Tag: politics

Alarming the Left

Even old double-dyed Reds are beginning to worry about how out-of-control the SJWs are, now that they’re being targeted too:

The last few years have seen the dawn of a new kind of political correctness which I think of as “PC 2.0”. This is the movement that seeks to de-platform Germaine Greer and wants every trace of Cecil Rhodes removed from Oxford. It’s the kind of thinking that has made gender so confusing that I don’t even know what the right view is any more, although I’m pretty sure that my view will be the wrong one, whatever it is.

Suddenly, those of us who had never worried about being seen as politically unsound are being cast as ageing, right-wing bigots. It’s weird finding yourself on the “reactionary” side of the argument with one of the world’s most famous feminists. Yes, in the blink of an eye, Germaine and I have become those crusty old people who start spouting unacceptable platitudes after a couple of drinks.

It’s going to be amusing to see how the Wil Wheatons and John Scalzis of the world start behaving once the SJWs of the SF world turn on them. No amount of snarky goodthink is going to save a rich old white guy from their tender attentions once they decide he has offended them by existing.

Once you decide to ride the tiger, it is the tiger who decides exactly when, and how, you’re going to get off.

How fortunate that there is an answer for those on whom the tiger turns.

So much for Republican loyalty

The Republican Establishment always demands loyalty from its base, but never offers any of its own:

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since I first became eligible to vote in 1980. I worked in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and in the White House for George W. Bush as a speechwriter and adviser. I have also worked for Republican presidential campaigns, although not this time around. Despite this history, and in important ways because of it, I will not vote for Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination….

No
major presidential candidate has ever been quite as disdainful of
knowledge, as indifferent to facts, as untroubled by his benightedness. It
is little surprise, then, that many of Mr. Trump’s most celebrated
pronouncements and promises — to quickly and “humanely” expel 11 million
illegal immigrants, to force Mexico to pay for the wall he will build
on our southern border, to defeat the Islamic State “very quickly” while
as a bonus taking its oil, to bar Muslims from immigrating to the
United States — are nativistic pipe dreams and public relations stunts.

No wonder people have increasingly little use for Republicans. They stand for nothing but the status quo. They promise nothing but the status quo. They offer nothing but the status quo. They are, quite literally, hopeless.

For Republicans, there is an additional reason not to vote for Mr. Trump. His nomination would pose a profound threat to the Republican Party and conservatism, in ways that Hillary Clinton never could. For while Mrs. Clinton could inflict a defeat on the Republican Party, she could not redefine it. But Mr. Trump, if he were the Republican nominee, would.

Mr. Trump’s presence in the 2016 race has already had pernicious effects, but they’re nothing compared with what would happen if he were the Republican standard-bearer. The nominee, after all, is the leader of the party; he gives it shape and definition. If Mr. Trump heads the Republican Party, it will no longer be a conservative party; it will be an angry, bigoted, populist one. Mr. Trump would represent a dramatic break with and a fundamental assault on the party’s best traditions.

An angry, bigoted, populist party sounds a lot more appropriate and viable in the last days of a failing multicultural empire than a go-along-to-get-along Wile E. Coyote party. And a dramatic break with the Republican party’s best traditions, which are stabbing its base in the back and caving into Democrats, is long overdue.

The most certain way to know that Trump is doing well is to observe the way in which the liberal mainstream media is affording these cuckservatives a national platform to take these futile shots at him.

Not even a cuckservative

This officially blows the lid off the Republican Party. Nimrata Randhawa Haley is an open Invader-American; the Spanish version of her State of the Union response is pro-amnesty.

Governor Nikki Haley is trying to get out ahead of the building expose’.  Haley just gave a DC press conference claiming she does not support “amnesty”; however, against her earlier admission of Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell approving the script – the Spanish version must have held similar approvals.

