Thursday, November 15, 2012

Sorry, we're broke!

Smile! Have a nice day!

3 comments:

RFGA, Ph.D. said...

Are you suggesting that BO is somehow responsible for these dismal statistics? Is the suggestion that working people would be much better off under a Republican administration? Look, regarding an earlier post, we all know BO meets with corporate heads and WS executives. The USA is a de facto plutocracy, so what do you expect? On the other hand, we can surmise that BO is not giving the green light to these capitalists' machinations a la MR, a true believer in their wicked ideology. The proof is in the economic pudding: working people were marginally better off under BC than GWB. (Remember you are voting not just for a candidate but his party.)

So why shouldn't I demonize MR? He IS demon infested, as are all heretics. BO is wicked as well, but- and here's the kicker, less capable of inflicting his brand of depravity upon the body politic, having less support from the plutocrats, whose love of money is the root of all evil in this country, abortion and homosexuality included. In other words, I am not saying that BO is the lesser of 2 evils; I am saying that less evil is likely to come about during his administration, as evidenced by my memories of the Reagan and Bush years. He is in short a very slight impediment to the capitalists, whom, I believe, he despises in his heart of hearts. He, thus, unwittingly affords us an opportunity to gather our thoughts and respond vigorously to his own anti-Catholic agenda, as well as its root causes in Protestantism. (Having read Belloc, you know where I'm coming from.)

Can't you see that the Republicans' goal is to force all of us to work so long and so hard that the unionists and intellectuals capable of challenging the capitalists' hegemony lack both the time and strength to engage in that struggle? Welcome to my world: http://www.nea.org/home/53403.htm

Pertinacious Papist said...

Hi Robert,

Several of us here must have different sources from which we garner our news, suggesting a radically different spin on persons and events.

I don't wish to get bogged down in anything too subjective here. Both parties have been largely co-opted by big money, such that the more traditional divides between the parties have been somewhat compromised.

Still, there's something to the difference in rhetoric, at least, with the Republicans for free enterprise and Democrats for taxing and spending.

I don't think BO is responsible for ALL these dismal statistics, but he (or whoever is pulling the puppet's strings) hasn't improved things much. Our currency has lost a fourth of its value since he was inaugurated, and our political community no longer seems able to visualize just how much we owe. It's not Obama's fault. It's not Bush's fault. It's the fault of an entitlement mentality that votes into office irresponsible governments.

What about Romney? One thing I'm nearly certain of: if elected, he would have killed the HSS Mandate and begun significantly cutting wasteful spending.

You consider him demon infested because he's a heretic. I'm a convert. I was a heretic. If I were simply demon infested, and if the Holy Spirit were not capable of moving minds and hearts outside the boundaries of formal membership in the Catholic Church, I could have never seen the light to convert.

Jesus said that the love of money is the root of all evil. This is true. I have two comments on this. (1) so what makes you think BO and his wife love money any less than MR and his? MR's charitable giving was enormous. I'm not sure BO and MO gave much at all to charity personally. I know Biden didn't. And what about Michelle's extravagant vacations in Spain costing millions of dollars, and her 40 ladies in waiting, vastly outnumbering anything Barbara B. had -- much less Calvin Cooledge, who kept a milk cow on the White House lawn.

(2) This saying of Jesus, like many others, needs contextualization. If money is the source of all evil, then it's perplexing what led to the fall of Lucifer. From the Seven Deadly sins, we learn that the chief sin, the gateway sin, is the sin of pride. Seen another way, the "gateway sin" of the Ten Commandments is the sin of covetousness (## 9 & 10), which animates all the violation of all the other 8 commandments. So there are different way to parse the business of sin.

I think we're probably on more solid ground not second-guessing individual's motives, but looking at actions.

I'm curious about the benchmark standard of adjudication between platforms that you have brought up a number of times. You mentioned how your family fared economically. If I were on welfare, I this would lead me to vote for Obama. If I had a business that I had built, that would be inclined to vote for Romney. My point here is that economic self-interest doesn't tell us much apart from a larger framework of values.

Rerum Novarum suggests that both untethered capitalism and untethered socialism lead to unwanted results. Both varieties are materialistic and money grubbing. Untethered capitalism wants to grow the individual's piece of the money pie bigger; untethered socialism wants to grow the whole collective pie bigger. The only difference is that the former does better with the psychology of incentive: selfish people work better in their own interest that for the collective state.

John S. said...

The media protected Obama by hiding his dirty 'little' secrets from the public, his Benghazi-gate coverup, his Fast and Furious coverup, the real unemployment figures, the reality of the fiscal cliff, his exploitation of African-Americans by empty promises, the economic debacle that was the result his explicit policies during his first term.

And RACE was the engine that fueled the entire disaster: the white guilt that fueled support for him in the liberal media and played right into his hatred of the white traditions of Christian America, self-reliance, free enterprise, and apple pie. The reason? The while liberals hate these traditions too, and re-electing a disastrous black president whose record would have instantly eliminated him from the running if he were white was a way of salving what was left of their own guilty white consciences for not ever really giving a damn about the plight of poor blacks, whom none of them have as friends and neighbours anyway.

Obama was elected on an emotional high of guilty white liberals and an irrational fantasy of poor blacks duped by their own party's exploitative false promises.