Tag: politics

Establishment logic

As I expected, Rick Perry is rapidly sinking in the polls thanks to the exposure of his radical support for open immigration. He’s lost 20 points and now trails Herman Cain, 28% to 18%. He’s effectively done. So, what is the solution of the Republican Establishment that backed his belated entry? Naturally, it is to encourage a less conservative and even more radical supporter of open immigration to enter the race:

Former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, who has known Chris Christie since he was a teenager and remains an informal adviser, tells National Review Online that the governor is “very seriously” considering a presidential bid.

“It’s real,” Kean says. “He’s giving it a lot of thought. I think the odds are a lot better now than they were a couple weeks ago.”

Christie remains undecided, Kean says, but is listening closely to pleas from party leaders. The chance for a “Jersey guy” to rise, Kean says, is not something Christie has sought. But now, with the field up for grabs, he is actively mulling a late entry.

If he makes the mistake of throwing his hat in the ring, Christie will melt down even faster than Perry did. Conservatives love seeing his fat, bellicose persona attacking the New Jersey teachers unions. They won’t like it half so much when he starts directing his attacks at them in defense of his moderate to liberal policies.

WND column

Immigration is the Issue

The mainstream media are desperately attempting to gloss over the real reason that Rick Perry self-imploded at the Florida straw poll. It wasn’t that his debate performance was poor, although it certainly was. The reason Rick Perry is imitating Fred Thompson’s rapid decline from favored frontrunner to candidate-in-crisis is because the debate revealed the depths to which his pro-immigration position runs counter to that of most Republicans.

Cain wins Florida

And, as I suggested, Perry’s remarkably stupid pro-immigration position is sinking him:

Every winner of Florida’s Presidency 5 straw poll has gone on to win the GOP nomination. And if that tradition continues this year, Herman Cain will be the Republican nominee in 2012.

He overwhelmingly won the straw poll, nabbing 37 percent of the votes. That put Cain more than twenty percentage points ahead of Rick Perry (15 percent) and Mitt Romney (14 percent). Rick Santorum won 11 percent of the votes, while Ron Paul came in fifth at 10 percent. Newt Gingrich was backed by 8 percent. And Michele Bachmann, who won the Ames Straw Poll, finished dead last at 1.5 percent. Jon Huntsman beat her to come in seventh place with 2.3 percent of the vote.

For Perry, whose campaign very aggressively courted delegates — his campaign hosted a breakfast, sent out direct mail, telephoned delegates, and appointed a leadership commission lead by Florida House speaker Dean Cannon — the distant second-place finish has the potential to curtail the momentum he’s had as frontrunner since entering the race. Many of the straw poll delegates expressed frustration at his poor debate performance Thursday night, along with irritation at his immigration positions.

Cain is a corrupt joke as a presidential candidate, but then, so were Bob Dole and John McCain. Obviously that wouldn’t stop Republicans from putting him up, especially since the party base despises Romney and is quickly coming to dislike Perry. I still don’t see Cain winning the nomination, but Perry’s ongoing meltdown makes it less implausible than before.

Chicago Tribune: Obama should step aside

The drums, they beat:

The vultures are starting to circle. Former White House spokesman Bill Burton said that unless Obama can rally the Democratic base, which is disillusioned with him, “it’s going to be impossible for the president to win.” Democratic consultant James Carville had one word of advice for Obama: “Panic.”

But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he’s willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013.

That might be the sensible thing to do. It’s hard for a president to win a second term when unemployment is painfully high. If the economy were in full rebound mode, Obama might win anyway. But it isn’t, and it may fall into a second recession — in which case voters will decide his middle name is Hoover, not Hussein. Why not leave of his own volition instead of waiting to get the ax?

Why not? Why not indeed?

Putting science back into political science

Now here is a proposal for a scientific approach to politics I would absolutely get behind the idea of bringing back the states as the laboratories of democracy:

What do politicians do when they think they have a great idea? They just go and implement it. It’s like someone thinking he’s got a cure for cancer and immediately injecting it into everyone he can. That’s a madman, not a scientist. You always have to at least try out your idea on monkeys to make sure it doesn’t kill them.

Were farm subsidies first tried on monkeys? Social Security? Bank bailouts? No, the unscientific politicians went straight to trying all their ideas on humans, and now we have a bunch of bankrupt people instead of harmless bankrupt monkeys.

But the problem with testing political ideas on monkeys is that forcing them to go billions into debt would violate animal-cruelty laws. The only ones we’re allowed to do that to are people.

So we have to just observe the effects of the politicians’ policies — but that’s not so simple. Many say the Obama stimulus was a failure; others say we’d be even worse off without it. With the data we have, we can’t prove who’s right.

