Tag: politics

Republicans pay attention

That’s new. The Senate Majority Leader reverses course on earmarks:

I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state. I don’t apologize for them. But there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and the out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight. And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government.

That’s why today I am announcing that I will join the Republican Leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress.

McConnell is correct in saying that rejecting earmarks is only a symbolic gesture at this point given the current $1.6 trillion deficit and the madness of Helicopter Ben. But what he clearly failed to understand initially is that symbols matter because they are also signals. I am no less skeptical about the Republicans in power now than I was back in 2000, but it does show that they are at least paying a modicum of attention to what happened earlier this month.

The clueless incompetent

One of the hallmarks of the incompetent individual is that he doesn’t realize his own incompetence; he tends to significantly overrate his own capabilities. In his piece entitled “American Narcissus“, Jonathan Last provides an interesting quote taken from a New Yorker article about Obama/Soetoro/Soebarkah:

Obama said that he liked being surrounded by people who expressed strong opinions, but he also said, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” After Obama’s first debate with McCain, on September 26th, [campaign political director Patrick] Gaspard sent him an e-mail. “You are more clutch than Michael Jordan,” he wrote. Obama replied, “Just give me the ball.”

We are informed that Valerie Jarret thinks Obama has never really been challenged intellectually and he has been bored to death his whole life. But that doesn’t indicate what she believes it does, that he’s extraordinarily intelligent. It actually tends to indicate that his intelligence is only moderately above average and he has been permitted to skate completely unchallenged by those around him his entire life. Malcolm Gladwell asserts that expertise of the highest level can only be developed by thousands of hours of practice; while the assertion is, like so many of Gladwell’s other ideas, almost surely incorrect, it must be admitted that Obama possesses an exceptional expertise in selling himself to the gullible. This is not only something he has spent his entire life doing, it appears to be the only thing he actually knows how to do.

No wonder the man is so bored. Even as president, he’s still doing exactly the same thing he was doing as a pompous law student. And the combination of his clueless narcissim with his incompetence is what makes his presidency and its inevitable fallout so damned entertaining.

Et tu, Brauchli?

My track record of political predictions is, admittedly, less than perfectly reliable. But I would encourage you to keep two things in mind. First, I make my predictions very far in advance of most opinion writers. Second, even when I am wrong, the results usually show that I correctly anticipated the general trend. For example, I was wrong about Hillary winning the 2008 Democratic nomination, but recall that I said she would win it back when the consensus was that she would stay in the Senate.

So, this unexpected editorial from the Washington Post is therefore rather interesting in light of my supposedly crazy prediction that Obama is not going to be the Democratic nominee in 2012.

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012…. We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed.

He certainly has. And if he’s lost the white independents, he’s lost the unemployed youth, he’s lost the Washington Post, and he’s losing the New York Times, how can he possibly expect to beat the Lizard Queen when she shows her true colors? His only hope is to turn on the banks and ride the wave of popular discontent, but given the number of Goldmanites he’s appointed, I assume he’ll look for a golden parachute instead.

UPDATE: Whispers from Washington: “I’m not claiming to know anyone important, just a bunch of old denizens of DC. Mostly they’re mid-level retired military who’ve found themselves a cozy life (that means $100Gs plus and their pensions) in the bureaucracy. Other “Ilk” will probably confirm what’s being said. I’ve been hearing for six months that Obama is erratic, irrational, and paranoid (he may have reason for that last one). It’s rumored the Democratic Leadership and the press have been covering this up since the night he was elected (something happened that night and there’s lots of different stories) but he’s gotten much worse. Every word he utters is canned and without a trace of spontaneity and this is being attributed to his use Anti-depressants… and worse.

Last week I heard that the NYTs (not the WP) was going to do an editorial asking him not to run in 2012. Running off to Diwali after the huge defeat was seen as the last straw. Apparently he’s not met with anyone from the Democratic party since the election debacle and refused to until this coming week. This has allowed Pelosi and her crew to make a move. A reasonable head of the Democratic party, Obama in this case, should have stopped that. But he didn’t to say the least. He left the party twisting in the winds of fate…. The most fantastic charge of all is that Joe Fucking Biden stays as far away from Obie as possible (and not the other way around as I’ve always assumed). Less surprising is Biden has brought up the 25th amendment. Not surprising in the sense that Biden wants to be prez and will never be elected.”

