herman, Sara, Rush, Allen, etc., etc, made of the R Party…. the last election and next elections to come make this clear too.
    It’s the R’s that must and will finish off the Tea Party. The Tea Party has no future for so many reasons.
    The R’s went hard right to play up to the extreme right and now the R Party is starting to do some major house cleaning in the hopes of a future as a party. Now the R’s and the hard right and TP will go at it while the Lib’s have pizza and beer and root them on as they melt down.
    As so many said and predicted when the Tea Party started up… the Tea Party will be responsible for taking down the R Party for years to come, they insured the re-election of President Obama, they rallied the D’s, minorities, women, gays, woman and young voters to vote D.
    The R’s will now clean their Party house, they will move towards the center, they will cut deals with President Obama. The remaining, ageing, 19th century stuck hard right and Tea Party will shake their fists and yell from the side of the road as America drives forward while they fade in the rear view mirror… all a direct result of the Tea Party, Rush, Sara, Herman and all the rest in the hard right, extreme clown car.

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  13. D. King Avatar
    D. King

    “…extreme clown car.”
    O.K. Enos, that was funny!

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  14. Russ Steele Avatar

    Ross Douthat: Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear. This disintegration will grow as the economy collapse become evident and they learn that Obama cannot, or will not, lead and his promises will go unfulfilled for an other 4 years.
    The Democrats did not do that well in Nevada County regardless of the Obama’s victory.
    The Tea Party has a 40 year plan and this as only a single election. You can see some of the 40 year plan coming together here in Nevada County in the election of Grass Valley City Council to Jan Arbuckle, while denying a seat to Democratic leader Jim Firth. It is back to the Grass Roots and build from the bottom and it is working in Nevada County.

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  15. Steve Frisch Avatar
    Steve Frisch

    Russ is right about one thing, the Tea Party is at the beginning of its planned 40 year struggle to take America to its vision of a 1000 year ….Republic…..and they are not done. We will need to crush them [metaphorically] at every election for the next decade to ensure the protection of the Constitution.

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  16. Russ Steele Avatar

    Steven@03:21PM
    Can you please explain how the Tea Party has violated the Constitution? What have they done that requires protection from liberal Democrats that violate it on a daily basis?

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  17. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    The Tea Party to me represents an idea more than political posturing.. Just like the founding ideas of the United States of America. The government that governs least governs best. Government must be constrained according to our Founding Fathers because government inherently lusts for power and control. Exactly like the libs who are driven by insatiable wanton cravings to control everything and put everything in its place. Under their control, of course.
    Ironically, those that say they are THE Defenders of our personal liberties are the first to tell us what to eat and drink and even how to live and what is acceptable speech and thought. Its their blind side. They are controlled by the need to control. What you sow is what you reap.
    I suppose we all remember the media’s astonishment and dismay when the Tea Party emerged after Obamacare. Them angry white folks even had the gall to carry Don’t Thread On Me flags of all things. They had to be racists and militant extremists to quote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and other quaint antiquated sayings from a by-gone era. Geez, they are sooo out of touch (and scary). The media and the libs have forgotten we where founded on an idea. That idea is personal freedom and a populace that tells government what to do, not the other way around.
    In the past 90 days alone, the Obama Administration has created out of thin air 6,000 new regulations affecting just about everybody. 6,000 in ninety days? At that pace the Executive Branch alone with lay down upon us 24,000 new regulations in a single year. Can’t wait to see what Congress will come up with.
    No, friends, going to the “hard right” will not bring down the opposition party. Darn hard to unseat an incumbent President unless you are Ronald Reagen or Bill Clinton. Obama’s margin of his reelection victory (compared to his initial election margin) was the lowest since Woodrow Wilson. We still are a center of right country any way you slice it. That is what Clinton found out.
    If being hard right means I stand for the ideals this country was founded on, then so be it. Personal liberties that are inherent in the human spirit and defended by blood shed against the control freaks and a government that actually believes it is the final source and arbitrator of those liberties….well then, I am a proud Right Wing Whack Job and part of the Great Right Wing Conspiracy to wage war on women and other minorities. Wait, men are a minority of this country. How foreign to the liberal mind.

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  18. George Rebane Avatar

    SteveF 321pm – Echoing Russ’ 422pm, yes, what has the Tea Party promoted or done that has been or promises to be unconstitutional???
    Will Rogers once said, “It ain’t what you know that worries me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.”

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  19. Todd Juvinall Avatar
    Todd Juvinall

    Dowd is a punk. Condi Rice has scraped less off the bottom of her shoes walking through a dog kennel.

