More on a liking for order

I have said something about this quite recently.  An abiding theme in social psychology is that conservatives suffer from personality defects.  But proving that claim has been kinda difficult. The fact that conservatives are regularly found to be happier than Leftists is a bitch.  Think of all the fault you could find with conservatives if they were more miserable!  You could definitely say they were "maladjusted" then.

So Leftist psychologists have to scratch around a fair bit to find what is wrong with conservatives.  The best they can do is to say that conservatives are said to be less "open" and more "intolerant of ambiguity", for instance. An easy conservative retort would be that conservatives are less scatterbrained and like order more.  You just give the same behaviour a different label.

But that retort doesn't disturb Leftists much.  They are quite happy to find fault with a desire for order. It is "rigid" etc. to them.  So I was rather amused to read an interview given by the daughter of Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, the Nazi commander of  Auschwitz concentration camp, where over a million of humanity's best and brightest were killed.  The daughter is now an old lady but had fond memories of her father and, along the way, described something about his personality.  See below:

"Her father had an obsession with order, something she inherited, and she also talked of a strict upbringing.

'If I see a picture hung wrong on the wall, I have to get up and straighten it. I get high blood pressure,' she said, adding that she also has a need to force her obsession with order on to others.

'Dad was strict when it came to etiquette,' says Ingebrigitt.

'At the dining table, the children were allowed to speak only if they were asked. But he was never angry."

SOURCE

But as a prominent Nazi, Höss was a Leftist.  If you doubt the Leftist nature of Nazism, just start reading this assembly of historical facts.  You won't read for long before you accept that reality.  So once again we see that good ol' Leftist projection at work  -- ascribing to others what is really true of themselves.  It is Leftists who are rigid and intolerant of ambiguity -- as we see in their intolerance of debate and reliance on authority whenever global warming comes up for discussion.

So the Nazis too were socialists who definitely liked order.  You actually had only to watch Triumph des Willens by Leni Riefenstahl to see that, even if you don't understand German.  Just think of all those cool Nazi uniforms! (If I may be a little sarcastic).

There is of course nothing wrong with a desire for order.  Life would be impossible without it.  It is when it becomes an obsession that it is dubious. It clearly was something of an obsession for Höss.

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They Never Stop, They Never Sleep, They Never Quit

Via "health care," the totalitarian Left is on the march once more

The hallmark of all Fascist systems is their relentlessness. Like the Terminator, they cannot be satisfied, they cannot be negotiated with, they cannot be persuaded of the evil of their cause (in fact, that’s a feature, not a bug). They just keep coming until either they are destroyed — or they destroy you. Case in point:

"A different health care issue has emerged for Democrats, in sync with the party’s pitch to workers and middle-class voters ahead of next year’s elections. It’s not the uninsured, but rather the problem of high out-of-pocket costs for people already covered. Democrats call it “underinsurance.”

After paying premiums, many low- and middle-income patients still face high costs when trying to use their coverage. There’s growing concern that the value of a health insurance card is being eaten away by rising deductibles, the amount of actual medical costs that patients pay each year before coverage kicks in. ”I think it’s going to be the next big problem,” said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a congressional leader on health care.

“We’ve got some 17 million more people covered … but they can’t access the care they seem to be entitled to,” McDermott said. “It costs too much to use the care. That’s the deceptive part about it.” Since virtually all U.S. residents are now required to have health insurance by President Barack Obama’s health care law, McDermott said Democrats have a responsibility to make sure coverage translates to meaningful benefits."

In other words, having achieved their thug victory with Obamacare, they’re now ready to move on to the “next big problem,” because for these people there is always a next big problem — another expansion of government, another bite at your freedom. Now they’ve come up with the word “underinsurance” as they discover that their magic bullet of Obamacare is — wait for it — flawed and, with a brutish hack like McDermott in the lead, needs to be “fixed.”

But this is always the way things are on the Left: there is nothing wrong with “reform” that more “reform” won’t cure, until the thing or institution being “reformed” bears absolutely no resemblance to what it once was. None of this has anything to do with “health care,” of course; rather it is simply another way to expand government and subordinate the people using the bogus Leftist “virtue” of “compassion” — an expansion of the federal governments powers far beyond those enumerated in the Constitution. It is therefore unconstitutional and, worse, un-American.

And right behind them is the amen choir of Leftist stooges, media flunkies, bought-and-paid-for think tanks and all the other structurally Marxist people and organizations who have plighted their troth to the Democrats:

"Several liberal-leaning organizations have recently focused on the issue.

—A Commonwealth Fund study found that 31 million adults were underinsured last year. Half of them had problems with medical bills or medical debt. Seven million were underinsured due to high deductibles alone. “The steady growth in the proliferation and size of deductibles threatens to increase underinsurance in the years ahead,” the study concluded.

—A study by the advocacy group Families USA found that one-quarter of the people with individual health insurance policies went without care in 2014 because they could not afford the out-of-pocket costs. The study singled out high deductibles.

—The Center for American Progress, a think tank often aligned with the White House, found that employers have been shifting a disproportionate burden of health care costs onto workers. As a result, the report said, employees and their families have not shared in the benefits of a prolonged lull in medical inflation. The group recommended several policy changes, including rebates for workers under certain conditions."

