Archive for the ‘Elections’ Category

This Is Good LIX

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Not “good lix”…it’s the fifty-ninth thing I found that’s really, really good.

FrankJ’s fantasy about the conflict about those Senate doors, and Rod Burris, to whom they have been shut, then opened, then shut, then opened again…

Al Franken shoved the aide out of the way. “You said when I take my seat, you’d have all the black people gone! I’ll hurt you! Grwaerree!” He came at [Harry] Reid flailing his arms.

Reid shielded himself. “Calm down, Al Franken! Don’t hurt me! By the time you take your seat, we’ll have this taken care of!”

Franken calmed down a bit. “You better, or me hurt you!” He spotted a piece of paper on the ground. “That’s a vote for me!”

Reid looked at it. “That’s a receipt from Taco Bell.”

“It’s a vote for me! Me hurt you you say otherwise! Grwaerree!” He charged at Reid, flailing his arms again.

Franken/Coleman/Minnesota = Bush/Gore/Florida – transparency. I wonder how Minnesota residents are dealing with that new rep; same shenanigans going on, but when the democrat party says “don’t worry, we’ll go into this dark tent we set up your parking lot with this carful of ‘lost’ votes and…uh…one last thing, how many votes did you say our guy needed again?” the State of Florida plays host to airplane-load after airplane-load of lawyers from both camps, and starts escalating the matter through the court system.

Minnesota, on the other hand, just says “Oh, you will? That’s really super. Yaw! Just let us know when you’re done finding…or counting…or punching…or whatever it is you do in that dark tent, democrats. Oh, and thanks again for sorting this out for us! Really swell!”

PEBO Has OCPD?

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Wish I’d thought of this: The shrinks have decided they want to make some loot off of inflexible, perfectionist jerks. Actually, it’s not that new, it’s Freud’s idea. The classic symptoms of what is now called Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) are:

 • Is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost.
 • Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
 • Is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
 • Is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
 • Is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
 • Is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
 • Adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
 • Shows rigidity and stubbornness

The litmus test I’d apply to it, is this: I come to you with a complaint. You respond by giving me instructions about what I should do, as if I had come to you asking for advice. That isn’t the criteria written above, but after so-many years of dealing with people who fit this mold, I really think that’s a fair distillation: The world’s just a soundstage in which you get to spout off orders at people, as your sole social pursuit, up to and past the point where it interferes with your ability to interact realistically, and with your relationships.

PEBO's OpinionI think President-Elect Barack Obama might have OCPD. He’s fulfilled my one-bullet litmus test, anyhow: People come to him with complaints, and he responds by telling ’em what to do. If he doesn’t have OCPD, he sure is a bossy little snot.

I gotta admit, though, he’s got me halfway-wishing President Bush had this disorder. It would’ve been fun watching the truthers and the impeachers and the Florida-recounters and the MoveOnDotOrgsters receive these haughty instructions from the White House to stuff a sock in it so we can all “get along”.

Dial it down a notch, President-elect Barack Obama tells gays

President-elect Barack Obama pushed back Thursday at gay rights groups trashing him for inviting evangelical Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.

“It is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans,” Obama told reporters in Chicago.

But he noted that he ran a campaign promising to reach out to all sides.

“It is important for America to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues,” he said, noting that Warren invited him to speak at Saddleback Church in California knowing Obama disagreed with many conservative religious stances.

“That dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign has been all about,” Obama added. “We’re not gonna agree on every single issue. What we have to do is be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

What a great line! I’m going to try that out on the next cop who pulls me over.

No, this is a sign of great fun in the years ahead. While President Obama puts my great-grandchildren in debt with bailout after bailout after bailout and redistributes every nickel I’ve ever managed to save, I’ll find solace in watching Him operate this way, and seeing His most ardent supporters get shakier and quakier with a white-hot quivering rage Obama’s predecessor never saw. It’s obvious the President-Elect has fallen into a lifetime habit of dealing with conflicts this way. He’s got the Walter Cronkite voice, the charisma, He’ll just dispense His Holy Instructions to people to unify, and all the complaints will wither away like your very favorite snowman after a herd of wild goats get together to pee on it.

Well…I’m sure that’s worked out great for him up to this point…I got to see the last two years of it up close. I don’t know if it’ll work out for Him in the new gig. I don’t think it’s going to work on His supporters, over the long term, any better than it would work on that motorcycle cop in the short term.

