Just some stuff, in case you haven’t overdosed on election postmortems and locked yourself in the basement with a snuggly blanket, a bottle of bourbon, and your favorite shotgun. My new dog has cheered me considerably but I’m not going to pretend something awful hasn’t recently happened.
Mark Steyn, The Edge of the Abyss:
The central question of [my book] is whether the Brokest Nation in History is capable of meaningful course correction. On Tuesday, the American people answered that question. The rest of the world will make its dispositions accordingly.
In the weeks ahead, Democrats and Republicans will reach a triumphant “bipartisan” deal to avert the fiscal cliff through some artful bookkeeping mechanism that postpones Taxmageddon for another year, or six months, or three, when they can reach yet another triumphant deal to postpone it yet again. Harry Reid has already announced that he wants to raise the debt ceiling — or, more accurately, lower the debt abyss — by $2.4 trillion before the end of the year, and no doubt we can look forward to a spectacular “bipartisan” agreement on that, too.
…Americans as a whole have joined the rest of the Western world in voting themselves a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. The longer any course correction is postponed the more convulsive it will be. Alas, on Tuesday, the electorate opted to defer it for another four years. I doubt they’ll get that long.
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Via ZeroHedge, Why Self-Sufficiency Matters:
It is both logical and consistent with the evidence to believe that self-sufficiency is an important ingredient for individuals and societies to be successful. Self-sufficiency encourages productivity by tying the ability to spend to the need to produce, it allows people to be free rather than dependent on others and it gives people self-respect. It is not controversial to say that people spend the money that they earn differently than the money that others give them – i.e., that the connection between earning and spending is a healthy one. If people have to earn money to spend it, they have to be more productive. Over the long run increases in living standards rise as a function of increases in productivity. So, it is not a big leap to presume that countries with greater amounts of self-sufficiency do better than those with less…
…As shown, Asian economies are measured as most self-sufficient, followed by Latin American countries. The English speaking developed world generally comes next. Finally, European countries, with the large European periphery countries like Spain and Italy, are the least self sufficient. The chart below shows these ratings. Look at it to see if you are surprised and note those surprises so that you can see what they are attributable to when we show you the composition of our barometer. For example, you might find it notable that “communist” China has greater self-sufficiency than the capitalist US.
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James E. Miller, Why President Obama Was Reelected:
There is a rational explanation for the President’s reelection which doesn’t invoke a deep or complex meaning. The only way to explain the outcome is in the simplest and direct prose: the moochers prevailed.
Obama’s winning tactic was to do what any respectable man does when he wishes to have something; he bought it. From cell phones and contraceptives to food stamps and unemployment benefits, the Obama administration kept the money flowing to ensure a steady turnout on Election Day. The coup de grâce was painting his opponent as a second coming of Dickens’ Scrooge that was ready to cut the voters from their trust funds.
The campaign made no attempt to hide this tactic. In an online video, celebrity Lena Dunham was tapped to extol the virtues of government-supplied birth control. The advertisement was aimed at a younger generation already guaranteed access to their parent’s health insurance till they turn 26 (and then morph simultaneously into full grown, self-sufficient adults). The video was a great demonstration of the campaign strategy but it was topped by one woman from Cleveland, Ohio who exemplified the public trough mentality on camera. Commonly referred to as the Obama-phone lady, this woman was so enraptured by her “free” cell phone and other welfare entitlements, she was determined to “keep Obama in president” to use her exact words. Though clearly dimwitted, Ms. Obamaphone was a phenomenal orator of the President’s message of goodies in exchange for votes.
…Obama won the election by catering to the worst of all human traits: envy. He demonized the rich while promising to take more of their income and give it out in the form of entitlement payments. Under his presidency, the attitude of the takers will continue to swell as they clamor for more privileges. Anybody who speaks out against the Robin Hood scheme will be called an unconscionable xenophobe and a hater of the poor. The protestant work ethic will slowly be choked into submission through deliberate iconoclasm launched by the political class and their pet media pundits.
