In his dialogue “De re publica,” Marcus Tullius Cicero explained, though the fictionalized voice of Scipio Africanus, that there are three basic types of government. The first is the monarchy, in which the king rules. The second is the aristocracy, in which a select class of privileged delegates rules. The third is the democracy, in which the people rule themselves. Each type of government has its strengths and weaknesses, and through those weaknesses, a cyclical process occurs in which one type of government devolves into the next.
Tag: politics
Okay, unexpected
Chris Mathews, he of the famously tingling leg, is beginning to dabble in birtherism:
On Monday night’s edition of “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews talked about putting the birth certificate controversy surrounding President Obama to rest. “Why has the president himself not demanded they put out the original documents?” Matthews wonders. “If it exists, why not put it out?” Chris Matthews asks.
Occam’s Razor suggests that his reason for not putting it out is somehow related to his qualification for the office he presently holds. I note with some amusement that the ludicrous notion Obama is cunningly holding it back to “embarrass his critics” appears to have finally faded away.
A fabulous military
No one cognizant of history would think to deny that homosexual men are capable of fighting effectively. The Sacred Band of Thebes alone would suffice to disprove that notion. However, one salient fact to consider about the Sacred Band was that it was a band, which is to say, it was a military unit that was set apart from other military units that did not share the particular predilection that made it such a remarkably cohesive unit.
The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which effectively permits the many closeted homosexuals in the U.S. armed forces to openly exhibit their abnormal preferences and presumably to act upon them, is therefore likely to prove less salutary to American military efficiency and effectiveness. While it is true that other Western militaries have eliminated their bans on homosexuals, it is also worth noting that none of them are presently capable of successfully invading Jerry Jones’s new stadium even if it were defended only by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
So, it is at the very least questionable to assume that there will be only minor negative consequences from this latest experiment in social engineering. Although the ambitious and politically correct general officers won’t admit it, the grand experiment of women in the military has been a massive failure whereas the integration of black soldiers was a success. Only time will tell if the result of this third great experiment will be more akin to the first one or the second.
Top conservative blog?
John Hawkins of the Right Wing News has VP at #16 on his list of the 40 Best Conservative Blogs. I’m flattered, of course, but just a little confused given my decidedly non-conservative views on a whole panoply of political issues. Although perhaps this is a sign that conservatives are moving in a more libertarian direction after that whole experiment in Big Government Conservativism didn’t turn out so well.
The distant sound of slithering
Peggy Noonan reaches a conclusion:
The Democrats’ problem is that most of them know that the person who would emerge, who would challenge Mr. Obama from the left, would never, could never, win the 2012 general election. He’d lose badly and take the party with him. Democratic professionals know the mood of the country. Challenging Mr. Obama from the left would mean definitely losing the presidency, as opposed to probably losing the presidency. There is only one Democrat who could possibly challenge Mr. Obama for the nomination successfully and win the general election, and that is Hillary Clinton. Who insists she doesn’t want to.
Of course, it strikes one that Clintons are almost as famous for their honesty as for their lack of ambition.
Republicans plot betrayal
The incoming House Majority Leader is considering whether he can get away with keeping Ron Paul out of the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee panel that oversees monetary policy in order to protect the Federal Reserve from any uncomfortable oversight:
Five GOP leadership aides, speaking anonymously because a decision isn’t final, say incoming House Speaker John Boehner has discussed ways to prevent Paul from becoming chairman or to keep him on a tight leash if he does.
If this happens, it will be a strong indication that the Tea Party is either going to split in two or split from the Republican Party. And this should tell you all you need to know about whether the House Republicans are going to govern any differently than they did the last time they were in power.
That’s why she’s the frontrunner for 2012
Mike Potemra posts an email from Claire Berlinski:
Palin is probably the only GOP candidate Obama could beat right now. She runs, 90-year-olds who have never dreamt of voting in their lives will register for the first time to vote against her. And I wouldn’t blame them. I don’t hate her, as some think. I just cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would look at her and think, “I trust her to hold the most powerful office in America at a time of uniquely grave national peril.” It’s mind-boggling.
It’s not mind-boggling, it’s ludicrous. Not the idea of Palin winning the Republican nomination, but the idea that the opinion of a Jewish woman living in Paris, whose family connection to America is but a single generation, is even remotely relevant to the probable primary voting behavior of American Christians living in Iowa, Florida, Texas, and Ohio. And since the “uniquely grave national peril” comes from the Federal Reserve, not a few third world goathumpers who haven’t managed to do so much as take out a single Christmas tree or lemonade stand in nine years, Palin will almost surely continue to become more popular because she is the only Republican politician besides Ron Paul who has been speaking out against Bernanke’s futile attempts to keep the insolvent banks afloat.
