Journal pudge's Journal: Pretending to be Centrist 3
Arnold Schwarzenegger's "new centrism" is, in fact, "old liberalism." I heard him talking about his new universal health care plan, and said that the new four percent tax he's proposing is not a tax even though it isn't, but that the cost of covering uninsured people, which actually is not a tax, is a "hidden tax."
He says he wants to "get things done" by working in the center but he's doing it by doing just what most liberals want to do. There's nothing centrist about it.
It's an old and boring trick, saying that you are a centrist, then picking a side and pretending that you're being sensible and moderate, when you're being no such thing.
It's like what the Democrats have done for the last few years on the whole, pretending to be centrist, in line with "the people," being the "reality-based community" and so on, when no such thing is remotely true.
One laughable (and sad) examples of this was last year in the Senate Intelligence Committee: there was no significant evidence that Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress had played a key role in America's decision to go to war, despite having fed us incorrect information, and there was plenty of evidence that it had not. The Committee's professional staff, the CIA, everyone said, nope, it didn't have a key role. As one CIA officer said, "If you're trying to say that the INC is the one that pushed us to go to war because of the WMD reporting, that's wrong."
But Senator Jay Rockefeller came up with his own, unsupported, alternate conclusion: "False information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC)-affiliated sources was used to support key Intelligence Community assessments on Iraq and was widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war."
With the help of Republican Senators Hagel and Snowe, Rockefeller's version won the day, prompting a nearly unprecedented reply from Pat Roberts, the Committee's chairman, who noted at the end of the official report: "These conclusions -- and the misconceptions they support -- are a myth." (See p. 130, although the whole section from pages 125 to 157 is enlighteneing.)
Again, I say: "reality-based, my ass."
Implicit assumption (Score:2)
that the cost of covering uninsured people, which actually is not a tax, is a "hidden tax."
As Walter Williams says, "That's not a problem of liberty; that's a problem of socialism."
CA socialism grows... (Score:2)
BTW, never heard of it until last week but Idocracy [imdb.com] came out on DVD and I picked it up. Most of it is pretty stilly/stupid, but it did have some social commentary. Helped to point out that stupid social programs protecting slack asses and the stupid really goes against darwinism and could result in an overall dumbing down of
Re: (Score:2)
Helped to point out that stupid social programs protecting slack asses and the stupid really goes against darwinism and could result in an overall dumbing down of humanity over time. Which might be part of why it wasn't advertised worth a damn in the US, or given many theaters on release
No. It was simply not advertised (not merely "worth a damn," but "at all": no trailer or movie poster even existed for it!) or in wide release because someone in the movie company decided it wasn't financially worth it. They figured they would make their money on it on DVD, and indeed, I saw a commercial for it on TV last night. Not sure offhand which channel, but a major one. The commercial was lame, showed only one sorta funny thing in it, but it's better than nothing.
It's a very good movie.