Topic: Quote of the Day - Smoke-'n-Mirrors Edition

[Pandora]

   "On the one hand, this is the single largest year-to-year cut in the federal budget, frankly in the history of America in absolute terms… probably for that we all deserve medals, the entire Congress," the Texas congressman (Jeb Hensarling) said on CNN’s "State of the Union" Sunday. "Relative to the size of the problem, it is not even a rounding error. In that case we probably all deserve to be tarred and feathered."

(My emphasis.)

Which goes along with this:

    "Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything," writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays ("American Politics, Then and Now"). The concept of "vital national interest" is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. What has abetted this political sprawl, notes Wilson, is the rising influence of "action intellectuals" — professors, pundits, "experts" — who provide respectable rationales for various political agendas.

    The consequence is political overload: The system can no longer make choices, especially unpleasant choices, for the good of the nation as a whole.

    --

    Government is suicidal because it breeds expectations that cannot be met.

Baker

[Sectionhand]

The very idea that every want can be met , every desire satisfied , every hurt addressed , and every dream fullfilled by government or any other entity short of Almighty God is not only unrealistic but silly . The attempt by self-serving politicos to apply government spending as a universal anodyne to satisfy a million different agendas is what has brought us to this sorry state of fiscal affairs . I defy anyone to argue the truth of this .

[Dan]

I don't mind that it's suicidal, just that it's 'gonna take so many of us with it!

[charlesoakwood]

I don't mind that it's suicidal, just that it's 'gonna take so many of us with it!

   

[Pandora]

In that, I have a small quibble with Mr. Baker; government is homocidal.

[charlesoakwood]

I don't mind that it's suicidal, just that it's 'gonna take so many of us with it!

   

In that, I have a small quibble with Mr. Baker; government is homocidal.

 

[Dan]

Yeah, but it's like calling a jihadi a "homicide bomber" rather than a "suicide bomber". Sure it's "killing" us, at times literally, sure, but it's going to do itself in eventually and what will replace it if we allow it will not even resemble the founder's vision. Maybe Marx's. And Cloward and Piven.

[Pandora]

Yeah, but it's like calling a jihadi a "homicide bomber" rather than a "suicide bomber". Sure it's "killing" us, at times literally, sure, but it's going to do itself in eventually and what will replace it if we allow it will not even resemble the founder's vision. Maybe Marx's. And Cloward and Piven.

And when it does, it will, as Dan wrote, take a lot of us with it.  Homicidal.

[Dan]

Yeah, it won't go quietly, that's for sure.

[Libertas]

Everything is fine!  Just hold hands a sing Kum-Bay-Yah!

/