The opponents of capitalism will keep blaming money and greed for all the ills of society. They will also keep wearing fashionable clothes and coordinating protests on their smartphones while drinking caffeinated drinks that cost the same as some third world country’s average salary. They will scoff at hard work when it’s the sweat and labor of generations before them that has created the living standard they enjoy today…
…Romney and Obama may be as interchangeable as a pair of dice, but the former’s rhetoric that highlighted self-sufficiency was enough to turn off the majority of the voting public. With Obama’s reelection comes the onward march of American society’s degeneration into that of the lazy, bitter masses forever on the lookout to loot a hapless minority still trying to make an honest living. The coming brave new world will be filled to the brim with self-righteous individuals eager to shuffle around the Earth’s gifts to achieve some kind of equality. In the process, none of them will produce a lick of good outside of satisfying their own disturbed need to dominate. It will be rule of the inept over the capable. Barack Obama will lead the way. He will be replaced in four years with someone that follows the same doctrine. The collective age of the country will continue to collapse till it reaches just shy of an unclothed infant wailing for succor. Except it will be grown men doing the crying and no one around to feed him because the sensible among us has already left.
The people have spoken and made it so.
So…that basement, bourbon, blanket, and shotgun are lookin’ better by the minute, eh?
But hey, abortion! Free birth control! Vaginas! Gay marriage! Binders! Big bird!
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From a wonderful friend-reader named Christina, here’s a rant by writer Larry Correia written in response to a fan named Bob who wrote that he didn’t like Correia offering his non-lefty political opinions. I got the title of my post from this magnificent rant.
So you say that you’re not a moocher, Bob? I don’t think I ever said that every single person that voted for Obama was a moocher… I actually think the democrats have built a winning combination of idealists who despite all evidence to the contrary think the government can actually make problems better, Marxist assholes, people who believe whatever the narrative is on TV, people who can’t think about anything more complex than a Facebook meme, dead and imaginary voters, and moochers.
To be fair though, the republican party is divided up between big government goons, democrats who think they are republicans, people who want the government to be our dad, people who think the government makes everything it touches turn to crap and who just want to be left alone, and libertarians who are smart enough to know that the most effective libertarian candidates in history have all been republicans.
You are probably a pretty well-meaning guy that doesn’t mind pulling the cart, but you voted for the moocher party. You voted for the party of bail outs, handouts, welfare, food stamps, government controlled healthcare, the Life of Julia, voting with your lady bits, racial quotas, Occupying Stuff, gun control, Obamaphones, and voter fraud, so I’m fresh out of pity if that hurts your feelings.
…Meanwhile, I voted for the party with some damn stupid elected officials in it, I’m talking absurd levels of stupid, but with a far higher ratio of people who can actually balance a check book. Are they perfect? Not even close. I’m not an idiot. But half our guys can at least do math while all of your guys are drawing stick figures in the check book, in crayon.
Yeah, and big L libertarians and Ron Pauloids, save it. Heard it. You comment in every thread. Yes, the republican party is just as bad, blah blah friggin’ blah, which is, once again, why the Libertarian party has accomplished jack and shit, ever, but you can pat yourself on the back about your purity, while meanwhile the candidates that actually come closest to your beliefs have all been republicans from the Tea Party. Because at least they show up.
And while I’m thinking about it, thanks for all of the helpful advice from smug liberals on the internet, about how if the republican party would just change their position of (topic X) then they could like totally count on your vote next time… This is especially good advice consdering that (topic X) is usually not something any republicans care about, but rather some media narrative talking point telling you guys about how god awful republicans are. So yeah… Thanks for the advice, but no. Shut up.
…Also one day after the election, Yahoo News ran an article listing all of the exciting new ways Obama will raise taxes… Of course, they couldn’t bother to run that one week before. Oh, and remember that whole second debate bit about how we’re going to lower gas prices because of all this awesome sooper dooper drilling we’re going to do on federal lands? Yeah… About that the day after the election Ken Salazar killed that. Dead. Done. That will deprive my state of tens of thousands of jobs, but that’s cool, because those guys aren’t union. So screw them, right?
Here’s the kicker, Bob. I don’t have strong political opinions because I’m a novelist. I have strong political opinions because I’m good at business. I’m good at MATH. You got offended when I talked about the moochers, but the productive simply can’t keep on paying for other people’s good times. It is going to end badly, because math doesn’t lie. We had our opportunity to apply the brakes (notice I didn’t say reverse it) but we weren’t grown up enough to do that. So now we’re screwed.
P.S. Not saying I’ve suddenly lost hope, here. Saying I think it’s dire.