Governor Haley gave the English version, Miami Representative and party-insider Mario Diaz-Barlat delivered it in Spanish.  Here’s a (paragraph by paragraph) comparison as translated by the Miami Herald:

♦ English (Via Haley): No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.

Spanish (Via Diaz-Barlat): No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love the United States should ever feel unwelcome in this country. It’s not who we are.

♦ English: At the same time, that does not mean we just flat out open our borders. We can’t do that. We cannot continue to allow immigrants to come here illegally. And in this age of terrorism, we must not let in refugees whose intentions cannot be determined.

Spanish: At the same time, it’s obvious that our immigration system needs to be reformed. The current system puts our national security at risk and is an obstacle for our economy.

♦ English: We must fix our broken immigration system. That means stopping illegal immigration. And it means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.

Spanish:  It’s essential that we find a legislative solution to protect our nation, defend our borders, offer a permanent and human solution to those who live in the shadows, respect the rule of law, modernize the visa system and push the economy forward.

♦ English: I have no doubt that if we act with proper focus, we can protect our borders, our sovereignty and our citizens, all while remaining true to America’s noblest legacies.

Spanish: I have no doubt that if we work together, we can achieve this and continue to be faithful to the noblest legacies of the United States.

If you still think any good Republican is pro-America, you’re being played. BOTH factions of the bi-factional ruling party are anti-America. Break out your battle flag and wave it high in the certain knowledge that Nimrata and the Republicans are on the other side.

Of course, at this point, it should no longer surprise anyone that an Invader-American would side with the invaders who raised her and not the Americans among whom she was raised. The dirt is not magic. Someone should write a book about it. Oh, wait, someone already did.

Six rules of strategic reshuffle

William Hague provides some rare insight into the backdoor dealings of a parliamentary system in his critique of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s recent Shadow Cabinet reshuffle:

The first rule, for a leader whose authority is anything short of total, is that it should come as a complete surprise, preferably a bolt from the bluest of skies. This is to prevent your colleagues from seeking to negotiate or combining to frustrate you. The date should be concealed even from some of the leader’s closest aides, with fake or easily cancelled engagements in the diary.

The second rule is that if any test of strength develops between you the leader and a subordinate, you have to win. If a colleague is immovable don’t try to move them. But once you say they’re moving, they have to go, whatever the cost. This is true even if it brings you down, because otherwise your weakness will make future shuffles impossible and bring you down anyway. In other words, you either pretend to be happy with Hilary Benn or you move him, but you certainly don’t show unhappiness and fail to move him.

The third rule is never to explain in public why you have dismissed any individual. Politicians don’t like being sacked, but on the whole they get over it. They still have hope for the future, and can sometimes be brought back with some gratitude on their part.

The fourth rule is that your new appointments should accentuate the divisions among your enemies. Promote some people from a different wing of the party who are proving technically able, so that they then have a vested interest in your success. Corbyn benefits enormously from Labour’s moderates being divided between those willing to serve with him and those who are sitting things out. But a shuffle is a chance to make their divisions worse, not push them together.

Here we have to come to the fifth rule, which takes us away from the
politics of personalities to how policy on major issues is made. This
rule states that a reshuffle, while not breaking any of the first four
rules, should make it easier for a party to unite in the future on an
issue it finds difficult.

The sixth rule states that, however much you’ve messed up with rules two
to five, never forget the first rule. A leader without the capacity to
surprise is without the power of tactical initiative.

Politics is a very dirty and intrinsically dishonest business. I’m glad I decided to stay out of it, although sometimes I wonder how things might have turned out if I’d gone with the program and aimed at Congress.

Regardless, Hague’s comments are a fascinating glimpse into a world we seldom see.

The art of punditry

Ross Douthat doubles down. He may have been wrong about Trump before, but he’s still entirely confident that Trump can’t win the nomination:

I certainly overestimated poor Jeb Bush, whom I wrongly predicted would profit from Trump’s rise. But for the rest — no, I had a pretty low opinion of the right-wing entertainment complex to begin with, and I’m not remotely surprised that the white working class would rally to a candidate running on populist and nationalist themes.

