Tag: politics

The poison is the antidote

Or so numerous pundits, a number of whom actually voted for Obama in 2008, would have us believe given their advice to the Republican Party:

It was a crushing defeat.  Despite
an economy as underpowered as a cheap flourescent light, Mitt Romney
somehow failed to unseat Barack Obama.  And now it is time for the
Republicans to rethink their platform in order to attract new voters–or
doom themselves to permanent minority status.

I
think the obvious place to start is with immigration reform.  Increase
the number of visas available.  Explore guest-worker programs.
 Establish a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who were brought
here as children and have never known any other home.  This not only
gives the GOP a shot at the Latino vote, but also softens their image in
the eyes of the professional class, who might be willing to give the
party another look if it didn’t seem so committed to deporting poorer,
darker skinned people who just want a shot at picking fruit, trimming
lawns, and cleaning houses.

The
GOP would also help itself with those people by embracing gay marriage.
 To be sure, this might cause them some problems with the evangelical
base whose organizing support is crucial to Republican get-out-the-vote
efforts.  But the GOP could assuage that tension by promulgating a
hard-core, Republican version of gay and straight marriage.  That’s why
they should pair it with making marriage mandatory, and eliminating
no-fault divorce.  The message should be that if everyone can get
married, then there’s no really excuse not to be.   Oh, I know, the
divorce changes might cause friction with the kind of Republicans who go
through wives the way other men go through undershirts, but this seems
like a small price to pay for a shot at the 1-3% of the electorate that
is eligible for gay marriage.  

The frightening thing here is that McCardle attempts to portray herself as an economist.  My suggestion is that one never take either political or economic advice from an economist, however tall, who cannot figure out that 20 percent is larger than 2 percent….

Regardless, there is only one viable long-term solution for the Republican Party, indeed, for the survival of constitutional America throughout the current territorial limits of the United States, and that is a repeat of Operation Wetback on a vastly larger scale. Such an action would require the banning of all dual-citizenships, mass deportations on an unprecedented scale, and likely inspire violence of the sort that has not been seen in America since the riots of the 1960s.  And, needless to say, it is clear there is now no chance that it is ever going to happen.

Which is a real pity, because it would actually have been the lesser of the two probable evils.  What is going to happen instead is some sort of civil war following the next major stage in the ongoing economic meltdown.  How big it will be and how it will turn out, I don’t pretend to know.  But it is as easily predictable as the wars in the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and the former British empire in India, because war is how diverse groups of people usually negotiate imperial divorce.  The USA has not truly been a single nation since imperial rule was forcibly imposed upon the southern states in 1865, but the difference is that it is no longer possible to plausibly pretend that it is still one any longer.

It’s not a question of hate, race, or religion.  It is the simple historical observation that the Kuomintang will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Chinese communists.  Pakistanis will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Indians.  Americans will not voluntarily live under the same governance as Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, or Arabs.  They just will not do it, and to pretend otherwise isn’t so much foolish as insane.

It doesn’t matter what you do.  It doesn’t matter what you think.  Winter is coming.  The only question is whether it will take you by surprise or not.  And there really isn’t much excuse for being surprised when the temperature has been dropping and the leaves have been falling for quite some time now.

A timely resignation

Interesting timing for this resignation, considering that CIA Director David Petraeus was scheduled to testify about Bengazi next week before Congress:

Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus has resigned, citing “extremely poor judgment” for having an extramarital affair.

Petraeus, 60, told President Barack Obama of the affair on Thursday and offered to resign, a senior official told NBC News. Obama accepted his resignation in a phone call Friday afternoon. 

“Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position,” Petraeus said in a letter to CIA colleagues. “After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours.”

“This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation,” Petraeus said in the letter.

This is why it’s always helpful to have a few skeletons in your closet if you want to move up the ladder.  The powers that be don’t like high-ranking individuals who don’t come with an easy self-destruct button.  The question is why someone felt the need to press it for Petraeus now.

It’s too late, Republicans

Ron Paul, who was rejected by Republicans in favor of the supposedly more electable Mitt Romney, concludes it is Game Over for the USA as well:

Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said
in the wake of this week’s elections that the country has already veered
over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a
country where too many people are dependent on government.