I am not a Palin fan myself; I’m a libertarian and Ron Paul is the only Republican for whom I would vote. But Palin has the political starpower and common sense synchronicity with popular opinion that the other candidates completely lack. I mean, Newt Gingrich? Trig Palin has a better chance of being elected president in 2012 than that fat little troll does. John Bolton? Mitt Romney couldn’t even beat the corpse of John McCain. The only Republican who looks capable of beating Palin for the nomination right now is the New Jersey governor, Christie. That’s why I expect to see the moderate elite fire up a Draft Christie campaign soon.
I chuckled, I did
The Washington Post issues another call for an opponent to run against Obama in the Democratic primary. To, you know, “save the Obama presidency”. Right.
But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unambiguously commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support – as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success – this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate. Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he’s a goner anyway.
Seriously, I don’t see how you can look at what has quite clearly in the process of happening over the last six months and not realize that Obama is going to either drop out or get kicked out by the Democrats. No one, least of all the Democratic elders, are in fear of the reaction of the 11% of black voters which has nowhere else to turn and also has one of the lowest turnout rates in the electorate.
Projection Anonymous
Charles Blow initiates a futile embargo:
This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive…. People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.
I never cease to find it amusing watching one clueless, shallow, and ignorant individual castigate others for their clueless and shallow ignorance. While Blow is correct and the attacks from the Left and the elite moderates of the Republican party only add to Palin’s already formidable popular appeal, it’s far too late to declare a moratorium on discussing her. No one cares if she’s hollow, (she’s a POLITICIAN, after all, and is therefore hollow by definition), no one of any political sophistication believes she’s any more dim than the average politician, and she’s demonstrably far less mean than her critics.
The reality is that there is a high probability that Palin will win the next presidential election if she a) elects to run and b) continues to strongly align herself with the opinion of the majority of Americans. This isn’t because she is a secret genius, but because intelligence is vastly overrated when it comes to the public appeal of politicians. Consider: the two most intelligent presidents of the modern era were Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. And the last two presidents whose intelligence was methodically denigrated by the media both won second terms.
The main reason Palin enjoys such strong support is very simple and obvious. People do not see her as a Wall Street whore, unlike nearly every other national politician. Yes, she publicly supported the 2008 bailouts as John McCain’s running mate, but charges of hypocrisy are not going to stick because everyone knows that a vice-presidential candidate is supposed to echo the presidential candidate’s opinion, not express his own. Obama, Clinton, Biden, Romney, and every other national political figure who is taken seriously as a presidential candidate are all seen as Wall Street whores, with the sole exception of the New Jersey governor, Christie. Palin may be one as well, but she is not perceived that way now.
To win in 2012, whether Obama drops out or is defeated in the Democratic primaries or not, all Palin has to do is stay on the right side of the masses on immigration and the banks. She’d do better if she’d come out against the ongoing military occupations, but she can’t be harmed on the issue since every other potential rival supports them as well. She’ll come in for tremendous criticism, of course, if she refuses to give way on the two central issues but as Blow is among the first to finally notice, that won’t hurt her in the slightest.
A Congress of Suckers
In which Washington D.C. is shocked, shocked, to learn that greater part of the money that was so desperately needed to save the American banks that were deemed too big to fail actually went to their European counterparts:
Foreign banks were among the biggest beneficiaries of the $3,300bn in emergency credit provided by the Federal Reserve during the crisis, according to new data on the extraordinary efforts of the US authorities to save the global financial system.
The revelation of the scale of overseas lenders’ borrowing underlines the global nature of the turmoil and the crucial role of the Fed as the lender of last resort for the world’s banking sector. However, news that banks such as Barclays of the UK, Switzerland’s UBS and Dexia of Belgium borrowed billions of dollars at favourable terms from US authorities may further anger critics already enraged about the Fed’s rescue of Wall Street….
Barclays was the biggest cumulative borrower from TAF. The UK bank, which bought the US operations of Lehman Brothers out of bankruptcy in September 2008, borrowed a cumulative $232bn from the TAF through various subsidiaries.
It’s interesting to see that nearly four times more money went to the biggest European bank than to the biggest American bank. But as we’ve seen everywhere from Ireland and Iceland to the USA, this is always how the process of structural corruption plays out in a modern “representative democracy”. The legislature forces through a pig-in-a-poke by any means necessary, threatening everything from widespread cannibalism to tanks in the streets if the legislators don’t ignore the protests of the people and obediently “address the crisis”. Then, a few years after the fact, it is learned that the actual purpose of the law was entirely different than the one that was provided in order to push it through the legislature.
I don’t have much sympathy for the people, however. Because it doesn’t matter how many times this happens, they will fall for it just as readily the moment that another crisis is announced and another solution to avert it is presented.