But I fully intend to grab a full bag of popcorn while I watch Him try it. It’s probably the only form of entertainment I’ll be able to afford for the next four years.

Sucks to be the gay activists, though. All this hopey-hope about changey-change…so they’d finally have someone in power who’d listen to them. Heh. Looks like they had a lot more of that going on up until now, than they’ll have from here-on-out. Got sold a pig-in-a-poke by the super-charisma “There’s Something About Him I Can’t Explain It” lightworker Man-God guy.

Lesson in there for all of us, gay or straight. Lesson in there for all of us.

Coleman’s Lead Down to Two Votes

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Wow, we might have a funnyman in the Senate.

Sen. Norm Coleman saw his lead over Al Franken in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race dwindle to just two votes Thursday. Meanwhile, a key court ruling put hundreds of improperly rejected ballots in play and promised the recount would drag into the new year.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that improperly rejected absentee ballots be included in the state’s recount. It ordered the candidates to work with the Secretary of State and election officials to set up a process to identify ballots that were rejected in error. Counties must make a report by Dec. 31.

So far as I’ve seen, or know, there haven’t been any “OMIGOSH!” votes found under floorboards, under couch cushions, mistakenly buried with embalmed bodies, implanted into William Hurt’s chest, injected into some guy’s bloodstream with Raquel Welch, launched on a rocket toward Hackensack New Jersey, buried in the snow near Brainerd Minnesota, et cetera, FOR NORM COLEMAN. Each and every single “found” vote has been for the funnyman.

Does that strike you as odd?

If not, see what Ann Coulter had to say about it. Yeah, I know, she has a bad name with some, and admittedly, whoever’s inviting Coulter and Franken to dinner on the same night, is no longer seating them next to each other. But just suspend all that for a minute…because facts iz facts, and these iz them…read

The day after the November election, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman had won his re-election to the U.S. Senate, beating challenger Al Franken by 725 votes.

Then one heavily Democratic town miraculously discovered 100 missing ballots. And, in another marvel, they were all for Al Franken! It was like a completely evil version of a Christmas miracle.

As strange as it was that all 100 post-election, “discovered” ballots would be for one candidate, it was even stranger that the official time stamp for the miracle ballots printed out by the voting machine on the miracle ballots showed that the votes had been cast on Nov. 2 — two days before the election.

Democratic election officials in the miracle-ballot county simply announced that their voting machine must have been broken. Don’t worry about it — they were sure those 100 votes for Franken were legit.

It gets weirder from there.

We are well on our way — if we’re not there already — to having an unwritten rule that, in any state, if the democrat party loses an election by less than a thousand votes, they automatically win. You think I’m exaggerating? Read that Coulter link again. Go ahead and check out the facts if you don’t trust her.

I don’t care if you think the democrat party hung the moon. If you think there’s nothing to be worried about with regard to this issue, you’re nuts. This is not a situation where you can shrug your shoulders and say “oh well, it’s all a matter of personal perspective” or “oh well, opinions are like assholes everyone’s got one” or “oh well, both sides are equally wrong.” It’s not like that at all.

Not even close.

Seriously.

Chambliss

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

AP reports Chambliss is ahead; Fox has just called it for him. That would end the democrat party’s hopes for a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. Even if Al Franken is going to win in Minnesota, which it looks like he’s not gonna do.

I’m almost sorry. I am sorry. This is the weakness with the American political system, that it is so hard for one party to be in charge of everything. I think we’re just about at the point where that’s working against us. Properly implemented, liberalism would indict and convict itself within a single election cycle, but if it’s opposed, or even watered down a little bit…instant talking points. Thanks to the filibuster, that’s what we have here. The democrat party policies will piss in their own boots, and come 2010 they’ll be all…”the reason we couldn’t fix that was the Republicans filibustered.” Or threatened to filibuster.

It is an interesting thought exercise, in my mind, to ponder what would happen if we went twenty-four months just doing everything the democrat way. Lots of cities already do this. Garbage needs to be collected – well, what’s the most liberal way we can collect garbage? What’s the most liberal way we can zone this district? I don’t mean to say there is a liberal or conservative way to zone a district – but boy, howdee, they sure do try to find a way. San Francisco, I’m looking at you.