The Republican Iago strikes

The elders of the GOP show their de Gaullesque gratitude for the Tea Party putting them back in the driver’s seat:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is maneuvering behind the scenes to defeat a conservative plan aimed at restricting earmarks, setting up a high-stakes showdown that pits the GOP leader and his “Old Bull” allies against Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and a new breed of conservative senators…. By keeping a low profile so far, McConnell is seeking to avoid an all-out public battle among his GOP colleagues over earmarks before the new Congress starts. He also wants to avoid alienating the tea party movement and conservative activists who helped win six Senate seats for Republicans on Election Day, victories that dramatically strengthened McConnell’s hand as he plans to battle the White House over repealing health care reform, retaining Bush-era tax cuts and reining in federal spending.

Right, that’s why Americans turned against Obama and the Democrats. It wasn’t due to all the excessive taxing, borrowing, and spending, but because they wanted Republicans to do the excessive taxing, borrowing, and spending. I can’t say it’s unexpected, but it is impressively shameless.

Welcome to Washington, Tea Partiers. How do you like the feel of that dagger in your back? Kind of stings, doesn’t it.

Palin vs Bernanke

Now this is unexpected: the Wall Street Journal praises Sarah Palin’s economic acumen:

It would be hard to find two more unlikely intellectual comrades than Robert Zoellick, the World Bank technocrat, and Sarah Palin, the populist conservative politician. But in separate interventions yesterday, the pair roiled the global monetary debate in complementary and timely fashion.

The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve’s latest round of quantitative easing. According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.

Stressing the risks of Fed “pump priming,” Mrs. Palin zeroed in on the connection between a “weak dollar—a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market”—and rising oil and food prices. She also noted the rising world alarm about the Fed’s actions, which by now includes blunt comments by Germany, Brazil, China and most of Asia, among many others.

“We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth brought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings,” the former GOP Vice Presidential nominee said. “We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.”

Of course, the Wall Street Journal doesn’t consider Ron Paul a “major Republican”, but he’s the only national politician in either party, with the possible exception of his son, who fully groks what is at stake here. Still, it’s interesting to see that Palin clearly has some reasonably astute advisors on her staff. And it is downright astonishing to see a major player in global banking come right out and endorse “the barbarous relic”.

Bernanke must be sweating bullets these days. What people tend to forget to take into account when they imagine there are no limits to quantatitive easing is that in order for the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt, the Treasury has to issue it. So, it increasingly looks as if there may be an epic clash between the Fed and the Republican House majority in the works and it’s a little surprising to see Sarah Palin stake out a position against the bank.

Yeah, that’s convincing

It will take a lot more than suspending Keith Olbermann to convince anyone with more than one-quarter of a brain that MSNBC is an impartial media observer:

MSNBC TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy. The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

So, Olbermann’s evening contributions in kind to the Democratic Party worth millions of dollars are fine, but contributing a few actual dollars to a few Congressional candidates are not. Olbermann is an ass, and a much less intelligent ass than he thinks he is, but this attempt by MSNBC to pretend it is anything but a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party isn’t likely to fool anyone.

Verse of the Day

“As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are.”
– Ecclesiastes 10:1-3

Keep that in mind the next time you speak with one of your Christian friends who inclines to the left. And it is, of course, intriguing that the Bible should not only correctly anticipate post-18th century political ideologies, but correctly identify the sort of individual who belongs to them as well….

In which the loss is regretted

Gail Collins makes the post-election case for Christine O’Donnell:

There were awful speeches from all sides on Tuesday night, but I liked Christine O’Donnell’s adieu. (“We’ve got a lot of food. We’ve got the room all night. So God bless you. So let’s party!”) That girl is so on her way back to cable TV.

You certainly have to admire Miss O’Donnell’s epicurean attitude towards defeat, if nothing else. On the other hand, some Kossacks are angry and bitter, counting down the days until America becomes a brown, third world country freed from the shackles of a constitution written by dead white sexist slave-owning men.

“We just have to be patient.

And wait for your hearts to stop beating.

And stop they will.

And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told.

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.”

It is interesting how many Americans, particularly white Americans, absolutely refuse to understand that immigrants do not want America to remain America. Mexican immigrants want America to be an improved version of Mexico. Turkish immigrants want it to be an improved version of Turkey. Even the descendants of involuntary immigrants want America to become an improved version of an imaginary Africa. None of them will get exactly what they want, of course, but the significant fact is that they will transform it by the mere fact of their presence and so whatever it eventually becomes, it will not be what it was before. It will not be America or even recognizably American. And it must be recognized that the end of America is not only something that the likes of the Kossack quoted are anticipating, but something they believe is directly connected to the objectives of Obama and the former Congressional majority.

