Define "Irrational" & Other links

October 18, 2010 By

I don’t know where I found this, perhaps from Hot Air, but it does make a pretty sound case that President Obama has it quite wrong, and that Americans are not the “irrational” ones:

So, yes, let’s take a look at the facts and the science. Your stimulus bill was passed last year by the Democrat majority in Congress along strictly partisan lines. You told us that the $787 billion dollar act had to pass or else unemployment might exceed 8%. The bill passed, most of the money was spent and unemployment exceeded 10%. It is currently at 9.6%. You said that your government would be accountable for the spending. That Vice President Biden would personally oversee the program to assure transparency and accountability. So what did we get for our $787 billion dollars:

* Checks sent to 10,000 dead people
* A web site (costing $18 million) that enumerated spending in non-existent Congressional districts
* $1 billion for the US Census (on top of the $3 billion cost overrun)
* $448 million for a new headquarters for Homeland Security
* $248 million for furniture for the new Homeland Security headquarters (feel more secure?)
* $412 million for Center for Disease Control buildings and property
* $500 million for National Institute of Health buildings (notice a pattern here?)
* $600 million for hybrid vehicles for federal employees (made by US companies, right???)
* $200 million for alternative energy vehicles for military installations.
* $246 million for Hollywood producers to buy film (and thanks for supporting the Democrats)
* $75 million for “smoking cessation activities” (gee, Barry, just quit already)
* $308 million for a clean energy project with … (wait for it) … BP
* $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station
* $3 million for a “turtle crossing” in Florida

There’s more, so read it all.

Egregious Harry Reid poisons a positive and makes the whole world groan in in disgust.

Cubachi: Chilean president found inspiration in Churchill. You know…the guy Obama wouldn’t have in the Oval Office.

Presidential Diction. Smartest guy ever to “step down” into the presidency.

Newsweek: Catching on that Obama will not be as smart as Bill Clinton and shift toward the middle after the election.

Christine O’ Donnell and Bill Maher: I totally agree with Ann Althouse, here, and think the left comes off terribly, too.

Daniel Foster has more on the Democrats “foreign money” hypocrisy. Seems the Democrat have umm…taken in twice as much as the GOP.

Liz Cheney gave Howard Dean a pretty sound thrashing over it, and the whole “prove a negative” Axelrod playbook.

Speaking of Axelrod, he’s the stone thrower in the glass house

Instapundit: would like to see this on a network spot. So would I!

38 African American Republicans are running for national office. Did you know that? Neither did I! It mustn’t fit the narrative!

Doug Mataconis asks: Whither Libertarians

Melissa Clouthier answers: they’re nearly irrelevant

Greg Mankiw: Barney Frank, then and now. There may not be a later

Spengler: unhappy with events in the Middle East

In return for a temporary truce in Iraq – a truce that is now crumbling as Iran inserts its military proxies into the Baghdad government and the Sunni fighters defect – America allowed Iran time to possibly produce weapons-grade uranium, stock Hezbollah in Lebanon with advanced missiles, and deploy terrorist networks wherever it wanted.

All of this is blowing up in America’s face, along with the twin farce in Afghanistan. The same talking heads who cheer-led the Bush administration claim that the problem is that Obama has encouraged the enemy by signaling his desire to withdraw. They know perfectly well that American voters cannot make sense of why so much blood and treasure has been poured into countries about which they care little.

What is also going on in the Middle East

Merkel: Multiculturalism is an Epic Fail. The problem with it is that if the multiple cultures don’t doesn’t eventually coalesce into the “melting pot” all you have is a bunch of ingredients, but no stew.

Teen suicides: Is the “wisdom of the age” contributing to the tragedy?

Archbishop Chaput: Our youth have lost the moral vocabulary; in truth we haven’t taught it well. The remarks from the teacher are a little chilling.

Ann Althouse: defends Christian fundamentalists against the “homophobe” charge. She does a very good job articulating the Christian perspective – better, in fact, than many Christians can manage.

Could the next big tv star be a priest? Or maybe two priests?

Jobs are better than charity? Americans used to know that! Teach the man to fish, and all that…

Another stab to the heart of the electoral college

More on the question of elitism

Simcha Fisher on forced “voluntary” sterilization

A hidden kind of suffering

“Catholic vs. Protestant”; the beat goes on and on

Fr. Dwight: a tough word for sneering ex-Catholics

St. Mary MacKillop: Some want to call her the Patroness of clerical sex abuse victims. Well, okay, but seem to me we should at least get her story straight, for posterity.

