While I find Romney to be a poor Republican candidate, and not really a conservative at all, I find agreement with him on some issues and this one I do.
Yesterday Obama released the creepy slideshow “The Life of Julia” in which they depict how a female is taken care of from cradle to grave by the taxpayer. It’s a perfect example of the welfare state that is bankrupting this country. In the utopian world of Julia she gets money for college, for her medical bills, she gets to sue her employer for more money, she gets free contraception, loans for a business, and then some retirement money until she dies. Somehow Obama believes we will have the money for all that for the next 80 years.
It’s a tall tale for sure.
Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.
The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked.
Her life is framed to show that she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family’s income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans’ inveighing against the trend. These examples don’t suit the campaign’s purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn’t delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia’s birth-control pills free.
The point of view of “The Life of Julia” is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture.
Now where do I find agreement with Romney? Here he answers a question from a real version of Julia:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6aLpf5OMKw[/youtube]
I agree with him, but does he really mean it? Romneycare may suggest otherwise.
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We’re behind the socialist countries of Europe in many areas. The only aspect that we may be ahead of them is the fact that so far we haven’t begun a double-dip recession yet—and that’s only because of Obama’s actions, which the Republican party has opposed on every front (we’d probably be much further ahead it wasn’t for this opposition).
The truth is that the only thing Obie has done for Julia is to have her aborted —
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Bhahahahahahahahahha!!!!!!
Two Medved tweets:
Obama should have named her Peggy in honor of Peggy Joseph who expected her vote to have bought her all these things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI
Really, this whole Julia thing is only a rundown of all the ways Obama buys female votes with our money.
Julia is a taxpayer. What the slideshow is about is how people in a progressive society take care of one another.
Maybe it would be instructive to create a slideshow depicting how the life of the average “Julia” might go in a society where most of the wealth and income have concentrated at the very top, where employee wages and benefits have at last fallen to the level set by competition with a third world labor pool, and where all progressive social programs that people presently take for granted have been eliminated.
That’s what the latter day GOP’s policies would bring you–along with a rapidly deteriorating environment.
What a shock. Greg is all in favor of a socialist/marxist society and rants about those evil wealthy people.
No doubt if all of those “socialist/marxist” programs go away, your parents’ lives, your grandparents’ lives, and your own life will be greatly improved.
It’s very odd how republican politicians can make their mainstream supporters believe that totally trashing the social programs that average Americans have supported and relied on for generations is somehow conservative, while the position that they should be preserved and expanded is radical.
There’s nothing the least bit conservative about what far right extremists are currently up to. If they have their way, in 10 years you’ll no longer recognize the America you grew up in.
Let’s see, greg wants a fully socialist society that takes away people rights and freedom.
I call him on it, and now I suddenly want to play social Darwinism. Absurdo Reductum in action. Notice the implication that liberals are better because they want to “save people and the environment”. That is REALLY what drives them-their narcissistic need to feel good about themselves and bettre than others.
Greg, you are not “for the little guy”. The results of your beliefs are proof of that. Sadly you and your ilk are far too mentally ill to see how you are destroying the people of America.
That’s a fact, Jack. We’re all on this ride together.
Too bad you DON’T want to save people, just ram your ideology down their throats, tell them how to live, tell them how to think, what rights they should have, and what they can say.
The nickname for people like you is “selfless narcissist.”
I prefer to be more blunt and call you what you are–liberal fascists.
@Greg:
Hell, Greg, in the last three years I no longer recognize the America I grew up in. If I want to use public transportation and fly on a commercial airliner, I have to be willing to forfeit my 4th Amendment rights and just recently, in Houston, Texas, bus passengers were subjected to being violated by the TSA; my vote is disenfranchised by ACORN and La Raza, my 1st Amendment rights of freedom of religion are now being eroded, and on and on and on.
And of course, you think people in progressive societies take care of each other. You exhibit just how well the socialist indoctrination program has worked on you. Tell me, how did this nation manage before the Progresses showed up? You know, back in the days when families, not villages, took care of each other? Explain to me why those hated (by you) 1 percenters are all mostly first generation wealthy, like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, Hollywierd elites, and BARACK OBAMA.
