Brad DeLong’s Still Hiding on Socialist Security

Brad DeLong still cannot admit it to himself… Check this out:

He quotes Bull Moose:

The admirable passion of activists should certainly be channeled to oppose the dastardly policies of the Bush Administration. But thought should also be given to innovative alternative proposals to the Bushies. Yes, we oppose privatization – but how will we promote retirement prosperity for older Americans? Social security, alone, is an insufficient solution. ‘No!’ is not an alternative program.

So what does he propose? Watch his statement carefully:

But there is an alternative plan on Social Security that is a near-consensus position for Democrats. It has three parts:

Social Security should be preserved–not phased out, as the Bush plan’s “price indexation” formula does.
Social Security’s long-run funding hole should not be closed by benefit cuts alone, but by a mixture of steps that reduce costs and increase revenues.
Private accounts to make it easier for America’s non-rich to build their retirement savings are a wonderful idea if properly implemented and if proposed as an add on to rather than a carve out from Social Security.

Look at the points listed.

That’s not an alternative plan, Brad… that’s simply more of the same, and you know it. Thing is, so do the voters.

And by the way, Brad…. your typical Bush-bashing isn’t helping your position.

I’m sitting here wondering why I give this guy the time of day. I suppose he’s a bad example, and thereby useful.

Steve Fosset is trying to fly around the world without refueling.  Keep up with this attempt via the Global Flyer Home Page

Boing Boing has the details.

Feed me, Seymour…..

THINGS YOU WON’T SEE ON CNN

Interesting.

This is just soooooo very emblematic of what we’ve come to expect of Jimmy Carter and by extension, his followers on the left.Ace of Spades HQ has posted a story which says Carter and his wife were taken in, apparently, by people posing as humanitarians… for quite the pile of cash.

United Nations, anyone? Oil-For-Food? Palastinian peace plan? And now this.

This is how someone supposedly working for peace can be counter-productive to the cause simply by letting their knee jerk before the head has a chance to read the situation.

Southern Appeal has an interesting exploration of the 10 Commandments cases.

Jen, at The Greatest Jeneration notes the Revolution going on in Lebenon that I noted earlier today and tosses off a comment in that write up that I think deserves it’s own post… Says she:

…. the Syrian troops have been in Lebanon for 30 years!
And no-one calls that a “quagmire!”…

Yeah, funny thing, about that, Jen.

So saysBlogcritics. That’s defined as having 100 hits per day.
How can I be up and coming if I’ve been at this level for around 2 years, now?

Somewhat more encouraging, the article they link to suggests that “a mere 0.4% of all active blogs have a sizeable audience… more than 10 regular visitors and more than 150 hits per average day”

So, Bit’sBlog, by those lights, is in the top one-half of one percent of all blogs.

(shrug)

Interesting article, anyway.

Mark Noonan, over at GOP Bloggers reports the Dutch are fleeing their country. He quotes a news story which says in part:

“This small nation is a magnet for immigrants, but statistics suggest there is a quickening flight of the white middle class. Dutch people pulling up roots said they felt a general pessimism about their small and crowded country and about the social tensions that had grown along with the waves of newcomers, most of them Muslims.”

I suppose I could have added this to the thread I posted earlier today about the Steyn bit.  Says Noonan:

“What is wrong here is that it indicates a great deal of cowardice – these Dutch who are leaving (40,000 is the estimate for 2004; equivalent to about 750,000 Americans) are surrendering their nation to an alien invader….

…This is the final result of enforced political correctness – no nation is more politically correct than the Netherlands….

And therein lies the whole deal.

FOXNews.com is reporting that the Lebanese government has resigned.

Offhand, I’d say President Bush’s plan is working.

Not quite, Billy… Putin’s simply getting his info from the Bush-hating Euro Newspapers.

One of the reasons I got out of Usenet for the most part was the nut cases. The place is simply awash in them. Here’s an example:This idiot actually thinks Hunter Thompson was murdered.