In science, when testing things on people, you always use a control group. If you have a drug you think will cut cholesterol, you give it to one set of test subjects. If everyone in the group that took the drug turns purple and starts choking but the control group is fine, we scientifically conclude there’s a problem with the drug. We have an economy that’s turning purple and choking. Did the stimulus cause that? If we had a control group that looked fine, we’d know.

So what we need to do is isolate part of the country to be the control group. They’ll be free from new taxes, won’t take part in government programs and regulations and can have all the guns they want. In the rest of America, politicians can go crazy with every Keynesian idea, ban trans fats and salt and just generally control everything. Then we can compare the results of the two groups and finally have a scientific answer on what works.

The only serious problem with the proposal is that everyone with half a brain or more would want to live in the unfortunately named control group. And even the liberals would start to figure it out eventually, as can be seen by their ongoing migration from the liberal states they’ve ruined to more conservative states.

Here’s the ironic thing. Due to their tendency towards the political left and their increasing dependence upon government spending, some of the biggest opponents of a scientific approach to politics would probably be scientists and the science lobby.

But it would certainly be amusing to see all the leftists in the experimental groups arguing that the policy would have worked if only it hadn’t relied on a population full of morons like themselves.

PS – For those who are following the Memorial Debate, I have just sent off my Round Two post to Dominic. So, we’re on schedule.

One and done

It appears to be only a matter of time before Maureen Dowd and the rest of the New York Times collective mind demand Obama’s withdrawal from the 2012 presidential campaign:

The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant. After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.

“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”

The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.

Hell hath no fury like a Democratic Party sensing their newly regained White House slipping away… to the Third Bush.

Quelle surprise

The Magic Mustache decides he won’t run; NRO and VP are the only two sites to even notice:

NR favorite John Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador, has decided against a presidential run. “It was a very difficult decision,” he said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. “My view has not changed one iota that we need a much more robust discussion of national-security issues as part of this presidential campaign.”

The assertion that John Bolton was electable as U.S. president while simultaneously claiming Ron Paul is not is arguably the single dumbest argument to ever appear in National Review. It seriously raised the question about whether the magazine had not only devolved into mindless neoconservatism, but outright retardation. John Bolton not only has a smaller following than Ron Paul does, he has a smaller following than I do. He has a smaller following than the average high school cheerleader.

As for foreign policy, it doesn’t mean jack squat when you’re bankrupt. Foreign policy is entirely irrelevant now, except in the sense of European sovereign debt bailouts.

Seculars are seriously insane

Datechguy simultaneously sums up the inherent lunacy of the “evolution in the schools” debate and illustrates the insanity of the secular science fetishists:

My friend is an educated man in his 40′s. Both he and his father owned small business and are longtime republicans. We were going through the potential GOP nominees when he declared he was afraid of Rick Perry because of his fundamentalist belief in the Bible (specifically on evolution). He argued that if he doesn’t believe in Evolution what OTHER science does he not believe in?

I’ve already said something in my gut doesn’t care for Rick Perry but this caused me to do a double take; I answered:

“Unemployment is 9.1%, the economy is in the tank and you’re worried about a candidate’s position on how old the planet is?”

It is instructional to see how secularist Americans are attempting to construct the very walls they once condemned. Whereas they still complain that there was a time when belief in God was an essential societal requirement, now they are simply substituting a different religious dogma to serve as a litmus test. Their concerns can’t possibly be about science, as there probably aren’t more than one or two Senators who could pass a college level physics test or more than ten who could pass an economics one. I’d be surprised if any of the candidates other than Ron Paul or Mitt Romney could even tell you what something as simple as marginal utility or a reserve requirement is.

I don’t like Rick Perry either, nor would I vote for him, but his opinion on the age of the planet and the origin of the species is probably somewhere around number 345,732 on my list of concerns about the man.

The irony is that the same people who believe that fiscal stimulus ends economic contractions and FDR’s New Deal ended the Great Depression will tell you, with a straight face, that you are ignorant and should not be permitted to hold office if you don’t believe that all cats and dogs are the descendants of a single catdog 42 million years ago. Because, you know, that’s so much more relevant to the main political issues of the day than economic and geopolitical rationality.

The truth is that all cats and dogs are descended from a male calico catdog named Fluffy Leghumper who was born on May 17th, 41,997,010 BC. His two kitten-pups, fathered on different female catdogs, were Patches and Happy Sniffbottom. And thus cats and dogs evolved. True science fact. And if you don’t believe in Fluffy Leghumper, you’re just ignorant and you know nothing about science.

Answering the NYT questions

I’m not a candidate, but Bill Keller’s questions are interesting and it would be informative if the candidates would actually answer them:

1. Is it fair to question presidential candidates about details of their faith?

Absolutely.

