Notes On Liberty: Edwin Van de Haar- Liberalism & Sovereignty

Source:The New Democrat-

Source:The New Democrat

Here’s another interesting piece and discussion from Notes on Liberty. And something The New Democrat debates all the time in the Classical Liberalism group on Google Plus. If you’re on Google Plus which we are and are interested in classical liberalism, I suggest you check that group out. Just look for the photo of the great Classical Liberal Milton Friedman.

Because when you’re talking about liberalism, what are you talking about exactly. Are actually talking about liberalism, or are you talking about libertarianism, or socialism, or Marxism. Because these are all different philosophies. Or are you talking about socialist liberalism, which combines social liberalism with a heavy belief in personal freedom. But with economic socialism and a huge welfare state that is financed through heavy taxation.

I and this blog fall into the Social Liberal camp. A heavy belief in both personal and economic autonomy, but with a limited government there to not only protect our individual rights and freedom, but to help people in need help themselves so they can to also live in freedom. So we separate from the Bernie Sanders Democratic Socialist, or Socialist Liberal camp, but also separate from the Ron Paul Libertarian camp. Where government is there just to protect the borders, defend the homeland and prosecute criminals when they hurt innocent people.

Social Liberals, share things in common with Libertarians. Because both factions believe in a lot of personal freedom short of hurting innocent people, but also holding people personally accountable for their own decisions. And we both believe in a lot of economic freedom. With low taxation to encourage economic investment and success. But we apply the don’t treat on me belief to both social and economic policy. As long as you aren’t hurting anyone from either a personal and economic standpoint, your business is just that. Social Liberals believe in a regulatory state not to run business’s, but to protect consumers and workers. And that is where we separate from Libertarians.

And I could get into people who are called Modern Progressives, who believe in both the welfare state and the nanny state, but now also have a speech state. That says government should decide what speech is appropriate and what isn’t. The so-called political correctness warriors. So-called Progressives that believe its the job of government not to expand freedom, but to be the national parents of the country and even protect us from ourselves. But this philosophy has nothing to do with liberalism and looks more like Neo-Communism, or Marxism, with a capitalist economic system and political freedom. When you’re talking about individual freedom it really gets to social liberalism, libertarianism, what is called conservative libertarianism and to a certain extent even socialist liberalism.

Human Events: Mark Skousen: 'If Megyn Kelly & Fox News Want to be Taken Seriously'

Source: FNC-Megyn Kelly-

Source:The Daily Review

Before I make Megyn Kelly sound like a dumb blonde from Beverly Hills, or the valley in Los Angeles where she competed with Britney Spears for Valley Girl of The Year and even beat her, I’ve been with her on the so-called Donald Trump debate. She’s been damn right about The Donald from the beginning and along with Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith and perhaps Charles Krauthammer, the only people at so-called Fox News, (Tea Party News in actuality) who’ve gotten The Donald and his realty show for a presidential campaign right from the beginning. That he’s a one-man reality show and when he says he’s not a politician you better believe him, because he should have nothing to do with politics and government. Because the man only says and does things to be popular whether he believes in them or not.

The other positive thing I would give the Valley Princess, I mean Megyn Kelly credit for is that she and Chris Wallace, I believe have both done a great job with the Republican presidential debates. Chris Wallace, is actually a journalist and perhaps he, Shep Smith and Carl Cameron, perhaps get lonely at FNC for being the only real journalists there. With the rest of the FNC crew sounding and looking like Human Events, Washington Times, or Washington Examiner, columnists. Before I watched the first GOP debate I was expecting FNC to set up Jeb Bush with a lot of softball pitches so he could swing for the fences and hit a lot of home runs. Why they bash The Donald and the Far-Right candidates, in order to make the GOP look better. But they’ve done a very good with all the candidates.

Now as far as the bimbo image at Fox News. I agree with Mark Skousen, but I would put it differently. When you’re lead anchorwoman says that White Christmas, ‘is just for White people’, you have a problem. When you say Santa Claus, who doesn’t even exist by the way, (sorry kids) ‘must be White’, you have a problem. Or claiming Jesus was White and I could go on unfortunately, but Megyn has made all of these claims in the past. It would be one thing if she was doing this on some public access channel in Huntsville, Alabama, but she has a big voice on FNC. And when she throws out this nonsense, it gets out and makes herself and the network she works for look like they’re dumb as bricks and are not in touch with the real world. Because you’re not if you actually take any of these quotes seriously and believe them.