What if we did that? Put the democrat party in charge of everything, without appeal, without recourse, without filibuster, and most importantly of all, make sure everyone everywhere knows the democrat party is running the show.

This guy butchered two hundred girl scouts in broad daylight while his neighborhood looked on in horror? Rough childhood. Let him go.

Iran wants to build a nuke? Let ‘em. Get rid of ours.

Tax the rich at a hundred and five percent.

Pay for abortions. Give out prizes.

That mail clerk at city hall who puts a sign on his counter saying “Merry Christmas?” Sue his ass off. Sue him to death. Put his heirs in the poorhouse until the day his youngest great-grandchild faces mandatory retirement.

Register anything more powerful than a child’s pop gun. Track down whoever isn’t buying his share of carbon credit vouchers. Home in on those bastards like a heat seeking missile, and show ‘em how unfriendly an IRS audit can be. Flog Joe the Plumber in the public square on a regular basis like the English did with Titus Oates.

Fairness doctrine? Make a whole new cabinet-level position to enforce it.

Minimum wage. Maximum wage. Make ‘em the same number. Hundred percent death-tax. Take away everybody’s car. Pass Directive 10-289. Pay criminals to not misbehave. Force colleges to admit nine illegal aliens for every legal citizen admitted, and then force that legal citizen to pay the tuition of the nine illegal aliens, plus fifty percent.

Just do what the cities do. Every little thing you can do a left-wing way, do it that way. For two solid years.

Until we hear those six magic words that ring true over all the wreckage in San Francisco, Davis, Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

“Can’t blame conservatives. There aren’t any.”

Agreement Over Clarity?

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

One of the things I appreciate the most about Dennis Prager is his unofficial motto, “I prefer clarity over agreement.” To me, that says it all. All too often, we’re deluded into thinking whoever’s nearby and for some reason refuses to go-with-the-flow, that person must have fastened his identity to the role of loose-cannon. He must live to wallow in conflict, and therefore, to create it.

Agreement is desirable. But other things are moreso. And it seems the divide between the folks we call “conservatives” and the folks we call “liberals,” has something to do with this. Especially now. Most of the liberals I know are big on agreement, and elevate it above clarity.

So essays like this one (hat tip: Little Miss Atilla) are of interest to me…

In-fighting is part of politics. There are fierce battles for position and conflict over who gets the credit and who the blame.

Usually it’s kept from public view. But not always. The very public spat between Ron Paul supporters and the rest of the Right is a good example of a “not always” moment. So is Mike Huckabee’s lambasting of Libertarians. And Christians are being scape-goated for the GOP’s declining brand popularity due to strongly held views on social issues and Creationism.

Unchecked, the Right may succeed in disemboweling itself. Staunching the bleeding is hard as restricting faith to the heart prevents mental use of biblical warnings about divided houses. Worse, successful “kills” deplete the Right’s strength. We agree on more than we disagree. There are some very real differences and these will need to be worked out. But using exclusion as a tool in this working out is precisely the wrong approach.

To which I say…the Devil’s in the details. Truth does not smile upon the statement “we agree on more than we disagree” where the good Congressman Dr. Paul is concerned, I’m afraid. Once you’ve made agreement more important than clarity, it’s a treacherously short road to that tragic state of affairs in which the substance of what you have to sell, is nothing but a distant memory, and all you’re left holding is a package and a label.

No, the Prager dictum remains valid, for me at least. Clarity over agreement. After all, the product that is to be sold, isn’t unappealing, isn’t complicated, isn’t negative in any way…and the only time in recent memory in which it could not be sold, is this year, at a time in which the advertisement for it was muted. Conservatism’s champion was chosen as the most-liberal among the available field of candidates. This is when it could not be sold — when people weren’t told what it was.

In my view, elevating agreement over clarity exacerbates this problem. I mean, really: If we’re all supposed to agree with each other without worrying about the meaning of the agreement too much, why not just fall in line and support that new guy getting sworn in on January 20?

I’ll admit my concern with clarity over agreement is not without a bias, in fact, perhaps a bias formed over an entire lifetime. I’ve been noticing something about these folks, be they liberal or conservative, who are so overly enamored with agreement over clarity. What I’ve noticed is — they are big on clarity, too. Their message is not…let us unite any ol’ way. Their message is…let’s unite behind someone I happen to like. In other words, they tend to have an agenda that isn’t really unity. All you have to do is figure out what it is, wait until some guy who opposes it might possibly be running things, and then run over to your agreement-over-clarity guy and say “Hey, let’s all get together and get behind him!” or words to that effect.

