Tag: politics

The boundless evil of socialism

Socialist Hugo Chavez speaks out against breast implants:

Venezuela has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery per capita in the world and in some cases teenage girls have had breast enlargements as birthday presents from their parents. Now Mr Chavez has condemned doctors who “convince some women that if they don’t have some big bosoms, they should feel bad.” Speaking on state television, he said that it was a “monstrous thing” to see that even women from poor backgrounds were now choosing to pay to go under the knife.

Libertarians are in favor of women being free to improve the aesthetic appeal of their bodies if they wish. Socialists call big, beautifully-sculpted breasts “monstrous”.

Any questions?

The left of the right

The Right-Wing News polls a collection of so-called “right-of-center” bloggers, thus revealing that the right-wing blogosphere is a) not particularly intelligent, and b) barely to the right of the New York Times token conservative. Consider their list of most unpopular figures:

10) WorldNetDaily: 60.6%
10) Michael Savage: 60.6%
9) Christine O’Donnell: 60.7%
7) Ron Paul: 64.7%
7) Mike Huckabee: 64.7%
6) David Brooks: 71.2%
5) Pat Buchanan: 71.6%
4) Kathleen Parker: 77.8%
3) Joe Scarborough: 80.6%
2) David Frum: 87.5%
1) Meghan McCain: 93.8%

So, most of the “right wing” bloggers dislike the leading paleo-conservative, the leading libertarian Republican, and the largest right-wing Internet site. Now look at who they like for president:

8) Ron Paul: 35.3%
8) Mike Huckabee: 35.3%
7) Mitt Romney: 44.8%
6) Newt Gingrich: 54.4%
5) Mitch Daniels: +76.1%
4) Michelle Bachmann: +83.6%
3) Jim DeMint: +87.9%
2) Sarah Palin: 89.8%
1) Chris Christie: +98.6%

This shows that the so-called right vastly favors an elephantine RINO over the only candidate who has any clue about the dreadful economic and geo-strategic situations in which the nation finds itself. Hell, they favor Newt Gingrich over Ron Paul! But at least give them credit for preferring Palin to Captain Underoos and the Huckster; they may be short-sighted and foolish, but they’re not complete idiots.

In other words, you can safely conclude that this is not the group that will be leading the charge for human freedom or a Constitutional restoration.

Wisconsin Republicans show some backbone

The Senate outflanks the Democratic fleebaggers.

The Wisconsin Senate succeeded in voting Wednesday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers, after Republicans outmaneuvered the chamber’s missing Democrats and approved an explosive proposal that has rocked the state and unions nationwide.

“You are cowards!” spectators in the Senate gallery screamed as lawmakers voted. Within hours, a crowd of a few hundred protesters inside the Capitol had grown to an estimated 7,000, more than had been in the building at any point during weeks of protests…. All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago….

I don’t think the side whose elected representatives ran away has a lot of room for calling anyone else “cowards”. The only cowardly thing the Republicans have done is to exclude police and fire unions from the new law, but I don’t think that’s what the protesters meant. As for the calls for a general strike, Governor Walker will be hoping that the unions try it as this will give him the chance to shatter the public unions for good. There is a term for politicians who take on and break unions in economic hard times, and that is “respected head of government”. Don’t forget that union-breaking was the early signature of both Reagan and Thatcher. If the unions are foolish enough to go to the wall on this, despite getting played so badly, and Walker crushes them, both the Republican nomination and the White House will be his for the taking.

UPDATE: The Democratic Left is showing its newfound, post-Arizona respect for political civility: “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.”

The unacceptable inevitable

What happens when the unstoppable political force meets the inevitable political issue?:

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was “unacceptable” to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security “unacceptable.”

Doesn’t matter. Here’s the numbers. Show me what we’re going to do about it.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment and Welfare comprise 56.7% of the federal budget ($2.1 trillion.) Defense comprises another 18.7% (about $700 billion.) And interest, today, is a paltry 4.6% (primarily due to ZIRP). Interest expense will double even if we don’t add one more dollar of debt to the Federal side.

Not might double, will double.

And will do quite a bit more than that when interest rates return to historic norms. Color me skeptical that the Tea Party is going to be any more successful in holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire when two-thirds of them won’t even look at the elephant in the room. Playing ostrich and declaring the inevitable to be unacceptable just isn’t going to accomplish anything.

We’re #2524

It would appear Death By 1000 Papercuts’s Alexa-based metric has Vox Popoli listed as the 24th most popular libertarian site on the Internet. Perhaps this will suffice to convince people that I am really not a social conservative, given that my staunch support for legal drugs, prostitution, and nuclear weapons, (to say nothing of my opposition to military imperialism, financial interventionism, government-sanctioned marriage, and the pledge of allegiance), doesn’t appear to have done the trick.

