Juan Cole may know Mideast studies, history, the coffee bean, and even  Eastern religions astoundingly well, but this Radical Michigan Professor knows next to nothing about political ideology coupled with sound argumentation....

 

 

Conservative Refocus Rebuttals

Barry Secrest

I was admittedly intrigued at first glance.

The article appeared on my screen as being heavily read the world over, as I reviewed the media articles for that evening,  but it was the title that drew me in:

I lived to See the Day when the Pope and the President of Iran are more doctrinally Flexible than the GOP

The website, "Informed Comment" is ranked fairly highly in the world index for site traffic.  My fascination substantially grew as I wondered what, by the evidence of such a title, could this individual possibly be saying to cause such a stir on the web? Needless to say, I was both relieved and alarmed at the same time as I emerged from having read the article.  The argument from this supposedly 'erudite' and heavily educated buffoon had all the substance of a shadow, and yet this University of Michigan Professor was getting insane amounts of media play.

Why?

It seems that this fellow had stepped out of his ordinary role of Mideastern studies near Dearborn-istan Michigan, and embarked onto the battleground of ideas--and with a target-rich environment of specious professorial rants to boot. Which, by the way, is our favorite playground here at Conservative Refocus.

The Professor begins with this specious diatribe:

The United States has all along been a society dominated by the wealthy, and more especially by the business classes. But businesspeople are not all cut from the same cloth. You had high-minded responsible businessmen like Benjamin Franklin and you had mean-spirited businessmen, including the plantation slave-owners.....

Once a Leftist always a Leftist

Cole incepts his Alinsky style attack immediately establishing class warfare as the nadir of his problematic theme, which is literally always the first arrow nocked from the Left-swung quiver of proselytizing Marxist-extremists.

In essence, Cole begins by foundationally layering the idea that the wealthy dominate pretty much everyone, and that they are the singular reason for America's economic pain, despite historical  US wealth and standards of living to the contrary. Cole then tries to establish a split between an original founding father as being a good businessman, while oddly including slaveowners in his remarks for the reason of  stealthily linking the root idea of modern-day businessmen as slave-holders.

Once again, these are essential Marxist tactics as established by Karl Marx himself. Indeed Marx was expert in setting up labor as being the victim and the bourgeoisie, or business class, as being the cruel overlords.

This, despite the fact that business cannot solely force anyone to do anything, while Cole's Big Goverment "Teddy Bear" can essentially do everything up to and  including harassment by taxation officials, listening to and recording everything you do and say over the phone or on a computer, or even bugging your parents' and co-workers' phonelines.

In fact, Cole's God-on-earth, that being Statist Government, has proven  his antiqued  argument as being nothing if not completely fabricated, especially when Obama routinely forces those big, bad, wolf  Business execs to do Big Government's bidding or else....

NSA Threatens High-Tech Execs with Charges of Treason and Incarceration Says Yahoo CEO

Fortunately, Cole's leaky ideas simply will not hold water in an America where middle-class businessowners are the rule rather than the exception, as Cole, now serially decoded, yet continues:

In recent months we have been bombarded by news items emanating from the really, really do-absolutely-nothing GOP-dominated House of Representatives, which when it does do something usually does something downright mean. Also rigid and unthinking and narrow-minded and wrong-headed. There, I’ve repeated myself. It might have been enough to say “GOP.” And some of the Republicans in the Senate haven’t been much better.

Seriously, Cole?  The "Do nothing" GOP-dominated House has been quite busy trying to save America from the ravages of a radical Leftist political machine, which will stop at nothing in establishing an indebted welfare state in America, not to mention threatening yet another war overseas. So far in 2013 , the GOP controlled US House has taken up over 483 items for vote, while the Democrat controlled Senate has taken up less than half of those items, 203 to be exact,  according to the website govtrack.us .

In 2012, there were over 658 votes by the Republican controlled House on various measures and bills, while there were only 251 items taken up by the Democrat controlled Senate.

So who is it, exactly, that's  doing nothing? Well, at least Obama is doing something:

"Fore!"