News flash, Greg. Stalin’s Russia was considered progressive, Hitler’s Germany was considered progressive, Mao’s China was considered progressive.
Under conservatives:
At 12, Julia opens up a lemonade stand without Government interference, begins saving for the future.
At 14, Julia refuses to have sex because she understands the future repercussions.
At 18, Julia enters the military to earn a marketable trade and the GI Bill.
At 22, Julia enters college with scholarships that she has earned, money that she and her parents have saved, and a part-time job to pay for it all. Older, more mature, more disciplined (thanks to the military), and more experienced than the other students, she has the advantage.
At 23, Julia uses her legally carried handgun to shoot and kill two men that break into her apartment and try to rob and rape her and her two roommates.
At 28, Julia graduates with a well-thought-out degree, and begins adult life debt-free with a good paying job.
At 30, Julia gets married and begins planning a family, knowing that her children will have a good start on life because both parents are there to raise and guide them into adulthood.
At 50, Julia and her husband of 20 years stand proudly as their son graduates from USMC boot camp.
At 55, with their last child in college, Julia and their husband retire on their savings from 32 years of earning.
The key word in the above, which Liberals seem to be allergic to, is “earned”.
Unless Obama is going to be ”president-for-life,” a la Hugo Chavez or Zimbabwe’s Mugabe Julia is a composite of a number of real females.
Just like Obama’s ”girlfriend” in his ”autobiography,” Dreams From My Father.
As we are learning, one woman, Genevieve Cook, came forward with diary excerpts about her dating Obama.
This was while Obama had a bunch of Muslim male friends and roomed with them, too in NY.
So, what about this woman, Genevieve Cook?
She is now Genevieve Moustafa -Cook.
Huh!
She recently scrubbed her italki page (like facebook) but someone saved it for a time.
Long enough to read her biggest desire:
“I would like to learn Arabic so that I may read the Quran and pray properly.”
AW!!!!
Ain’t that cute?
Public records show that Genevieve Moustafa -Cook is no longer married to her Egyptian guy and has gone back to her original name.
Also dug up was the fact that Genevieve Cook was going to a Bank Street College at the same time as Bill Ayres, also when she dated Obama!
Funny little circle of buddies.
I wonder who she owed the favor to that made her put out these ”diaries” now, when Obama needs them?
@Budvarakbar: What’s the age limit on being aborted? 40…. 50…. ?
http://www.suitablyflip.com/suitably_flip/the-life.html
Here is a parallel: the life of Julie
comparing if Romney gets elected or if Obama gets re-elected.
Really good, too!
That the cradle-to-grave nanny state is simply unaffordable is not the only thing wrong with it. The tendency to erode the character and work ethic of the public is a problem, too. I believe that this corrupting effect is built-in and intentional.
Look at all the young people, from every background and income level, who have simply been ruined. You see the people explicitly saying, why work when you can get public assistance and food stamps, you’d have to be a fool. You see the unemployable college kids who pissed their tuition away “finding themselves” and now want their debts to be forgiven plus some sort of sinecures for being such cool people.
Totally invested in big government and wealth redistribution, and unreachable by facts or logic. Directly and indirectly, government policies and programs made them this way.
Things that can’t go on, don’t. When the entitlement bubble finally bursts, it’s going to get ugly.
@retire05, #12:
Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China were totalitarian dictatorships. There was nothing “progressive” about them.
You tell me how republicans are going to balance the damn budget while simultaneously cutting taxes and increasing military spending, without leaving the average American up the creek without a paddle. It can’t be done.
@Greg:
It’s simple to balance the budget while cutting taxes and increasing military spending: By getting more people off of Unemployment and Welfare and into jobs, the money flows INTO the government in the form of taxes, instead of flowing FROM the government in the form of handouts.
The Obama Administration is trying to institute a totalitarian dictatorship through his “We Can’t Wait” program to go around Congress. His unelected czars have been instituting rules and regulations that are wholly Unconstitutional, and many of the Executive Orders that he has been issuing are as well.
So Greg, tell us where Obama got the idea to use “Forward” as his new campaign slogan? Was it from Stalin (vpered), Hitler (vorwarts), Mao (the Great Leap Forward), or the name of multiple Socialist publications around the world?