Now, I’m not into chest-thumping over hits and lists and awards. Except, of course, the one award given by Bane, which I will cherish always. (Note to those who bought into the whole Bane is Dead charade… just look at the Middle East. Now you know what he’s been up to.) First, there are too many horrible sites that are highly ranked and too many very good sites that virtually no one reads to take the numbers game very seriously. Second, let’s be honest, I am a little too arrogant to be inclined to put much credence in a metric that depends upon what most people like, most people being idiots and all.

But I do find it a little mystifying when those with readerships that are but a fraction of the Dread Ilk – let alone the WND readership – attempt to dismiss what I’m writing because they think no one reads it. How, precisely, does that compute?

Mailvox: the grasshoppers cry

NL makes an emotional appeal in defense of Social Security:

You said, “What it cannot afford to do is to permit them to increase while simultaneously spending more on…. massive income transfers to the elderly, the poor and other unproductive classes. “

HOW DARE you say this about the “elderly”. The generations like your ma and pa that worked hard all their lives to get us what we have TODAY. They are OWED their retirement and to have a decent live after.

WE OWE our parents everything for all the blessings we have today. Most just live on a moderate pension and Social Security. As for the poor, I hope you are NOT talking about the widows and the fatherless. (No, not the abandoning kind.) As a Christian you know you are breaking “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the earth”? If you feel they should not have their monies and call them “unproductive”.

This prodigiously stupid response to my WND column yesterday is, alas, a fairly typical one. The Baby Boomers, as is their narcissistic wont, are clearly in complete denial about the mathematically inevitable consequences of the grand Ponzi scheme that is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They don’t seem to grasp that the large numbers that made them such a cultural force from the 1960s onward now renders them a vast financial anchor on the nation that will inevitably have to be cut loose in some manner. Like a vast plague of locusts, they devoured the nation’s harvest and its seed corn.

If the collective “ma and pa” had worked hard all their lives rather than borrowing money to live beyond their means, there wouldn’t be any need for this melodrama. But they didn’t. They spent everything they earned, they spent everything their children will earn, and they spent everything their grandchildren will earn… assuming they weren’t among the millions of women who murdered their children and eliminated future generations post-1973. The elderly of America not only don’t deserve much in the way of respect, they will be extremely fortunate if they are not forcibly exiled to metaphorical ice floes for their inter-generational financial crimes. They not only ransacked the present, they raped the future.

The elderly are presently the wealthiest segment of the nation. Extracting more wealth from the young and transferring to the irresponsible elderly is not only a mockery of justice, it is rubbing salt in the wound. And one does not honor one’s father or mother by robbing from someone else and presenting one’s aged parent with the proceeds of one’s crimes. But it should not surprise us that an aging Baby Boomer would attempt to turn theft into a Biblical injunction.

Not every Baby Boomer is responsible for the crimes of his generation, just as every National Socialist wasn’t responsible for the crimes of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. But that doesn’t make the crimes, or the inevitable consequences of those crimes, disappear.

The new caliphate rises

Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to end up with liberal representative democracies in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and now Libya:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is believed to have fled the capital Tripoli after anti-government demonstrators breached the state television building and set government property alight. Protesters appear to have gained a foothold in Tripoli as banks and government buildings were looted while demonstrators have claimed they have taken control of the second city Benghazi. It is thought up to 400 people may have died in the unrest with dozens more reported killed in Tripoli overnight as protests reached the capital for the first time and army units were said to have defected to the opposition…. A coalition of Libyan Islamic leaders has issued a fatwa telling all Muslims it is their duty to rebel against the Libyan leadership and demanding the release of all jailed protesters.

It’s interesting to consider the juxtaposition between what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in Wisconsin. It is apparent that the leader’s sense of his own legitimacy and the military’s support for it plays a significant role in his willingness to stand firm or not. Which raises the question. If the millions of so-called “birthers” began to protest in Washington DC demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate, how long would it take before he fled from the White House?

But that’s neither here nor there as it’s not going to happen. The more important question is when we are going to start seeing mergers between the various Muslim nations. This will be a significant sign that the Ummah is girding up for a new wave of expansion into the Dar al-Harb.

In tangentially related news, Steve Sailer notes that the US media is opposed to electing a new people when it happens in other countries: “It’s funny how much more readily the American MainStream Media grasps how unfair it is for the government to elect a new people in Bahrain—while they cheer it on in the U.S.”