The standard mantra by those in the media who continually effort disparagement of the Right-Wing opposition party has always been to vilify for doing nothing that which is not in the political Left's most keenly desired interests. This is often also referred to as "Gridlock" by the media and the political Left, which is actually how the US Government was brilliantly designed. The chief reason for such gridlock being so that nothing could be done, by the official government powers, without meaningful checks and balances holding government in equilibrium to the People's will. It's the entire reason for a bi-cameral Legislature and completely separate Executive and Judicial branches of government in the first place. But, why have we had to keep repeating this particular fact over the last 5 years?

Next Cole uses the words, "Downright Mean"  to technically describe his overall political analysis, which is rooted in emotional frustration towards the Right.

"Downright mean?" Not to those on the political Right, it isn't. But how about Obamacare, which is being thrust upon an unready nation by the President and his Democrats--is not that truly "downright mean?"  A nation, in fact, which  neither likes nor needs the healthcare mandate as established by poll after poll. Or how about the 26 states that sued the central government for being forced into a healthcare deal with the Devil? Is not the forcing of unwanted mandates on over half an unwilling nation "downright mean," as well?

Cole then refers to the GOP as "unthinking?" Well, how about the President's having railed against those wishing to raise the debt limit in 2004 as being unpatriotic, only to later rail for the debt limit to be raised in 2013 while accusing the opposition GOP of holding the US hostage?  So, was the President holding the nation hostage in 2004, by his own words? Or, we could talk about Obama's words regarding "entering into a dumb war" while authoring an entire movement to bomb Syria, but only with a "pinprick bombardment"...So, is that a smart war?

How About "Unthinking" as in "Passing  a law so that we can find out what's in it?"

In fact, Cole now takes to using emotionally charged adjectives to support his argument, while offering up nothing of substance to augment his position.

Typical for the model, to be certain, Cole now goes even further:

At a time when Pope Francis I has called for the Church to be less rigid in its attitudes toward e.g. gays as persons, and when President Hassan Rowhani of Iran has sought a more reasonable tone toward the US and Israel, our hard line Republicans have become more and more blinkered.

Conversely, while Cole offers up an analogy, seemingly without fruitive basis, on Republican intransigence--Obama has shown a truly remarkable willingness to compromise with international opposition, while remaining rigidly opposed to any type of capitulation with Conservative opposition in the US Legislature:

Obama breaks three decades of silence with call to Iranian president

U.S. and Russia Reach Deal to Destroy Syria's Chemical Arms

Obama's Debt Ceiling Red Line: No Deals

So, why exactly is that Juan?

"Earth to Cole, Earth to Cole, come in Cole, come in"

In fact, Cole now reaches for an argument, while offering neither rhyme nor reason for including these two subjects within his overall opinion in the first place, which seems to careen wildly like a pinball on meth, throughout. What in the Sam Hill do gays have to do with the debt limit or the Republicans or the Church as it is applied to US politics at this juncture?  What is Cole's  opinion even about exactly, and why was this scatter-brained argument about nothing, thus far, so highly ranked on the web ? Before the President's phone call to Iranian President Rouhani, Obama was threatening to attack Syria "because of Iran," while the US House under the GOP was fully against such a move, so where might this surreal argument of Cole's be leading?

So far, Cole seems to be the one who is astoundingly blinkered to offering any type of coherent argument.  More from Cole:

The House of Representatives has just passed a budget that would keep the government operating until later this fall, as the fiscal year ends, but only if the Senate and President Obama agree to defund the Affordable Health Care Act, which is the law of the land and cannot be defunded.

Funding the government and halting implementation of the Health Act sounds like a pretty good deal, quite frankly, bearing in mind the fact that even many Democrats, not to mention the rest of America, have come out against Obamacare. It was Obama himself who delayed implementation of the mandate on employers for one additional year, while also generously subsidizing both Congress and its staff after their initial howling wails of disapproval. The horrid effects Obamacare had already taken on US business was ghastly and everyone knows this fact, so isn't it only fair to delay implementation for all? For Heaven's sake, even Cole's Proletariate, the Unions themselves, have come out against Obamacare demanding a waiver; does Cole even effort to think about these damnable facts?