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  20. Michael Anderson Avatar
    Michael Anderson

    Ummm…but she’s on your side this time, Todd.
    Look for the forest from the trees. Myopia isn’t pretty.

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  21. Steve Enos Avatar
    Steve Enos

    “The Tea Party has a 40 year plan”. Someone might want to check the current demographics and projected demographics for the next 40 years to see the future.

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  22. Michael Anderson Avatar
    Michael Anderson

    Here’s another one for you, Todd. Yet another New York Times columnist who agrees with your position. Who woulda thunk it?!?
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/kristof-Grandma-Faces-Down-War-in-Syria.html?hp
    I happen to agree with the analysis as well.
    “A 14-year-old boy, Muhammad Abbas, showed me scars on his stomach where a bomb had gravely injured him (and killed his best friend). He now must use a colostomy bag to collect his wastes. ‘I blame the Alawites,’ he said venomously. ‘They should all be killed.’”
    “NATO should create a no-fly zone in northern Syria and provide weapons (short of antiaircraft missiles) and intelligence and training for the rebels, to break the stalemate. Otherwise, as the war drags on endlessly, more people are killed and injured, neighboring countries are destabilized, and Muslim extremists gain credibility because they do confront the regime. Worst of all, sectarian tensions are growing and could turn Syria into a Somalia.”

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  23. Michael Anderson Avatar
    Michael Anderson

    More fun!
    As W.’s former aide Karen Hughes put it in Politico on Friday, “If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue.”
    http://blogs.christianpost.com/disciple/how-theelectoral-college-betrayed-the-people-12981/
    http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/maps/president/

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  24. Ryan Mount Avatar

    Michael-
    The whole “winner take all” electoral college thing makes no sense other through the lens of two-arty politicking. Texas and California are two big examples of this. It makes more sense to award electors based on district, rather than disenfranchise (I do not think that’s an overstatement) a sizable chunk of voters.
    This way, we can keep the electoral college to keep the less populated States happy, and better represent the vote. Also, ranked voting or alternative voting would give people another choice other than “I’m voting for the less of two evils” vote.
    The best thing that could happen in the Republic is a marginalization of one of the major parties. Either one would be fine for me. Looks like the GOP is first in line, unless they want to become more like Democrats. And that seems to be the message GOP Command. Like a dysfunctional marriage, the Democrats and the Republicans need each other.

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  25. Russ Steele Avatar

    More evidence on the dangers of liberal thinking:
    CALIFORNIA: What happens when Dems get everything they want. “The California Republican Party is functionally dead. And how is California doing, now that liberals have successfully terminated the state’s remaining conservatives?” #1 in debt, #1 in welfare, #1 in taxing the rich. And hoping for a federal bailout, I suspect. As is Illinois, which is in similar straits for similar reasons. “One-third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country’s population. That’s four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York. Meanwhile, California eighth-graders finished ahead of only Mississippi and District of Columbia students on reading and math test scores in 2011.”
    More here: http://washingtonexaminer.com/can-conservatives-prevent-the-u.s.-from-becoming-california/article/2513695#.UKpLfqWjeQp

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  26. George Rebane Avatar

    RyanM 557am & RussS 715am – both points long argued in these pages. And the repetition of California’s sad economic and education statistics is becoming more frequent as time passes and we sink deeper. The once remarkable thing was that the entire phenomenon has been invisible to the liberal mind. However, with rampant dumbth and generations of growing polarization (giving rise to clinically detected changes in brain processing), that blindness is also no longer remarkable.
    I am reminded of the Papua-New Guinea episode where anthropologists discovered a tribe of ‘stone age’ natives whose world ended at a river bank across which they saw nothing. And speaking of Papua-New Guinea, CARB’s long lamented (heraled by liberals) cap n’ trade (tax) debacle has launched. It too hearkens back to the benighted primitives of that isle in their years-long cargo cult practice, the connection to CARB was discussed here –
    http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2010/12/californias-purple-cargo-cults.html

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  27. Walt Avatar
    Walt

    Now here is some of that wild Progressive thinking at it’s finest.
    “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday that Congress should stop placing legal limits on the amount of money the government can borrow and effectively lift the debt limit to infinity.
    On Bloomberg TV, “Political Capital” host Al Hunt asked Geithner if he believes “we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling.”
    “Oh, absolutely,” Geithner said.”
    This sounds like it came right out of a Bogart movie. ( some here may even remember the famous line) ” Budget…? BUDGET!!???? WE need no stinkn’ budget!!! Start spendin’ Amigos! ” ( and the sound of cash register bells go off like machine gun fire)
    How did “spending our way to prosperity” work the first time? Now Timmy wants to do it again.