All you get back is a dirty look.

So it’s an axiom worth pondering, that perhaps none of us are really wild about agreement-over-clarity. Perhaps that value system draws nothing more faithful than fair-weather-friends.

Here’s a thought: Conservatives could use their various disagreements to put the big reveal on this lie that there is something inherently non-accepting and non-inclusive about conservatism. They could showcase how all these different systems of priorities are united by common values, and that these values are in keeping with the original intent behind the founding of the nation. Example: Some conservatives believe the abortion issue is far more important than the fiscal-responsibility issue; some conservatives believe fiscal responsibility is more important than gun rights. The value system that unites all these positions is a wholesome, simple one…and it doesn’t have anything to do with forcing women to have babies or creating a Christian theocracy in our republic. It just says people matter. People are good, decent, capable of sound judgment, deserve to exist even if they haven’t slid past the vaginal finish line just yet — and are at the zenith of their potential when they sacrifice for the concept of delayed gratification.

You know who really needs to concentrate more on agreement here? Libertarians. I’ve noticed half the people I know who call themselves “libertarians” don’t give a rip about lower taxes or minimalist government, and just want to legalize pot.

And the big question conservatives need to ask themselves on January 20 as The Chosen One’s hand comes off the Bible — is not — “How can we change ourselves to get people to buy next time?” That’s a very foolish and silly question. Who, anywhere, regardless of their political leanings, can logically assert the electorate chose to repudiate conservatism after honestly inspecting its contents? Ten months ago, the Republican party made a conscious decision, codified during the conventions three months ago, that conservatism wasn’t what they’d try to be selling.

No, the question conservatives need to ponder is, instead, “Is this bacterial, or is it viral?” The American People have chosen someone to run the entire government, or the executive branch of it anyway, without knowing one little thing about what He is going to do. All they know about Him is that He is the product of a political-machine climate in Chicago, and He is an anti-war Socialist. If this is a viral infection, they’ll get fed up with His nonsense in a couple years. They have before. If it’s bacterial, an antibiotic will be needed.

Me…my answer is it’s viral. Sarah Palin nailed it when, asked why her campaign failed, she said it was “not our time.” That’s exactly right. Part of the reason it was not the time for the conservative movement, is it didn’t act conservative. Voters wanted to know what it was all about, and the answer their candidate provided was…a bailout. Communism-lite. The product of prioritizing agreement over clarity.

You can hardly blame the voters, then, for saying — why punch the ballot for an imitation brand? Let’s go for the real thing.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

We Love Her As She Is

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

The Dagney with the misspelled name speaks for me on this one…and God only knows how many others.

I actually heard Cal Thomas, a reliable conservative voice, say on Fox News tonight say he thought Sarah Palin needed to reinvent herself? CAL, WE LOVE SARAH AS SHE IS!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME WOULD MAKE YOU THINK SHE NEEDS TO BE ANYONE ELSE?

Imagine the following in your very best slow, loud, Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction voice…

Nobody needs to reinvent a Goddamned thing.

It’s the people voting. One ticket had lawyers on it, the other ticket had none. The electorate was in the mood to vote for lawyers. Focus-group tested buzzwords, a bunch of nonsense that “Everybody” knows…that’s what the ballots were made of this year.

We’ve gotten sick and tired of lawyers and canned catchphrases before. We will be tired of ’em again. And when we are, “Smug ‘n Plugs” won’t have a single other thing to sell anybody. The hunger for real solutions, with substance, that actually work, will set in.

It’s a hunger that always arrives quickly. Quickly and painfully. The desire to see good guys treated like bad guys, and bad guys treated like good, dissipates the minute the bad guys start running around doing their damage. In other words, we’re all a bunch of Paul Kerseys…we believe in fluff and hope and change and things that sound good, “root cause of crime is poverty,” second chances, rehabilitation, right up until our wives and daughters are violated and murdered. Then we’re ready for some reality and some justice.

Let the electorate try their childish experiment. They won’t be enamored of it for long, I promise you. May the lesson arrive quickly, may the tuition be affordable, may the damage be slight.