I am very surprised, though, that Trump himself would have the political savvy, the (relative) discipline and yes, the stamina required to exploit that opening and become that populist. And for that failure of imagination, I humbly repent.

Of course I’m not completely humbled. Indeed, I’m still proud enough to continue predicting, in defiance of national polling, that there’s still no way that Trump will actually be the 2016 Republican nominee.

Trust me: I’m a pundit.

That’s the true art of punditry. Never changing your mind, even while you are admitting that you’re wrong.

No wonder I couldn’t hack it. Meanwhile, Reihan Salam explains what Douthat missed, and is missing, at NRO:

“[Trump’s] emergence as the voice of the anti-immigration Right is a reflection of the failure of the Republican establishment to grapple with lawlessness at the border and half a century of mass immigration. Consider the events of the past two years. Child migrants have surged into the United States from Central America, and working-class cities and towns across the country are struggling to absorb them. Before the federal courts stepped in, President Obama signed an executive order shielding roughly half of all unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from the threat of deportation, a move he had previously suggested was out of bounds. And now the U.S. is experiencing yet another wave of Central American arrivals. Border Patrol officials report that many unauthorized immigrants believe that the U.S. is going to welcome them with open arms, and who can blame them given the president’s rhetoric?

Interesting to see that even the heart of cuckservatism is beginning to sense that all is not right with open borders.

Reliable in what regard?

Jonathan Haidt considers whether an entirely biased social science is capable of reliability:

Truth is a process, not just an end-state. The Righteous Mind was about the obstacles to that process — confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, tribalism, and the worship of sacred values. Given the many ways that our moral psychology warps our reasoning, it’s a wonder we’ve gotten as far as we have, as a species. That’s what’s so brilliant about science: it is a way of putting people together so that they challenge each other and cancel out each others’ confirmation biases and tribal commitments. The truth emerges from the interaction of flawed individuals.

But something alarming has happened to the academy since the 1990s: it has been transformed from an institution that leans to the left, which is not a big problem, into an institution that is entirely on the left, which is a very big problem.

Nowadays there are NO conservatives or libertarians in most academic departments in the humanities and social sciences. The academy has been so focused on attaining diversity by race and gender (which are valuable) that it has created a hostile climate for people who think differently. The American Academy has become a politically orthodox and quasi-religious institution. When everyone shares the same politics and prejudices, the disconfirmation process breaks down. Political orthodoxy is particularly dangerous for the social sciences, which grapple with so many controversial topics (such as race, racism, gender, poverty, immigration, politics, and climate science). America needs innovative and trustworthy research on all these topics, but can a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produce reliable findings?

Based on the evidence, the answer is yes, as a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produces findings that are reliably insane. At this point, the term “social science” has become an oxymoron akin to “military intelligence” or “new Star Wars movie”.

US military vs the CIA

To say these reports of the US military taking one side and the CIA taking the other could have explosive repercussions would be putting it mildly:

The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.

Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,’ the former JCS adviser said. ‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration’s policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.

Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, ‘we provided the information – including long-range analyses on Syria’s future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: “Here’s some information that’s pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.” End of conversation.

The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included.

A Republican self-throat-cutting ritual

Even the cuckservatives at National Review are aghast at the Republicans in office:

It would be bad enough had Republicans merely acquiesced to foolish policies, but in this bill they actively advanced them. The bill’s most egregious proposal will temporarily expand the H-2B visa program, quadrupling the issuance of visas to foreign workers for nonagricultural or temporary service jobs in 2016 — and it was a Republican initiative from start to finish.

What is the rationale? There is strong evidence that large-scale hiring of foreign workers depresses wages for Americans, and it’s not as if Ferris wheels and ski lifts will go unmanned if we stop importing Peruvian labor.

