Because that’s in the finest President-for-Life tradition of most Marxist countries.

Looking back, I really think the real impetus was working in academia. My fellow faculty are so hare-brained in their leftists views, that just to retain some sanity I had to become more conservative.

Physicsguy, you’ll like this one. Once in the 80s, during a heated exchange with department chairman (an ardent lefty, in an institution known as a bulwark of socialist support), he said he was going to implement some much-needed reform I’d long been urging, and would do so “soon.” Annoyed at his mendacity, since I’d heard this many times before, I laughed bitterly and said, “Moscow will have a stock exchange before that happens.”

He waved his hand and snorted, dismissing my statement as risible hyperbole.

But Moscow now does have a stock exchange. And that department, which I left long ago, still hasn’t implemented the reform. So my statement turned out to be literally true!

The distinction gets blurry sometimes, though: there are religious conservatives (like Mike Huckabee) who don’t have any problem using state power to enforce morality. There’s a very long history of that — although it is not inherent in Christianity, despite what a lot of atheist morons seem to think.

On the other side, I think we’ve all seen recently how leftists imbue the state or the party leader with what can only be called religious adoration.

I tend to prefer religious conservatives to leftists, because at least the religious have a fixed code, whereas leftists believe that whatever the state or party wishes to do at any given moment is absolutely good. Or to put it in concrete terms: leftists have killed more people than theocrats ever have.

“and such distrust is easily found on both the religious Right”

I don’t know that the religious right really wants to control people. Lefties paint them that way but I don’t actually buy it (all of the big social issues dust ups in my lifetime have been started by the left). The distrust of people and the corrupting influence of the world on souls is usually presented as a truism or even fatalism. In the American context it tends to be a pressure release valve. Don’t hate people for being sinners, everyone is (you too) and that’s just the way of the world. Accept them with their faults. This is different than the left. Totally. They’re more ‘people are
infinitely malleable Winston’ types.

“thomass: If there are conservative “squishes,” their small numbers entirely decide Presidential elections.”

Don’t they though? You have a layer of non conservative republicans and on top of that independents. They do have all the leverage. Take Mitt Romney. I like the guy (I just voted for the guy); but he is not a movement conservative.

US aircraft carrier cruises disputed Asian seas
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/2012/10/19/aircraft-carrier-cruises-disputed-seas/1bn7cZavhGP2enkx3HIIGO/story.html

basically, china is using its new military muscle from its now soviet celebrated “Market Communism/Socialism”… (the western socialists see the controlled market of the Chinese communists as the answer to the failure of socialism production. ultimately, given that their production leads to power and that leads to acquisition by force, whats playing out is the inevitable war base)

Now there is a game of chicken going on, but its not even on the election radar… and its not the only point.

Turkey (as i said over 4 years ago) is now getting really into a hot conflict with syria, and its a conflict with a touch of genocide over religious beliefs.

Damascus car bomb kills 13 in Christian quarter of old city
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/1022/1224325543674.html

Turkish retaliatory fire has killed 12 Syrian soldiers -report
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/20/syria-crisis-turkey-idUSL5E8LK1E320121020

Turkey’s military has fired on Syria 87 times, killing 12 Syrian soldiers and destroying several tanks in retaliation for Syrian shells and mortars landing on Turkish territory, a Turkish newspaper reported on Saturday.

Turkey has been carrying out a series of retaliatory strikes against President Bashar al-Assad’s forces fighting rebels along the border since Syrian shelling killed five Turkish civilians in a Turkish frontier town at the start of October.

[this kind of makes the morning pundit on fox talking about war as if it was a choice about costs and you can write it out or off budget at will and the world will not take advantage of it (yes, Obama supporter and token on two levels)]

A New Iron Curtain
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/a_new_iron_curtain.html

a new iron curtain is falling, and this one is a bit different. the dictatorship has realized that it need not have a supporting argument like communism, but is self supporting in its existence. ie. its existence is its own justification, and so needs accept no limitations, not even ideology. (this is what the past was, but with even less limitation over time).

Putin flexes muscle in big test of Russia’s nuclear arsenal
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/20/us-russia-nuclear-putin-idUSBRE89J0EJ20121020

President Vladimir Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

ests involving command systems and all three components of the nuclear “triad” – land and sea-launched long-range nuclear missiles and strategic bombers – were conducted “under the personal leadership of Vladimir Putin”, the Kremlin said.

An RS-12M Topol Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was launched from the Plesetsk site in northern Russia, and a submarine test-launched another ICBM from the Sea of Okhotsk, the Defence Ministry said.

Long-range Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers fired four guided missiles that hit their targets on a testing range in the northwestern Komi region, it said.

“Exercises of the strategic nuclear forces were conducted on such a scale for the first time in the modern history of Russia,”

China’s increasing military spending unnerves neighbors

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-increasing-military-spending-unnerves-neighbors/2012/10/23/4b66a7ae-1d29-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_story.html

The United States still spends four times as much on its military. But by some accounts, China is on course to surpass the United States in total military spending by 2035.

[ever notice that they always compare the US to ONE country, not the array of those who self proclaim opposition together]

The US will not have a viable economic partner it can borrow from. it will be a case of losing a war and imposing X, or imposing X to fight the war… and it wont matter who is in office as to that point, but it will matter critically on other points. even if the point is that second in command would be Biden…

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http://www.talkleft.com/story/2012/10/24/03931/443#11

This “Donald from Hawaii” fellow is a state representative for the Democratic party.

In 1991 when I heard an alternative point of view on AM Radio – I was hungry and listened to every host I could. The liberal hosts (I can’t remember the station in Virginia Beach, VA at the time) made no common sense.

The conservative hosts made sense.

More importantly, the facts.

I went to the library 3 times a week that year because I wanted to verify what was true factually.

I learned that Rush was right on so many key issues such as the government cutting tax rates in 1981 and yet the revenue went from 550 Billion to 990 billion in 1989.

It probably happened that way because politics interest me greatly. I ate up many topics from economics to environment to racial politics and gender.

I read Christan Hoff Sommers book “Who Stole Feminism” and Ward Connerly’s book “Creating Equal” and a whole bunch of other books on a wide variety of topics.

You could call me a high information voter and I can understand how the country went for Obama the first time however I couldn’t understand the people I talked to closing their ears when I tried to talk to them. Did we have to learn the hard way??? Really??

And what did the voters really learn? I don’t even know. If they truly learned conservatism I thought that was learned in 1994 with the first wave of Congress being won by the Republicans in 40 some years.

I understand the Republicans “lost” their way and spent more than we all wanted – anyways I’m rambling.

I’ve said to many that I consider myself a “centrist” however that puts me to the right of most Republicans and all Democrats.

Maybe a subtle marker of coming change was that though I voted for Gore I was not angered by the outcome of the Florida vote and felt Democrats needed to accept it. At any rate my final break with the Democrat party came in 2004 when it was clear to me that what I call the “Michael Moore” wing of the party was now dominant – a total dealbreaker for me. Finally the meltdown/bailout/stimulus scenario in 2008 turned me pretty hard to the right on economic matters. I wouldn’t call myself a “Tea Partier” but I am very sympathetic. If there is anyone I detest more than Obama, it’s Bernanke.

I agree. Let us end affirmative action now.

(Snap!)