“We’re
so far gone. We’re over the cliff,” the Texas Republican told Bloomberg
Television’s “In the Loop” program. “We cannot get enough people in
Congress in the next 5-10 years who will do wise things.”

Since the “drive toward the cliff slower” strategy has worked so well, perhaps Republicans will now consider attempting a “fall slower” approach.

Breakdown

This chart of the electorate fairly clearly illustrates the growing difference between historical America and third world America.

We already knew the “conservative Catholic Hispanic” vote upon which Karl Rove and George W. Bush were going to build their permanent Republican majority doesn’t exist.  But the theory of the conservative Asian voter appears to be even more of a myth.  Of course, why immigrants from cultures with zero tradition of limited government would ever be expected to respect the concept has never been explained to my satisfaction.  And where would they learn to appreciate it in modern America?  The public schools?  At university?

What I missed

It wasn’t the Jews, the Blacks, or even the Single Women that won it for him this time.    A lower percentage of Jews and Single Women voted for him than in 2008.  The Black vote was already maxed out.  What made the difference was the increasingly powerful, increasingly Democrat-leaning Hispanic vote.  First, look at what happened in 2008:

Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over
Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than
two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 67% versus 31%, according
to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls from Edison
Media Research as published by CNN.  The Center’s analysis
also finds that 9% of the electorate was Latino, as indicated by the
national exit poll. This is higher, by one percentage point, than the
share in the 2004 national exit poll.

There were 129,391,711 votes cast for Obama and McCain in 2008, of which about 11,645,254 were Hispanic.  Obama received 7,802,320 of them.  We don’t know yet how many total votes were cast in the 2012 election, but the Hispanic vote is reported to have not only grown, but to have gone more heavily for Obama than before;  I’ve seen reports indicating between 72 and 75 percent voted Democrat.

The numbers aren’t firm yet, of course, because the final totals haven’t been reported.  But even if we assume only another one point percentage increase so that 12.9 million of the approximately 24 million Hispanics eligible voted, the reported increase from 67 to 73 percent would be an increase from 7,802,320 to 9,417,000, which is a substantial portion of Obama’s reported margin of victory.  And those votes are spread out very liberally through swing states such as Virginia, Colorado, and even Iowa.

Before the election, I noted that the big difference between Nate Silver’s take and mine was that I simply did not believe the D+11 and D+7 weights in the state polls.  The reason those differences were justified was that in 2012, Hispanics apparently went from being heavily pro-Democrat to being even more pro-Democrat than the historically second-most reliable group of Democratic voters, the Jews.  That’s the key factor I missed; while I anticipated an increase in the size of the Hispanic vote as more immigrants became eligible over the course of time, I thought it was going to drop in line with the other demographic groups, not vote an even stronger pro-Democratic bias.  Had it fallen 9 points like the Jewish vote, to 58 percent, Romney would have been much more competitive.

This development is particularly troubling for future Republican prospects since even more of the 50 million Hispanics now in the USA will become eligible to vote in 2016.  My previous characterization of Mitt Romney as the last viable Republican presidential candidate may be more significant than I imagined.  This demographic shift indicates that no candidate can expect to run on a Constitutional platform ever again, and appears to seal the irrelevance of the document that George W. Bush once dismissed as a worthless piece of paper.

Nate Silver 1 Vox 0

This comment from DH sums up the election nicely:

Nate Silver was very close to perfect.  VD called the swings states wrong.  National polling is not that useful, State polling is pretty useful.

So, the good news is that we probably won’t be fighting Iran or any other wars in the Middle East now.  Another African intervention or two is more likely and less problematic.  The bad news is that Helicopter Ben just got the green light for QEn.  The dreadful news is that those seemingly ridiculous D+11 samples were actually correct, which means the 2012 election has the potential to mark a demographic turning point from which the American Right will never be able to recover.  The Republican Party is going to have to move harder to the Left if it is going to compete for the female and third world votes that are now electorally determinative.  The demographics are only going to get worse, significantly worse, from here, as millions of immigrants and the children of immigrants with no connection to, or regard for, little American traditions such as the U.S. Constitution and limited government become legal voters.

