The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Conflation

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

Daily Pundit keys in on a sentence from Stacy’s post:

He loves to talk about infrastructure — “investments in road and bridges” — as if that was the majority of the what he’s spending money on, when in fact, infrastructure projects were less than 5% of the stimulus bill. It’s like me sprinkling a turd with sugar and asking you to eat it and when you refuse, I accuse you of disliking sugar.

and asks:

How would you characterize this facet of Obama’s tactics?

Really though, #OccupyResoluteDesk is dedicated to conflating ideas.

1 a : to bring together : fuse
b : confuse
2: to combine (as two readings of a text) into a composite whole

I really don’t believe anything about Obama. It seems probably true that he was born Hawaiin, i.e. I reject Birtherism. It is also true that he’s said he’s Christian. I don’t care to call a bluff there, either.

Beyond that, this administration is an abdication of all things American. Referring to Stacy’s transcript, Government neither invests nor creates jobs: it redistributes and creates positions for people. Those government positions do not drive the economy. They are a load, every one of them. Some, like the military, make Constitutional sense. Others, like the czars, treat the Constitution as a urinal cake.

To govern a country is like refereeing a football game. If points are money, how many do the zebras score? None. They merely ensure that the private enterprise of fielding a football team leads to legally scored points. Crony capitalism is the referee suiting up and kicking a field goal for a favored team, or queering the calls to ensure they have better field position.

#OccupyResoluteDesk systematically conflates the public and private sectors. The job is so thorough as to beg the question as to whether he’s sincerely wrong about Economics, or knows fully what he’s about, and to paraphrase Mailman, knows he’s headed for the bottom, but he’s riding us all the way. It’s easier to stay dispassionate by letting History judge that, because it’s immaterial to the task of easing him on down the road next November.

Anybody else planning on hanging at the Northern Virginia Tea Party event on Saturday?

Category: Barack Obama, Democrats

Comments

10 Responses to “Conflation”

  1. richard mcenroe
    December 12th, 2011 @ 7:57 pm

    #OccupyResoluteDesk systematically conflates the public and private sectors. 
    As did Newt when he described his K Street lobbying as ‘working in the private sector.’

  2. Steve in TN
    December 12th, 2011 @ 8:47 pm

    The point isn’t whether it is 99% likely he was born in Hawaii, the point is that he refuses to prove native birth.  People that refuse to prove a core requirement are likely to commit, abet, or condone things like election fraud, it seems to me.

    Say, like what is being reported in Indiana…

    It seems probably true that he was born Hawaiin, i.e. I reject Birtherism.

  3. RE Conflation « God's Own Crunk
    December 12th, 2011 @ 9:14 pm

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  4. Joe
    December 12th, 2011 @ 9:19 pm

    Steve, it is moot now, he is President.  And I am virtually certain he was born in Hawaii (this was 1961, it was not easy to jet over the globe–certainly not to Kenya). 

    The bigger issue is how did Obama get into college, what did his application say,  what courses did he take, what grades did he get, etc.  We can go back to ties to Brigham Young on Mitt Romney, four or five generations back, but we can’t look back on Obama’s young adult life?  Why not? 

  5. Adjoran
    December 12th, 2011 @ 11:59 pm

    Well, when Romney challenged Newt yesterday to return the money he was paid to lobby for Freddie and Fannie, Newt shot back, “Will he give back the millions he made bankrupting companies and laying off workers when he was with Bain?”

    Clearly, Gingrich is no capitalist, as Romney’s restructuring saved those companies, most of which would have folded without him and Bain – then ALL the workers lose their jobs, right, Newt?  Or do you believe like Obama that unemployment creates more jobs than investment?

  6. Adjoran
    December 13th, 2011 @ 12:36 am

    Exactly – Obama admitted he was a poor student at Occidental College, so how did he transfer to Columbia after two years?  Third-year transfers to Columbia at that time were rare and restricted to high achievers, except for a few special categories of students.

    Bush, Gore, Kerry, and McCain all released their college transcripts – not a scholar among them, but with the standard set at a “Gentleman’s C” by those candidates, and Gore even flunking out at the grad level, one wonders why it is like getting classified information – or maybe harder.

  7. Alan Kellogg
    December 13th, 2011 @ 12:56 am

    That’s the thing people  miss about the birthirism guff, so long as one parent is an American citizen, and they haven’t been out of the country more than for years at the time of birth, then the child is a native born American. So even if Obama had been born in Kenya he would still be a native born American.

  8. Adjoran
    December 13th, 2011 @ 1:15 am

    The “5% on roads and bridges projects” isn’t “5% on roads and bridges,” even; it includes ALL the project costs, among which are the endless studies and environmental impact reports which must be filed and litigated before a shovel ever tastes dirt. 

    Which is also part of the reason why there are no “shovel-ready infrastructure jobs” to be had.  You can’t just throw some money out there and say, “Go forth, building ye roads and bridges!”  It takes years of planning to figure out when and where the needs will be greatest, prioritize them, figure out the cheapest and most practical routes, etc.

    So the “stimulus” went to pay extra money to the unemployed, gave money to states and localities so they could put off their own budget reckonings a year or two, sent billions to unions, and huge amounts to Obama cronies for phony green projects which exist mainly for the purpose of extracting money from US taxpayers.  Now he proposes to do the same thing again.

  9. Bob Belvedere
    December 13th, 2011 @ 9:17 am

    If there is a legitimate issue with his birth – if there is – it is regarding who his biological father is.  Frank Marshall Davis?

  10. Anonymous
    December 13th, 2011 @ 10:34 am

    The overriding  thing to remember about the SCOAMF is he is the ultimate Affirmative Action hire. He’s never had to meet standards (including, ultimately, the ones defined in the Constitution; otherwise, that long form cert would have been part of his filing papers). His entire career has been devoted to avoiding any position where he might be held to any. Until now.

    Now he’s in a position where he can’t avoid being held to standards, and can’t even define what they are. Hence the SCOAMF. What else could you expect?