@Greg:
“Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s German and Mao’s China were totalitarian dictatorships.
And exactly what road do you think we are on now, Greg? Have you read the 4th Amendment lately? Understand what it says? Do you think the federal goverment has the right to subject a airline passenger who is exercising their freedom of movement to searches that would get an ordinary police officer suspended when that person is NOT under arrest and NOT suspected of a crime? Do you think those totalitarian dictators gave a damn about the laws that were designed to protect the citizenry against them? And yes, those dictators promised a new and progressive form of government where everyone would obtain equal outcome, not equal opportunity. How did that work out? How many millions died only for the total failure of their progressive ideals?
How are Republicans going to balance the budget while cutting taxes? Well, Austrian economics has been shown to work while you liberals hang on to Keynesian economics that have been a failure. How about the government doesn’t spend more than it takes it; the government stops rewarding those who are unproductive and rewards those who are and we stop spending money like drunken sailors? Solyndra? Hello?
As to “leaving the average American up a creek without a paddle”; perhaps you can tell me where in the Constitution it guarantees you anything other than the right to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness? The government was never meant to be your nanny, to make sure that you did not suffer any bumps or bruises on your way to acheiving whatever you are capable of. It guarantees you the right to try, not to success. And you see, Greg, all those paddles you want the government to give you, well, they can take them away at any time and there would not be one damn thing you could do about it.
Most Americans are not like you. They don’t want the government to be their mommies. They just want the government to stay out of their lives, and be able to raise their families and do the best they can to build some amount of wealth. They want to keep as much of what they earn as is possible, and they don’t consider themselves greedy because of it. They earned that money, and feel it is theirs, not to be stolen from them by the IRS to be redistributed to those who lack any ambition to better themselves.
Now, you answer this: what has all the progressive plans of the Democrats brought? How about the New Deal? Did that really make lives any better? Did the “Great Society” really lessen poverty, or did it do more to destroy the black family than any racist politican could have dreamed of? Will Obamacare really work or will it end up exactly like the socialized medicine that the Russians tried in the 19th century and Hitler tried in the 1930’s, leaving many to die from lack of care, lack of resources and lack of funds?
You “progressives” have been trying to fundamentally change the United States for the last 100 years. Oh, you have gained some ground, but if you really succeed in the end, the Great Experiment will go down like every other socialist dream, and then, it will be too late.
Here’s the TRUTH about “Julia”
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/47-1.jpg
@retire05, #20:
Would you feel safe these days flying on a commercial airliner filled with total strangers of every description who haven’t been carefully scanned or searched? Stop the searches, and a plane load of innocent men, women, and children will die because of some psycho or fanatic. Unfortunately that’s the world we’re living in.
To work for who? Laissez-faire, free market capitalism will eventually get you an updated version of the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution of 1917, if that’s what you’re looking for. If you want a balanced budget without a populace uprising, you adopt a balanced approach involving both tax increases and across-the-board spending reductions. Nothing else will work.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are referenced in the Declaration of Independence. The Preamble to the Constitution expresses the founders’ intent to devise a means to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, and promote the general Welfare. They delineated the means to those ends during the latter part of the 18th Century, when America was an agricultural nation with a population of 3.9 million. America is now an industrial 21st Century nation, with a population of 312 million. Problems and solutions are vastly more complicated.
This is a democratic republic. The federal government is an extension of the will of the people. We have progressive social programs because a majority of the people want them and support them. Using money to buy the power to accumulate even more money to buy even more power is not what the founders had in mind. It’s a corruption of fundamental America values. If progressive social programs are an obstacle to those who wish to amass enormous wealth and the power to dominate their fellow citizens, too bad. Most people of good will have more modest ideas of affluence and of a successful life. Their version of the American dream doesn’t require that a majority of other people become serfs.
Hell yes. My grandparents told me in considerable detail what life was like for the common man during the 1920s and 1930s. Fifty years of progressive policies coincided with 50 years of increasing prosperity for a constantly expanding American middle class, with fewer and fewer suffering the pains and indignities of abject poverty. That all began to come apart when tax and policy changes favoring the upward redistribution of income and wealth were instituted. The story was that the changes were a way to raise revenue, to reduce deficits, and to balance the budget. That certainly worked as advertised. Be that as it may, the usual suspects are telling the same story again.