Like immigrants everywhere, they will attempt to make their new land more like their old one.  And now we know they will succeed.  That’s good news if you like Mexican food, not so good if you don’t like corporate corruption on steroids, third world crime rates, and a lower standard of living.

And yet, in the short term, as I’ve been pointing out for some time now, most Americans will be better off with the Golfer-in-Chief walking the links than an authoritarian CEO-in-Chief aggressively “fixing” everything from Syria to the money supply.  If we’re fortunate, Obama will be content to bask in his victory for the next four years and let the economy collapse without much more than the half-hearted Keynesian assistance he’s provided in the past.

But I think it is safe to conclude that I should stick to economics and societal predictions rather than political ones.  Polling clearly trumps pattern recognition with regards to the latter.  On the plus side, now that we know the polls are reliable, there isn’t really any need for short-term predictions anymore.  As Real Clear Politics has shown, anyone with Excel and a Monte Carlo plug-in can do the basic math averaging the state polls as competently as Nate Silver.

The New York Times makes it pretty clear how we can expect the left-liberals to interpret Obama’s victory:

 The president’s victory depended heavily on Midwestern Rust Belt states
like Ohio, where the bailout of the auto industry — which Mr. Obama
engineered and Mr. Romney opposed — proved widely popular for the simple
reason that it worked.  More broadly, Midwestern voters seemed to endorse the president’s
argument that the government has a significant role in creating
private-sector jobs and boosting the economy. They rejected Mr. Romney’s
position that Washington should simply stay out of such matters and let
the free market work its will.
It’s hard to argue with that, except for the idea that Mr. Romney was going to actually keep Washington out of such matters if Wall Street was involved.  It appears the next book I have to read is Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now, as I have the feeling it’s going to be increasingly relevant as an economic roadmap.

For whom did you vote?

This is an open presidential election thread where you can inform us of your vote. Just to get things started, as per my endorsement, I did not vote for anyone for president.
I’ll be posting updates here as information about the results begins to circulate.

The final forecasts are as follows:
 

Gallup: Romney 50, Obama 49
 
Rasmussen: Romney 49, Obama 48
 
Silver: Obama 51, Romney 48

 It may be worth nothing that the Gallup deviation in 2008 exaggerated Obama’s percentage by 2.0 and was 2.0 too low on McCain. Rasmussen nailed McCain and was 1.0 low on Obama’s total.

UPDATE 6:32 PM

Pasco County in Florida reports the following with 67.2% turnout so far.

Republicans: 89,359 of 120,860 voted. (73.9%)
Democrats: 72,273 of 108,154 voted (66.8%)

In 2008, McCain got 110,104 votes to 102,417 for Obama with 73.4% total turnout.  That’s 1.08 Republican/Democrat vs 1.24 tonight.  Conclusion: initial edge to Romney.



UPDATE 6:45 PM

Drudge reporting early exit polls indicating Florida and North Carolina for Romney, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada for Obama,  Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, and Iowa too close to call.  Another good sign for Romney, as media always spins exit polls toward Democrats.  We’ll learn a lot more once Virginia results are reported; that’s the key state now.

UPDATE 7:00 PM

No surprises yet.  Virginia too soon to call.  Romney does take Indiana, which is a big switch from 2008, but expected.  Irrelevant initial Electoral College count is 19-3 Romney.  However, Romney has 53-41 edge among Virginia independents in exit poll; Obama won them in 2008.

UPDATE 7:45 PM

Electoral College is now 49-3 but still no surprises or calls on Virginia or Ohio.   First sign that Obama might win: exit polls report New Hampshire independents are voting 51-45 for him there.   Correction: Obama is up by 2 points among NH independents, 10 points less than in 2008.

UPDATE 8:40 PM

Politico has Romney up 56.3 to 42.3 in Virginia with 31.7 percent reporting but still no call there.  There must be some major Democratic counties missing.  Neck and neck in Florida with 6 million votes reported.

