Debate Used To Be Possible

Remember these issues, back when debate was possible?  I'm going to attempt to follow a thread with hopes of stimulating debate once again, rather than the state at which we find ourselves unwilling to discuss issues owing to a disrespect through arrogant vanity on both "sides".Have we been "dumbed down" to the point we're no longer able to discuss issues, especially on college campuses, without prideful posturing of one view or another?

Why Is The White House Defending Public Equity?

Up is down, left is right, good is bad, and day is night. If you wander inside the Washington, D.C., beltway, you’ll enter a bizarro world where, at times, commonsense is replaced by a localized logic that is completely divorced from the reality. The latest example of political gobbledygook comes courtesy of White House press secretary Jay Carney, who yesterday lapsed into rambling rhetoric when asked to explain how President Obama can defend the failed Solyndra solar boondoggle, yet attack private sector investments that sometimes fail but oftentimes succeed. Here’s his response:

Look…there, there, there is the…the…difference in that, your overall view of what…huh, your responsibilities are as president and what your view of the economic future is. And the president believes as he’s made clear that a president’s responsibility is not just to, ah, those who win but those who, for example in a company where ah, there have been layoffs or a company that has gone bankrupt, that we have to ah make sure that those folks have the means to find other employment, that they have the ability to train for other kinds of work and that’s part of the overall responsibility a president has. 

Got all that?

For the duration of his Administration, President Obama has dished out billions of dollars to politically favored companies in pursuit of job creation and a new “green” economy. It’s taxpayer-funded crony capitalism that has neither created new jobs nor produced the green-energy payout that the president was looking for. In fact, it’s a policy that has failed miserably, leading to bankruptcy after bankruptcy. Yet despite all the failures — and zero successes — the president and his Administration are defending the indefensible and standing by a policy that has squandered taxpayer money.

In one instance, President Obama committed $465 million of taxpayer money to Tesla, which was founded by a campaign mega-donor and the 63rd richest man in the world, Elon Musk, to build a $130,000 battery-powered sports car that becomes permanently inoperable if left uncharged for 30 days.

It’s gotten so bad that Congress is launching probes of federal green energy programs, including the Energy Department loan program, over concerns that lawmakers fast-tracked approval for politically connected companies. Heritage’s Lachlan Markay reports that according to a Republican aide on the Senate Budget Committee, “Politically favored, and often connected, renewable energy plans [receive] less rigorous review than traditional energy projects.” In one program, of the $20.5 billion in loans granted, $16.4 billion went to companies linked to donors who contributed to Obama and the Democratic Party.

At the same time the president is defending his taxpayer-funded failures, he’s attacking free enterprise, including in private equity and venture capitalism — enterprises in which investors voluntarily put up their own money to invest in new ideas and rescue existing companies. Sometimes those ventures fail, sometimes their inevitable failure is delayed but temporarily saves jobs amid restructuring, but many times they succeed — generating profits and producing new jobs.

When Carney was asked to justify the president’s defense of one, but criticism of the other, he just couldn’t do it. That’s no surprise, in that the two positions are logically inconsistent. This episode calls to mind a quote from George Orwell, a frequent and pointed critic of modern political discourse:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms …

Maybe Jay Carney’s confused speech is the result of the unbearable heat and humidity that has descended on Washington all too early this year. Or maybe it’s a bad case of Potomac fever. But no matter the cause, the results are the same. In Washington, the Obama Administration is hard at work defending the crony capitalist machine while lambasting the free market system — and it shows no signs of letting up.

This is from the Heritage Foundation.

Glenn Hubbard Is Soft Spoken And Practical

Even with CNN he's straightforward and clear thinking. After all, we all agree that our leaders in Washington are to whatever degree appeals to you, out of touch and bent on saving their perks. Patience is admirable under the circumstances. It would be preferable if those who aren't really engaged beyond political ideology would inform themselves and speak from the standpoint of solutions rather than mere rabble rousing.

"If I wanted America to fail"

Former Soviet Citizen Confronts Socialists at Occupy Wall Street

There's so much rational confidence among educated Americans who support an idealized form of socialism that they think is possible in this country. Paradoxically, the very existence of this confidence stems from the very freedom that many seem to denounce in favor of their utopian vision. Youthful confidence has been the source of the socialist experiment for centuries, though creeping corruption and human resentments about relative duties has always resulted in totalitarian dictatorships. After all, how do thousands of ideas get "on the same page"? The Green movement gives the apparency of such unity, but they exist within a free society, so it's really just academic. Take away those structures of freedom and then let's see the confidence level. Westerns were a main staple of TV as American industry grew. The raw immediacy of core social structures was flimsy, as the evil monopolist would coerce the weak. Hollywood's values are strikingly similar today but the bad guy is the greedy company executive. "Funny how countless people flee socialist "paradises" all the time to escape to capitalist America and warn us of the dangers of following down that path while you never see any lefties here pack their bags for one of these places, even after threatening to do so every time a Republican wins the presidential election" (Ironhawk86) There were attempts to disrupt the 1%er, "Peter Schiff". Many have fixed opinions and were looking for supporters, while some of the younger were willing to absorb and learn from their experience of the evening in NY city at the Occupy Wallstreet gathering. To conclude here, I've gone back to the former soviet clarifying intent.

Keep Political Correctness Off The Battlefield. Free the L10!

"There's something wrong in this country." In the words of Colonel Allen West, soldiers have been imprisoned for violations of poorly defined orders that are the result of court decisions driven by the likes of the ACLU, forcing political correctness onto the battlefield. It's a pathetic waste of human capital that those who choose to defend American values be shackled by leaders unwilling to defend their men. Those who join a volunteer army deserve to be protected from academic discussions made in a court removed from the fluid challenges faced by troops. In a complex and multifaceted society such as ours, responsible leaders buffer their people from the expectations of the inexperienced. Colonel Allen West gave a speech to a number of parents, friends and supporters of those held in Leavenworth Prison.

Rubio Discusses Future of U.S. Foreign Policy

Rubio clarifies a nuanced approach to U. S. Foreign Policy. This is the most logical, nuanced and lucid representation I've heard out of Washington. For once a presentation hasn't been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator or shallow talking points. This speech is spoken by a leader. This is a person who respects his position and wishes to influence Americans to strive to unify towards a common vision. Nice change. I listened to this twice because I'm distrustful enough to suspect that honest nuanced logic out of Washington is not possible. Having lived overseas for 10 years, it's clear that the World functions best when the USA leads.