House of Eratosthenes

The “Bad President” stuff is about eighty percent accurate as far as the really high-level and obvious fact-checking goes. That’s about fifty or sixty percentage points higher than normal with Palin haters.

However, it continues a trend I have found to be absolutely iron-clad: Of the eight “Bad President” slides that bear some passing resemblance to the truth, all make it their business to predict what someone else is going to think or do.

She’s supposed to be this intellectual lightweight, but nobody can form any sensible thoughts about what she’s going to biff, how she’ll manage to piss in her boot, which pooch she’s gonna screw.

Nobody can say how she’s going to suck, exactly, without bringing some third party into it. That says something.

It doesn’t strike me as the kind of attack an incumbent can lay down against a challenger. If you’re the incumbent, and the economy sucks ass, and you’ve been presiding over it, then we know beyond any doubt what mistakes you can make and we don’t need to bring anybody else into it at all.

Now to be fair about it, I do find some of the “Good President” slides to be lame. And the absolute lamest one would be “First Woman President.” Hope this doesn’t come off as bigoted or sexist, but this white male has absolutely had it with “firsts.” I’ve been hearing about ’em for forty years. Lately they haven’t done us any good; our First Black President is a communist who uses His skin color as a weapon against dissent, thereby dividing the country.

Actually, you know the one thing I like about Palin being a woman? It isn’t going to net her a single female vote, in fact it will lose her tons of ’em. Our females don’t seem to be too excited about her. Girls would rather have Hillary. They feel most comfortable with female authority figures who are unappealing to men.

But enough about that. I think the “Friend to Working Class” slide is worth mention, doesn’t quite score a bulls-eye but it does come close.

We’ve been hip deep in liberalism for a long time. By that I mean, liberal extremism has started to look like moderation (see previous post).

Perhaps the oldest tenet of modern liberalism has been control of the means of a society’s production of goods. And today, this is really what the yelling and the fighting are all about. People tend to spend their entire lives either being producers, or not-producers.

Of the not-producers, the soldier represents the not-producer we actually need. Defense is vital. It isn’t supposed to actually produce anything, save for that which is used to provide the defense.

All the other not-producers we can do without. We’ve got a very long way to go before we can realize that objective; all of our leaders, recently, seem to arrive with resumes that are very impressive, but not-productive. Our latest President is only the most stellar example, since “The Community Organizer” demonstrates fairly often that He has no idea how the economy actually works, and by demonstrating it, actually hurts a lot of people. But it’s a problem that predates him, and who says it has to be this way?

Maybe, just maybe, the first step toward fixing our many ills is to put someone in charge who has been a producer of goods that actually help people, and thinks like a producer of goods that help people. It is, without a doubt, the remedy we most urgently need right now.

You forgot that #1 reason that she would be a bad president: she’s a stupid, ignorant, slutty quitter of a snowbilly.

There. I think that I managed to get everything into one sentence.
- Physics Geek | 06/21/2011 @ 09:44
Just a semantic quibble here: I think it would be reasonable to consider soldiers “producers.” They may not be producing tires or cheeseburgers or tangible products — but in the sense that they have to make decisions and perform actions that are either “the behaviors that lead to success or the behaviors that lead to failure” (to paraphrase Evan Sayet), they’re definitely on the side of the angels. Though perhaps I’m confusing “producer/non-producer” with “Architect/Medicator.” (I’ve been reading your blog for a while but couldn’t be arsed to register with WordPress until now…)
- Guy T. | 06/21/2011 @ 11:12
Yeah, producer/non-producer is perhaps a tangent that would best justify a post of its own, and it’s not synonymous with Architect/Medicator or Good/Evil. We do need some non-producers. I see the soldier as like a defensive wall; you do not need the wall to create loaves of bread, or power trains, or purified water, it would be silly to expect this, and yet the wall remains all-important — if the situation calls for it, the wall is actually more important than most of the things contained within.

So, no. Soldiers are absolutely not Medicators. That would be a complete disaster.

