Do you know, I honestly didn’t know Ken Mehlman was supposed to be straight. I was surprised to learn that Karl Rove had been married… I always figured he was gay too. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because if you don’t understand that the Republican Party leadership is a bunch of moderate Democrats attempting to keep the Republican grass roots reasonably in line, you can’t possibly understand how American politics works.
Tag: politics
The watermelon approach to gun control
Using the environment as an excuse for disarming the citizenry:
Will Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson make a back door move to ban lead bullets the day before the November 2 elections? Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although EPA is barred by statute from controlling ammunition, CBD is seeking to work farther back along the manufacturing chain and have EPA ban the use of lead in bullets and shot because non-lead alternatives are available.
This won’t go over well, to put it mildly. Forget their rapidly diminishing chances of hanging onto the House and Senate, if the EPA is dumb enough to attempt this one, you can pretty much take out the Democratic Party and shoot it.
And your point?
The New York Times shows why it is a rapidly fading force in printing the single most stupid statement ever to appear in a mainstream newspaper:
The Justice Department decided last week not to bring charges against Tom DeLay, whose unethical conduct represented a modern low among Congressional leaders. The decision is a reminder that some of Washington’s worst big-money practices remain either legal or far too difficult to prosecute. Mr. DeLay, the Texas Republican who had been the House majority leader, crowed that he had been “found innocent.” But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.
Emphasis added. I note that actions such as selling cocaine and whipping slaves remain illegal only because lawmakers have chosen to criminalize them. It is interesting that the New York Times is so much more upset about a Republican lawmaker’s admittedly legal actions than it is about the blatantly illegal fraud that is still being committed by the banking industry on a daily basis.
The affirmative-action president
Jennifer Rubin is among those who have finally figured out that Soebarkah is nowhere near as intelligent as advertised:
To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East)…. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he’s so prickly. You’d be, too, if everyone your entire life had told you that you were swell but now, when the chips are down and the spotlight is on, you are failing so badly in your job.
I figured out during the campaign that while Soebarkah is more intelligent than the average, he is far less intelligent than his academic background would normally lead one to believe. He’s simply not as smart as his underlings or most of his peers in the political elite and he knows it, which is why he accepts the de facto leadership of Reid and Pelosi. This doesn’t make him uniquely cretinous among the Washington set; John Kerry has a similar IQ in the 115 to 120 range. But because people expect more from a president, I have little doubt that by the time Soebarkah’s political career is done, most likely after his first term, the national consensus will be that he was one of the dumbest presidents with whom the electorate has ever inflicted itself.
Illustrating MPAI
China Mieville kindly demonstrates that intelligent, educated, and talented writers can most definitely be idiots:
To designers across the world: there’s a hot need for someone(s) to design & disseminate a symbol & slogan to unify & express, on t-shirts, websites, blogs, badges & buttons, support for the right of Muslims to gather in lower Manhattan, & indeed anythefuckwhere else. & with it to proclaim disgust at & condemnation of this scary hatemongering horseshit.
Racism out of Manhattan.
Tell you what, you silly English twit. Limit your historically ignorant, politically correct, socialist sensitivity concerns to Londonistan and the rest of your island. I was under the impression that the English already have all the mosques in their backyard that they want, but if you, China Mieville, happen to desire a congregations of Muslims at the University of Warwick, then by all means feel free to build them a mosque there. You see, it’s not my business what you want in your backyard.
Of course, what sort of buildings and what sort of people Americans happen to want in their backyards IS NOT YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS AND IT HASN’T BEEN SINCE 1776!
Although it pains me to have to point this out, I will restate the obvious for the benefit of clueless science fiction writers and anyone else whose ignorance of religion is near complete. A religion is not a race and opposition to the symbolism of the 9/11 Mosque has nothing to do with racism. For crying out loud, even the name of the group that wants to build it is a provocation that refers to the Muslim conquest of Spain! This is a not a freedom-of-religion test, but rather a semiotic test and Mieville has failed it badly.
Unsurprisingly, the irritating nature of Mieville’s foreign nannynagging somehow managed to escape one of John Scalzi’s subs. This is a fine example of why guest bloggers are usually a bad idea.
They’ll get what they deserve
Connecticut Republicans reject Peter Schiff in favor of Vince McMahon’s daughterwife.
In the Nutmeg State Linda McMahon (48%) handily beat former Congressman Rob Simmons (29%) and financier Peter Schiff (22%). In November she’ll face non-Vietnam Vet and AG Dick Blumenthal in a poltical steel cage match.
Most republican voters have clearly learned nothing, those commentators waxing enthusiastic about the tea party notwithstanding. This is much like choosing John McCain over Ron Paul, only we are now two years into the Great Depression 2.0. I am skeptical that a spendthrift entertainment mogul is going to do anything if she gets to Washington but borrow and spend.
WND column
Social Conservatives on Steroids
It is a basic principle of socionomics that economic boom times are strongly correlated with social liberalism, while economic contractions tend to be accompanied by social conservatism. This has been observed over thousands of years; the Lex Oppia of 215 B.C. was the most famous of the sumptuary laws that were passed by the Roman republic in response to the recession that took place during the second Punic war. Twenty years later, with Carthage defeated and the launch of a huge investment boom based on conquest and colonization, the Lex Oppia was repealed after the women of Rome rioted for days over the right to display their wealth in the same manner as non-Roman women.
On conservative bikini “scandals”
The Other McCain points and laughs at liberals attempting to create scandals out of very little fabric:
Conservatives are not only smarter and more patriotic than liberals, we’re also better-looking. It’s high time we stopped letting liberals get inside our heads and tell us that it’s some kind of “hypocrisy” for conservatives even to acknowledge the existence of sex.
It is true. Even when liberal girls start out pretty, they rapidly end up making hags of themselves. There’s something about being angry and self-righteous all the time that seems to warp a woman’s face as well as her soul. Meanwhile, Cassy Fiano explains the liberal thinking, such as it is, behind these “scandals”.
They like to paint conservatives as frigid, dried up, ugly old prudes, and of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth. And they hope that showing pictures of a conservative — or their family members — in bikinis will mean that other conservatives will be outrageously outraged. They’re always shocked when bikini photos do not, in fact, derail conservative candidates’ campaigns.
It seems that more than a few left-liberals have failed to understand that the American Taliban metaphor was, in fact, a metaphor. So, chalk me up a supporter of pretty conservative women in bikinis. However, I find libertarian women to be the most attractive. They’re smarter, more interesting, and much more fun than their pretty conservative counterparts.
Blowing more futility
For once, I agree with Megan McArdle:
If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability to prevent housing market bubbles, well, I give you Exhibit 9,824: the government’s new $1000 down housing program. No, really. The government has apparently decided, in its infinite wisdom, that what the American economy really needs is more homebuyers with no equity.
While McArdle wouldn’t know what a real libertarian was if Murray Rothbard’s zombie bit her on her bony ass – she actually voted for Soebarkah – she is correct to point out the madness of this homebuying incentive program. It does not help the economy to encourage more poor people to buy homes they cannot afford to buy and take out mortgages on which they will almost surely default.
Glenn Reynold’s succinct summary is more astute: “These people are idiots. Idiots who’ve been entrusted with nuclear weapons, and their economic equivalents.” Of course, this insane program might not exist if “libertarians” like Megan McArdle hadn’t voted the people who created it into office.
Corrupt like a senator
Washington beats the market:
A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to – and were using – material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.
I suppose they’re just all super-skilled econ-savvy investors, but their performance during the ongoing financial crisis argues convincingly against that.