Cole:   Note that the GOP House did not actually pass a proper budget. It doesn’t believe enough in government to do that. It just permitted the government not to close down altogether, but only if it can impose its minority views on the rest of the country. President Obama ran twice on health care reform and if the country had wanted to get rid of the AHCA, it could have voted for Mitt Romney but it didn’t. The GOP House has wasted a lot of time attempting to repeal Obamacare, which it cannot do at the moment because the Democrats have the Senate and the presidency. They know this. Governing for them has become like a strange ritual.

The GOP House, in fact, has passed several budgets every year, each quietly tabled by the US Senate, while on the other hand, Obama and the Democrats have failed to pass any US budget for Obama's entire Presidency. The 2009 budget was passed by Bush in 2008, by the way. Indeed, Obama will most likely go down in history as being the first US President to have never passed one single budget, nor have they even offered up one for a vote.  Bad argument, Cole, try again.

As for the GOP's holding the minority view on Obamacare, a recent poll by Rasmussen indicated that well over half of all Americans both support a partial government shutdown to cut spending and delaying implementation of Obamacare, over 53% in fact. So, who is in the minority Mr. Cole?  The Republicans' hands are largely tied when it comes to governing, as Obama and the Senate seem to want to jealously clutch the reins of the nation, while forcing the House to fund ongoing government plunder with aplomb, a thing that the GOP has grown tired of.  Unfortunately for Obama, that old saying that "Congress holds the purse strings" should now become evermore starkly clear, especially with a President seeking to rule as Potentate without oppositional input. Conservatives now appear to be drawing their own "Red Line"--it will be interesting to see whose line actually holds.

Cole:  The reason the GOP wants to do away with the Affordable Health Care Act is that big business does not want it, and the Republicans in the House of Representatives no longer represent the American people. They represent big business and it alone. Big business deserves to have some representation in the US government. The 2000 biggest corporations are half the US economy. But they don’t deserve to be the only voice that is heard there, and they shouldn’t be able to undo the will of the majority of voters with a whispering campaign on the Hill.

Yes, indeed, when it comes to Obamacare,  neither big business nor small business, neither big people nor small people--and even many who were fooled on the political Left--are now dawning to the idea that Obamacare is pretty much bad for everyone. Even Congress and their staffers wailed for an Obamacare waiver after passing the blasted thing, to which Obama generously responded with a 75 % subsidy. Here, once again, Cole rails against big business with a broad stroke, while completely forgetting the fact that the academia in which he gains a living is one of America's biggest business interests of them all. Isn't it truly absurd to hear an academian rail at business, while conveniently leaving out the fact that the academian world is nothing but big business for Big Left?

Don't agree? Okay, let's see.....like business, the Universities and Colleges charge for their services, they have employees, their customers are their students, and they sell education like the bestest snake oil that ever came out of a bottle, while throttling their customers with obscenely priced college loan levels and the like which they can barely, if ever, pay back. Oh, and they DON"T PAY TAXES while raking in extraordinary levels of income.

Now, doesn't that sound like a rather lucky "mega-business" model to you?

Thought so...

Cole: The GOP is willing to try to destroy the AHCA, even though this act benefits some 30 million Americans who otherwise lack health insurance. Apparently they are supposed to do without medical care until they get deathly ill, at which case they should take a chance on Emergency Room Treatment. This proposition is a non-starter. The heroic health care professionals in ERs cannot possibly serve all those 30 million. And, it is much more expensive for taxpayers to pay for emergency room care than to simply fund the AHCA. It is only business interests that would benefit from the latter’s demise. Not the middle classes who pay the taxes and don’t have Caribbean tax havens. Not the poor, whose health suffers from lack of medical care and physician access. Children are much less healthy later in life if their mothers had no regular physician visits, and lack of such visits raises the risk of miscarriage and infant mortality.

Yeah, but wouldn't  you like to know what the dirty little secret about those 30 million people who still won't have coverage is, Juan?  It's because many simply didn't want the coverage then, and certainly don't want it now,  and they won't have it in the future whether Obamacare is maintained or not.  It's just that simple.  In fact, many of those who didn't have coverage before were undocumented illegal aliens, many more of  the people were unneeding young people, and even a slew more were folks eligible for MEDICAID who had simply never signed up.

Probably because they didn't want a government handout, among many other reasons; so, what will we have to show for our worldclass healthcare system if Obamacare is fully implemented after about a decade? I think most of us already know the answer to that question...

