Disturbing thoughts

View 793 Thursday, October 10, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I am a bit under the weather today.

A Disturbing Thought

Jerry,

The thing about playing Chicken is, both drivers get into the contest assuming that the other doesn’t actually want a head-on collision.

The game changes fundamentally if one driver believes he’s immortal and doesn’t really like his old clunker anyway. This by way of introducing a truly disturbing thought about the upcoming debt-limit deadline.

It seems universally agreed that an actual default on US debt instruments would be a disaster, likely precipitating a worldwide financial crisis and greatly diminishing the US’s international economic clout.

The Republicans are explicitly acting on the assumption that the President would, on hitting the debt limit, continue making payments on US debt instruments while cutting elsewhere the approximately 20% required to keep overall Federal spending within current revenue absent new borrowing. At some point, they assume, he’ll come to the table.

The President and Democrats in general are obfuscating for political advantage the difference between hitting the debt limit and actual default, and also asserting that ALL government spending (that they

like) is sacred and that the current Congress MUST do whatever it takes to fund everything (that they like) passed by a previous Congress.

This is of course nonsense on stilts, but serves the purpose of motivating their partisans and terrifying the ignorant. The rest of us just shrug and assume it’s politics as usual, and that the two sides will come up to the brink then draw back and reach a compromise, business as usual.

Indulge me in an apparent digression… President Obama’s foreign policy arguably is built around the assumption that the US’s post-WWII preeminent status in the world is an historical error that needs correcting. He pays the necessary public lip-service to the US being Number One, but both his actions and his appointments arguably point toward a chastised and diminished US.

Suppose, now, for the sake of argument, some mix of:

– genuine belief ALL their programs are sacred

– genuine contempt and disdain for their opposition

– belief that their opposition would certainly take the blame

– cynical conviction that they could then increase their power in the resulting crisis, however diminished the country might be

– and an underlying ideological conviction that diminishing the US is good for the world in any case

should later this month cause the White House to say, what the hell, They Made Us Do It, and instruct the Treasury to start missing debt payments.

I’d really like to be able to believe that this administration’s obvious ongoing fundamental respect for the law, the Constitution, American tradition, and the American people instantly rules this scenario out as ridiculous paranoia. Alas, I’ve been paying attention these last five years.

cynically

Porkypine

I would like very much to dismiss this as ridiculous paranoia. If someone has good evidence to show this is ridiculous paranoia, I would welcome receiving it.

I’ll try to have more later tonight.

‘The National Park Service has every man, woman, and child in America on its enemies list.’

<http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/park-police-part-deux-hot-cops_762387.html?page=2>

—–

Roland Dobbins

Nasty and vindictive. Public servants.

The Servant When He Reigneth

"For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear. For a servant when he reigneth, and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married, and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." — PROV. XXX. 21-22-23.

Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book --
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master's name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy broken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave --
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!
 
 
 
 
 
 

Rudyard Kipling

And Eric found this gem:

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/10/10/Nevada-Health-Exchange-A-Case-Study-in-What-Went-Wrong