I heard a discussion on Fox News Channel a while ago in which British PM Gordon Brown was quoted as calling for a "global New Deal."
I can well understand why Brown would call for such a thing, and it is epitomized in a quote by Margaret Thatcher: "The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." Clearly, the British government is running out of money and it is looking for other pockets to pick. The USA is still relatively productive so that is the direction Brown is looking.
People like Brown, and the people who administer the United Nations, are the best argument there is against a "global governing body."
03 March 2009
02 March 2009
Formulas for Success
A blogger at Puffington Host (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds) has finally come right out and admitted that he wanted the US-led war in Iraq to fail -- and it was/is a US-led effort despite the claims from the Left about the war being a unilateral effort. What a surprise! His reason for rooting for the bad guys? Well, the way the Bush administration proceeded is the direct opposite of how he feels that the US should exercise its power. Fancy that. He would have preferred that we had talked Saddam to death rather than doing it the old fashioned way. Ditto for Uday and Qusay and their ilk.
But George Bush chose the direct approach and earned the ire of everyone Left. You know the resultant response: protests and efforts to undermine the war effort. Who can forget Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claiming in April 2007 that the war was lost? The war might well have been lost, had not the Bush administration finally taken serious steps to root out opposition and destroy it. So much for politics and diplomacy. Now, however, it looks like the war in Iraq is won. It would look very bad for the Obama administration, now, to take actions that would alter the expected outcome for Iraq.
On the other hand, the lefty blogger is upset with Rush Limbaugh because Limbaugh is quoted as saying that he wants Obama's economic policies to fail. Well, that's not what Limbaugh said, actually. You can read the transcript of his speech at Fox News.com. Limbaugh didn't so much say he wanted Obama's economic policies to fail, rather, he said he wanted Obama's over arching plans for changing the culture of the United States of America to fail. He wants Obama's social policies to fail because they are, in a word, Socialism. Socialism has been an ongoing failure wherever it has been put in place. Socialism is virtual assurance that almost all citizens will be reduced to the same level of misery. The ruling elite, of course, are excluded from that economic prison sentence.
It's not so much a matter of wishing that Obama's economic policies fail as it is the fact that they are doomed to failure. As a matter of economic fact, the New Deal policies that promoted huge rounds of deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy did little to improve the economic lot of American citizens. FDR, and now Barak Obama, are listening to John Maynard Keynes for economic advice. In defense of the FDR administration, they were listening to the then current thinking of Keynes. A much much wiser and older Keynes admitted after WW II that deficit spending was not the way to go. Rather, tax cuts do more to stimulate an economy than deficits. So, an Obama administration has the benefit of history and the words of an early hero and advocate of Socialism to go on. Rather than read all the way to the last chapter to learn what Keynes had learned from experience, the Obama administration prefers to try a redux the part of Keynsianism that failed.
Keynsianism reloaded is going to fail just as surely as it did the first time around. Karl Marx is quoted as saying: "History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce." There have been some farcial moment lately, but it remains to be seen how this all plays out.
But George Bush chose the direct approach and earned the ire of everyone Left. You know the resultant response: protests and efforts to undermine the war effort. Who can forget Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid claiming in April 2007 that the war was lost? The war might well have been lost, had not the Bush administration finally taken serious steps to root out opposition and destroy it. So much for politics and diplomacy. Now, however, it looks like the war in Iraq is won. It would look very bad for the Obama administration, now, to take actions that would alter the expected outcome for Iraq.
On the other hand, the lefty blogger is upset with Rush Limbaugh because Limbaugh is quoted as saying that he wants Obama's economic policies to fail. Well, that's not what Limbaugh said, actually. You can read the transcript of his speech at Fox News.com. Limbaugh didn't so much say he wanted Obama's economic policies to fail, rather, he said he wanted Obama's over arching plans for changing the culture of the United States of America to fail. He wants Obama's social policies to fail because they are, in a word, Socialism. Socialism has been an ongoing failure wherever it has been put in place. Socialism is virtual assurance that almost all citizens will be reduced to the same level of misery. The ruling elite, of course, are excluded from that economic prison sentence.
It's not so much a matter of wishing that Obama's economic policies fail as it is the fact that they are doomed to failure. As a matter of economic fact, the New Deal policies that promoted huge rounds of deficit spending in order to stimulate the economy did little to improve the economic lot of American citizens. FDR, and now Barak Obama, are listening to John Maynard Keynes for economic advice. In defense of the FDR administration, they were listening to the then current thinking of Keynes. A much much wiser and older Keynes admitted after WW II that deficit spending was not the way to go. Rather, tax cuts do more to stimulate an economy than deficits. So, an Obama administration has the benefit of history and the words of an early hero and advocate of Socialism to go on. Rather than read all the way to the last chapter to learn what Keynes had learned from experience, the Obama administration prefers to try a redux the part of Keynsianism that failed.
Keynsianism reloaded is going to fail just as surely as it did the first time around. Karl Marx is quoted as saying: "History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce." There have been some farcial moment lately, but it remains to be seen how this all plays out.
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