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  28. Ryan Mount Avatar

    When I confront my fiscal dove friends about this long term debt problem, they invariably remind me of two things, usually stolen from Professor Krugman:
    1) It’s the US Government, and we don’t necessarily have to pay it back in a normal fashion. It isn’t, they tell me, like a mortgage or credit card payment. We can tell foreigners to go suck it. They do admit that such adolescent behavior would have notable consequences.
    2) The bond market is low, which tells them that there’s no there, “there.”

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  29. Russ Steele Avatar

    More evidence the liberals cannot comprehend the unintended consequences of their actions.
    I highly recommend our liberal political leaders read and ponder this latest artcie by Joel Kotkin: The Rise of the Third Coast. While CARB is rasing the cost of docking in California ports the Gulf Coast is on the verge of capturing the fall out from this stupidity:
    The trends favoring the Third Coast will accelerate further once the $5.25 billion Panama Canal expansion is completed in 2014, as I pointed out in Forbes last year. The wider canal will be able to accommodate Asian megaships, which are currently forced to dock in California. That will open the Gulf to more Pacific trade, since most northeastern and West Coast ports have been reluctant to make the necessary capital investments to capture it. China’s abandonment of the Maoist ideal of self-sufficiency and its growing willingness to rely on imports of food and other items represent a huge opportunity for the region.
    Full article is here: http://www.newgeography.com/content/003230-the-rise-third-coast

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  30. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    Ah, California is a rich futile field of futile thinking, so I will let others gleam pearls of foolishness that are waiting to be found. Mr. Steele has already pointed out that CA’s 8th graders finished only ahead of Mississippi and DC in scores. Doesn’t DC spend the most per pupil in the USA? Ca’s solution to piss poor embarrassing results is to pass measures that pour more good money down the public education sinkhole thinking it will be all better this time. Keep doing what you are doing and you will keep getting what you are getting.
    Moving on the the Great Liberal Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the current liberal administration in its infinite wisdom hired someone with no experience. Oh, she has pretty of experience driving no doubt.
    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/19/massachusetts-highway-safety-head-loses-job-after-report-driving-violations/?test=latestnew

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  31. Paul Emery Avatar

    So if Liberals are so bad can any of you explain why the Republicans offer such pitiful alternatives?

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  32. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    Re: The fiscal cliff. They don’t call him No Drama Obama for nothing. Now the Dems are calling the Repubs “fear mongers” for trying to sound the alarm about the Fiscal Cliff. Yep, I have been doing the politics of fear and people like me are to blame. Let’s not discuss the issue. No, let’s shoot the messenger.
    Debt? Its not like real money or real consequences. Its all make believe. Its not even a real issue. Its just an entry in some imaginary ledger on somebody’s desk. Who can trust some bookworm who dons a green visor anyway? Nothing to see here. Just those evil Right Wingnuts up to their politics of fear again.
    Can you say Can Kicking Time? Thats right. I knew you could.

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  33. Russ Steele Avatar

    Paul@12:32
    The Republicans offered solutions and the Democrats offered free stuff for peoples votes. It was a no brainer for the voters, the solutions were going to limit the amount of free stuff. Every time Barack Obama opened his mouth he offered ice cream and 51.4 % of the people reacted like nine year old’s. Now you and I and all the other taxpayers are going to have to pay for all that “free stuff.”

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  34. MikeyMcD Avatar

    Big government’s legacy: Total debt hits new record: $16,281,329,916,599.63 (http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
    The Liberal answers: don’t worry about it, in the long run we will all be dead.
    I’ve never met/read a liberal who saw gov debt in a bad light or understood the enslaving ‘powers’ of said debt. They only see debt as bad when a rich capitalist deploys it.

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  35. MikeyMcD Avatar

    Paul, I saw very little difference between Romney/Obama. Both are pro-war, both Keynesian, both for socialized healthcare… as I have said before I think Romney could run as a democrat.
    The repubs are left-of-center and in need of a jolt to push them towards the right. Ditch the social platform (abortion/gay rights) and focus on debt, employment, broader tax base, smaller government, peace and individual liberty.

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  36. Paul Emery Avatar

    Mikey
    But the Repubs can’t do that without loosing the thumpers. Of course that’s what lost them any chance to take the Senate.
    Russ
    Are you saying Romney offered solutions? When Romney suggested volunteer deportation as a solution for immigration woes and borrowing money from your parents to go to start a business as “solutions” I knew they were going to lose. He will now join Bush in exile and will historically will be known as one of the worst candidates in modern history.

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  37. MikeyMcD Avatar

    Pandering to ‘the thumpers’ while focusing on federal government issues/topics can be done by the right candidate.
    Romney’s business resume was better than anything we will see again in our lifetime.

