Joel's Rant

With all the coverage of the budget deficit and the debt ceiling it was easy to miss the report that came this week from the Commerce Department that indicated the nation’s growth in the last quarter was 1.3%. To put that into some perspective, it takes quarterly growth of at least 3% just to keep up with the population of new workers coming of age and seeking employment. Essentially, 3% growth means being just even, treading water, just keeping up. It’s, for all practical purposes, no actual growth at all. It’s what an economy does when it’s standing in place, not moving forward or back. You get the idea.

If only our nation had 3% growth, what a lovely thing that would be. Instead we had 1.3% growth in the last quarter. But that’s not the worst news that was reported, news that no one really saw or cared about given the debt ceiling crisis and all that. No, the worst news was that the reported 1.9% growth of the previous quarter was actually incorrect. It turns out the actual real growth figure was 0.4% growth.

Now here’s the deal. The nation’s economy is dead in the water. We’re actually listing to the left. All this Obama and liberal and Democrat talk about an economic recovery, a recovery that’s underway but just not fast enough, and any other talk from Geithner or Schumer or Reid and the others about recovery is utter bullcrap. Not only is it a complete lie to say we’re in a recovery, but the ease with which these people lie reveals something very dark and sinister and troubling. It’s serial, it’s psychopathic. It just is.

If you believe those guys, or their media sycophants, you’re living on another planet. There’s no recovery at all. In fact, there may actually be a real live depression going on. Job growth is dead. Home buying is dead. Consumer spending is dead. With fully 25 million people either unemployed, or under-employed, what we have here is your classic stagnation, with stagflation not far behind.

This brings us to the debt ceiling and the farce that’s playing out for the entire world to see. It would be funny to watch if it weren’t so serious and the stakes so high. We have the Republicans on one side, furiously trying to put plan after plan, proposal after proposal on the record, hoping to get the Democrats to allow a vote up or down and then use that debate to formulate a policy every side can live with. My own opinion is that the Republicans should stop negotiating and let the August 2nd deadline come and see what happens, but that’s beside the point.

Since April, the House Republicans have actually passed, and made official and transparent, the Ryan budget, the Cut, Cap & Balance proposal, and the Boehner plan. The Democrats have not even offered a budget, let alone passed one, as required by law, in almost 3 years!

On the other side we have the freaks of the left. You can’t describe them in any other way because to do so would lend them a sense of seriousness of which they do not deserve. They are not serious people, they are destroyers. For the past 7 months they have offered exactly nothing. They have not offered a plan or a policy. There is nothing specific on paper, there’s nothing written down for others to examine, they have provided no documentation. They just talk……and talk and talk.

Obama’s the best talker, a talker in the mold of Castro or Chavez, droning on and on, blaming everyone else, using his now almost daily national audience to stoke, the way a third-world dictator would, hate and loathing of the Republicans. Or if not Republicans one day, it’s hating the rich, the oil companies, insurance companies, or jet owners the next day. It’s about hating the “millionaires & billionaires” (who are actually more likely to be a teacher and fireman married to each other and earning about $250,000 a year). It’s about hating the people on Wall Street. It’s about hating business or corporations. It’s about hating CEO’s or drug companies. But it’s always about hate.

Obama and his minions are very hateful people.

And so they offer nothing. Even after all the discussions and negotiations about spending cuts Jack Lew, Obama’s director of the budget, admitted that the Democrats had actually agreed to only $2 billion in discretionary spending cuts. That’s $2 billion; or 1/20th of 1% of the expected budget deficit for 1 year.
But even that wasn’t written down anywhere.

And the Senate Democrats then refused to even debate the bills the House sent over for a vote. Not only did they not vote, 51 of them agreed not to even hear the specifics of the bill, to not even listen to what was proposed. The Democrats essentially put their hands over their mouths, eyes and ears and would not even admit that there was something physical sitting directly in front of them. They’re the ones proclaiming a calamity in the American economy if something isn’t done to raise the debt ceiling and they refuse to vote on or even discuss the Republican’s offer of a resolution. And literally no sooner do they refuse the Republican’s outright, but have the unmitigated chutzpah to appear before a national audience just moments later to say the Republicans are negotiating in bad faith. You can’t make this stuff up.

So what does all this mean? I don’t believe the Republicans are necessarily noble people. They clearly are politicians and have their own stuff. But they’re not anti-American. They don’t hate America. They don’t hate the people they are supposed to represent.

The Democrats, on the other hand, want to create an additional $10 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years to add to the $14 trillion in public debt already on the books. They have no problem raising taxes on those still lucky enough to be employed and will increase those taxes by 5% or 50%, they really don’t care. They don’t care that the nation’s accrued debt, by 2020, will be over $25 trillion. They don’t care that debt levels of that magnitude cannot be sustained. They don’t care that the civil society might collapse, that civil unrest could break out the way it has in Greece. They really don’t care.
They don’t care that the economy is dead. They lie about it to convince you otherwise, but the facts tell the truth. And ObamaCare has not even hit the streets yet.

The Democrats are the party of Fast & Furious. Like the reprehensible scandal that bemoans that name, people like Obama and Pelosi and Wasserman-Schultz and others don’t think things through; they have no interest in the consequences; they’re not concerned about how they impact on people’s lives. They refuse to take any blame, they refuse to be reflective of their actions, they refuse to be transparent, they refuse to take any responsibility.

When you take a moment and look at our country and the political class that is navigating our ship of state you realize something really scary. This present debate isn’t at all about America’s economy, or our debt or debt ceiling or any of that. This is about America and the kind of country we are and the kind of country we will become. This is about the future of America for us and our children.

This is an existential battle between two different and opposite ideologies. One ideology is good, even brilliant, if otherwise managed clumsily and often weakly. The other is evil and will bring down our once great society and culture, bringing menace and misery to everyone but the political class that adores it.
I hate to say it, but the Democrats hate America and they hate Americans. They hate all of us. Their actions prove it.

And that’s all there is to it.