Really? It seems to me that it’s the current crop of extremist republicans who want to fundamentally change everything. No long-standing program that mainstream America has supported and counted on will go undamaged. If they manage to pull it off they’ll likely need secret escape routes out of the country, once the people who voted for them figure out what it is that they’ve actually done, who benefited, and who gets left holding the bill and an empty bag.
@CharlieGee: Death panels – do not forget the death panels
@Greg:
“Would you feel safe these days flying on a commercial airliner filled with total strangers of every description who haven’t been carefully scanned or searched? Stop the searches, and a plane load of innocent men, women and children, will die because of some psycho or fanatic. Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in.”
Really? So you base your security, and the violation of your 4th Amendment rights, on hypotheticals? Because four planes were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, you function from a point of fear that every plane is a possible hijacking senario?
Your chances of being killed in an auto fatality on the way to the airport are greater than your chances of being blown out of the sky. Are you willing to have to subject yourself to a law enforcement examination before you can put the keys of your vehicle into the ignition and have everyone else have to be subjected to the same in order to provide your desired security from evil doers? You seem quick to want to give up your right to freedom of travel for some false sense of security. If you are afraid to fly, take a train, a bus, or drive. And while you’re at it, give me just ONE instance where the TSA, and it’s oppressive tactics, have foiled ANY attempt to bomb a plane since 9-11.
“If you want a balanced budget without a populace uprising, you adopt a balanced approach involving both tax increases and across-the-board spending reductions. Nothing else will work.”
Quite the contrary. Tax increases are not necessary when more people are working and paying into the system. But under Obama, we now have fewer people in the work force than we have had in decades. Those people didn’t just disappear. They still exist. But regulations and taxation have driven employers to hire fewer people in what should, by now, be a strong recovery from the recession. Because of Keynesian economics that even Keynes would not recognize, those former taxpayers have been turned into tax recipients. One in every seven Americans currently are on food stamps, unemployment or some form of taxpayer supported assistance and currenly relying on the government for their subsistance. But that is the progressive plan, isn’t it? To make people reliant on the government, absolving them from any personal responsibility, so that they can be controlled by a select few in Washington, D.C.? But if those people were working, paying into the IRS coffers, do you think there would still be a need for increased taxation when the government would spend less on them?
The only thing the government is Constitutionally required is to defend our borders and deliver the mail, and it doesn’t do either very well.
“the Constitution expresses the founders’ intent to devise a means to establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Do you even understand those words, Greg? Do you understand the difference between promote and provide? Do you understand that no where in the Constitution does it guarantee you the right to anything paid for, or supported, by others except for the common defense (securing our borders from those who would harm us) and promoting the general welfare? Do you understand that the term general meant equally distributed among ALL? But when my earnings are taken to be redistributed to others, how does that provide for MY welfare? And it does not matter one whit if we are an agrarian society, or an industrial giant as we were a few decades ago. The Constitution deals with your rights as an individual, not as a member of the collective. Because administrations, starting with the Wilson administration, has bastardized the Constitution to be what they want it to be, not what it is, does’t change the intention, or meaning of that document in any way.
So your grandparents told you that life was rough in the ’20’s and ”30’s. So what? Do you think that you have a right to have life made easy for you? What clause in the Constitution can I find that guarantee? You said: “Fifty years of progressive policies coincided with 50 years of increasing prosperity for a constantly expanding American middle class, with fewer and fewer suffering the pains and indignation of abject poverty.” Where is your proof of that? Do we currently have fewer poor than we did in the 20’s (which if you knew your history, were called the “Roaring 20’s” for a reason) or the ’30’s when the entire world was experiencing a depression? Are you really so foolish that you think FDR pulled us out of the Depression with his socialist ways of price fixing, communal farms under the guidance of Rex (The Red) Tugwell that did not work, the slaugter of 6,000,000 hogs when people were standing in soup lines, the plowing under of cotton crops that drove the cotton market to Egypt, the suppression of the free press and the use of the IRS to go after those who disagreed with FDR’s heavy handed policies? I feel you have a jaded ideal of what the ’20’s and ’30’s were really like.