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  38. Paul Emery Avatar

    Mikey
    Do you have any insight on who that might be ? (candidate)

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  39. MikeyMcD Avatar

    He or She has yet to arrive to the stage… He or she may never come. I simply opined that it is possible to pander to ‘the thumpers’ while focusing on federal government issues/topics.
    🙂

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  40. Paul Emery Avatar

    Mikey
    Actually Mike Huckabee could have fit that bill. He left a pleasing memory in 2008 as someone who could work with both sides and keep the wingers in line. Too late now that Fox bought him out and encouraged him to be the media darling of the Christian right. Actually the Newt was the Repubs best hope but look what they did to him when he suggested a reasonable solution to Immigration issues. Now they are all embracing what they dumped him for. Lots of fun for sure watching the Repubs retreat and get attacked on both sides.
    Certainly George when you accuse the Liberals if being stupid you don’t look upon the Republicans as being smart.

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  41. George Rebane Avatar

    PaulE 421pm – You have a point there Paul. I see the Repubs as not knowing how to play in this sandbox of the brave new world. Their stated principles are way better than the Dems’ – when the Dems even list them – and their candidates are more attuned to the real world. But put them in the ring with Dems and a dumb electorate, then they look like they brought a knife to a gunfight.

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  42. Russ Steele Avatar

    Is “thumper”a racist dog-whistle for the left?

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  43. Russ Steele Avatar

    Should read “by the left”

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  44. Paul Emery Avatar

    Bible Thumpers Russ. More properly the Christian Right. Not to be confused with the fiscal conservatives or necessarily the Tea Party which is often falsely branded as activists for the social conservatives.

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  45. MikeyMcD Avatar

    “A modern liberal is someone who doesn’t care what you do, as long as it’s compulsory.”
    — Stanton Evans

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  46. Russ Steele Avatar

    Some thoughts on the failure liberalism by John Hinderaker at Powerline:
    “Things have now devolved to the point where California leads the nation in poverty:
    The Golden State’s poverty rate is a whopping 23.5 percent – higher than the District of Columbia, at 23.2 percent, and even Florida, and 19.5 percent.
    This is based on the federal government’s new poverty measure, and California suffered a bit because of its high cost of living, but that is a minor point–by any measure, California is number one in destitution. The cause is obvious: liberal Democrats have held unimpeded sway in California, just as they have in Detroit, Illinois, Miami, the District, and so on. Everywhere, the results have been similar. Where liberal policies are implemented, productive citizens fade away and poverty follows.
    Sure, there are still a few rich people in California; the rich are always best able to withstand the ravages of leftism, for a time. But California now appears to be in a death spiral, and the consequences will be devastating, not just to Californians, but to the rest of us who will be called on to pick up the tab, once again, for failed liberalism.”

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  47. Todd Juvinall Avatar

    I watched a CSPAN panel from AEI last night regarding immigration and the minority vote. They were all over the board on the reasons why Obama received mopre votes. He got 71% and Romney got 29%. Well, the one fellow said after Reagan granted amnesty to the Latinos in 1986 they voted n the next Presidential election as follows. Dukakis 71% and GHW Bush 29%.

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  48. Bill Tozer Avatar
    Bill Tozer

    Mr. Paul Emery. You appear to be a thinking kind of guy. You have stated positions as being anti-war, anti Christian Right, and Pro-Choice. What puzzles me is you do not declare yourself as a Democrat Liberal. It seems a perfect fit for you under the Big Tent, but then again, I have not walked a kilometer in your shoes.

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  49. MikeyMcD Avatar

    Bill Tozer 9:04am I think Paul understands the following:
    NRA, pot-heads and homosexuals OH MY!
    The title of this rant is somewhat misleading. I could have used a myriad of labels in place of ‘homosexuals,’ ‘pot-heads’ or ‘NRA.’
    I am surprised at how many people place the plight of various groups (abortionists, wealthy, etc) into different camps while ignoring the fact that the said group is made up of individuals. And each individual battles the same foe. Government.
    Each group is birthed by the desire of/for individual liberty. The liberty to do as they wish in the bedroom, protect themselves through armament, use their property as they see fit, eat/smoke what they want, etc.
    The demands, laments and frustrations of each individual is nothing short of a protest against an over-bearing government.
    [note: this rant will not focus on organizations that exist solely to collude with government (i.e. labor unions, environmental organizations, crony capitalists, etc)]
    Why can’t the religious zealot, the ‘prepper’, the bi-sexual, marijuana user, the wealthy tax payer/landowner, the employer join together to fight their common foe? At the end of the day each of these individuals wants the same thing…. Liberty.

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