Longer term consequences

Because the economy is going to recover without Republicans in charge, the right now loses the myth that only they can solve economic woes. This wound will last a couple generations. With it to the trash goes the right’s bigotry that theirs is the only morality, the only religion, the only good worthy of the word, that the rest of us are vile and immoral. So to goes the falsehood that getting sloshed on beer is less harmful than getting baked on brownies. Freedom to choose is not free if the choices are already chosen.

But the left loses something, too, with their victory. They lose the real messsage of the Right, poorly wrapped in fear and hypocrisy, about the power of the individual, the validity of making choices in our lives. There need be consequences for bad choices and individuals need to suffer those consequences. If society takes up too much of the burden we disable instead of empower. Freedom to choose means freedom to fail. We cannot eliminate risk nor should we. We make better choices knowing life is not easy. 

Romney promises time travel

Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney promised yesterday that he would guarantee time travel to all Americans by the end of his first term.

"Any American who chooses to travel through time will be able to do so. This is a freedom and America was built on freedom. Only I can do this for America and I have a plan to do this for all Americans."

Asked what that plan might be, Romney said "There is no reason for me to go into the details. If I provide any detail, my opponents, who oppose me and therefore oppose time travel, will simply start picking apart my plans and prevent me from getting elected and being able to provide the time travel I have promised all Americans."

Romney went on to say that "President Obama has failed to deliver on time travel. He has held America back from exercising their freedom to travel where they want, when they want. It is time for a change."

Questioned whether time travel was even possible, Romney said "I don't believe just in the possible. I believe in the unlimited possibilities of the American people. My experience in the private sector provided me with the experience to create jobs. That is what this election is about, the jobs I have experienced and my experience creating jobs. Millions of jobs for hard-working Americans.

"My opponent, the president who some worry might not have been born in America, does not like jobs. He does not want people to have jobs. All he wants is big government, voters who want free stuff and will never vote for me so screw'em, and no time travel for them, either."

Romney's running mate Rep. Paul Ryan was speaking to Council for American Families when told of Romney's new promise. 

Ryan said that time travel should first be offered to Americans "who want to go back and undo bad choices, make better decisions. Even in cases of justifiable rape, rather, where the claims of a raped woman can be justified after they are proven by the evidence gathered at the scene, as it were, which would be much easier with time travel, that woman can now choose whether she gets pregnant or she might even choose to keep herself out of harms way before the alleged rape even occurs."

Ryan said time travel could even result in the prevention of pregnancy when the fetus grows up to be homosexual. "No abortion and and no deviant. That's a win-win," Ryan said.

Romney did say his concept for time travel is based on the idea of "getting government out of the way of companies that will provide jobs for everyone and the safest, most cost efficient travel through time the world has ever known. Free markets provide competition that works to free markets from excessive government regulations that prevent the freedom to compete that all Americans demand and deserve," Romney said.

"The president, who once said that he favored opportunity for all Americans in a socialistic effort to redistribute wealth through progressive taxes that I never paid anyway, opposes Americans having jobs or traveling through time."

The Obama campaign was cautious in their response. "That Governor  Romney promises time travel by the end of his first term makes sense of so many things," said David Axelrod, Obama campaign spokesman. He would not elaborate.

Paul Ryan is Washington insider!

Can it be true? Paul Ryan has never had a job outside of Congress?

Paul Ryan has never met a payroll, never been in the "market place" he so blithely advocates for others? Never not had government perks? It's astounding!

Can it be true this man has never been in the private sector but has been paid out of our tax revenues his ENTIRE ADULT LIFE?!? If so, this is the best argument ever made for retroactively downsizing government.

No wonder Paul Ryan has so little compassion – he came of age in Washington D.C. He was born on third base, says he hit a triple, then tells everyone else coming to the plate that they should bat without a helmet. What gall. What hypocrisy.

He believes in Ayn Rand but leaves out that atheism is the core of her philosophy, which is baking a cake without adding flour. Or eggs. He says we cannot afford compassion as a country and really, it's a sign of weakness. Does this staunch Catholic think he is quoting Jesus!?

He makes up a silly budget fiction about how to give more money to the rich while cutting food and hospitals and schools for the poor. Then he says Democrats are divisive?! This ego-driven wanker even lies about his time in marathons. He's never even run in Oregon's rain!

Paul Ryan's budgets are a sleight of hand, his "everybody-on-their-own" philosophy heartless in this time of hardship, his adherence to "free markets" uninformed. Ryan is as ambitious as Mitt Romney and just as bogus.

Liberty and Liberals

"Single" seems to thrive on feelings he denies. In this case, feelings about "liberals." He sets up a "straw man" and then crows about knocking him down. (http://eyeonoregon.blogspot.com/2007/01/protect-and-serve.html)

Let's try this in language more plain: We did NOT say cops should not do anything when they feel threatened.

What we did say was that there needs to be greater scrutiny of the "I felt threatened!" defense, better training, possibly a change of culture in the union hall and squad room. Because there seems to be a pattern of behavior.

The other difference between bad cops and good liberals, “Single,” is that a bad cop carries a gun and a badge that allows him/her to victimize others with impunity. And those that do so damage all those good cops, the vast majority, we agree, as well as the rest of our social fabric.

That’s what we said.

The idea that "Single" may favor a society that, without much concern, allows police to batter a man because he didn't do "what the cops ask," even though the man was autistic and barely able to speak and follow directions, is a repugnant but possibly accurate representation of his whole philosophy.

There, a straw man of my very own.

We LIKE it when "Single" takes the opportunity to prove his "conservative manliness" over the "weak liberal" writer by saying there are only a few bad cops and a few good liberals.

It tugs at our “Wobblie” heart strings when “conservatives” do that sort of thing. Gives us a glow right from the 1940s and 1950s, not only a time of “Leave It to Beaver and “Father Knows Best,” but of Eric Hoffer and Alan Ginsberg and Jack Keouac and a vibrant left that was made up of working men and women who fought for these liberties on the battlefield and in the steel yard and ship yard and in the forests. Who bought bonds and made guns and sent their own children off to war.

Liberals are not “weak” by definition. They just misplaced their vitality, a few vital organs, too. Many of them from the past would not even be considered "liberal" today, but great confusion occurred after the 60s, with the boomers ascendant. It was the mushrooms, I just know it.

The left is ignorant about many things, like the effects of global free trade, and that all teachers are of value and should have equal access to the minds of our children, that good intentions are the equivalent of good action. The left can be quite confused about the difference between “equal opportunity” and “equal quality (equality) of life.”

But the left is not inherently weak, unless they choose not to fight.

And the best thing to fight for is liberty, and against those who think that a “police state” is a liberty-enhancing, safer place to live.

Democracy is a funny thing. It is not the bed of liberty, as many suppose. In fact, one of the most important warnings we’ve been given about democracy are the dangers inherent in “Tyranny of the Majority.” And if the last two presidential elections didn't convince you, nothing will.

Which is why we have a Bill of Rights, which is why our founding fathers designed a government that was INTENDED to be slow and awkward and noisy and inefficient.

"Single" my friend, "warm and fuzzy?" The only thing fuzzy here is your thinking. Like you, many of those today who believe they are "conservative" are not, they are actually statists, corporatists, Fascists or theocrats, or some foul amalgam of all of those. Like Cheney’s puppet in the “W”hite House.