Given the complete lack of coherent opposition to the Democrats in Congress, look for the “underinsurance” chant to be picked up by the junior wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party as well — a group of feeble-minded weaklings who are already scrambling to propose “fixes” to Obamacare should the Supreme Court find that the IRS-determined “subsidies” to consumers who bought their Obamacare plans via the federal exchanges are unconstitutional.

And once the “problem” of “underinsurance” is “solved,” another problem will quickly arise, as the Left continues its war on truth, justice and the American Way.

This never would be happening if the Republican Party were still alive.

SOURCE

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How Dishonest Is Barack Obama?

A week ago Friday was an unusual day for the editorial page of The New York Times. An unsigned editorial in the paper lashed out at the president for his public statements about reengaging in Iraq. A Paul Krugman column attacked the administration’s defense of the new trade agreement. Both pieces said the administration was being … (how shall we say it?) … dishonest.

Granted, this was nothing like the language Krugman and the Times typically use to describe Republicans. A few days earlier, Krugman accused Jeb Bush of “cowardice and vileness” with respect to his statements about Iraq. In a column on Jeb’s brother and the original invasion of Iraq, Krugman wrote “We were lied into war.” “It was worse than a mistake,” he added, “it was a crime.”

Still, Krugman and the Times are normally the most visible and reliable apologists for the Obama administration. On “The Escalation of Unauthorized Wars,” the Times doesn’t accuse President Obama of “lying” or committing “crimes,” but it comes close:

On the president’s promise that “I will not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq,” the Times writes “Those words were suspect then. They seem preposterous now.”

On the administration’s claim that its authority to drop bombs in Iraq and Syria stems from a decade-old congressional resolution, the Times writes, “That claim was flimsy then. It, too, seems preposterous now.”

In his claim that the administration is being dishonest in defense of its trade policies, Krugman tries to sugar coat his attack with this kind of rhetoric:

“One of the Obama administration’s underrated virtues is its intellectual honesty…. In the policy areas I follow, the White House has been remarkably clear and straight forward about what it is doing and why.”

Wow. How quickly memories fade. Everyone knows that Krugman follows health care, for example. Does he really not remember, “If you like the health plan you have, you can keep it”? Or, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”? We now know from insider reports that the White House knew these statements were false at the time the president was making them.

The federal budget is another matter Krugman follows and right now Congress and the president are wrangling over the sequester (across-the-board spending cuts) they agreed to a few years back. How many times has the president and his spokespeople tried to blame the sequester on the congressional Republicans? Yet it is incontrovertible that the idea first came from the White House.

Sometimes when it isn’t clear whether the word “dishonest” applies, the context is suggestive. The other day, the President told a group of Coast Guard graduates that global warming is a threat to our national security. It was a controversial claim made at a controversial time and place. So a lot of thought must have gone into the speech. Yet only a few days earlier the President approved Shell Oil’s request to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean.

Certainly these actions are inconsistent. Lots of people are inconsistent. Or, is more involved? Did the president really believe that carbon fuel is a threat to our security when he was speaking to the graduates? Did he have that same belief when he approved off shore drilling?

One of the president’s finest moments was his appointment of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to lead a bi-partisan commission to recommend ways to curtail runaway entitlement spending. This reflected a position he took as far back as the 2008 Democratic primary and he promised both gentlemen that they had his full backing — regardless of their recommendations. Yet when the Simpson/Bowles report was released the president acted as though he had never heard of either one of them.

Okay. That’s a broken promise. Or, is it more than that? Did the president really believe the promise when he made it?

In 2008, candidate Obama promised to heal wounds, end partisan rancor and pull the nation together. “Yes, We Can” was a promise to unite the American people and members of both parties behind common goals.

Yet President Obama has turned out to be the most partisan and the most polarizing president in our life time. And, yes, it really is his fault. Granted, Republicans have given tit for tat. But the president promised to lead.

In his first State of the Union address he gratuitously insulted the members of the Supreme Court, who were sitting in the front row honoring him. He invited Paul Ryan to a gathering and proceeded to humiliate him on national TV. For the most part, the president doesn’t socialize with Republicans or even talk to them. But he doesn’t talk to Democrats either. He hasn’t done anything to bring about togetherness on either side of the aisle.

Think back to the 2008 campaign. Did the president really mean what he said about bringing people together?

SOURCE

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Patriot Act Expires After Last-Minute Senate Fight

The Senate allowed the Patriot Act to expire Sunday after opposition, led by Rand Paul, derailed the efforts of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to renew the act and endorse the NSA’s mass metadata collection efforts. The chamber did, however, vote 77-17 to take up the House-passed USA Freedom Act, which would revise the Patriot Act to specifically prohibit the NSA’s domestic spying program — a program ruled illegal by a federal court.

Unfortunately, congressional efficiency being what it is, leadership waited too late to bring either bill up for debate, almost ensuring unnecessary drama. That means the good of the Patriot Act was thrown out with the bad. Yet as Reuters reports, “Intelligence experts say a lapse of only a few days would have little immediate effect. The government is allowed to continue collecting information related to any foreign intelligence investigation that began before the deadline.”

Fighting terrorists is critical, but collecting data from every American to create the proverbial haystack doesn’t strike us as an efficient or trustworthy way to go about doing that. And it’s time Congress took its national security responsibly more seriously than leaving important work to the last minute.

SOURCE

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Some probable thoughts



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