It seems that politics has gotten too raw and real for some people.

This, of course, begs three related questions: who are these people crying for increased civility, what is it that they actually want, and why do they want it so much?

Who’s Crying For Civility

I see two disparate and unrelated general segments of America’s population crying out for an increase in civility in political speech and argument. They are respectively the apolitical drones and the Leftists, the Liberals and Progressives. Each makes similar outcries but for seemingly different reasons and with different real goals.

What Do They Really Want And Why?

The apolitical people just want things to go quietly. They’re uninvolved in politics, fervently wish to stay that way, and are both bothered and scared by the passion that is being shown by many others. Whether from cynicism or self-centeredness, they do not want to pull their heads out the oh-so-comfortable sand and become involved and the fire of current political discourse is preventing them from doing this.

The staid, stuffy, and easily ignored ways are what these drones want to return to because they don’t want to open their eyes and choose a side.

The Leftists, these Liberals and Progressives, are quite different.  They are awake, aware, involved in the political process, and they have a definite direction that they want to take America in. Their cries for civility are really two things: cynical attempts to silent their enemies and cries for validation and acceptance.

The willfully uninvolved will just have to stop their ears better and learn to keep their heads down.

For many of the Left, their cries are just dog-whistles for censoring the American people. They don’t really want civility, as their very cries for it often show, so much as they want to stop any dissent against their foundations of their agenda.

For others on the left it is a matter of crying out for acceptance and validation. They’re looking for some affirmation that, even though their enemies disagree with their core ethos, they are still respected and approved of.

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Sadly for those who’re crying out for increased civility, I don’t see much chance of- or value in its return any time in the near future. The divide in America is not too deep; it’s to fundamental. It doesn’t allow for the luxury of civility anymore. It’s not a political divide; it’s an ethical and moral divide.

We’re not going to be silenced. We’re not going to engage in carefully managed debates over minutiae of methodology when we want to change the goals and systems. And we’re very much not going to respect our enemies when we find the core beliefs that underpin their goals and actions to be utterly abominable and abhorrent.

As one would expect of a SOTU Address from any POTUS in an election year, but especially from Obama, the hour+ long speech was far less about the state of the union than it was about the state of Obama’s presidency and his 1099 day-long – as of January 24, 2012 – bid for reelection.

The speech was filled with mis- and disinformation, obfuscations, attacks upon Obama detractors, class warfare, and various attempts to couch Liberal talking points in rhetoric more palatable to the American people. To give Obama his due though, it was one of the better examples of such a speech since Prefect Pontius Pilate washed his hands of a certain, sordid affair in Judea a bit over two millennia ago.

One thing – I found the juxtaposition of calling for the application of military philosophy and doctrine to civilian matters and the subjugation of the individual for the collective a little disturbing.

In a time when both the Left and the Right are worried about the authoritarian shift in government and the militarization of civilian entities it’s quite “tone deaf” of Obama to be using rhetoric that is reminiscent of that surrounding the Volksgemeinschaft.

As for the actual state of the union – Given that Obama’s 2012 SOTC Address was quite similar in many key respects and tone to his 2011 SOTC Address, it reasonable to assume that the actual state of the union is also quite similar to how it was a year ago. Obama has made little progress and America is still stagnating.

While the drivel spilling from the maws of the Obama Regime, its remaining cultists, and the Liberals is laughable, it’s not fair to call Obama a total failure. It’s not all bogies, double bogies, and triple bogies on Obama’s scorecard and not every success was the result of a Mulligan.

There’s one area where Obama has more than made par…

Obama’s class warfare has brought us to the point where successful people feel they have to apologize for getting it right.

– Neal Boortz

Yes! Obama has been quite successful at class warfare. It is, in point of fact, the defining point of the boy’s presidency.

To be fair and to give Obama the props which are his due, as the First Black President the boy is de facto a Black Leader and Black Leaders have to dream and dream big.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of integration and equality and of a nation where Race didn’t matter. His successor, Malcolm X dreamed of a race war and the annihilation or subjugation of the Whites.