Fr. Barron: Seeing the scandal through biblical eyes

First Things does its first-ever ranking of colleges

Filed Under: Egregious Harry Reid, Election 2010, Elitism, Serving up hot links
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  • Libby

    So many good links…I’ll only comment on the O’Donnell clips: what an amazing display of liberal misogyny! Can you imagine,say Naomi Wolf, passionately discussing sexual harassment (maybe Anita Hill), and having prominent conservatives respond with “You would look great in a black swimsuit” or paternally advise “You need to give in to your urges every now and then”? Amaaaazing.

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    You told us that the $787 billion dollar act had to pass or else unemployment might exceed 8%. The bill passed, most of the money was spent and unemployment exceeded 10%.

    It turns out that the hole the Bush Administration left was much bigger than originally thought. That would be a misestimate. A bigger stimulus may have been called for, but that has to be balanced against the long-term effect on financial markets.

    * $248 million for furniture for the new Homeland Security headquarters (feel more secure?)

    Because we expect people to sit on the floor and not have filing cabinets. The list is typical for any large expenditure.

    And so on.

    In any case, the irrationality and misinformation includes tidbits such as almost a majority of Tea Party supporters who think that Obama has raised taxes, when taxes are actually at one of their lowest points in modern history, indeed, much larger than they were during the period known as the Affluent Society.

  • Doc

    Give it a rest Zach. You make my punch line seem real (The sign on Obama’s desk reads, The Buck Stops in Crawford, TX).

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    Doc: You make my punch line seem real (The sign on Obama’s desk reads, The Buck Stops in Crawford, TX).

    The issue is irrationality in the electorate. There is a great deal of misinformation borne of preconceptions, including that Obama raised taxes, death panels, etc.

  • Tonestaple

    I saw the Angela Merkel story on Yahoo’s front page this morning. My first thought was, Finally, some sense. My second thought was, what else do we get with that? And then I noticed that one of the little sidebars for the Angela Merkel story said “Some want a Fuehrer” which led to this article: link

    We may bitterly cling to our guns and religion but it looks like a fair number of Germans are still clinging bitterly to their xenophobia.

  • http://jscafenette.com/ Manny

    The President is reducing himself to an incoherent shriek. It reminds me of the wicked witch splashed with water and shriveling up into a cry…lol.

  • Joseph Marshall

    Here is how Ed Morrisey thinks a stew should taste:

    Merkel’s speech may be one of the more important given by a Western leader in the last several years. It underscores that immigrants have a duty to assimilate if they want to live in another country, and that the receiving nation’s responsibilities do not include carving its nation or its laws into mini-models of the nations that the immigrants have left. Immigrants must either assimilate and accept the social and especially legal structure of their new home, or go to a country that more fully fits their own values and practices.

    Who knew? “Assimilation” is a synonym for obedience to local law. I always thought that “assimilation” was the degree to which your personal culture was disguised with veneer of the culture of the majority, so that who and what you are never becomes a serious issue even if you do obey the law. That is the sense, at least, that the historians give it when they point out that before 1930 the Jewish population of Germany was the best assimilated in Europe.

    Over here, at least, “multiculturalism” isn’t a policy, it is a fact. In a decade or so there will simply be no “majority” culture to assimilate to.

    I sometimes think that good folks like Ed are so worried about immigrants and “assimilation” as an outlet for their uneasiness with the multicultural facts on the ground over here.

    It seems perfectly clear to me that, for example, the urban Chinatowns in America have not kept the stew from cooking slowly and well.

    But then, in America, the law is supposed to protect and serve its citizens rather than transform them. And our Chinatowns are a testament to the value of such a conception of the law.

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    Chinatown, Little Italy, Harlem, No Irish Need Apply, Greektown, Mexican Village, Amish Country, Poles, Romanians, Creole, Cajun, Thai, Vietnamese, Russian, African, Ukrainian, South Asians, Quebecers, Catholic Greenwich Village, and all the other ethnic groups that contribute to the mosaic of American culture. Oh, and the descendents of slaves.

  • Rhinestone Suderman

    All the immigrants I’ve ever met, in all the “Little Saigons”, China towns, and the Syrian-Arab church I attend, seem quite pleased to be in America and perfectly willing to obey her laws, and blend in, while still hanging on to their own cultures; that’s what America can do for you. (Though, in the case of the Syrian Christians, I suspect their culture isn’t one either Joseph, or Zachriel, would approve of, or want to see continue.)

