Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Plaintive groan/scream at the end really makes this. Happy TurkeyDay everyone.

A Pyrrhic 'Victory'
By Thomas Sowell
8/10/2011

In Don Marquis' classic satirical book, "Archy and Mehitabel," Mehitabel the alley cat asks plaintively, "What have I done to deserve all these kittens?"

That seems to be the pained reaction of the Obama administration to the financial woes that led to the downgrading of America's credit rating, for the first time in history.

There are people who see no connection between what they have done and the consequences that follow. But Barack Obama is not likely to be one of them. He is a savvy politician who will undoubtedly be satisfied if enough voters fail to see a connection between what he has done and the consequences that followed.

To a remarkable extent, he has succeeded, with the help of his friends in the media and the Republicans' failure to articulate their case. Polls find more people blaming the Republicans for the financial crisis than are blaming the President.

Why was there a financial crisis in the first place? Because of runaway spending that sent the national debt up against the legal limit. But when all the big spending bills were being rushed through Congress, the Democrats had such an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress that nothing the Republicans could do made the slightest difference.

Yet polls show that many people today are blaming the Republicans for the country's financial problems. But, by the time Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, and thus became involved in negotiations over raising the national debt ceiling, the spending which caused that crisis in the first place had already been done -- and done by Democrats.

Had the Republicans gone along with President Obama's original request for a "clean" bill -- one simply raising the debt ceiling without any provisions about controlling federal spending -- would that have spared the country the embarrassment of having its government bonds downgraded by Standard & Poor's credit-rating agency?

To believe that would be to believe that it was the debt ceiling, rather than the runaway spending, that made Standard & Poor's think that we were no longer as good a credit risk for buyers of U.S. government bonds. In other words, to believe that is to believe that a Congressional blank check for continued record spending would have made Standard & Poor's think that we were a better credit risk.

If that is true, then why is Standard & Poor's still warning that it might have to downgrade America's credit rating yet again? Is that because of the national debt ceiling or because of the likelihood of continued runaway spending?

The national debt ceiling is just one of the many false assurances that the government gives the voting public. The national debt ceiling has never actually stopped the spending that causes the national debt to rise to the point where it is getting near that ceiling. The ceiling simply gets raised when that happens.

Just a week before the budget deal was made at the eleventh hour, it looked like the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives had scored a victory by getting the President and the Congressional Democrats to give up the idea of raising the tax rates -- and to cut spending instead. But now that the details are coming out, that "victory" looks very temporary, if not illusory.

The price of getting that deal has been having the Republicans agree to sitting on a special bipartisan Congressional committee that will either come to an agreement on spending cuts before Thanksgiving or have the budgets of both the Defense Department and Medicare cut drastically.

Since neither side can afford to be blamed for a disaster like that, this virtually guarantees that the Republicans will have to either go along with whatever new spending and taxing that the Democrats demand or risk losing the 2012 election by sharing the blame for another financial disaster.

In short, the Republicans have now been maneuvered into being held responsible for the spending orgy that Democrats alone had the votes to create. Republicans have been had -- and so has the country. The recent, short-lived budget deal turns out to be not even a Pyrrhic victory for the Republicans. It has the earmarks of a Pyrrhic defeat.

Ignoring the video - which is typical bilge - I'll move on to actual substance. Here is the crux of the current panic that is gripping the Warmies... Their empire is crumbling and they know it. Hence, they are lashing out in panic and anger. This is typical of most socialist scams when they go belly-up, as is further evidenced by the riots in Europe and elsewhere.

The Warmies have always had a particularly ugly sow’s ear they were desperately trying to turn into a silk purse. Their primary concern has never been the cliimate. Their sole objectives have always been entirely oriented around the creation of expensive programs which force human beings to accept decreased standards of living, reduced freedoms, higher taxes, less food, costly commodities, limited transportation, and onerous regulations. In exchange for all these burdens, humanity was to be provided a very nebulous ‘benefit’ (0.001% lower C02) which was by no means even guaranteed by the implementation of their draconian measures. That’s a tough bottle of snake oil to sell, even IF you have ironclad proof of your argument. And of course when it came right down do it the problem with the Warmies' argument was that they NEVER had proof of any kind beyond fabrications, exaggerations, and fevered imagination.

One of the main problems with all you Warmies is that you can't put forward a position. You talk about 'scientific proof' of 'climate change'. Pht. You don't need the rigor of scientific method to tell anyone that the climage changes. Dur dur dur. Everyone accepts the premise that Earth's climate is not static. Wow - what a keen observation.

Where the Warmies have lost the argument is thier plaintive, inaccurate, unproven position that HUMAN C02 emmissions are (A) what changes the climate and (B) the climate can be changed by reducing human C02. There was never any evidence of that position. But Warmies love to muddle terminology and pretend that just because 'scientists' agree that climate is changing (again - not much of an accomplishment) that also all those scientists agree that human activity is responsible for it (which they most decidedly do NOT).

Add on top of that the fundamental reality that many of the cornerstones of the APG Warmie movement have been proven to be complete bunk. Just this week the Polar Bear guy was proven by a federal probe to be completely full of crap. He had no data that bears were dying because of human activity as he claiimed. The hockey stick chart - falsified. East Anglia university data - the numbers are cooked. The IPCC panels - all thier data is bad and the majority of thier claims have all been debunked and failed. Time and time again when you put the Warmies under the microscope of REAL SCIENCE, the argument completely falls apart.