The middle class did not expand until the ’50’s, when we had gained from war production, not only for our nation, but Great Britian, as well, and the work force was reduced by the deaths of those at Iwo, Normandy and the total war. The fewer workers to fill X number of jobs, the greater wage can be demanded by those workers.
You also said: “If progressive social programs are an obstacle to those who whish to amass enormous weath and the power to dominate the fellow citizen, too bad.” Spoken like a true Marxist. If I manage to amass enormous wealth, why then are you dominated by me? Mark Cuban has managed to amass enormous wealth. How are you dominated by him? And then you said: “Most people of good will have more modest ideas of affluence and of a successful life. Their version of the American dream doesn’t require that a majority of other people become serfs.”
Yet, you would allow people to become serfs to the government. Your idea of political correctness (cultural Marxism) is so far off base it is hard to know where to begin. Do you really believe that individuals, like Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, et al, amass wealth for no reason other than to subject others to serfdom?
Everything you have written I can find at the Workers of the World website. It is no different that the writings of Marx and Engles, the Fabian Socialists or the Frankford School scholars. What you want seems to be equal outcome, not equal opportunity. You think that redistributive policies uplift the poor. You need to read something other than the writings of cultural Marxists and deal in the real world where freedom to live your life as you see fit is truely the only freedom. It is a fallacy that you can make one man richer by making another man poorer. And in all of your blathering, I noticed one thing missing; any reference to personal responsibility.
@Greg:
The TSA failure rate is slightly lower than Obama’s, but it is still around 70%. It isn’t the TSA making flying safer.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2010/12/23/tsa_failure_rate_may_approach_70_247786.html
This is without a doubt the most skewed view of history I have ever read. This is right out of Marx’s contradictions of capitalism.
Wow! As James Madison alluded to in Federalist 41, why didn’t the founders just stop there then? Why have enumerated powers? While the preamble is a beautiful piece of work penned by Governor Morris, it is just a preamble, just like the preamble of any other contract. It states the intent of the document, but holds no weight in actual contract law. The courts have never used the preamble in adjudication. The reason is because the rest of the Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government.
No, this is a representative democracy and constitutional republic. That means the people can vote for what they want through their representatives, but if it is unconstitutional, the constitution must be changed.
Almost 50 years in the war on poverty, and liberals still don’t understand.
The democrats are a lost cause, and I don’t generally hold out much hope for the republicans. I do see a lot of hope in what is happening with some States. There is no one size fits all Greg, it does not exist. Our country is too big. Power does not need to be consolidated in DC, it does not work. The federal government is too big and the power of the States almost inconsequential. That needs to change. I don’t want to live under your rules and you don’t want to live under mine. The founders took that into consideration and for most of the country’s life, provided a solution with the States. What was good for the people of Georgia might not be good for the people of Ohio. Why would the people of Ohio be upset because the people of Georgia didn’t like their rules? It doesn’t bother me a bit that California does all the crazy things they do, I don’t have to live there. I don’t want the federal government to shove California rules down my throat.
Federal Republic operating as a defacto Unitary Republic
that needs to get fixed.
But absolutely not a “Democratic Republic” since there is only one species of government which historically has claimed that title.
Julia, of coarse is a composite of the life of a female. It illustrates how our country helps people at various stages of life should anyone find themselves destitute or in a life threatening situation. These programs serve as safety nets and have been around for a very long time and are not a creation of Obama.
Rich most likely hasn’t got a clue on what poor people or working people go through when befallen by financial disaster. He belittles Pell grants omitting the possible effects, graduates are discovering jobs are not waiting for them, signing up on their parents health ins. is a positive solution. Rich’s take on Lilly’s bill has nothing to do with suing for more money it’s for reparation for discrimination in the form of being underpaid.
Medicare and social security are not freebee’s I actually paid for them during my working yrs. Rich should know better unemployment is paid by workers and employers, not gov. entitlements.
Of course Rich and Republicans are railing against it because everything is Obama’s fault, we get it.