UPDATE 9:18

It’s starting to look as if I’m wrong.  Pennsylvania was just called for Obama.  If Virginia and Ohio both go for Obama as well, Romney is done.

2012 Presidential Endorsement

First, here are a small selection of my favorite endorsements from the more than 200 that were presented by the Dread Ilk.  I was surprised to see that there were more of them than were presented at Whatever, but I was not surprised to see that they were considerably more diverse and much more indicative of being the result of actual and original cognitive activity.

Romney…b/c he has executive style hair this country desperately needs
– TRK

I am endorsing Romney because he is the only chance to save the republic from the impending maelstrom of….  Just kidding. I am voting for Romney because it will be fun to revel in the misery of the sanctimonious messiah worshippers and see the MSNBC crew put on suicide watch.
– Judge

Not voting so that one day I can look my children in the eyes and tell them that I never supported any of it!
– Cinco

I don’t vote. Here is why: It’s Hobson’s Choice, disguised. No matter who you vote for, you get the exact same game plan. Since I am going to receive the same outcome no matter my vote, I prefer not to contribute to the appearance of legitimacy of the voting process.
– P-Dawg

I cannot support Obama or Romney. Neither candidate supports the constitution of the US, nor the freedoms, rights and responsibilities it guarantees. If liberty and freedom of conscience means nothing to them, then the candidates mean nothing to me.
– wordwarrior

Voting is an absolute waste of time. When you read and listen to what Americans think on almost any subject, social or political, you must conclude that prosperity has indeed bred contempt. Contempt for reality.
– Altered Fate

Mitt, for two reasons  1. I wanted to vote on the down ticket items, and leaving the presidental circles empty can get you ballot tossed.  2. It makes my inlaws nuts.
– RedJack

In the time since I’ve been legally able to vote I have only seen ambitious politicians who have managed to do nothing but screw things up despite their best intentions of making a positive change. This has led me to the following conclusion: Change is not feasible…. So I intend to vote for the the candidate with no ambition to do much more than collect a paycheck and enjoy the title, rather than vainly hope they might do something worthwhile and being perennially let down. Even in the office of president I would rather have a vain pompous ass who had no sites beyond making himself look good and protecting his legacy for the next 4 years so he can safely pass the buck when he’s gone. That is why I will be voting for Obama.
– NateM

I am abstaining this year. Gary Johnson is a pathetic excuse for a Libertarian who thinks his name recognition will help him get votes as a Libertarian candidate. If the Lib. Party had actually nominated someone that understood first principles, I would again go to vote for the Lib. Party in my district. However, unless or until I see that the LP actually stands for what it says it is about I will continue to abstain.
– CunningDove

Romney. First of all, I am just tired of Obama and Biden. They bore me. They are pathetic and I am tired of hearing the idiotic drivel that oozes from them.  Second, Romney will do better with appointing Supreme Court justices, and other judges for that matter. I know Vox scoffs at this reason. But let’s do the math on the Obamacare decision, for example. 80% of the Republican appointed judges voted the right way. 0% of the Democrat appointed judges voted the right way.
– Boetain

This is my reason for not voting.  In John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government any legitimate government must first obtain direct consent of the governed. This is later reaffirmed by the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
– difranco

I’m voting Romney because I think the implosion of Western civilization in America will proceed at a slower pace under him. We should prop up the vestiges of better times that remain in our laws for as long as we can. Maybe in the meantime some saint will rise up with a way to turn the tide.
– DanDan

Writing in Ron Paul as a protest vote.
– Grendelizer

One can make a good Leninesque case for voting for Obama: the faster the disaster, the sooner the solution.  One can make a solid prevent defense case for voting for Romney: the longer collapse is delayed, the more time we have to eat, drink, make merry, and reach the sweet release of death before it all comes tumbling down.  Sadly, CunningDove is correct and one cannot make a good case for voting for Gary Johnson; the Libertarian candidate is not a libertarian.  But one can also make a good case for writing in Ron Paul as a protest vote.