Obama Has A Dream

Obama’s dream is somewhere in the middle of those two and skewed a lot towards the Left, or so he and/or his handlers want people and the Liberals’ constituents to believe because it’s Obama’s first, best, and last hope of keeping his job.

Yes, Obama has been singularly successful at class warfare. The question is whether this singular success, being mere words from his bully pulpit, will be enough to gain him victory in the 2012 elections.

It seems that back in September 2011, the Obama-appointed heads of General Motors signed an agreement with the Chinese government to effectively move all future electric vehicle (EV) development to China. Primary production of such vehicles will also likely move to China.

America’s Liar-in-Chief, Obama strikes again.

But then almost all of these “green jobs” that Obama has touted and attacked traditional American jobs and practices over have gone to foreigners so GM’s moving their electric powertrain development to China shouldn’t come as a surprise despite Obama giving them a massive handout from the taxpayers’ coffers.

Still, upon occasion, his stupidity – though not his mendacity – is shocking. Such is the case in his recent comparison of job creators with unicorns.

It beggars the mind to expect Americans to take Reid seriously – except as a clear and present danger to America – when he jabbers such inanities that are so easy to refute and debunk.

Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist.

Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1%, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators.

Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They don’t do much hiring and they don’t need tax breaks.

The pathetic Leftists of NPR, ever eager collaborators with any and all of America’s enemies, was quick to attempt to support Reid’s stupidity.

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to.

Of course Americans can expect nothing else from NPR; they’re devoted to being a 5th Column and to the destruction of America.

Really! Creatures like those controlling NPR were some of the few valid reasons for the original provisions in Section 1021 & 1022 of NDAA 2012.

It’s not surprising at all that NPR couldn’t find an American who talk to them, especially an American who is part of the demographic currently targeted for harm by the Liberals. Americans, after all, do not make a habit of speaking with the enemy. And it’s equally unsurprising that NPR would spin such a refusal to speak to them into “supporting evidence” for Reid’s spurious an specious attack.

It did not, however, take long for Americans to refute and debunk Reid and NPR. All it took was for a contributor to Forbes, Paul Roderick Gregory, to make a few simple inquiries with the IRS and then to put thing together.

What Professor Gregory discovered is that are, in fact, unicorns prancing around – or, at least, millionaire job creators.

This is simply because it’s delusional to believe that the 236,765 millionaire or above taxpayers, who earn an aggregate taxable income of $623 billion per annum are overwhelmingly hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers and that they provide few, if any, jobs for their fellow Americans.

 I do not know what Harry means when he says “a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.” If we let 5 percent represent Harry’s “tiny fraction,” we are left with 118 businesses owners who earn a million or more and create jobs. Yes, they are only slightly less rare than unicorns, if Harry is to be believed.

Is it even in the same timezone as logical to believe that only 118 out 236,765 millionaires create jobs? Even doubling it to 10% – tiny is, after all, relative – would only give us 236.

You’d really think that the Senator from Nevada would know not to draw to an inside straight or, at least, how to bluff. Then again, he probably trusts the lamestream media, like NPR, to either actively support his lies or stay quiet about them.

People “want a bigger piece of the pie” or they complain that, “No matter how you slice it, the rich get most of the pie.”

This is a horribly pernicious falsehood. The pie is a lie. It’s a false metaphor that has helped create much of America’s current social and economic woe.

Zero Truth In Zero Sum

The first great falsehood of the “money pie” is that it is predicated upon wealth being a zero-sum game; i.e., there is a finite and/or fixed amount of houses, cars, healthcare, etc. to divide amongst the population, and the more the 1% get the less is left for the rest of us. Once, that held some truth, but now that our personal and national economies are not agrarian-based this is no longer true. Wealth is no longer a constant; it grows, shrinks, and changes with ever increasing rapidity.

