The intent of this book is to convince folks that the USA should have a European style of government, with a permanent left or far left government for both the Presidential and the Congressional branches of government simultaneously.
The purported reason for advocating this direction is that the Republican / Conservative party has "shifted so far to the right" after the election of Obama, in the 2010 elections, that they no longer represent the significant political center where most voters reside, and that they have far too large an ability to block this liberal government (Obama) from achieving its "mainstream" goals.
The authors believe that one of the first steps is to make sure that the US Senate can do all of its business with a simple majority. Currently, for many items of business, it takes 60 Senators to vote to support stopping debate, which will then allow a vote to take place which will only take a majority to pass, or defeat, the bill at hand. This is called cloture. Interestingly, after the 2004 elections, when the Republicans increased their majorities in both houses, the Republicans in the US Senate discussed doing away with the 60 vote cloture rule, which is an internal to the US Senate rule, because the Liberal Democrats used it to constantly obstruct any positive actions by the Republicans! Saner heads prevailed that knew that a permanent Republican majority was not possible, and this would turn around and hurt the Republicans in the future.
Would the authors be happy with a Republican 51 vote majority in the US Senate that passed everything the Republican House and a Republican President wanted? They say they would, for the majority like that would only last one election cycle before they were thrown out. Unmitigated liberal bombast by the authors.
The authors decried how Republicans won't approve Obama appointees, and how Obama was forced to make recess appointments. but they didn't mention how the Democrats treated Bush and his desired appointees even worse, and how Bush was eviscerated by the liberals for making the equal or greater number of forced recess appointments, including the best UN Representative we have had in 25 years, John Bolton.
The authors use the Democratic majorities of the last 60 years (from 1932 to 1994) and how it worked so well with the "moderate" Republican minority. There were times when there were over 70 Democratic Senators. It was a rare day when a Republican could even propose a minor change to any legislation. In effect, this heavenly period of cooperation only lasted as long as the Republicans were willing to just be the pets of the Democrats.
They stayed that way up until 2010, while Democrats held the majority, moderate Republicans could and did support such "mainstream" programs as health care, immigration reform (I presume, amnesty) and climate change (being man made and bad, I presume). Once again, pet Republicans.
Basically the authors believe that Republicans should just be Democrat light, going along and making kissy face with the Democrats at every turn, as is done in Europe. Well, Europe is demographically dying and fiscally destroying itself. It will take a decade or more to seriously start, and another century to complete, but by 2200, there will no longer be a Europe with any Europeans in it, except for a few octogenarians, and far too many Islamists. Along the way, the complete and total fiscal collapse of Europe will go a long way to pulling the USA down with them, all because of liberal fiscal policies, liberal ideals and liberal beliefs similar to that which the authors are advocating.
Fox News comes in for some scathing and specific criticism. They charge that Fox's business model is to repeat the same news over and over again. This is called a headline news, or semi-headlline news format, and it is entirely legal. CNN did this with a vengeance with its headline news network. But for Fox to do a light version of CNN is somehow horrid and debilitating. The assumption is that watching FOX news makes those who do so less well informed than other folks. This is a liberal canard that is based on some terminally flawed studies. They authors also blame FOX news in part, along with talk radio, for the "asymmetric polarization that is now such a prominent feature of U.S. politics". Of course, they don't cover the radical polarization of liberals by the mainstream media, including CNN, MSNBC, and PBS.
This is not an even-handed, fair and balanced, rational book. It is a liberal screed, with permanent and terminal flaws. It is written with an entertaining and legible wit that is, at times, highly entertaining, as any good fiction book should be.
The authors state that "whether lawmakers like or dislike laws, they are under oath to carry them out." But Obama has not enforced immigration laws he dislikes, he has worked for voter discrimination events, he has supported Sharia law against our Constitution, and he has broken Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation Laws regarding the DELPHI bankruptcy, involving the Treasury department, destroying the pensions of the salaried workers, while rewarding the UAW workers and making their pensions whole. The Author decries how Republicans, using the filibuster rules in the Senate, have obstructed the enforcement of laws, but they give no examples.
The authors believe that it is the Democratic party, that while imperfect, is more ideologically centered. Republicans allegedly deny facts, evidence, and science, and are dismissive of the government. The authors believe that the socialistic direction the country has been headed in for the last 80 years is the right direction and that any obstructionism against achieving that goal is bad, The authors have everything upside down.
The authors believe that Obama has been too restrained in his use of his executives powers, and that the presidency should be granted far greater powers. It was Richard Nixon, I believe, to whom liberals applied the term "Imperial President". The same was true of Ronald Reagan, and especially of George W. Bush. And now they want the president, along as they are a liberal "mainstream" president, like "President Hussein" to have more powers? WOW! Obama has already taken more power because craven Republicans won't oppose him enough.