However, all of these reasonable arguments are trumped by one overarching principle: maintaining the illusion of legitimate democratic rule through representation requires the participation of the voter.  By voting, you are participating in the illusion.  You are sustaining it, even if you are refusing to engage in the immoral choice of the lesser of two evils by voting third party or writing in a protest candidate.  This is why avowedly anti-democratic nations pass laws that mandate voting.  They are not interested in knowing the will of the people, they merely wish to use it as a veil, as is the case here in the United States today.

I can, of course, cite history to show that genuine change of the sort that is desperately needed seldom comes from the ballot box.  I can demonstrate that your one vote for president will not, under any circumstances, be permitted to determine the outcome of the election.  I can explain how supporting the lesser of two evils is not a morally permissible choice. But those things are irrelevant in comparison with the fundamental choice between participating in the illusion or refusing to participate in it.

Therefore, I endorse not voting for anyone for U.S. president.

I am not saying that one should never vote under any circumstances, or even that you should not vote today.  There are many important state and local measures concerning which your vote does actually matter and you should not hesitate to make your opinion formally known.  But I do recommend refusing your consent to the electoral sham of the U.S. presidential process.

Election Day and the Fourth Turning

I don’t necessarily subscribe to the concept of generational dynamics, but I do find it to be an interesting perspective.  Regardless, it certainly provides a unique take on the presidential election today and inspires some reflection on my part.  I don’t often make public my meanderings, by which I mean ideas I cannot articulate in what I consider to be an adequately defensible manner, but since we’re basically engaging in multiple levels of societal haruspicy here, I suppose it can’t hurt so long as everyone realizes this is little more than following the idea flow wherever it happens to go:

Can generational theory predict who will win the presidential election? Probably not, but based upon historical precedent, during times of Crisis the country usually turns to a Prophet generation leader who provides a new vision and summons the moral authority to lead. This leader may not have the right vision or have the backing of the entire population, but he is not afraid to take bold action. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was despised by many, but he boldly led the country during the last Crisis. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 39.8% of the popular vote, but he unflinchingly did whatever he thought was necessary to achieve victory and preserve the union. Prophet leaders like Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin offered the sense of moral urgency required to sustain the American Revolution. Strauss & Howe give a historical perspective on Prophet generations.

“Prophet generations are born after a great war or other crisis, during a time of rejuvenated community life and consensus around a new societal order. Prophets grow up as the increasingly indulged children of this post-crisis era, come of age as narcissistic young crusaders of a spiritual awakening, cultivate principle as moralistic mid-lifers, and emerge as wise elders guiding another historical crisis. By virtue of this location in history, such generations tend to be remembered for their coming-of-age passion and their principled elder stewardship. Their principle endowments are often in the domain of vision, values, and religion. Their best-known historical leaders include John Winthrop, William Berkeley, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt. These were principled moralists, summoners of human sacrifice, and wagers of righteous wars. Early in life, few saw combat in uniform; later in life, most came to be revered more for their inspiring words than for their grand deeds.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

Barack Obama was born in 1961. According to the Strauss & Howe generational distinctions, this makes him an early Gen-Xer. His life story matches that of the Nomad archetype. His chaotic early life, confused upbringing by an array of elders, frenetic alienated early adulthood as a community organizer, and his rise to power through his public speaking talent and pragmatic ability to achieve his agenda is a blueprint for a Nomad. Mitt Romney was born in 1947 [Prophet – VD] and grew up during the American High. His childhood was idyllic and privileged. His moral Mormon youth as a missionary eventually devolved into his yuppie “greed is good” career at Bain Capital acquiring companies, making them more efficient (firing Americans & hiring Asians), and spinning them off, while siphoning millions in fees. He has tried to convince Americans to vote for him, based upon his business acumen and moral lifestyle, as the cure for what ails America. With the continued downward spiral of societal mood, record low trust in Congress and 60% of Americans thinking the country is on the wrong track, the odds should favor the Prophet candidate. The 40% of Americans who think the country is on the right track are a tribute to our awful government run public education system or are smoking crack.