For a women to be a bimbo, you have to be really attractive and dumb at the same time. I’ll grant that Megyn is a very adorable and a beautiful women, but she’s skinny as a stick and looks like a Valley Girl on TV. And when she makes those dumb comments she just backs that image up as a dumb blonde. Whatever you think of MSNBC and their talk lineup, MSNBC at least their management is not nearly as Far-Left and socialist as they come off. They’re a business looking for ratings and if that means having a lot of Far-Left commentators in order to do that, then that is what they’re going to do. And maybe Fox News is the same thing with the Tea Party. And just has a lot of people on to speak for the Tea Party and showcase their point of view for the ratings. Even if their management is not that Far-Right.
TPTV: Megyn Kelly- 'Santa Is What He is'

The National Interest: Daniel McCarthy: 'The Ugly Truth of Barack Obama’s Last-Gasp Liberalism'

Source:The National Interest- President Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) speaking to a joint session of the 114th U.S. Congress.

Source:The New Democrat

I feel a little strange commenting on the Obama presidency and it’s impact on America and the rest of the world when it still has a about a year left in it. There are several president’s who’ve accomplished a lot for good in bad in their last year in office. President George W. Bush for example had to deal with the collapse of Wall Street and the banking system in his last year as president. But with Daniel McCarthy essentially arguing that liberalism American and otherwise is dead, I sort of feel the need to weigh in on this. Since again we still have a Center-Left president who is a Liberal, or Progressive, even if he’s a moderate one when it comes to civil liberties and freedom of choice issues.

When Barack Obama came to office, the American economy was literally collapsing. He inherited a budget deficit of over a trillion-dollars and a national debt that rose seven-trillion in the previous eight years and was a eleven-trillion when he took office. Plus the Great Recession just added to that with an economy shrinking at seven-percent and we were losing seven-hundred-thousand jobs in each of the last two months of the Bush Administration. Which adds to the unemployment rolls which adds to the deficit and debt with so many people who previously had middle-income and better jobs now receiving Unemployment Insurance from the Federal Government.

President Obama, had a lot to deal with in his first days as president, plus weeks and months. Like passing a Federal budget and the appropriations bills that the previous Congress and President Bush failed to pass. He had to get a stimulus bill through Congress to get the economy to stop dropping and buy it time to start recovering again. Which is what happened by the summer of 2009. America started creating jobs again by the spring of 2010. The President had forty-five-million Americans without health insurance and lot of those people simply couldn’t afford it. All of this on top of an economy that was falling. Which were the reasons for the auto bailouts, the American Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform. All of this legislation in his first two-years as president.

And that is before you get to the President inheriting two wars in the Middle East. With no clear end to when either one would be over and the hundreds of billions of dollars that was borrowed from other countries to pay for those wars. Seven years later is America perfect and is every problem that the President inherited completely solved with nothing left for the future president to have to deal with? Of course not, but that is not how you judge presidencies. You judge them by the State of The Union from which the president inherited to how it was when they left office. Wages aren’t as high as we would like them and the size of the American workforce isn’t as large as it was in 2008. But the economy is no longer falling. The deficit is now 1/3 of what it use to be at around four-hundred-billion dollars. In April we will have seen six straight years of job growth and by the summer seven straight years of economic growth. More Americans now have health insurance than before.

I’ve always seen Barack Obama as a progressive pragmatist. Not as a Socialist, which the Tea Party loves to throw at him, especially the Birthers. Or a Neoconservative/Moderate Republican that actual Socialists like the Noam Chomsky’s of the world see him as. I see the President as Progressive who has big progressive goals and values, but won’t fight to the death for them and come up empty. So of course he’s not Bernie Sanders. He’s someone who goes issue by issue and looks for the best solution to each issue and then looks for the best solution possible. He had a Democratic Congress for his first two years and a divided Congress with a Republican House and Democratic Senate for the next four. And his last two years he’ll have a Republican Congress. So of course he’s had to compromise even with his own party in Congress a lot.

America really at least since the 1960s with the Cultural Revolution and then add the Reagan Revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s, has always been as Barry Goldwater like to say a big government out of our wallets, bedrooms, boardrooms and classrooms country. Which is why both Center-Left Liberal Democrats (the real Liberals) like Jack Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and yes Barack Obama, have done pretty well politically in this country. And why Center-Right Conservatives (the real Conservatives) like Barry Goldwater, Ron Reagan, George H.W. Bush and you could add Dick Nixon as well, have done well in America as well. Because they’ve tended to know where the people are and share their values and what they can accomplish politically as president. Senator Goldwater, was obviously never president, but he fitted in well with the Center-Right.

Liberalism, is not dead. Assuming Hillary Clinton is the next Democratic nominee for president and she becomes president, whether she governs as a Liberal or a Progressive, she’ll try to move the country forward from the Center-Left. And if she does that she’ll pretty successful politically. As long as she knows where she wants to go and can avoid big government and political scandals and handles issues competently. So in this universe as long as Liberals are actually that and don’t try to govern, or win office as Socialists and even Democratic Socialists, Liberals as long as they stay as who they are and stay in the Center-Left as people who believe in both personal and economic freedom and creating a society where everyone can succeed and use a limited government to help create that, they’ll do very well politically. Which is the politics that Barack Obama has always represented.

