The Peasants are Revolting!!

indyfromaz|

“Sire, The Peasants are Revolting.”
“You’re telling me, they stink on ice” (Mel Brook’s History of the World Part 1)

And from one of the best films ever, Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
ARTHUR: I am your king! (Think Obama, The Ivy Tower Harvard Educated Community Organizer and Academic Professor )

OLD WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
OLD WOMAN: Well, how did you become king, then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held Excalibur aloft from the bosom of the water to signify by Divine Providence … that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur … That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords … that’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ( and ours ignores that in favor of  Socialist Keynesian Liberal Academic Fantasies and “democratic” cramdowns for your own good because we are so morally and intellectually superior)

ARTHUR: Be quiet! (HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Insurance Industry)

DENNIS: You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!
ARTHUR: (Grabbing him by the collar) Shut up, will you. Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah! NOW … we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up! (DAMN TEA PARTIERS!)

PEOPLE (i.e. other PEASANTS) are appearing and watching.
DENNIS: (calling) Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help, help, I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: (aware that people are now coming out and watching) Bloody peasant! (pushes DENNIS over into mud and prepares to ride off) (Bloody Teabagger!)

DENNIS: Oh, Did you hear that! What a give-away.
ARTHUR: Come on, patsy.
They ride off.
DENNIS: (in the background as we PULL OUT) did you see him repressing me, then? That’s what I’ve been on about …
Call the NAACP!!, LA Raza, or MSDNC…


But now to the more serious point. This amazing article by Victor David Hanson.
Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.
In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner — if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government — would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.
Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense
We seem to be forgetting that lately — though Mao Zedong’s redistributive failures in China, or present-day bankrupt Greece, should warn us about what happens when government tries to enforce an equality of result rather than of opportunity.
Even after the failure of statism at the end of the Cold War, the disasters of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and the recent financial meltdowns in the European Union, for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it. Candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth” slip to Joe the Plumber simply was upgraded to President Obama’s “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
The more his administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.
No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don’t get richer.
The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax — or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who managed to scheme to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health care and income taxes — together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.
That limited-good mind-set expects that businesses will agree that they now make enough money and so have no need to pursue any more profits at the expense of others. Therefore, they will gladly still hire the unemployed and buy new equipment — as they pay higher health care or income taxes to a government that knows far better how to redistribute their income to the more needy or deserving.
This peasant approach to commerce also assumes that businesses either cannot understand administration signals or can do nothing about them. So who cares that in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement, quite arbitrarily the government put the unions in front of the legally entitled lenders?
Health insurers should not mind that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just warned them to keep their profits down and their mouths shut — or face exclusion from health care markets.
I suppose that no corporation should worry that the government arbitrarily announced — without benefit a law or court ruling — that it wanted BP to put up $20 billion in cleanup costs for the Gulf spill.

What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics.

In other words, a newly peasant-minded America is willing to become collectively poorer so that some will not become wealthier.

The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish. (Townhall.com)
But damn it will feel good, at least for liberals, to stick to the rich bastards.
Class warfare is like the fire they set at night to keep them warm and to warn off the predators lurking in the dark. It warms the cuckolds of their hearts and give them sustenance.
Envy, and Fear. Fear and Envy.
FEAR IS HOPE
Mind you, Everyone in Congress and the President are “rich”, millionaires in fact. But they aren’t evil because they are Liberals. And they are in “Public Service” so they are the Insufferably Morally and Intellectually Superior Left and not evil “rich” millionaires.
And big companies run by Millionaire CEOs (hello, GM,Chrysler etc) or Unions are not evil capitalist bastards out to destroy everyone in their path, because they are Liberals.
Evil “rich” people are only Republicans and Conservatives, you notice. Funny how that works out.
No partisan politics involved there.
Orwell was piker compared to these guys.
Did you see him (the evil “rich” and/or republican) repressing me?

The Power

In his victory speech, {Rand} Paul applauded the tea party movement and issued a stern warning to the political establishment: “I have a message, a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back.”