A Flimsy Argument With Many Openings

Cole: The GOP House, in trying to get rid of Obamacare, is literally acting as baby-killers. They are set on this course the way the Inquisition used to be determined to burn heretics at the stake. They are loyal servants of the corporations, the way the Aztecs were loyal servants of the gods to whom they sacrificed innocent victims.

Seriously?  This Liberal in Juan Cole is actually so  moronic that he would accuse the GOP of being "Baby-Killers," while knowing that his own party of radical Liberals will defend to death the killing by abortion of babies in the womb to the tune of over 1.3 million children every year?  This is one of the Democrat Party's bellwether positions.  It's "Baby-Slayers R' Us" over there in the political Left--and this singular wit of an academian actually has the nerve to call the GOP baby-killers?

This college guy has more holes  in his argument than Miley Cyrus's entire wardrobe.

But then Cole uses the term "burning heretics at the stake" by the GOP?

Cole, have you ever looked at the history of the Democrat Party as it relates to the Ku Klux Klan? Seriously, Juan Cole couldn't debate a walnut. The Democrat Party was founded on the principles of denying freedom to the slaves. Don't believe it?  Watch the Movie "Lincoln" and see which group of ideologues are forever trying to end slavery. It wasn't the Democrats, nor was it the Liberals. In fact, it was the Conservatives, the leader of which was brilliantly played by Tommy Lee Jones. Then the word "inquisition" is used by Cole...

Wait until the Obamacare death panels are formed if you want to see a real inquisition, folks. The "sacrifice of innocent victims?" Ever seen an aborted fetus? Even been to a Democrat National Convention? Yet, here again, Cole brings up Big Business and the GOP's serving them as if the Democrats have no big business sponsors whatsoever, when in fact, Obama has made it beyond painfully clear of his ties to Mega Business, not to mention all the other Democrats and their big donators. Here, Cole falls into the uneducated myth that Democrats don't have big business interests, when in fact, anything but is actually the truth.

Cole: The Grand old Party of Scrooge likewise cut $4 billion a year in food stamps. Having deregulated the banks and encouraged the demon instrument of derivatives and driven the country into the ground with their economic policies, the Republicans now want to heap further punishment on the very people they have made homeless. Before the apogee of GOP policy in 2008, 11 percent of Americans were poverty-stricken and food insecure. Every year since the Great GOP Depression of the 21st Century, the percentage of food insecure people in America has been over 14. The GOP, having advocated baby-killing through the abolition of Obamacare, nowwants to engage in baby-starving.

Yes, the GOP cut $ 4 Billion in food stamps, but only  after finding out that the Obama Regime had actually sponsored public service messages trying to sell the SNAP program to Illegals and beamed them into Mexico, for God's sake. We actually had individuals who owned mutiple homes buying food stamps while government workers who signed up the most people were given bonuses. The Obama Regime doubled the program spending, since 2008, to the point that over $ 80 Billion per year was being spent in 2013, which is money that the US can ill-afford to fritter away these days.

Nor was it the Republicans who caused the economic meltdown of 2008, but rather, it's now a widely accepted fact that the US Government's forcing of the "Community Reinvestment Act,"  in mandating that banks lend to people who simply could not afford the loans. This is now a well-documented fact that only those "not in the know" would even bother to try and argue. Banks were culpable, no doubt, and yet who bailed these banks out after the fact, and then kept bailing them out, Cole?

Cole:  Not since British landlords actually exported food from Ireland for profit during the Great Famine of the 1840s have we seen this kind of hard-heartedness in an elite.

Have we had a rash of mass killings? Should we have gun control? No, because a handful of huge corporations such as Colt and others make billions off semi-automatic pistols and rifles. The GOP doesn’t represent the children who are shot down by the mentally unbalanced with those weapons. It represents the manufacturers and the retailers who make money off the sale of military-style weapons to civilians.

Well, at least Cole gets his "hard-heartedness of the Elite" statement right, but in fact, it's the academians who are in truth held out to be the actual "Elites" in America, certainly not the business types. Nor does the uproar of our government's efforts at confiscating weaponry come from corporations. Au contraire, it is the people themselves who have smothered the legislature with calls each time "gun prohibition" is tried. Here Cole seems to forget his overall stance on baby-killing, as well, when he tries to trot out his "children shot down" argument.

