Showing posts with label partisanship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label partisanship. Show all posts

Thursday, December 23, 2010

No Alternative


Congress has once again disgraced itself. It’s getting to be a common theme. The way START was passed is an outrage. Such congressional outrages can be expected to continue into the next session.

This Congress has reduced itself to the level of ‘dog and pony’ show. Only 13% of the people support what this Congress has done. Even with the infusion of Republicans, it will be difficult for the institution to climb back from such depths.

The clear winner is the president. He has been able to amass powers that go far beyond mandated constitutional limits. Anyone crowing that the next Congress will succeed in putting the brakes on what has essentially become a runaway executive branch has another thing coming.

2011 will see more of the same with the added drama of even more partisanship and blame shifting. Meanwhile, Obama’s overall agenda advances.

By 2012, there may well be no alternatives. Obama will own it all. Depending on the public’s mood for continued left-wing gavage, we may yet escape the indignity of civil unrest of the kind we see in Europe. Though it’s unlikely, with fires burning everywhere, that the people will remain in their houses hunkering down with the doors bolted shut.

There will be push-back.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

We Are All Socialists Now


We can now put another ornament on Obama’s socialist (mop) Christmas tree: net neutrality. Nobody can yet exactly say what it means. The full text of the new rules haven’t been released yet. But, putting yet another chunk of the free market under government control should tell you all you need to know.

As with other legislation that has passed this year, the new rules basically amount to a framework that allows government to regulate as issues emerge. “At the digression of…” appears to be a ubiquitous phrase in any such legislation. It is also important to note that no such legislation - from ‘health care’ to FINREG to START - has been assembled willy-nilly and without purpose. All of it has been carefully crafted and been filed away from public view for a long time to be taken out at a time most favorable to passage. Law makers have had virtually no way to assess the merits of any such legislation and were required to vote in hurried fashion, strictly along party lines.

Net neutrality, of course, bypassed Congress altogether. There was no opportunity to probe the past associations and affiliations of those who crafted and promoted it. Suffice it to say, that those of us who suspected Obama’s socialist bias all along were right. Vote socialist, and you get socialist - and worse.

At this pace, we can expect a seemingly legitimate bill to slip through a rubberstamp Congress within the next two years that gives Obama the presidency with unlimited power for life. It’ll all be done under the rubric of crisis - Chavez style.

Crisis is the mother’s milk of authoritarian regimes and as such we cannot expect much to improve our situation. Crisis is one of the easiest circumstances to manufacture. Socialism thrives on it. It has never played to finding solutions anywhere its been tried. It just dissolves the parameters by which to judge success or failure.

Republicans and tea party members will have their work cut out for them. Rolling back or de-funding existing open-ended legislation is, they will find, is much like trying to nail Jello to a wall. Their best bet will be to proceed with hearings, focusing on constitutional grounds. This will, however, leave them open to the charge of practicing McCarthyism. The public at large will not be encouraged to support such dramatic high-profile displays. It will judge any effort on the part of Republicans as grandstanding, racism, and rank partisanship. They can be expected to fold like cheap cameras and just go along.

It’s been coming for a long time. It’s all been planned so meticulously, down to the last detail. The shame of it is that we too had a chance to stem this socialist tide. Bush too had control of Congress for a time, but squandered the opportunity to gird us against the threat. The Right has done nothing but capitulate. We now face a situation not dissimilar to our fight against Islamic terrorism in which a whole roster of clarifying terminology has been swept off the table. Mention ‘socialism’ and the full weight of political correctness comes crashing down from the sky to stifle any further hope for honest debate.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/