Tag: politics

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with Carthage defeated and the launch of a huge investment boom based on conquest and colonization, the Lex Oppia was repealed after the women of Rome rioted for days over the right to display their wealth in the same manner as non-Roman women.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.

A sign of an indication?

In which we are informed that the Lizard Queen is now making noises about resigning from Obama’s Cabinet:

Hillary Clinton raises prospect of resignation. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has complained of the tiring natue of her job and said she will step back from the role before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.

R writes: “I admit it doesn’t actually surprise me that it is so far playing out as you predicted.”* So far, so good, anyhow. I have no doubt that Hillary will resign, most likely before the end of the first term. Of course, the much more interesting question is if she intends to step back from the role in order to bring about that end to Mr. Soebarkah’s presidency.

*“it is clear that he [President Soebarkah] is likely to be extraordinarily vulnerable if the Lizard Queen elects to strike against her current boss. The first indication that she intends to do so will be a growing chorus of elite Democratic opinion against Obama’s conduct of the war… the more significant indicator would be her resignation from the Cabinet next year.”

Marriage flames out

What a surprise that an orientationally-challenged judge should just happen to come down on the orientationally-challenged side:

The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.

Yes, it’s just TREMENDOUSLY astonishing that he decided the Founding Fathers seriously intended to enshrine homogamy and polygamy as Constitutional rights. It’s pure fiction. But on the plus side, the coming battle between gays and feminists is shaping up to be the most amusing battle between two left-wing constituencies since scientists thought there might be a gay gene. Given the certainty of this decision going to the Supreme Court, it’s no wonder Obama is trying to pack it with lesbians.

I’m just wondering who’s got next, the bigamists, the polygamists, or the animal lovers. But at the end of the day, it’s little more than one more check in the societal collapse column. This should, however, have serious implications in November as the Republican grass roots begin the push for a Constitutional Amendment in defense of marriage.

Mailvox: responding to a liberal

CG asks for help in responding to this, but I think he is probably looking in the wrong place by coming here:

Conservatives have no clue about business. They think that business can sell MORE AND MORE to people who have jobs paying less money, with a collapsing middle class. Who is going to buy stuff after we get through gutting the system and eliminating the buying power of workers in this country? What fuels consumption now that the borrowing binge we’ve been on for thirty years is over. Can consumers borrow their way to prosperity, along with our economy. How do you pay for the $10s of trillions in private debt that has masked a collapsing real economy which used to be fueled by savings and investment?

40 years ago we had a third of the private work force unionized, tariffs to protect domestic industry, 70% marginal rates on income over about 3 million, and were the most prosperous country on earth, the exporter and lender to the world. Now that Reaganomics has worked it’s magic for 30 years, China owns us.

Not sure how you think us running 30-40 billion per month trade and current account deficits will work out long term. Love to hear the theory of how we import our way to prosperity, trading jobs that produce wealth, transform raw materials into valuable to valuable goods, for “service” jobs that add no wealth and don’t sustain any economy that I’ve known of in all of recorded history. How long can we keep sending the rest of the world paper, and they send us oil and TVs and cars, and clothes and electronics, etc. Seem unsustainable to me, but I don’t understand how business works.

This demonstrates why the Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative poles simply don’t apply to the present economic situation very well. CG’s liberal interlocutor is correct in diagnosing the problem as debt and “free trade”, but he is incorrect in thinking that Reaganomics is to blame for either of them and he is deeply mistaken to think that high marginal tax rates helped produce societal wealth. One doesn’t increase savings and investment through taxation, after all, and while it is absolutely true that consumers can’t borrow their way to prosperity, governments can’t tax-and-spend their way there either, Keynesian arguments to the contrary notwithstanding.