An Argumentative Snag

How can there be some sort of arguable difference between willfully killing the young by parentally approved forcep termination, as opposed to death as wielded by the mentally unstable?  Ergo, is there truly a difference between a parent wanting their unborn child dead and a spastic with a gun wanting that same end, especially when it comes to stability?

Cole: Has Egypt had a military coup and engaged in a bloody crackdown? A congressional delegation including Michele Bachmann promptly went off to Cairo to assure the generals that they fully supported the human rights violations. Ironically, Bachmann’s policies in the US differ little except by denomination from the Muslim Brotherhood she hates, and the secular officers would arrest her as a fundamentalist and cultist if they knew what she advocates.

Is Iran’s new president positioning himself for serious negotiations with the US? Sen Lindsey Graham calls for war on Tehran, and Congress passes stringent new sanctions that amount to financial warfare on that country.

In Egypt, the military intervened because Muslim Brotherhood death squads were roaming the streets and wantonly killing, and even crucifying, anyone who disagreed with them, especially Christians, and at former President Morsi's approval.  How can anyone be in support of that? Apparently, Cole does unsurprisingly support this. Nor was the fact of Obama's support of the Muslim Brotherhood, while largely turning on the Egyptian military after the fact, lost on any of us. The people of Egypt were howling for the military to act when Morsi suspended the Constitution, while installing a Shariah based Islamic Republic. Have we seen anymore civilian uprisings against the military controlled government in Egypt since the government coup? I rest my case.

Cole: This Congress, and especially the House of GOP Scrooges, represents narrow and mean-spirited interests, not the broad mass of Americans. Indeed, it seems obvious that if only they could find a way to legalize slavery again, the GOP would be perfectly happy to sell us down the river for the sake of our plantation masters.

 

Yet more revisionism? It was the Republicans who freed the slaves, Cole; certainly not the Democrats, while Cole seems to also forget that Lincoln was, in fact, one of the first Republicans. Further, when it comes to the True Scrooges of US politics, are not the Conservatives seeking to stop the thievery of our future generations, i.e. children, from the untenable debt that the Left has built up in only the last five years? It could easily take the upcoming generation decades to work down this horrendous debt, nor will such an effort occur easily.  Are not the Scrooges the ones who work to deny the next generation a start with a clean slate?

Further, what is this battle all about, if not the massive debt that even now threatens our national security? Raising the debt limit only worsens our national economy, which still teeters on the edge of insolvency.

Cole: It is the policy of a cult, not of a national party that has a hope of gaining the presidency.

Surely Cole  must be referring to the cult trying to elect Hillary in 2016; you know, the same cult that pushes illusory global warming and out of control spending as a panacea to the masses.

Cole: They should take a lesson from other cults that have attempted to rule in a narrow and injurious manner, producing public anger and backlash against them.

Indeed, I suspect the GOP has taken a number of lessons from the current cult in power, which initially referred to its leader as "God-Like" and, by the way, Obama did say "the waters will reside under my presidency," and I expect Cole actually believed him. Nor can Cole, whose arguments leave holes that semi-tractors can drive through, deny the fact that a backlash is even now occurring by the growing "Victimhood of Obamacare"--nevermind a host of similar backlashes over the past five years.

The US has never been so divided in my lifetime, in fact.

Cole: Indeed, that (Backlash)  was exactly the charge against deposed Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi. There won’t be a coup against the GOP Scrooges, but it seems very likely that there will be a wave of public revulsion that reduces them to further isolation and irrelevance.

Here, Cole even supports our earlier argument against Morsi as being correct; no surprises there. But the public revulsion that Cole hopes for will never come to pass, because it's already here and it's painfully palpable. A Democrat Senator even unwittingly alluded to a "Civil War" as a result of Obama's ongoing governing against the will of the people in support of his radical agenda, recently.

No, the isolation and irrelevence Cole pines for actually proliferates in the backbone of America and is directed against the current regime, as could be seen in the recent protest by bikers who descended on DC on 9/11. At some point Obama and the Left will find no avenues of plausible escape from the fact of their incessant governing failures.

However and unfortunately, nor will the American people.