“The tea party movement is about saving the country from a mountain of debt that is devouring our country and that I think could lead to chaos,” Paul said grimly, laying in to President Barack Obama for his participation in last year’s Copenhagen summit on global warming and accusing Obama of trying to “apologize for the industrial revolution.”

A political science professor in college taught me a very valuable lesson about politics.
It’s about power.
Not the money.
The money facilitates the power.
So the more money you have the more likely you’ll get the power you seek.
So you always need more power.
More power begets more money.
And more money begets more power.
But it is power that is the ultimate goal.
And the more power the better.
Which explains a lot about Liberalism and their need to control everyone and everything and make them do what they want, when they want, because they want.

And will explain the focus of the Liberal media last night as well.
Last night on MSDNC, for example, it was all about the PA special election for the late pork-king John Murtha’s seat.  The Democrat won that seat, by acting like a republican by the way, and thus they hold that seat.
That power was the most important thing to Mr “tingle up my leg” Chris Matthews and his array of liberal elite pundits.
That and the “establishment” Republican in KY lost to a “teabagger” (a liberal pejorative) which they consider a good thing because they believe they can beat him easier than the old line establishment candidate. So they were happy.
It was about advantage. Political advantage.
Meanwhile, over at MSDNC’s arch enemy, FOX, it was about the people. The people’s anger.
Arlene Specter, who was a Republican for 30 years but switched parties last year for sheer sake of re-election was soundly defeated by another Democrat because of that switch. His opponent beat him up with it.  Specter was supported from a far by the President.
His opponent sounded very “tea party” anti-establishment but that was just for the purpose of winning.
What will be interesting is that opponent now has to face the Republican in November, but he got here sounding like a Republican. So he’ll have to veer left now. Just like the President did in 2008.
So will that lead to his demise?
The dreaded flip-flop!
Time will tell.
Then  there was the race in Kentucky where Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, a “tea party” Republican beat the establishment’s candidate.
Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas is in a run-off for the Democrat nomination because she wasn’t far left-enough but was also one of the key votes for Health Care.
MSDNC really didn’t care much about this one because they felt that neither Democrat was strong enough to win in November so it didn’t really mean anything to them.
The Liberals took no notice of Health Care’s unpopularity at all.

FOX focused on the message of the people.
MSDNC was focused on the power.
It couldn’t have been more stark if you tried.

“When [Republicans] were in charge, we doubled the deficit, and now with Democrats in charge, they’re tripling the deficit,” Paul said. “What the Tea Party says is there’s bipartisan blame to go around for the deficit and we have to do a better job.”–Rand Paul
Exactly. A Pox on both of your houses.
Now, let’s do something for the people. Not the political Elite.
Problem is, the Political Elite own the majority of the Media, The Congress, And The White House and they won’t go quietly, FROM EITHER PARTY.
Power is the drug, and boy are they addicted. Heavily addicted.
The White House is absolutely, positively correct that there is a divide between America and Washington – but what they fail to appreciate (or, more likely, they appreciate it but want to fake-out the press) is that Washington, D.C. now belongs to Barack Obama.
Just as the student radicals of the 1960s became the tenured faculty of the 2000s, so the worm has turned in the District of Columbia. The gates have been crashed and the one-time insurgents are now comfortably ensconced as the establishment. And with the health care bill, Mr. Obama and his band of former rebels have enacted an extremely unpopular law that they cannot possibly blame on the old guard (But boy they still believe it and try to sell it that way). George W. Bush may have “forced” Barack Obama’s hand on the stimulus, but Dubya had nary a thing to do with the health care bill.
This is why President Obama was wrong to equate the election of Scott Brown to his own victory, and why he’s wrong to push this story now. He is the ultimate insider now. That snappy “Hail to the Chief” he hears every time he walks into a room should be sign enough of this fact.
The White House likely knows this. They just don’t want us talking about how Obama can’t save a single high-profile candidate from a purple or blue state. They don’t want us to realize that his coattails have been torn and frayed by the choices he’s made in the last 17 months.
So focus on the race not the horses. The nags from “the people” and the Thoroughbred from “the establishment”.
The “teabagger” vs Washington Elites.
But in general elections, the dynamic will be very different. Republican challengers and incumbents will tar their Democratic opponents with a simple characterization: “A vote for my opponent is a vote for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s agenda.” Democrats will have no such claim to make against Republicans.(RCP)