But there’s one other thing I forgot to work in there. The soldier has been an integral part of the machinery that is our nation, since the very first day the machinery was designed. The soldier has been vital since Day One. But because the design of our republic is inherently conservative, the soldier is, as an explicit rule, placed under civilian command. We’re opposed to liberalism, so the producers are in charge. That’s the intent.

Liberalism is all about giving non-producers the final say. And they don’t have soldiers in mind…
- mkfreeberg | 06/21/2011 @ 11:20
How do soldiers of “bad” countries or governments fit into that model?

We’re used to thinking about American troops, and we’re used to thinking of them as the good guys. But through most of history,the word “soldiers” has meant trouble…whether it referred to Nazis in Holland, redcoats in Massachusetts, or legionaires in Gaul. I’ve also heard all kinds of unpleasant stories about what knights did to people of their own countries in the Middle Ages, between wars.

Think about it – young men with weapons, often with time on their hands, trained to mistrust anyone who isn’t wearing the uniform…often under the command of someone who doesn’t care enough to rein them in or make sure they don’t abuse the civilian population.

In fact, now that I think about it, American GIs are the exception, not the rule.
- cylarz | 06/22/2011 @ 20:17
Let’s look at that “Bad President” slideshow, shall we?

She is largely a rookie on the international stage who is not up on key issues or friendly with world leaders.

So was (and is) Mister Wonderful.

She has a questionable ethics record. From pressure on state cops to her 2008 Republican National Convention wardrobe financing.

All of which accusations proved to be groundless.

Palin lacks big agenda. Seen as more reactionary than visionary. Her book was a disappointment to some who wanted a longer agenda of issues she’d like to tackle.

Yeah, “Dreams from My Father” and “Audacity of Hope” – now those were REAL statements of presidential intent.

Slim management experience. She was a small-town mayor who quit the Alaska governorship early in her first term, following her 2008 campaign as Sen. John McCain’s runningmate.

Let’s see…community organizer, editor of a law review who never wrote anything, one-term senator from Illinois….

She’d be the butt of jokes. Imagine four to eight years of “You Betcha” humor from David Letterman.

So stop making cheap jokes.

Seriously? We’re supposed to reject her candidacy because the Left will try to make humor out of it. Remember, Letterman’s the guy who tried to make us think the idea of Palin’s daughter being raped by A-Rod was just a big hilarious knee slapper.

Maybe a bit to focused on her large family. While JFK brought a big family to the White House, Palin isn’t likely to hand off raising her kids like Kennedy did to his wife.

It’s “too”, first off. Secondly, she seemed to have done all right juggling family with the responsibilities of the governorship. Nobody seems concerned about who’s raising Obambi’s daughters while he’s out on the links – er, I mean, bowing and scraping, er ahem, making speeches…..oops, I meant, doing big important presidential things.

There are serious concerns that she lacks a lot of experience on domestic policy like healthcare, immigration reform, and financial issues that are consuming most of Washington’s time and energy.

Seeing as how she comes from a state where energy policy is pretty much EVERYTHING….and secondly, Palin seems to have a pretty good grasp on all of those: get government out of it, secure the border, and stop spending so much money…respectively.

Obamarx, meanwhile, seems to have an extremely poor grasp of all the above.

A bit too centered on conservative social issues like abortion, faith, and the flag. Her new book will be titled: America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag. The GOP has been moving away from those issues and toward kitchen table issues like jobs and spending.

Hey, US News. Have you read the book, or are you judging by what’s on the cover?

Once again, Palin’s ideas are simple – cut spending, reduce regulation. The rest is up to us. You liberals are the only ones who think a presidential candidate needs to have a sophisticated plan or that government is there to solve our problems with the economy.

She’d destroy the mainstream media by using her own blogs and conservative press to push her issues. And why not? Many in the mainstream have treated her like a dunce.

And this would be a bad thing……..why?

Oh, right. I forgot. US News is part of that media.

She is not a very dynamic speaker. One snide remark we received from a long-time former Bush aide was that the public might long for the “eloquent” speeches of the former president.

Uh…erm….eh……57 states….eh, job creation…..ehm….bitter clingers…..people who don’t look like them….ehm, uh, police acted stupidly.

Riiiiiiight.
- cylarz | 06/22/2011 @ 20:32

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