“What is laughingly called “the law” in america says it was a suicide but who’s dumb enough to believe that?.  They’re out to get rid of all free thinkers in america.

(Free thinkers? Unbounded by things like reality, I suppose.)
It gets better. They actually found a way to blame George W Bush directly for it….
Check this;

“People don’t commit suicide.
Guns effect suicide.

About 16,000 times a year. Every year.
Like clockwork.

Bush is pro-guns.
He killed Thompson just as surely as if he had pulled the trigger.

Kerry wouldn’t have let Thompson do it.
Kerry had a plan.

Impeach Bush.
Now.
Before it’s too late.

Who will be next to suck on a gun barrel because of Bush? “

Given it’s useless to argue with the insane, I find myself speechless, except to note that they’re Democrats.

Over the last several days, we’ve watched as the Pope goes through trials I pray for him, I wish him well, but that concern pales in comparison in light of my concern for my own mother-in-law, who is also going through some trying times.

For those who have been asking, we’re now looking for a nursing home. she’s fairly stable,but improvements are slow, and we have to work on the idea she won’t be going home again.  As such, my wife and I are going through the process of dealing with preparing the house my wife grew up in, for sale.  A monumental task in itself, even exclusive of the emotions, surrounding such an event.  It’s not a happy time, by any measurement.

Into all of this comes today’s column by Bob Lonsberry that I found of interest, given that it speaks to all of this.

James makes note of a Mark Steyn bit at Outside The Beltway today.  Steyn says:

CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I’d say, as predictions of doom go, that’s a little on the cautious side. But either way the notion that it’s a superpower in the making is preposterous. Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg’s about to go up.

For what it’s worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe’s problems — its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed — are all of Europe’s making. By some projections, the EU’s population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches — and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature. Some of us think an Islamic Europe will be easier for America to deal with than the present Europe of cynical, wily, duplicitous pseudo-allies. But getting there is certain to be messy, and violent.

Steyn thinks Europe will implode under it’s own weight, and unlike James, I tend to agree. However, where Steyn (And Boortz, apparently) takes comfort in this, I find it alarming. In his own text Steyn points to the population shifts; Of interest here is the swing toward Islam that Steyn mentions.

Steyn seems comforted in his quote, thinking that an Islamic Europe will be easier to deal with than the current one.  Steyn, apparently, has forgotten all about the last forty years, and particularly the last four. While Steyn is correct that an Islamic Europe would be no comeptition in terms of economics…(A visit to Beruit should prove that point)… imagine with me if you will Islam with the Nukes and other heavy firepower etc., that the EU currently has.

I’m sure there will be a number of people celebrating the lessening of influence of western culture as we see old Europe fall, but I will not be among them. Like it or not one reason the US has survived in the 1900’s, was Europe.  With Europe already going increasingly Islamic, and with Islam itself being driven increasingly anti-western by it’s radicals, and the Western cultural Europe suffering under it’s own socialist excesses to the point of collapse, the question going forward is clearly, would America survive an Islamic Europe?

Forgive me, but I have cause to doubt it would.

For whatever differences there have been between the US and Europe, we are bound by a common history, and to a large degree a common culture. The EU, for whatever other problems it has with us, is not likely to use that weaponry against the US. I’m not convinced an Islamic EU would think itself so limited.

Am I the only one seeing this issue on the horizon?

Update: I now see by way of McPhillips that VDH is singing the same song Steyn is.

Son of an update: McPhillips and I are having a chat about this at his place.

Also, I see Austin Bay and Steyn are having a long chat about this as well, apparently concentration on the social dynamics of it all. I add some comments there, as well.

The left in this country… at least, certain diverse elements of it, is starting to understand the problem they have gathering support. Mark you, they’re fumbling efforts, mostly because they’re not quite sure what to DO about it. And perhaps we will find that some wounds cannot heal.

Take for example the attempt to rehabilitate the memory of the Black Panthers.  A new exhibt at the Berkeley Public tries to re-write their history, as Michelle Malkin explains.

Will we hear next that Hitler was a pretty good guy after all?