The video has it completely backwards. It is not FOX & conservatives who are faking thier way. The entire climate change movement and all its acolytes are the ones who are lying to accomplish a biased, incorrect, inaccurate, anti-science objective entirely for political purposes.

A meow is a sound used by cats to signal a request to their mother or owner. Adult cats do not normally meow to each other, and so the meowing to human beings that domesticated cats exhibit is likely partly an extension of the use by kittens of this plaintive signal

A meow is a sound used by cats to signal a request to their mother or owner. Adult cats do not normally meow to each other, and so the meowing to human beings that domesticated cats exhibit is likely partly an extension of the use by kittens of this plaintive signal

Now THAT is true.

Seriously though - I can't think of a single person in the GOP of any note that is a "birther" in the sense that they don't think Obama was born in Hawaii. So far it seems to me that the cuckoo far-left fringe and their media shills (MSNBC) are far more obsessed with this issue than anyone on the right. MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, NTY, AP, et al are running 'birther' stories at a 4 to 1 ratio compared to FOX News. People that are whining "Let it go!" should be directing their venom at the left wing media complex, not the birthers.

But of course the neo-lib media won't let it go because it gives them a way to do what they do best... That is to deliberately screw up terminology, perception, and language in order to paint the sins of a tiny fringe with a big fat brush onto anyone they don't like. Now all the liberally biased media outlets are literally screaming like frothing lunatics that anyone who wants to see 'records' is a racist/bigot.

Bullcrap. There are people who want to see Obama's records. There is NOTHING WRONG with that. Any person who runs for ANY public office from Dogcatcher to President should be willing and able to supply any and all records on request. That is not a big deal. Just because people want to see Obama's records doesn't make them either 'birthers' or racists. That's just a load of garbage that neo-lib left wing propogandists are screaming loudly and often in the plaintive, desperate hope that the stupid and inattentive will believe it.

But reality check time. Obama isn't the first President who had this issue swirling around him. Chester Arthur, Barry Goldwater, and John McCain just a few who have had to produce records about thier births to settle controversies. And they're all WHITE guys. So please - none of this BULLCRAP that Obama is some sort of innocent, unique victim of racism over this birth certificate issue. Give me a break. What a steaming pile of hotspur. The whole issue wasn't even STARTED by the GOP. Hillary Clinton's campaign was the first group to bring this all up.

M'eh - conspiracy theorists are what they are and some percentage of a large population is going to agree with almost any theory that gets cooked up. The 9/11 Truthers are a far better example of this than the Obama Birthers. The idiotic conspiracy theory about 9/11 being a Bush inside job so he could declare war on Iraq to 'finish what his daddy started' and all that other bologna has not gone away to this day. The whole blood for oil crowd belongs in that bucket. You really think an electronic scan of a document is going to satisfy the die-hards? Haw.

The real issue here is the neo-lib kook left's continuous and increasingly plaintive and DESPERATE attempt to try and paint anyone who opposes Obama for ANY reason as a crazy birther, or racist. Completely untrue. A lot of people say they have 'doubts', or 'aren't sure' or other fuzzy comments of that sort when asked about Obama's birth. But very few people (GOP, Tea Party, whatever) say that Obama was definitely NOT born in the US, and should be removed from office because he isn't a citizen. Those who spit that hate speech to falsely denigrate an opposing group are just as crazy and prone to wearing tin-foil hats as the radical birthers.

The fact is that when polled, MOST AMERICANS (not just GOP) have said they were 'not sure' if he was born in the US or not. This isn't because they're birthers. It's because they have seen this guy's outlandish, anti-American behavior and just plain do not see Obama as "American".

Heck, even Obama doesn't see himself as an American really. He keeps going on and on about how great China is, and how great some other country is, and how wonderful Hugo Chavez is, and how great Islamic dictators like Amadinijad & Asad are, and how fantastic it is to bow to the Saudis, and I'm just getting warmed up. The guy can't open his mouth without saying how great everywhere ELSE is, while the same time whining about how Americans are stupid, gun-totin', bible thumpin', fuel burnin' jerks every time he goes anywhere. Not to mention his downright anti-constitutional behavior domestically with his czars, and ramming laws through, and ignoring court orders, and ignoring laws Congress passes, and NOT enforcing laws that already exist because he doesn't like them... And his constant arrogance and hypocrisy when he insults people (like Ryan) while in the next breath saying how everyone else has to stop being 'mean' (I could fill pages with lists of his double-speak jerky hypocritical arrogance). Add that to his crazy-@$$ pastors, his ties to terrorists like Ayres, his fanatical secrecy in hiding his past, his criminal tie (Rezko) and ON and ON and ON and ON and ON.

Needless to say that the bulk of America has doubts about this pathetic clown not because of his birth certificate - but because of everything else. So when the radical birthers come along, they may not really beleive he was foreign born but they see Obama the man himself and think, "Well... MAYBE..." Just like there was always enough about Bush for the bulk of America to think "Well... MAYBE..." when the 9/11 Truther spouted their bilge.

The dog looking plaintively looking as if to say...help.