Elections

[moreluck]

 

[The Other Side]

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the
spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The most charitable way of explaining
the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo - for
the incumbent President and for a divided Congress.

They must enjoy gridlock,
partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility.
And fewer people voted.

But as we awake from the nightmare, it is
important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will
prevail among the chattering classes.

Romney did not lose because of the effects
of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a
poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better
candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the
economy due to the business cycle.

Romney lost because he didn't get
enough votes to win.

That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious
reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues - the traditional American
virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and
aspirations to moral greatness - no longer inspire or animate a majority of the
electorate.

The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is
impossible to compete against free stuff.

Every businessman knows this;
that is why the "loss leader" or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool.
Obama's America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the
47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so
they did, by the tens of millions; those who - courtesy of Obama - receive two
full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes
looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while
collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff
is irresistible.

The defining moment of the whole campaign was the
revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the
difficulty of winning an election in which "47% of the people" start off against
him because they pay no taxes and just receive money - "free stuff" - from the
government.

Almost half of the population has no skin in the game - they
don't care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they
care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children
and from the Chinese.

They just want the free stuff that comes their way
at someone else's expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for
error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.

It is
impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming
odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a
Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them
free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.

That engenders the second
reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is
ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter,
because most other voters - the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily
swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that
too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama
did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term
record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who
throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their
cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the
rich.

During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai
Stevenson: "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson
called back: "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"
Truer words were
never spoken.

Obama could get away with saying that "Romney wants the
rich to play by a different set of rules" - without ever defining what those
different rules were; with saying that the "rich should pay their fair share" -
without ever defining what a "fair share" is; with saying that Romney wants the
poor, elderly and sick to "fend for themselves" - without even acknowledging
that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency
only papered over by deficit spending.

Similarly, Obama (or his
surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into
chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be
taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all
arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce
the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous
relationship between governments and unions - in which politicians ply the
unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the
politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money
and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is
gone.

Obama also knows that the electorate has changed - that whites will
soon be a minority in America (they're already a minority in California) and
that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not
share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and
20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America . Obama is part
of that different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why
he won.

Obama also proved again that negative advertising works,
invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged
in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his "negative
ads" were simple facts, never personal abuse - facts about high unemployment,
lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of
leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not
embrace the devil's bargain of making unsustainable promises.

It turned
out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan - people of substance, depth
and ideas - to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their
opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare - never
reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling
together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be
defeated - with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff
seduces voters - it is hard to envision any change in the future.

The
road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy - those very
economies that are collapsing today in Europe - is paved.

For Jews,
mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again
that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a
president widely
perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . They voted
to secure Obama's future at America 's expense and at Israel 's expense - in
effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin.

A dangerous time
is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take
any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli
initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the
production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon - and then state that the world
must learn to live with this new reality.

But this election should be a
wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there an enduring
haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in
2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This
election only hastens that decline.
Society is permeated with sloth, greed,
envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral
foundations.. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in
years to come.

The "Occupy" riots across this country in the last two
years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead - years of unrest sparked
by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits
and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of
redistribution.

If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old
America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back."

The problems we face today are there because the people who
work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.

Who listens to this maroon? oh wait, you posted it.

TOS.

 

[moreluck]

Are priests morons too, or just rabbis ????? Where do reverends fall on your scale ?

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Are priests morons too, or just rabbis ????? Where do reverends fall on your scale ?

Morons are not career-specific.

 

[moreluck]

 

[moreluck]

Short history trivia testNow this is scary !!!Six trivia questions to see how much history you know. Be honest, it's kinda fun and revealing. If you don't know the answer make your best guess.Answer all the questions (no cheating) before looking at the answers.

Who said it?
1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
A. Karl Marx
B. Adolph Hitler
C. Joseph Stalin
D. None of the above

2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...... And to replace it with shared responsibility, for shared prosperity."
A. Lenin
B. Mussolini
C. Idi Amin
D. None of the Above

3) "(We) .....can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."
A. Nikita Khrushev
B. Josef Goebbels
C. Boris Yeltsin
D. None of the above

4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own ... in order to create this common ground."
A. Mao Tse Dung
B. Hugo Chavez
C. Kim Jong Il
D. None of the above

5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
A. Karl Marx
B. Lenin
C. Molotov
D. None of the above

6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."
A. Pinochet
B. Milosevic
C. Saddam Hussein
D. None of the above
Scroll down for answers




Answers
(1) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004(2) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007(3) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(4) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(5) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007(6) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005

 

[roadrunner2012]

Moreluck, you are either very gullible, or blinded by hatred. Context matters:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/marxist.asp

 

[moreluck]

Moreluck, you are either very gullible, or blinded by hatred. Context matters:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/marxist.asp

You know, maybe some of them were pulled out of context but ask yourself.....you ever say things like that ???

Snopes will hem & haw around to protect all things onliberal side......Hillary is one of those things.

To even say those words is extreme. Snopes is lopsided....find another true or false site. It's like using MSNBC as your main news source.......that would be stoopid!!

 

[The Other Side]

Are priests morons too, or just rabbis ????? Where do reverends fall on your scale ?

Moreluck, let me phrase exactly the way founding father Thomas Paine said it eloquently in his time:

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

Hope you understand.

TOS.

 

[The Other Side]

RICK PERRY says the stupidest things of any governor. Maybe you forgot his run at the nomination??

TOS.

 

[The Other Side]

You know, maybe some of them were pulled out of context but ask yourself.....you ever say things like that ???

Snopes will hem & haw around to protect all things onliberal side......Hillary is one of those things.

To even say those words is extreme. Snopes is lopsided....find another true or false site. It's like using MSNBC as your main news source.......that would be stoopid!!

Your a sucker that would make PT BARNUM proud. Email chain letters make monkeys out of alot of people..

TOS.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

RICK PERRY says the stupidest things of any governor. Maybe you forgot his run at the nomination??

TOS.

He may not be the most eloquent----must be a Texas (Dubya) thing----but Texas is one of the few states prospering during the turndown.

 

[mjjlohn]

And has little to nothing to do with rick perry. Source: I live here, he's an idiot.

 

[moreluck]

TOS.....Maybe you should practice words like Thomas Paine's.....................the words out of your own mind .....like maroon and others.........make you look the opposite of a wise one.

 

[moreluck]

Your a sucker that would make PT BARNUM proud. Email chain letters make monkeys out of alot of people..

TOS.

I'm not a sucker....I'm a Tootsie Roll Pop !!!

 

[moreluck]

 

[ImWaitingForTheDay]

 

[Jones]

omg

 

[island1fox]

And has little to nothing to do with rick perry. Source: I live here, he's an idiot.

Sure just like the Idiot who is Governor of Wisconsin !!! Not.

 

[island1fox]

And has little to nothing to do with rick perry. Source: I live here, he's an idiot.

Maybe you should move to the booming economies in places like Detroit or Chicago !!