WND column

The Battle for America’s Credit Card

The eyes of the Republican blogosphere are concentrated on Wisconsin these days, as the public employee unions and Democratic senators are lashing out in a desperate and futile attempt to defend the status quo of unsustainable state debt. But despite the mediagenic circus of shut-down public schools, doctors dispersing fraudulent sick notes and teachers waving misspelled signs, the battle between the unions and Republican Gov. Scott Walker is not one that demands reinforcement from either the blogosphere or the tea party.

The focus of the fiscally prudent should be on Washington, not Wisconsin. This is because the outcome in Madison is assured, whereas the one in the national capital is not. While both situations are unsustainable, Wisconsin has already reached the outer limits of its debt expansion. The federal government has not. Wisconsin’s limits are externally imposed, whereas Washington’s are not, at least, not in the near term.

Mailvox: on the Tea Party

TF writes in regarding his perceptions of the movement:

I am a Viet Nam veteran that came home in Dec. 1970 with a burning question in my mind? “Who is running our country?” About 1975 I started on my quest to answer that question. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent in libraries trying to find information about various subjects. I have read excerpts out of the Congressional Record of the United States, I have read volumes of books, etc etc etc. At the risk of sounding like a big mouth I am very well read and understand more then most. I have attended several Tea Party rallies in the state I live in and found that most of the people there were there for answers. They saw enough about what was going on in the Government to make them scared. Some were more informed then others but ALL OF THEM had their eyes and ears open like no group I have been around since I started on my quest in 1975. To me that’s the big deal. A lot of people now know enough to know that they need to find out more and that it’s time to really stand up and do something before it’s too late. I disagree with you that the Tea Party played no part in the recent election. How much of a part I won’t try and portray because usually any event was a combination of several factors that caused a change but I can say the Tea Party has played a part and the people now have their eyes open. I just hope they stay that way.

I do too. And I think it is entirely correct to say that the Tea Party had a powerful effect concerning which Republicans were nominated and subsequently elected, but it defies both belief and electoral history to argue that it made any difference regarding the size of the Republican victory. That was entirely a function of Democratic missteps and subsequent unpopularity, in fact, one can even reasonably argue that the Tea Party cost the Republicans a few seats such as the Nevada Senate seat. But it is totally nonsensical to attempt to argue that the Tea Party matters because a) it elected “good” Republicans who nevertheless b) vote with the exactly same results as the previous “bad” Republicans.

PD doesn’t assert that I am wrong, she merely hopes that I am. So do I, for that matter:

Thank you for your bold article. I have considered myself a Tea Party Patriot from the first day. I fully admit I am no Mensa member, but I would like to point out that many of us Tea Party folks, as homey as we are, have been calling on our representatives to defund ALL foreign giving – even Israel, under Jeffersonian and common sense principles. I fully agree that all foreign wars should cease and desist immediately, foreign bases should be closed and our military funded to secure our national borders and prepare for attacks on Americans at home. I disagree with the US being the policeman of the world and if a country needs our help they should hire it. We could use the extra income from wealthy countries like S. Korea. I have called for the abolition of unconstitutional programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security starting in generations like mine that have time to plan for that eventuality. These ideas are not foreign to the Tea Party people, but we do know that they are foreign concepts to those in DC and there is a great mistrust of even those we sent to DC. I hope you are wrong that this grassroots movement will die like so many others. I hope that it is the rudder that turns the ship of US destruction as it sails toward DEMOCRACY (if it has not already arrived), then on to socialism (where I fear we already are) and onto the final destination of Communism. I say Heaven Help US, for there is not other help that can effect a true change.

I think her mistrust is well-placed. And we should find out if Tea Party optimism will survive to live another day or if Vox Day cynicism will score a first-round knock-out relatively soon, as the Tea Party has now laid down a direct challenge to Republicans who are flirting with raising the debt ceiling.

The largest tea party group in America has come out forcefully in opposition to raising the debt limit, adding more pressure to House Republicans who can kill plans to permit continued borrowing by the federal government and thus mandate the most dramatic government cuts in spending in decades. Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement, “Republican credibility as fiscally responsible managers of public resources is on the line” with the issue of the debt limit.

“In a matter of weeks, Congress will vote on whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling,” they wrote. “The American people are united in saying ‘no,’ with recent polls indicating almost 70 percent of the American people opposed to this reckless action. Once again, congressional Republicans will have the opportunity to demonstrate to the American people that they are serious about bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington. Tea Party Patriots will be watching.”

This speaks well for the seriousness of the Tea Party regarding its core issue. It also sets the stage for a real test of the hypothesis that the Tea Party is capable of becoming a significant force in governing politics as well as mere electioneering. My assumption is that the Republicans will show about as much concern for the will of the people who elected them as they did when 70% of the American people opposed the banking bailouts of 2008.