J.V. DeLong in a comment at The Right Coast:
Maybe it was a bad week for the Obama administration — and maybe it was a fine week.
If the Obama-ists weather these scandals with no damage except squawking from the conservatives, then they will know that they are invulnerable, and are free to use the IRS, the regulatory agencies, and the legal system to harass all enemies without limit.
The real test is of the Democratic Party. Does it stand with the Republic, or has it turned into a Leninist party that controls the government according to the will of the Leader? Based on the performance of the Dems at the Benghazi hearing, the latter seems the case.
If Lexington Green is reading; could he comment on what the J.V. DeLong quote implies about the concept in America 3.0?
The country has to survive the short term, to prosper in the long term.
And events destructive to the constitutional order are happening far faster than the system can react, even if there was an Opposition willing to react.
Subotai Bahadur
>>> The real test is of the Democratic Party. Does it stand with the Republic, or has it turned into a Leninist party that controls the government according to the will of the Leader? Based on the performance of the Dems at the Benghazi hearing, the latter seems the case.
The REAL test is, have the media/journalists so sold their souls that they don’t care, either…?
We can likely survive a party that is out of control, given the fact that we have the guns.
I’m not so sure we can survive Pravda at the same time, tovarisch.
Journ-O-List = Brown Skirts.
They are the media arm of the Chavista State Obama is trying to form.
A state whose future includes the IRS investigating your medical records and auditing your medical providers for providing “too much service” to the political opponents of the state.
The IRS admission of targeting groups based on their politics, should be the death knell for Obamacare. It was frightening enough before, with the suspicion they couldn’t be trusted, now that they have been proven to abuse their power how can we possibly let Obamacare go forward?
If you disparage the name ‘he who must not be named'(the Dark Lord, aka The Father of Lies) in an Email, you will be investigated by the FBI and auditted by the IRS.
As we can tell from the treatment of the Boston Bombing and the Cleveland Kidnapper, preventing kidnapping and terrorism are not as important to the FBI or DHS as stopping the Tea Party.
The government is at war with a large segment of the American people. How it will play out, I don’t know. The last few years reminds me of the subversion of German institutions after the appointment of Hitler as chancellor. That subversion took several years, and I think things have progressed more slowly here, but the resistance so far hasn’t been any more successful.
Subotai, I suppose the prospect of a Castro-ite despotism being imposed is possible.
But most Democrats simply do not have the will to power needed to be genuine Leninists.
Nonetheless, most of Mr. Obama’s more ardent supporters do not see what the problem is with any of these actions by him and his administration. What their guy wants is correct, what hurts his enemies is good, and they formulate arguments to justify his actions and vilify his opponents. That mindset is a minority of the country however. Or so it seems. And so I hope.
We shall see how this all plays out.
Generally, we predict the dissolution of much of the existing Federal government machinery. This episode may be one episode in what will certainly be a protracted and contentious process.
I’m sorry, but you continue to speak of these situations as if we were simply dealing with a political party or parties which have gotten out of control, or beurocrats who exceeded their statutory powers.
These developments are clearly more than that.
we are dealing with a criminal syndicate which has taken political power through elections bought and sold by a complicity media and a thoroughly corrupted electoral process.
we are being governed by a Chicago mafia syndicate, and these tactics are completely normal for that scenario, and no other.
these supposed competing parties are a fiction. There is a factionalized ruling elite, whose various and shifting allegiances are to one power broker or another, and very little concern about the overall welfare of the country or the average citizen, except as a cow to be milked and sheep to be shorn.
The current regime is only the most nakedly obvious incarnation of this tragic situation.
the greatest nation in history is slowly being devoured by lampreys, criminal lampreys which have burrowed into it’s flesh and is drinking it’s life’s blood unto the death of the republic.
Sorry about the typos. I’m not used to posting from my iPad.
Veryretired; Typos or not, you are spot-on correct.
“But most Democrats simply do not have the will to power needed to be genuine Leninists. ”
The real Bolsheviks were a small group. The rest of the nomenklatura were satisfied with the consumer goods in special stores and the feeling of power that they got from being on the correct side.
The Nazis were a larger share of the German ( and Austrian) population than the Bolsheviks’ share of the Russian population.
The American people have year after year voted for representatives, presidents, and senators who have created and elaborated the institutions of tyranny. Then they are shocked to discover that tyrannical institutions can be used by wanna be tyrants. The solution—the only real solution—is not to create an elaborate bureaucracy which makes baroque rules whose enforcement is at the discretion of elected thugs.
The solutions, beginning with abolishing the IRS and reversing the transfer of power from Congress to the bureaucracy, require the American people love liberty more than comfort; freedom more than government subsidies. If such sentiments exist, they are not visible to me.
The last Democrat (both upper and lower case ‘d’) left the Democrat party with the retirement of Sam Nunn, who so hated Republicans that he preferred retirement to opposing the occupation of the Democrat party by Communists (literally Communists who hang Mao ornaments on Christmas trees and fly the Cuban flag at party headquarters).
No one left in the Democrat Party cares the least for the AmeriKKKa (their spelling) which endured for almost 200 years. Their hatred is such that their enemies deserve no quarter, no mercy, and certainly no respect from the Law. There are no laws which can protect the racist-sexist-fascist homophobes (again, their terms, roughly the equivalent of ‘kulak’ or ‘ox ghost and snake spirit,’ or ‘capitalist roader’ from their vengeance.