Clearly, Republican leaders bent to the demands of a tiny segment of employers. Meanwhile, they capitulated on a host of other proposals. Despite serious concerns about the integrity of our refugee-vetting procedures in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, the bill fully funds the government’s refugee-resettlement program, facilitating the president’s promise to settle 10,000 Syrians in the U.S. over the coming year. Despite revelations about outrageous criminal activity in America’s 340 “sanctuary cities,” the bill permits federal grants to those cities without adding any qualifying conditions.

And despite a bipartisan effort to reform the cronyism-riddled EB-5 visa program, under which foreigners can obtain a green card if they invest a certain amount in a business that creates or preserves ten jobs for U.S. citizens, Republican leadership dismissed the reform effort and extended the EB-5 program as is through September.

You know it’s bad when they can’t even bother trying to claim that this is just a tactical defeat that is cleverly setting up a long-term conservative strategic victory. You know, one of those long-term strategic victories that are apparently measured in centuries, because I’ve yet to see one come to pass.

We’re not radicals or extremists

We’re “policy entrepreneurs”. That’s a useful little phrase, that is.

This dynamic is inherently more challenging for those of us on the Right, who have good reason to believe that politicians’ incentives to placate various factional constituencies are so often at odds with the long-term effort to rein in the federal footprint. While political parties can exist as factions rather than ideological entities, conservatism cannot succeed as a factional constituency to a political party.

Several years ago, Ross Douthat identified the Obama-era GOP’s worst tendency as “[n]ot an ideological extremism, exactly, but rather a vision of government that you might call ‘small government for thee, but not for me,’ in which conservatism is just constituent services for the most reliable Republican groups and voters.” This is the worst of Republicanism, and it is incompatible with conservatives’ long-term project.

The GOP could exist as a political party by handing out patronage to its constituent groups—a prescription drug benefit for seniors, corporate agriculture pork masquerading as a farm bill, Export-Import Bank loans to Boeing. Conservatism, however, has no chance of advancing an agenda in this type of factionalized party.

A conservative reform effort, therefore, requires the Republican Party to forego factional politics and the patronage role of elected officials in favor of winning the argument on a conservative articulation of public policy. We must have the confidence that our reform ideas will best serve the nation and, realistically, if the government we have today has been built over 100 years by progressives with a vastly different conception of good policy, it will require attacking the status quo in a manner that makes niche constituencies nervous.

Never mind the pitchforks and torches. They’re just policy implementation enhancers.

Anyhow, this is precisely what I was saying about a year ago. You must cherish your extremists, not turn your backs on them, much less shoot at them. They provide the impetus for advancement; even if they go too far, at least they are going in the right direction.

Disband the Republican Party

Rush Limbaugh is railing against the Republicans in light of their most recent cuckservative betrayal.

Blasting the Republican-led Congress over a $1.1 trillion omnibus bill that, among other things, fully funds Planned Parenthood and has the White House declaring victory yet again on fiscal fronts, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Thursday that the GOP should be disbanded.

“There is no Republican Party!” Limbaugh said. “You know, we don’t even need a Republican Party if they’re gonna do this. You know, just elect Democrats, disband the Republican Party, and let the Democrats run it, because that’s what’s happening anyway.”

Limbaugh recounted how American voters “showed up in record numbers” and “defeated Democrats down the ballot” in order to get Republicans to stop runaway spending and President Barack Obama’s agenda.

“And now the Republicans have the largest number of seats in the House they’ve had in Congress since the Civil War,” he said. “And it hasn’t made any difference at all. It is as though Nancy Pelosi is still running the House and Harry Reid is still running the Senate. ‘Betrayed’ is not even the word here. What has happened here is worse than betrayal. Betrayal is pretty bad, but it’s worse than that.”

He’s not at all wrong and one would certainly like to take him at face
value, but it’s hard not to look at his past record and conclude that in
six months, he’ll be calling this “the most important election ever”
and urging listeners to vote Republican or else!