The authors use the Obamacare bill as an example of both co-operation and doing the right thing. Specifically they laud the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). They decry the naming of this board as the "death panel" by Tea Party folks, whom they particularly despise (as do most liberals). However, Health Care Delayed is frequently a death sentence. Health Care Denied is, almost always, a death sentence.
Health insurance is not health care. Only 12% of US doctors will see patients on Medicaid. Within 8 years, the payments for Medicare will be as low as those for Medicaid are today. Over 50% of US doctors will not take on any or any new Medicare patients. Why? The payments are less than their costs. So much less that they cannot afford to continue in practice at those payment levels. Four years of College, 4 years of medical school, and 4 years of internship, mean a doctor is 30 before they start earning money, and their school loans are huge. Why be a doctor if you can't make a living doing so? Fewer and fewer young folks will become doctors just to be impoverished themselves for most of their lives. The IPAB will only limit payments, not costs. Check Canada, England, and Europe. Long lines, care greatly delayed or completely denied are the norm. Obamacare will do nothing to make Health Care affordable. It will do nothing to foster the competition and innovation that are the only way to reduce health care costs. Obamacare will destroy the best health care system in the world (this is a much longer discussions to absolutely prove this, which I can do)!
The US Great Depression in the 1930's was the longest and deepest depression any country in the world had. Canada had a much shallower and shorter recession. Why? Canada had a conservative government that did not engage in Keynesian "pump priming" spending and liberal policy experimenting, which created far too much uncertainty. Most of the programs from the 1930's and WWII were supposed to be temporary. Oops! In the 1950's and 1960's almost every recognized economist that studied the depression realized that FDR's spending and liberal policies greatly hurt the USA. Here we are today, and Obama, and Bush to s lesser extent, are repeating the mistakes of history. The debt levels, which are now exceeding WWII historic highs, will gut our national defense, gut our ability to compete around the world, and, ultimately, cause either double digit inflation or the dramatic devaluation of the dollar, or both. Payments on the debt will slowly drag our nation into impotence, internationally and nationally. Ignorance of the past is no excuse.
Why do conservatives despise Obama so much? Read my reviews of his two books,
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
, titled "Islamist Apostate? Or Islamists?" and
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Vintage)
titled "Our Islamist President and Defeating America". As I state, I have spent over 10,000 hours studying Islam since 9/11, we are in mortal danger of becoming an Islamist country before 2100, and anybody who voted for or who supports Obama wants the USA to become an Islamist nation 5 to 15 years sooner than either if McCain was elected or if Romney is elected. Obama is not on the side of al-Qaeda and the IslamoNazis that want to blow us up or cut our heads off, but he is on the side of the Jihadists that want Sharia law to replace our constitution, as is the DOJ under Eric Holder. Read
One Second After
and my review titled "An EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) Attack on the USA is a Permanent Civilization Killer". Obama will allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. It is not his job to farm out our own defense to Israel. Iran with nuclear weapons is a clear and present danger to the USA.
The authors plug for a publicly funded broadcast system that is fair and balanced, with shows like the PBS "News-Hour", "Charlie Rose", or the "Diane Rehm Show". The problem, as is everything with these authors and this book, is that those are, all three, uber-liberal shows, that occasionally have a liberal-conservative on to represent the other side of the argument against multiple other uber liberal guests. In effect, since liberal talk radio has been a complete failure, and MSNBC has only a minute audience share, this book is for eliminating freedom of speech.
The authors make the common argument that only knowledgeable folks should be included in any argument, which sounds OK superficially, but who decides who is knowledgeable?. Similar to Michael Mann, author of the hockey stick global warming curve, perverted science and abused the scientific method to achieve his predetermined beliefs., argues that only peer-reviewed articles and scientists can be included in the global warming discussion. The problem is that Michaels Mann's blatantly biased unscientific paper was peer reviewed by a bunch of peer alarmists that bowed down to his expertise, and it took a non-peer reviewed non Ph. D scientist to figure out how Mann had perverted science and proven the peer review system to be worthless. Liberals are just like Michael Mann, without logic or facts, and willing to lie about it.
The authors and this book have everything wrong and upside down. It is cogently written. It is 100% without merit. I do recommend this book to every conservative, to understand just how far gone the alleged moderate liberals are. It is even worse than it looks, and it is the Democratic party that has gone so far to the left that they are no longer on the side of America, neither domestically, nor regarding national defense, and not internationally.
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