The Barack Obama presidency has many similarities to the one-term presidencies of Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan. Both men were overwhelmed by rapidly deteriorating events, an inability to understand the true nature of the Crisis, and failure to inspire the American people to rally behind a common cause. Both men drifted off into obscurity and are overwhelmingly acknowledged as two of the least successful presidents. The men who succeeded them are ranked by historians at the top of the list, even though they are both despised by more libertarian minded citizens as proponents of big government solutions and control. Libertarians will not be happy with developments over the next fifteen years. This Crisis is an era in which America’s corrupt social order will be torn down and reconstructed from the ground as a reaction to the unsustainable financial pyramid scheme which is an existential threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority will revive, cultural manifestation will find a community resolution, and citizens will begin to associate themselves as adherents of a larger cluster.  

Barack Obama has fallen short as a Crisis leader, just as Buchanan and Hoover fell short. Buchanan also tried to maintain the status quo and not address the key issues of the day – secession and slavery. His handling of the financial Panic of 1857 led to annual deficits that exceeded 13% of GDP during his entire presidency. His legacy is one of failure and hesitation. Hoover was a technocrat with an engineering background who failed to recognize the extent of the suffering by the American people during the early stages of the Great Depression. It is a false storyline that he did not attempt to use the power of the Federal government to address the economic crisis. Federal spending increased by over 20% during his term and he was running a deficit when Roosevelt assumed power. Hoover was an activist president who began the public works programs that FDR expanded and dramatically increased taxes on the rich and corporations in 1932.

Obama inherited a plunging economic situation and proceeded to make choices that will make this Crisis far worse than it needed to be. He has failed miserably in addressing the core elements of this Crisis that were foreseen by Strauss and Howe over a decade before the initial spark in 2008. Debt, civic decay, rising wealth inequality due to the rise of our plutocracy, and global disorder are the underlying basis for this Crisis. Obama’s response was to run record deficits driving the national debt skyward, failing to address the unfunded entitlement liabilities that loom on the horizon, bowing down before the Wall Street mobsters and paying their ransom demands, layering on more complexity and unfunded healthcare liabilities to an already teetering government system, and extending our policing the world foreign policy at a cost of $1 trillion per year. A Crisis requires a bold leader who makes tough choices and leads. Obama has proven to not be that leader. Based on historical precedent and the rapidly deteriorating mood of the country, it would be logical for the country to select Romney, a Prophet generation leader.

This analysis rather ominously parallels what I have observed about Mitt Romney’s character during the Republican primaries and at the Republican National Convention.  Because he governed as an unprincipled moderate in Massachusetts, and because he has an affable public personality, very few observers realize that the man has a strong will to power and authoritarian instincts.  Being a Mormon, he likely possesses the same sense of self-justification by historical persecution that many revolutionary Jews have had, and he will acknowledge no allegiance to the mainstream Christians and evangelicals who elected him.

We already knows he views himself as a Mr. Fix-it, and quite reasonably so.  I suspect, therefore, that he might surprise everyone and abandon all pretense of political moderation if he perceives what I and other economic observers have long perceived and concludes that the nation, as well as the global financial system, is on the verge of collapse.  What I don’t know is which way he will jump if he goes Full Fix-it; I assume he is a conventional globalist who will follow the usual path of doing the same thing, only at the next level, but then again, his Mormonism could be an indication that he will take a different and less predictable path.  After all, if there is an individual that is going to address the immigration and vibrancy problem that is fracturing the country in such a predictably conclusive manner, it is most likely one from a group has religious justification for doing so in its most sacred scripture.

Here is the vital point.  Mitt Romney appears to be a principled man with a public track record of no conventional political principles.  He has flip-flopped so many times on so many major issues that no one can possibly say with any degree of plausibility what his true political ideology is, if one can even be said to exist.  He has bound himself to nothing and no one.  So, this raises the obvious question: what are his underlying principles?  I suspect he has been practicing a Mormon form of taqiyya for a long, long time, and we will only discover what those principles are if Romney is elected and comes to believe the national situation is dire enough to justify him revealing himself and taking action in full Prophet mode.