Now add to that the fact that no nation, especially not America, is economically isolated. Globalism has expanded the sources of wealth, labor, and materials across nations’ borders. This means that when looking at the distribution of wealth within any singular nation one has to ascertain how much of that wealth came from within its borders and how much of came from exogenous sources. In other words, wealth flows.

Not Even A Crumb

The second and far more destructive great falsehood of the “money pie” is it engenders the belief that wealth owned by society. That is patently false.  Society as a whole doesn’t own even a single crumb of this fictional “money pie.” Society is a process -  a woefully amorphous process at best – and, as such, neither creates nor owns wealth and has no authority to claim it or divide it in any manner whatsoever.

Wealth, that growing, shrinking, flowing, ever changing chimera,  is created by individuals – either singularly or in voluntary association with each other – and morally belongs to those individuals and solely to those individuals. It doesn’t belong to “society” or any other unrelated individuals or groups. To believe otherwise is one of the greatest of evils, that of slavery.

Yes, slavery. If an individual does not have the full right to product of his or her labor to do with and apportion as he or she wills, that individual is a slave and is merely chattel of those who have usurped the authority to dispose of that individual’s product.

No! Arrest This Guy, Not The Wannabe Insurgent

It’s sadly quite classic. The MSM, long a fifth column within America, paints the Patriots of the TEA Parties as dangerous, violent thugs – and racists, of course – while portraying the slackers of the #Occupy [wherever] rabble as peaceful protesters representing Americans. And, of course, the truth of the respective matters is irrelevant to treasonous MSM.

If you tell a lie that’s big enough, and you tell it often enough, people will believe you are telling the truth, even when what you are saying is total crap.

– Richard Belzer
UFOs, JFK, and Elvis:
Conspiracies You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe

The truth of the matter is that, over the course of several years and hundreds of TEA Party protests, that movement has been peaceful, law abiding, and non-disruptive to their communities. The only violence that has happened has been when union thugs attacked TEA Party members.

Contrariwise, in just a few weeks time, the “Occupiers” have repeatedly and consistently violated the law, disrupted the communities they’ve invaded, and resulted in violence.

That is the truth that the Liberals’ MSM won’t speak of because they fear the truth second of all things. The first being Americans who’ve grown fed up with their lies and who are finally ready to fully exercise their 2nd Amendment rights to exterminate these domestic enemies.

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

A Comparative Guide To Protests

Isn’t just so nice of the lamestream media to make these comparisons between the slackers of the Occupy Wall St. mobs and the patriots of the TEA Parties? What would we ever do without their help?

This is a great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.

Much like his earlier jabbering about being an American, the boy’s latest screed is nothing but cynical and self-serving twisting, warping, and perverting of the truth to shift the blame for America’s predicament onto someone – anyone’s – else’s shoulders.

Who Can I Blame For This? It Can’t Be My Fault!

Yes, it’s sadly true; America got much more than a little soft over at least the last half-century. It just didn’t get soft for the reasons or in the manner which Obama alluded to and implied.

The growing cancerous weakness within the belly of America came from Liberalism and the neo- and/or quasi-Socialist policies it’s followers gained the power to enact the American people.

Labor unions, the vast social programs, the civil rights movement, and feminism are what led to this “softening” of America and to our current economic problems.

Please note that all of the above also did and continue to do some good. They were just enacted for the wrong reasons and therefor easily suborned for harmful purposes.

A strange and pernicious cult developed within our nation’s borders, a cult of weakness. Our domestic enemies, the Liberals and Progressives, and their minority tenants not only preached the tolerance of weakness and personal failure but actively endorsed and supported it under the guise of “compassion” and various perversions of “justice.”

It was inevitable that, once equality of result or outcome, was made of paramount importance irrespective of individual merit and the decision was made to elevate the lifestyles of the lower echelons without regard to their abilities, economic collapse would be the result.