2. Is it fair to question candidates about controversial remarks made by their pastors, mentors, close associates or thinkers whose books they recommend?

It’s fair, but don’t be surprised when the candidates don’t agree. I respected my pastors, but I never completely agreed with any of them. No one who has ever been to a Bible Study believes that Christians don’t think for themselves.

3. (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in practice?

Of course America is a Christian nation. It was founded by Christians on predominantly Christian concepts and most of its citizens are Christians. No other nation is described by virtue of what its constitution says about religion or anything else, so why would we describe America that way?

4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?

Work towards changing the Constitution and the laws. Isn’t that what elected leaders do? Isn’t passing new laws pretty much all that Congress does?

5. (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist?

Yes. Sharia is intrinsically incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Depends on the atheist.

6. Are Mormons Christians, in your view? Should the fact that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons influence how we think of them as candidates?

They can be, but being a Mormon doesn’t make one a Christian any more than being a Catholic does. Group identity is not a perfectly reliable guide to religious faith. That being said, I do think their Mormonism should influence how we think of Captain and Lieutenant Underoos.

7. What do you think of the evangelical Christian movement known as Dominionism and the idea that Christians, and only Christians, should hold dominion over the secular institutions of the earth?

Nothing. It’s more fringe than the Mormons or the atheists and it’s inept theology. Satan holds dominion over the Earth until Jesus comes back. And nobody gets a vote on that.

8. (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

Skeptical. Of course it shouldn’t be taught in public schools. Worry about teaching an minor aspect of biological science AFTER you are able to successfully teach reading, personal economics, and math, which is not presently the case.

9. Do you believe it is proper for teachers to lead students in prayer in public schools?

Of course. A public school isn’t Congress and a prayer isn’t a law. Even under the mostly fictional “separation of church and state” doctrine, this is perfectly permissible. If either the kids or the parents don’t like it, let them pull their kids out and homeschool them.

Darwinist demands Darwinian litmus test

In other news, Roger Clemens today announced that “throwing like a girl” should disqualify a politician from the presidency.

A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

Richard Dawkins again demonstrates that he is an unmitigated moron. Perry may be an “uneducated ignoramus”, but Dawkins is nothing more than an educated one. But what is always amusing is his narcissistic myopia. The entire world is in the midst of an economic meltdown that threatens the global financial system, so naturally he is very, very concerned that the next U.S. president must be a True Believer in the Cult of Darwin.

If Dawkins actually cared about science, he would be enthusiastically supporting a snake-handling fundamentalist who believed the world was created exactly 6,000 years ago so long as said Creationist was cognizant of economic reality, which none of the current presidential candidates except Ron Paul happen to be. The ongoing Great Depression 2.0 will do far more damage to science than an outright ban on the teaching of evolution in the public schools ever could.

The fact is that neither the president nor anyone else actually needs to know a damn thing about evolution or the intrinsically unscientific principle – it is based on logic, not science – that is “natural selection”. Even biologists who are performing cutting edge work in genetic science don’t necessarily need to know anything about either. Almost no one does.

Moreover, Dawkins is a liar. He lies, and he knows he lies, when he says: “Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science.” Let’s see the scientific experiment that demonstrates that “fact”, then see it replicated three more times for good measure. Other scientists can manage this effortlessly, so why can’t Mr. Dawkins? Because, obviously, evolution is not a fact – which Dawkins admits in his most recent book – nor is it anywhere nearly as securely established as a plethora of scientific hypotheses. And that is a fact. An actual, verifiable one.

The Cult of Darwin must be getting desperate indeed if they are resorting to attempting to pass off outright lies in this manner. Moreover, three years after getting spanked on his embrace of the stupid Red State argument, Dawkins still clearly knows nothing about the American political system. It is not the Republican Party that depends upon the uneducated vote, but the Democratic Party, as CNN exit polls have shown after the 2008, 2004, and 2000 presidential elections.

“Voters with postgraduate schooling were only 25 percent more likely to vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004 while those who did not complete high school were 90 percent more likely to identify themselves as Democrats. Since there are 75 percent more Americans who never completed high school (16.4 percent of adults over twenty-five) than possess an advanced degree (9.4 percent), this means that despite their reputation for being the party of the most highly educated, a Democrat is nevertheless more than twice as likely to be someone who has dropped out of high school than an individual with a master’s degree.”
– The Irrational Atheist, pp 18-19

Dawkins concludes: “The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.”

Absolutely it does. I would LOVE to see it given a prominent place in the debates. Because wouldn’t it be amusing to see the look on Dawkins’s face when all the Democrats he admires stand up and deny evolution in perfect lockstep with all the Republican candidates! And it would be an excellent method of keeping those potentially deadly atheist utopians out of high office.