Meanwhile, the NYT is spinning like a thirty-something married woman’s rationalization hamster after being unexpectedly hit on by Brad Pitt/Justin Bieber/the Twilight guy:

“Tuesday’s election was indeed a “shellacking” for the Democrats, as President Obama admitted after a long night of bad news. It was hardly an order from the American people to discard the progress of the last two years and start over again. Mr. Obama was on target when he said voters howled in frustration at the slow pace of economic recovery and job creation. To borrow his running automotive metaphor, voters threw the keys at Republicans and told them to drive for a while, but gave almost no indication of what direction to drive in.

Right, the people voted for Republicans because they so enjoyed “the progress of the last two years”. This isn’t news or analysis, this is a feeble attempt at revising history as it’s being written.

Hardly

Carrie Lukas thinks the election results prove that women don’t favor security over freedom:

Women voters have also defied traditional stereotypes about skewing liberal. While it will take some time to get complete exit poll data, polls taken shortly before the election suggest a major shift in women’s voting habits. Early reports suggest women split nearly evenly in this election. As Mary Kate Cary reported in U.S. News, a recent New York Times poll showed undecided women breaking heavily for the GOP. In fact, women went from favoring Democrats by 7 points last month to giving the GOP the edge by 4 points in the New York Times’ latest polls. In other words, the famed gender gap — which somehow always refers to women’s tendency to vote disproportionately for Democrats rather than men’s tendency to vote Republican, has vanished.

Pundits will spend the next two years debating the meaning of the 2010 Election. But a few things are clear. The conventional wisdom that women all prefer government-provided safety over freedom has been put to rest, and female political leaders do not come in one mold. There are strong, unabashedly conservative women throughout the country who are prepared to fight for limited government and greater freedom. And they can win.

This is amusing. Remember, the “limited government” for which these supposedly freedom-loving women are fighting is one that is all of 2.8% smaller. They cling to their entitlements and “national security” spending as firmly as Linus clings to his blanket. And perhaps more to the point, it is possible that it is finally beginning to penetrate through many women’s skulls that there is no reliable security in the government spending money it doesn’t have in the first place.

Either way, I tend to see this as less reflective of a positive evolution towards liberty in women’s political consciousness and more reflective of the larger societal trend towards matriarchy and grass huts. Insty notes in response that the Tea Party is majority female, which is one reason I believe it has been so easily coopted by the Republican establishment.

Don’t get me wrong. I would very much like to believe that for the first time in human history, women have genuinely begun to value freedom over security. I just don’t believe this is credible interpretation of the recent electoral events. (HT Dr. Helen.)

Adios California

Not to belittle the historic electoral landslide, which despite the Republican inability to regain the Senate was an even bigger political event than 1994, I suspect the most significant result of last night’s election occurred in California. It wasn’t the failure of Proposition 19, which would have decriminalized marijuana and marked the first roll-back of the thirty-year Drug War, but rather the passage of Proposition 25 by a ten-point margin.

Why was this significant? Because California’s Republican legislators can no longer prevent their Democratic counterparts from raising taxes and increasing spending now that the number of votes required to pass the state budget and spending bills related to the budget has been reduced from two-thirds to a simple majority. As Kevin Williamson noted on NRO: “This election means two things for California: 1. It is now more likely to end up needing a federal bailout, and 2. It is less likely to find Congress receptive to that idea.”

California is already more or less insolvent, it’s just shuffling its debts around to delay the inevitable. But the relaxed budgetary controls as a result of the change to the state constitution almost surely guarantee that the legislature’s attempts to respond to the problem will be counterproductive and make what is already a disastrous situation even worse. It is remotely possible that the second re-election of Governor Moonbeam could somewhat meliorate this structural change, as despite being a Democrat he had a better record for fiscal conservatism than either Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But since the veto is much less reliable than simple math, I wouldn’t count on it.

I would not be surprised if the eventual bankruptcies of California and Illinois become one of the more important issues of the 2012 election. If the bipartisan Republican-led bank bailouts were enough to inspire the Tea Party, who can imagine what effect a bipartisan, Democrat-led state bailout will have on the electorate? Rick Santelli asked us if we wanted to pay for our neighbor’s mortgages, but most Americans would much rather do that than pay for California’s teachers unions, prison guards, and imported Mexicans.