I'd make one now, except just thinking about it depresses me. I was not happy about the results of the midterm, needless to say... and I am even less happy, if possible, about this "compromise" that Obama has made with the GOP on taxes. From where I sit, it smells more like capitulation than compromise. Give a lot, get almost nothing.
Obama is the most intelligent president we've had since Jimmy Carter... and, sad to say, he is looking more and more like Jimmy every day. A good man, but not a good leader. At least not so far. He doesn't seem to have the stomach for a fight. We need another FDR, another JFK, another LBJ. NOT Jimmy II. (And, yes, I know, Obama has accomplished some important stuff. But so did Jimmy. Camp David accords, remember?)
Yeats was writing about his own time in "The Second Coming," I know, but sometimes I think he was prescient:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
And could that rough beast whose hour has come round at least be... Sarah Palin?
No, please. Tell me that's just a bad dream. Somebody wake me up.
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grrm- George R.R. Martin
- George R. R. Martin
Comments
Of course, defense spending should be cut as well, but at least the Constitution provides for the use of taxpayer money for national defense.
It seems like social safety nets designed to help desperately sick Americans, or impoverished elderly, do promote the general welfare of the United States. Or at least, it's a close enougth call to be left to Congress' judgment.
If you want to go with the "wait, they didn't really mean that" route, then you're in the interpretation game, and there are 70 years of Supreme Court cases saying that Social Security is a legitimate use of authority under the Commerce Clause. Medicaid, meanwhile, is done under the spending clause, in partnership with the states. A state is free to opt out, if it wants to, as far as I know. I don't think any have.
Regarding the Supreme Court bit, all I'll say is that many, many longstanding laws have been struck down after decades of enforcement and opinions. I'm only using the principle (and thus am not drawing a direct comparison), but Brown vs. Board of Education is a solid example of this.