Sunday, May 24, 2009

Still crazy after all these months

Katherine Kersten is back - in form - in Sunday morning’s Star Tribune. Well, it just put Spot in mind:

Our dear Katie fears that the country has slipped badly while she was off the watch.

America's military continues to be the world's best, yet today we're losing the struggle for freedom on the home front. We're giving ground in the battle against that voracious devourer of freedom -- massive, intrusive central government.

Big government is not making these inroads by threatening or intimidating us. On the contrary, it declares its good intentions in warm, reassuring tones -- promising to assume our burdens, protect us from risk and enhance our well-being. [Katie is taking a little license, don’t you think, boys and girls, with what President Obama is proposing to do?]

The campaign to expand government's scope and influence is led by a president who is a master at manipulating this seductive message. Barack Obama declared his intention on Inauguration Day, when he vowed to "remake America." A skilled rhetorician, the president has couched his ambitions in words that resonate to American ears -- equality, empathy, compassion and social justice.

Yes, Katie, we must resist the call to equality, empathy, compassion and social justice. They must be stamped out! Utterly. If we don’t, here’s what will will happen – is already happening:

The consequences of central government's assault are just beginning to become apparent. Its first victims have been "greedy" bankers, financiers, and auto and insurance executives -- those classic Hollywood bad guys we love to hate. They fell for the siren song of massive government bailouts. Now, not surprisingly, they find themselves beholden to that same government.

It simply sickens Katie that people like Bernie Madoff and Joseph Cassano are the objects of scorn and their successors have been forced in to bankruptcy or receivership and are now beholden to the government. We should have just given them the money!

Of course, AIG would be the corpse that ate the economy if it had not been “rescued.” As it now stands, the figures that Spot recalls is that the government owns about eighty percent of AIG. There were no siren songs involved, just a string of frauds. Don’t you think that entitles the government – representing us – to exact a little oversight in return?

Conservatives as alienated and unloved as Katie are about the only ones who could describe “’greedy’ bankers, financiers, and auto industry executives” as “victims.”

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