Death Of A Nation....

Polarization is not the problem.

The problem is not that the 'pubs are too right wing, or even that they are too anything different from the Dems; it's that our country as a whole has largely become populated with people who expect the Government to be the end and answer for all ills. It is liberals and most moderates who tend to think that way, but also a surprising number of people who style themselves conservative.

The problem won't be solved by 'pubs trying to act like Dems. In fact, the problem has already reached the critical mass of users overbalancing producers and I truly believe our country is beyond saving -- in its current form. It's like watching a giant tree topple... slowly at first, and then faster and faster....

Gas prices at the pump are rising fast. It is the Oil companies and OPEC's aim to have gas at $4+/gal. by October/November. They are doing this by cutting production and storing oil outside the US.

Any business operating off of their P&L statement to get money has to be watching A&R very closely. They still have to keep inventory low and take absolutely no hits such as a big customer going under. It still will do no good. Any company not making products that people actually need, or companies that depend on "marketing" to drive demand are goners. Like most biz that operates on "buzz", they think they can create demand without products people need, but they are done. Cooked. They just don't know it yet.

I expect unemployment will pass 12-15% by the 2nd quarter of 2010, there will be across-the-board credit defaults, by both individuals and companies, and then it will become evident that we are in a full-blown depression.

And we will find out that the Government cannot save our economy or our souls -- if we still have either.

Here's exerpts from a great post by Old Hop:

... "Citing Murray Boochkin, Riggenbach shows how the conventional political appellations of “left” and “right” are turned on their heads:[A] brief look at the history of the relevant political terms – Left and Right, liberal and conservative – will persuade us that libertarianism has absolutely nothing in common with anything on the Right. For it is as the anarchist Murray Bookchin said back in 1978: “People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights – this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left […].”

... And what about the socialists, the Maoists and Trotskyites, and the liberals of the Democratic party? Bookchin was asked. What about the people most Americans regarded as “the Left”? Those people, Bookchin replied, were “going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism.” They were “becoming the real right in the United States.”

... In other words, one who believes in unhindered free markets and individual rights is really on the left side of the political spectrum. Those who favor government intervention in social and economic matters (thus considering themselves flaming liberals) turn out to be supporters of conservatism – unwittingly preserving the statist status quo that under different guises has dominated public affairs in this country for decades.

The GOP is the conservative party in American politics, the party that since Lincoln (and Henry Clay and Alexander Hamilton before him) has stood for mercantilism, welfare statism, and war. Libertarians are not conservatives; they are not on the Right. They are on the Left, the last remnant of the original liberals.

... And lest we forget that Barack Obama’s #1 campaign contributor was Goldman Sachs:

Though some true liberals remain in the Democratic Party of today, almost all of them have made the error of pursuing liberal goals by conservative means. And the majority in the party has been New Deal liberal – false liberal, conservative in liberal’s clothing – since the 1930s. In effect, the United States is now governed by one or the other of two conservative parties.