    It should be remembered that scattered pieces of glass strewn across the floor aren’t a mosiac until they’re assembled a pattern, and just setting out meat, potatoes, veggies on the counter won’t create a stew; you actually have to put both these things together. There should be some sort of pattern, or recipe, to bring people together in a society

  • Doc

    Zach’s like an Obama Mini-Me. The issue is the irrationality of the electorate. How arrogant. If anything, the irrational election was in 2008, when the public voted for a man specifically because of the color of his skin, in an effort to finally have the media stop referring to America as a racist nation. How foolish. The voters now see that the race card will be use whenever we reject the policies advocated by our progressive betters.

  • Rhinestone Suderman

    Doc, yes, that darned old electorate! If it were just less irrational, we wouldn’t have any problems.

    i have to agree—the irrational election was in 2008; black or white, Obama just didn’t have the kind of experience necesary to lead the nation.

    The race card has been played so often, and by so many, it’s wearing out. It’s also becoming obvious it’s being used as a tool, to squelch any, and all, criticism. Eventually, it’s going to have to be, “Sorry, your race card is overdrawn!”

  • http://www.lisagraas.com Lisa Graas

    Thanks for the linky love, my sister, but what really caught my attention was the suggestion about St. Mary Mackillop. I think St. Dymphna would be a good choice. Her father wanted to marry her. A priest took her away for protection. St. Dymphna’s father lopped both their heads off because of both her refusal and her Christianity. She is patroness for those who deal with mental disorders because it is believed that her father had a mental disorder. Many cures have been attributed to her. Her shrine is in Massillon, Ohio. I’ve been there myself and received a wonderful blessing from the priest who is the caretaker for the shrine, Fr. Ed Gretchko. He is priest in both the Byzantine and Latin rites and this was the first and only time that a blessing was chanted over me. They are wonderful people there and I recommend anyone who has suffered from sexual abuse by someone close to them please adopt St. Dymphna as your patroness and, by all means, visit the shrine. Just Google National Shrine of St. Dymphna.

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    And yet the very people protesting loudest about high taxes don’t know that federal taxes have not been raised, but lowered.

  • Doc

    Here’s the thing, Zach. Most people who are really ticked off about the federal government are not merely focused on taxes. It’s regulatory intrusion, federal overreach, and runaway growth of the federal government, which will automatically lead to massive growth in corruption and waste. It has produced a blowback, known as the Tea Party movement.

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    Doc: Most people who are really ticked off about the federal government are not merely focused on taxes.

    Taxes was just an example. It includes death panels, birth certificates, xenophobic remarks, socialists have taken over, all terrorists are muslims, and all sorts of other things. And it’s not just the laypeople, or something misspoke, but constantly invoked by many in positions of leadership.

  • Doc

    Birth Certificates? Really? C’mon, you know that I know that you know you’re just building strawmen here. Terrorist attacks? Let’s see, what phrase was used during every terror attack over the last dozen years or so? Ummm, oh yeah. Allahu Akbar! God is great. An exclamation that God is blessing their act of jihad. Xenophobic remarks? Meaningless cliche’. Death panels? It’s a metaphor for an uncaring bureaucracy that does indeed lead to unnecessary deaths which result from decisions taken out of the hands of patients and doctors. See the multitude of examples from Britain.

    And on taxes, the Tea Party movement is smart enough to know that this unsustainable growth in federal government will lead to much higher taxes. You know it too. You, however, think it’s a good thing.

  • http://zachriel.blogspot.com/2005/07/liberal-v-conservative.html Zachriel

    Doc: And on taxes, the Tea Party movement is smart enough to know that this unsustainable growth in federal government will lead to much higher taxes.

    Bush’s unfunded Medicare Prescription Bill will add more to the deficit than TARP, the stimulus and the health care bill put together.
    Taxes should not be raised broadly until the economy has started to recover. Fortunately, the U.S. is still in a position to borrow, or it could have been much worse. However, cuts and taxes are probably inevitable.

    Doc: You know it too. You, however, think it’s a good thing.

    Lean and efficient government is the key to sustained growth.

    Doc: It’s a metaphor for …

    Ah, it’s a metaphor. Just like the birth certificate craze and socialism smears are a metaphor, for what? For being “other”. And death panels is a metaphor too, even though leaders of the Tea Party talked as if they were real proposals.