And this culminated in a collective “softening of the head” amid the Liberals and Progressives along with their minority tenants – a masturbatory orgy of racism and ethnoguiltism – that resulted in the election of this irresponsible, narcissistic, and petulant boy as POTUS.

Yes, we’ve gotten soft and now we’re paying the price for that softness. It’s past time to harden our hearts and do what is necessary to restore and rebuild America’s greatness by any and all means at the the disposal of we, the People.

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

By any measure this is a late effort but, as usual for the Obama Regime, it’s not a better late than never situation – except possibly in the context of Obama keeping and his handlers keeping his own job for a few more years.

It’s largely (70% of it)  the buying of votes and retreaded Liberal wealth redistribution ideas.

Simply put, it’s $447 billion of up front spending allocations to be supposedly paid for over the course of a decade by tax increases, including taxing the carried interest, or profits-based compensation, of private equity managers, real estate investors, and venture capitalists as ordinary income, instead of more lightly taxed capital gains.

This is not going to spur business or employment. It will likely have quite the opposite effect due to what Carried Interest is and how it works.

Carried Interest:

A share of any profits that the general partners of private equity and hedge funds receive as compensation, despite not contributing any initial funds. This method of compensation seeks to motivate the general partner (fund manager) to work toward improving the fund’s performance.

Traditionally, the amount of carried interest comes out to around 20-25% of the fund’s annual profit. While all funds tend to have a small management fee, the management fee is meant to only cover the costs of managing the fund, with the exception of compensating the fund manager.

Carried interest is meant to serve as the primary source of income for the general partner. However, the general partner must ensure that all the initial capital that the limited partners contribute is returned along with some previously agreed upon rate of return.

What happens is that people running the fund, called the General Partners charge the rest of the funds’ investors, the Limited Partners a combination of maintenance fees and profit sharing. This is usually referred to as “2/20,” signifying fees of 2% of the funds’ assets and 20% of the funds’ returns above an agreed upon amount known as the “hurdle rate.” That 20% is what is the Carried Interest, meaning the General Partners’ carried or ongoing financial involvement in the fund.

The 2% in fees is taken and taxed as income and the 20% is taxed upon “cash out” as capital gains with a maximum tax rate of 15% as opposed to the maximum of 37.9% for normal income. This latter part is what the Obama Regime and the Liberals and Progressive hate and want to fundamentally change.

Even more than the lower tax burden, it’s that the profits aren’t taxed until “cashed out” that chaps the Left the most. It is also why Obama’s plan to tax Carried Interest is a clear and present danger to America’s economy and proof that he cares nothing at all about any American’s economic future.

This is just another of Obama’s attacks upon America to feed the Left’s hunger to eat the rich.

It’s normal practice for the General Partners, like all wise business owners, to leave all or most of their profits – Carried Interest – in the funds. Therefor, if these profits are taxed as general income, they’ll have to be withdrawn from the funds which would reduce those funds’ available capital for investment by a like amount!

Less available investment and venture capital means less money for businesses to borrow for start up, renovation, or expansion and commensurately greater competition for that money as the venture capitalists are forced to move to a more conservative stance.

It also means lower absolute dollar returns – rate of return may stay the same – for the funds’ Limited Partners which include many personal retirement funds, pension plans, universities, and state governments.  The effects of that are myriad and all negative.

The above is predicated upon Obama actually wanting this revenue. If Carried Interest will only be taxed as normal income when the General Partners cash out, this is not a problem.

It’s also, if that turns out to be the case, pure pandering bullshit that will generate little federal revenue and fail to do its part to pay for, however slowly, his “Jobs Plan.”

Fortunately for Americans, Obama is just, once again and again and again, shucking and jiving in the hope of not getting his worthless ass booted out of his new, temporary digs in DC come the 2012 elections.  He knows that his American Jobs Act won’t pass muster in Congress as it is now and that the Carried Interest portion of it won’t be in the final version – if there even is a final version.

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.