The reason we were the most prosperous country on Earth 40 years ago was very simple and easily proved. The USA was about the only major economy on Earth that had not had its industrial infrastructure completely destroyed by World War II and American industry made an absurd amount of money selling both consumer and capital goods into European and Asian markets that had to rebuild their industrial base. This was the source of our post-1940s economic growth and concomitant wealth. Now that all of our former competitors have rebuilt their economies and numerous other countries have succeeded in developing theirs, it has naturally become much more difficult to maintain our economic primacy vis-a-vis the rest of the world. As I have previously stated, but have yet to conclusively prove, the Ricardian concept of comparative advantage has turned out to be incorrect and therefore American wealth should be expected to decline in both a relative and absolute sense as other countries grow at the expense of American industry and workers in a free trade environment.

It’s not that conservatives have no clue about business, they have no clue about economics. But neither do liberals; the fact that one party is incorrect does not automatically make the other right. The fact that conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike supported TARP, the banking bailouts, and the automotive bailouts demonstrates that the intrinsic problem is superpolitical and therefore will not be solved regardless of which political faction ends up temporarily on top.

TIME beats the war drum

The cover picture of a woman with her nose cut off is captioned “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” This would appear to indicate that the Magic Negro isn’t even thinking about ending the occupation next year or his supporters in the media wouldn’t be reduced to banging the drums in an attempt to stir up some belated war fever in such an obvious way.

The ridiculous thing is the way in which TIME missed the obvious point, which is that the brutal punishment meted out to the young women for breaking a marital contract happened under the American military occupation. Saving the noses of Afghan women certainly isn’t a bad thing but there is no circumstance in which one can honestly claim that it is in the American national interest or concerns American national security in any way.

Mr. Buchanan reads the blog

Actually, considering some of the people who have emailed me, it wouldn’t be all that surprising. In any event, I’m not the only one who is contemplating a primary challenge to the Magic Negro.

PAT BUCHANAN: [Anti-Vietnam sentiment] drew an anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, first into the New Hampshire primary, and after he did fairly well with 42%, it drew Robert Kennedy in against their own president, tore the Democratic Party apart, and led, of course, to a Republican era. If the president is still hanging in to Afghanistan in 2011, 2012, do you see an anti-war candidate coming out of the Democratic Party?

ED RENDELL: It’s possible, Pat. It really depends on how far it deteriorates [emphasis mine]. But on the other hand, if troop withdrawal begins in 2011, if there’s some signs that we’re trying to get out of there, and I heard, I think you were talking about, if there are only 3,000 American troops, we still have a presence. But if we start to begin to reduce our presence, I think that’s probably enough to keep an anti-war candidate out of the race.”

As Instapundit noted, the important thing here isn’t that Rendell is the governor of Pennsylvania, but that he is a known Clintonista. And from my perspective, what’s intriguing about taking a foreign policy line of potential attack on Obama rather than his unpopularity among white voters and negative effect on other Democratic politicians is that whereas practically any Democrat could make a case for himself on the basis of the former, there is only one individual who is in a uniquely advantageous position to utilize the former.

The Secretary of State.

Due to her Cabinet position and foreign policy focus, the Lizard Queen is uniquely positioned to credibly declare that the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and become untenable. Should she resign her position next year to run against an Obama who has continued the wars, contra to his promises in the 2008 primaries, she will have no trouble obliterating him in the 2012 campaign for the nomination. Now, the fact that she COULD do this doesn’t mean that she WILL; after all, she didn’t move to oppose immigration and the wars when doing so could have guaranteed her both the nomination and the election last time.

But given the growing signs that Obama may soon not only continue but extend what is increasingly beginning to look like an American-Islamic war, it is clear that he is likely to be extraordinarily vulnerable if the Lizard Queen elects to strike against her current boss. The first indication that she intends to do so will be a growing chorus of elite Democratic opinion against Obama’s conduct of the war, particularly with regards to Afghanistan and Pakistan. (I doubt they will criticize anything related to Iran, assuming there is anything to complain about, in order to placate potential donors in the Israel lobby that has been banging on the Iran war drum ever since Baghdad fell.) But the more significant indicator would be her resignation from the Cabinet next year.