Nome De Plume: Rita Hayworth- Put The Blame on Mame

Source:Nome De Plume- The Love Goddess Rita Hayworth.

Source:The Daily Review

I saw the entire Gilda movie for the first time last week and I really believe this is Rita Hayworth at her best. And she and Glenn Ford, are great together. Glenn Ford’s character in Gilda, reminds me of the Sam Rothstein character from Casino. Gilda, played by Rita of course, not that different from Ginger played by Sharon Stone in Casino. A women who marries rich to live well, but not in love at all her wealthy husband with her husband knowing that, but loves her to the point he plays like an over possessive father and not a husband. With Gilda almost being like a sixteen or seventeen-year old girl who wants to breakout and have her freedom.

Ginger, in Casino was not a singer, or an entertainer at all. More like a part-time gambler and former prosecute who gets Sam Rothstein’s attention played by Robert De Niro, at his casino. Gilda, played by Rita is a singer and dancer. Which a lot of Rita’s characters were. She was this red-hot adorable sexy goddess, with an incredible voice that helped keep her very young for a long time. She was great in Gilda again as a women who was really just trying to have a good time in Argentina and perhaps escape her past in America and live as well as she can. While having men around her that loved her perhaps too much and were very possessive of her. She does a great job in this video Put The Blame on Mame and just one reason to watch Gilda.

ABC News: 'Dark Days at The White House'

Source:ABC News- Dark Days at The White House documentary.

Source:The New Democrat

"Part of the ABC News Great TV News Stories series. From the VHS Tape - "The story of the President at the center of the Watergate Maelstrom, his near impeachment, his last dark days at the White House, and his sudden resignation in disgrace."

From ABC News

ABC News, wasn’t number three on the network news battles back in the early 1970s. But they were buried in last place which just happened to be third back then. Well behind CBS News and NBC News.

ABC would have been what the CW is today behind CBS, NBC, ABC and even FOX. They simply didn’t have the viewership of the other networks, because they didn’t have the affiliates and perhaps just barely qualified as a national broadcast network back then.

But ABC News was able to cover Watergate and did have their own nightly newscast and did have very good people working for them. Like Howard Smith, Frank Reynolds, Harry Reasoner, Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings and a young Ted Koppel.

Watergate, was nothing more than a local Washington city burglary in the summer of 1972. At least that’s how it was portrayed early on. With some real differences even early on. 1972 was a presidential election year. It wasn’t the Watergate Hotel itself that was burglarized, but the Democratic National Headquarters that had their office at the Watergate that was burglarized.

The burglars had both CIA and White House connections with the Nixon Reelection Committee. The White House under President Nixon, involved themselves early on in this story in the summer of 72 when the President told his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman to tell the FBI to get out of the story. Which wasn’t learned until the summer of 73 with the Senate Watergate investigation.

Without The Washington Post and a certain extent Walter Cronkite at CBS News, all of those stories that broke in the spring and summer of 73 about Watergate, do not come out. Because The Post was hammering away and digging into Watergate from day one. Because Watergate happened in their city and they had all the connections including in the Federal Government, but the local City Government as well to investigate this story.

And that is when you see organizations like The New York Times, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, and others, starting to not just look into Watergate, but what else the White House might have been involved in and their other illegal operations back then.

The Federalist: David Harsanyi: 'Republicans, Don't Be Hypocrites On The Filibuster'

Source:The Federalist- U.S. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell & President Barack Obama.

Source:The New Democrat

"There’s a lot of dispute in contemporary Republican politics about who is and isn’t a true conservative. One would imagine, though, that a genuine ideological conservative — the type of person cautious about change — would believe that preserving the filibuster is even more important than a “productive” GOP Congress."

From The Federalist

"With Senate Republicans meeting Tuesday to debate how to handle the filibuster in the 114th Congress following last year's "nuclear option," Roll Call looks at a June 2013 speech from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell threatening to maintain a reduced threshold for advancing legislation if Democrats changed Senate rules."

Source:Roll Call- Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in 2014.

From Roll Call

Senate Republicans, have all the motivation in the world to not only be in favor of the filibuster, but to want to keep it even though they’re current in the majority in this Congress. They could easily be in the minority in the next Congress next year. They currently have a better shot at losing their majority than keeping it if you look at how many more seats they have to defend and how many of those seats are in blue states. Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, to use as examples. Senator Rob Portman, will have a tough reelection campaign in Ohio which is swing state. 2016 presidential election where they’ll most likely be facing Hillary Clinton, where there will be a huge Democratic turnout. And their candidate might be Donald Trump. And I can’t wait to see every ad against him.