But the Liberal Media will come up with something, hopefully more convincing than “the party of no” because, guess what, We The People ARE the Party of NO.
NO more spending like drug addicts after a new high.
NO more government takeovers, bailouts, and patronage to cronies.
NO more government debt piles for the sake of piling.
The National Debt has gone up 3 Trillion Dollars in the 17 months of this administration!
It went up 5 Trillion in 8 years under Republicans.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!

On a lighter note: Rick Bayless, the Chicago superstar chef, (and winner of Top Chef Masters last year, The king of all Mexican food in America) was Twittering from the White House kitchen about today’s Obama White House state dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife, Margarita Zavala. Until the Tweets stopped. The White House kitchen is for cooking, not Tweeting.
The White House press operation wanted to downplay the glamor aspect of the state dinner; these are tough economic times. (Chicago Sun-Times)

And undoubtedly, at dinner, Obama will apologize for Arizona being unhappy with all the Mexican illegal immigrants, drug dealers, coyotes, mafia and gang wars going that the Mexican government practically throws at us.
After all, it disgraceful that we are upset about it.
And the same can be said for the political elite in Washington. They are annoyed that these uppity people want to spoil their power trips.
Well, I say it’s time to pull the plug and replace the light bulbs.
This election is too important for you not to care.

WTF! Arizona and China The Same?

If I wrote this as a joke, I’d catch crap for falsely depicting Barry & Co. as a bunch of pinkos. Associated Press:

The United States and China reported no major breakthroughs Friday after only their second round of talks about human rights since 2002…
Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state, told reporters that another round will happen some time next year in Beijing…
Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.
He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.

That’s right: We said “sorry” to China for violating human rights by enforcing our own immigration laws.
Jay Nordlinger at the Corner asks: “Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for the new immigration law in Arizona?” Yep! And John Hinderaker at Powerline wants to know: “Is it unfair to say that the Obama administration consists of a bunch of anti-American ignoramuses? If so, why?” Ya got me! (Daily Caller)


Yes, folks! The people who brought you forced abortions, gulags, repression and Tienanmen Square are now official not as bad as Arizona!
You’re Bad, but we’re bad too, Kumbuya!  can’t we all just get along.
<<>>
<<>>
<<>>

MICHAEL POSNER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination, of potential discrimination. And that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.

<<>>
<<>>
<<>>
The Chinese, who incarcerate people for political opinion, who have brutalized the nation of Tibet, who have no protections for freedom of speech, the press or anything else, are being asked to discuss the new Arizona law? Is this “The Twilight Zone”? Why would the Obama administration even bring it up?
Once again, this Chinese thing is stunning. If you sneak into China, you’ll wind up in a concentration camp or with a bullet in your head, and the Obama administration is discussing Arizona with these people? Totally beyond the pale.
“Talking Points” will remind you that more than 60 percent of Americans support the Arizona law, fully realizing that the federal government will not secure the border and the state had to do something.
Later this week, President Obama will meet with the Mexican president, and the Arizona law is sure to come up there as well. We will watch that very closely. (Bill O’Reilly)

And he will no doubt apologize again.
<>

After all, Mexico and Latin American are quite literally throwing these people at us, but we are going to apologize to THEM for some of US  getting upset over the murders, the shoot-outs, the drugs, violence and civil unrest.
Damn, there must be something in that Harvard Law School water…
But don’t worry, dear seekers of truth, you won’t find it anywhere on The Ministry of Truth.
They are crusaders for justice,fairness, and the Liberal Socialist Way!
And Arizona is definitely on a moral relative par with China.