Patriot Talk provides analysis and opinion for the political scene in America. We believe in the Constitution, freedom, liberty, and limited government.
Your source for conservative news, opinion, and analysis written by several conservative commentators. This blog will provide daily analysis for politics of the day. We're not the top conservative blog, but we're working on it!
CNN invented the 24x7 news genre and in the last ten years has found its market share dropping against Fox News and more recently MSNBC. According to Larry Kramer the reason has to do with time. People don't have time for all the analysis he says so they gouge their opinion based on what MSNBC or Fox news says about a particular situation - like a new Supreme Court Justice nominee.
The idea according to Kramer is less time = less patience to do the homework ourselves and we allow others to do it for us instead.
While I am no expert on MSNBC - I watch it only occasionally, it is worth pointing out that Fox News makes a major effort to present all sides to a story.
O'Reilly in particular has pivoted to the center-right since Glenn Beck's popularity started to soar. Bill has many guests on the left and debates them on the merits time and time again.
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If you graduated college and live in the DC area you are less than half as likely to think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President. So says a Politco poll which is full of useful information which shows fairly consistently that Washington elites are somewhat if not totally disconnected from the rest of the population.
Consider that this month, 38% of the DC elites think the economy is headed in the right direction but only 26% of the general population believes this is the case.
The poll itself shows why the disconnect is taking place. We know that the Obama administration is responsible for the largest federal payroll in history so we would assume that government workers and those who feed off them are very happy. Moreover, the average government worker makes twice what the typical non-government worker makes.
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The recent press conference where President Obama tried to sell tax cuts for those making over $250k while extending unemployment benefits for 13 months struck me as being odd but until I read Peggy Noonan's article titled From Audacity to Animosity, I couldn't understand what was so perplexing.
This portion of the article is most important:
President Obama was supposed to be announcing an important compromise, as he put it, on tax policy. Normally a president, having agreed with the opposition on something big, would go through certain expected motions. He would laud the specific virtues of the plan, show graciousness toward the negotiators on the other side—graciousness implies that you won—and refer respectfully to potential critics as people who'll surely come around once they are fully exposed to the deep merits of the plan.
Instead Mr. Obama said, essentially, that he hates the deal he just agreed to, hates the people he made the deal with, and hates even more the people who'll criticize it.
Without the US government pushing subprime loans for home purchasing which by definition are a risky product, there could be no start to the subprime housing bubble which eventually burst. Countless government agencies have been involved in the mortgage business for decades such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and laws such as the Community Reinvestment Act over time held banks accountable by forcing them to lower their lending standards so as not to charged with unfair lending practices.
In other words, if the government over decades and through both Republican and Democratic administrations did not get deeply involved with ensuring people with poor credit were getting loans, we would not have seen a sub-prime housing bubble or a bursting thereof.
This doesn't mean home prices wouldn't have corrected - we have seen many corrections over the years but this one would have been much milder if the government wasn't standing over the banks ready to call them racists and charging them with crimes for not lending to minorities who tend to have lower credit scores.
John Carney has an incredibly well-researched article on the topic and it should be read by anyone who does not want to see a repeat of the housing collapse.
Rather than looking at the real roots of the problem, the government has done an amazing job blaming Wall Street and just about anyone else they can find for the problem. Sure Wall Street played a role but the major distortion in the market came from the government and it amplified the pain of the crash because it amplified the rise in prices.
The facts are crucial to understand as the AP just reported that HUD is investigating mortgage lenders who require better credit scores than the government requires to get a mortgage. The issue they have is that minorities have lower credit scores and are subsequently not able to purchase as many homes.
There is no charge of discrimination based on race mind you but just on credit score.
The policies have "the effect of discriminating against African–Americans, Latinos, and residents of African–American and Latino neighborhoods across the nation," the National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote in the complaints that it announced Wednesday.
A lot has changed since the days of the old, Wild West.
Guns, after all, are passe. It’s technology that rebels are going to need to be slinging if they want to fight the big, bloated beast that is the state. Polished, at the hip and at the ready… brains are the new firearms.
And "firearms" are desperately needed because of how this country was founded. In rebellion.
At America’s inception, the evils of an unregulated government were considered by our forefathers.
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If each of us individually cannot borrow our way to prosperity, is it logical to believe that collectively we can do the same? Absolutely not. But that doesn't stop politicians from borrowing massive amounts of money from potentially hostile regimes to finance a virtual Ponzi scheme of promised entitlements.
Ronald Reagan said the following during his inauguration - "You and I as individuals, by borrowing, can live beyond our means but for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation?"
He continued, "We must act today, in order to preserve tomorrow.
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We Continue to Believe the Democratic Politician Seems Most Reasonable When Screaming
Rather than seeing the Tea Party as what it is - a massive grass-roots movement initiated by Americans who are fed up with large government and re-distributive progressive ideals which end up hurting the very people they are supposedly helping, Dean once again plays the race card saying the Tea Party is uncomfortable with the current demographic shift in the US.
Dean does not let facts get in his way of course - totally ignoring that the Tea Party just elected more minorities than Democrats - instead, he goes on to show that the only thing less coherent than his screaming is his rambling.
While racism was often used to discredit the Tea Party in its early days, sane people have come to the realization that there are likely the same number of racists in the Tea Party as any other group of people such as Democrats or Republicans.
But rather than debate the merits of his arguments - for example, how can he explain taking more money from the private sector which is currently used to create jobs will create more jobs?
Morover, if most people start or grow new companies because of the potential to become wealthy, how can lowering the amount of wealth a person can achieve, increase the rate of new business creation and subsequently job creation?
Other arguments you will see Dean avoid are how can placing any able-bodied person on government assistance for many years or decades make them a productive member of society enabling the US to compete effectively with our new competitors in China and India.
Moreover, has anyone ever seen him address how borrowing money from countries with terrible human rights abuses - ones we don't consider allies, enables the US to negotiate for better rights in such countries?
We haven't.
No, for Howard Dean, the argument is that the Tea Party is racist and Republicans are bad because they believe that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed and by providing society with maximal opportunity, they have the maximal chance of becoming self-sufficient and potentially wealthy. Moreover, conservative principles achieve something no Democrat wants for the poor - the dignity of being able to provide for themselves - free of the need for government assistance.
America continues to be the land of opportunity and hordes of immigrants come to the US every year to escape large-government and/or religious/racial/class oppression, in order to start companies or work in other roles which help provide jobs for countless others.
Yet Democrats conveniently ignore the fact that someone with English as a second-language but the desire to make it to the top can come to the US and become incredibly successful. And they discard the fact that this happens regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation - in the US - we truly (for the most part) judge you based upon your character, knowledge, skills and ability.
Other countries have rigid class structures which encumber the entrepreneurs - people will ask you your last name and about your father and mother and use this information to ascertain if they should loan you money or give you an opportunity.
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