Senate Republicans, need to ask themselves a question. Do they really want to be in the 115th Congress with another Democratic president, a Republican House with a much smaller majority and a Democratic Senate with 52-53 seats or more, that doesn’t have a filibuster to deal with. With Senate Democrats passing bills that they and Hillary ran on in 2016. With a Republican House that is now divided because they lost a bunch of seats and aren’t sure where to go from there and perhaps just waiting on the 2018 mid-terms and hoping a President Hillary Clinton is unpopular then. And this is all before you get to the whole hypocrisy of the so-called Senate filibuster debate from both sides. Where there isn’t a Democratic, or Republican position on the filibuster. But a majority and minority position. The majority is against the filibuster. The minority is in favor of it.

Senate Republicans under Mitch McConnell, had eight years in the minority. And in that time became not only very skillful with the filibuster, but Senate rules in general. To try to obstruct and stop Senate Democrats on practically everything in hopes of winning back the Senate. So it’s very hard for them to make the case that the filibuster is a bad thing, because it slows down not only the Senate, but Congress as a whole. Because when the House passes something generally on party-lines the Senate is unable to act on it, because they end up debating what amendments should be allowed and how long to debate. And one side accusing the other of obstruction, with the other side accusing the other of being overly partisan and not allowing for enough amendments. And people wonder why Congress is so unpopular.

The Senate filibuster, is kind of like Unemployment Insurance. You don’t want it and rather not have it, but you’re sure as hell glad it’s there if you become unemployed and you don’t think you’ll be working again anytime soon. At least not making the type of money that you’re accustom to making. The Senate filibuster is there to hold the majority accountable and even the administration accountable when one party holds the White House and Congress. But with the opposition having enough seats in the Senate to slow things down if not obstruct them. When the majority is overly partisan and doesn’t want to work with the opposition and even allow for amendment to bills. Senate Republicans, in 2017 if they’re at around 45-47 seats in the Senate, are going to be glad they didn’t abolish the filibuster.

Johnny Machine: Bugsy (1991) Starring Warren Beatty & Annette Bening

Source:The Daily Review- Annette Bening & Warren Beatty. Perhaps you can tell for yourself who is who.

Source:The Daily Review

Bugsy from 1991, is one of not my favorite films, but also one of my favorite gangster films. Right up there with Goodfellas, which could be my favorite gangster movie and Casino. This is a great film and even though it is not completely accurate and it doesn’t advertise itself that way anyway, this is a very funny film. Warren Beatty, makes Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, seem like a very funny charming guy. Not sure if Bugsy was that way in real-life, or Beatty just makes him look that way in the movie, because that is how he wanted to play him, because he’s a very funny charming guy. But Beatty makes Bugsy look like a cold-blooded killer with another side to him. That loves his family and the people he cares about as well. But won’t stop to kill someone who gets in his way.

Bugsy, is about the career of Benjamin Bugsy Siegel. Who is a Jewish mobster from New York who operates out of New York, who is sent to Los Angeles on business. To become partners with Italian gangsters over there. To actually buy out their business there and take it over with those people working for him and his bosses back in New York. When Bugsy gets to Hollywood, he can’t find anything he doesn’t like about it and decides he wants to go into films as well. Which is where he meets his long time mistress Virginia Hill, played by the beautiful and adorable Annette Bening. She’s not just an actress and mistress, but becomes his business partner as well. That is the legitimate side of his business dealing with gambling.

Bugsy, is then sent to Las Vegas, which was still a hick Southwestern town in the early 1940s when this movie first takes place. To check out a casino there and to report back on it. And instead passes on that dump of a casino there and discovers that he could develop a casino industry with his own casino-hotel there. And make millions if not billions of dollars there and make Las Vegas a gambling mecca. All this stuff in the movie is completely true. Bugsy Siegel, had a lot to do with the development and economic success of Las Vegas. And a big reason why it goes from a town of maybe ten-thousand people back in the 1940s, to a big city of over five-hundred-thousand people today and one of the fastest growing cities and metro areas in the country now.

Bugsy Siegel, was not a good guy at all. He was a cold-blooded killer who had witness’s whacked and personally murdered perhaps twenty people or more himself for getting in the way of his illegal business’s. But Warren Beatty, does a great job of giving Bugsy a very likable charming funny side. That people could actually like especially if they don’t know he’s a gangster and personally responsible of the murders of so many people. This is a two and a half-hour film that is worth every minute. With a lot of great lines, with a lot of humor and not just from Beatty, but Annette Bening does a great job and so does Harvey Keitel as Mickey Cohen and so many other great character and actors in this movie. This is truly one of Barry Levinson’s best movies.