Drill baby drill.

Update: You know, at first it strikes me as a fair argument that I ought to be doing some research into whether Mr. Thomas said what’s attributed to him, before I work up my passions. Ordinarily, I’d agree.

But not here. I’ve heard this tired trope many times before, that Ms. Palin “needs to change,” and at this point I don’t give a rat’s rear end whether Cal Thomas said it or not, nevermind in what context. I don’t care. The talking point is out there, and it’s a load of hogwash.

The electorate will be learning soon enough what a dreadful mistake they made. Sarah Palin doesn’t need to change a thing. Not in what she does, not in what she is, not in what she says. She’s smart, and she’s right.

And so this inspires some more (semi-stolen from DC Comics) artwork. As if we haven’t indulged in that enough already. I’ve always liked George Perez’ work…and the Supergirl/Wonder Woman ratio has been tilted a bit too strongly toward the Amazon Princess lately so the time’s come to even it out.

Go Sarah Go.

Least Favorite Conservatives

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Right Wing News has put up a list of unliked conservatives, as voted-upon by “right of center” blogs such as this one. First, a minor quibble — this is not quite consistent with the way we see things here. What other folks call “conservative” is something we would call centrist. We see it as a personal practice of replying “Let’s Not Do It And Say We Did” to…you know…dumbass ideas that have already been tried lots of times before. Gun grabbing, pulling manufactured “rights” for special interest groups out of your rear end, eugenics, bloated welfare state, making atheism the official state religion, spreading the wealth, et al.

Opposing that is not right of center. It is the center. Most if it is written right into the U.S. Constitution. We just pretend it isn’t, by throwing around the word “constitution” as a figure of speech, and allowing it to be used by people who haven’t even glanced at that document, let alone studied the history and meaning of it.

I wouldn’t even bother with this quibble — except it has to do with what follows.

I found the list of despised conservatives, that I submitted, had only a small overlap with the “popular” list that was published in the end. I did not include, for example, Ann Coulter, George Bush or Peggy Noonan. I do not think you become “bad” at anything dealing with an exchange of ideas, when you simply become popular. That would imply conservative figureheads have a duty to stay popular. And if conservative figureheads have a duty to stay popular, we might as well call ’em liberals because that’s how you get popular and stay popular; by being a liberal.

I also didn’t include congressmen who’d cast pro-choice votes, unless they’d cast a vote on some other issue to call their credentials into serious question. I’ll not fault someone for applying their personal druthers, even when they represent hundreds of thousands of others, to an issue that is deeply personal to some, complex as all get-out, and cannot have an outcome that is completely fair to everyone. Not unless they’re pretending to be thoughtful and really following in lockstep to someone else.

On the other hand — I did include one or two “conservatives” who voted for gun control. To me, there is absolutely no logical reason to support gun control. It isn’t that I have a huge gun collection, or even that I like guns that much. It’s that, if you favor even “common sense” gun restrictions, you’ve missed an important point about what it means to be an American. You’ve revealed a sympathy for centrist authority that is quite incompatible with the intended spiritual underpinnings of our nation.

Ditto for tax increases. I don’t favor tax increases when governments are out of money. I’ve heard the argument before…”it’s a serious shortfall, and we aren’t gonna get it from anywhere else.” Eh, no. You raise taxes, people and businesses leave, next year the problem is worse. I’ve not yet seen it fail. On this point, conservatism is nothing radical — nothing over & above common sense. It is, simply, having a functional memory. Nothing more than that.

I have mixed feelings about what Mr. Hawkins is trying to do here, I must say. On the one hand, it is valuable for conservatives to inspect the list of individuals who have shouldered the responsibility for getting the message across, and what kind of job they’re doing. You’d have to be nuts to think everything is ship-shape in this department right about now.

On the other hand, whatever you might call us — tighty-righties, common-sensers, Great Americans — we do not worship popular people just because they’re popular. As I’m often fond of saying: An excellent product can be sold by an adequate salesman just as well as it can be sold by an excellent salesman; you don’t need the excellent salesman, unless you’re selling a substandard product that people really shouldn’t be buying. Since the conservatism I know is simply the possession of a decent memory, common sense, and the will to act upon those…it doesn’t have much use for excellent salesmen. Or it shouldn’t. If it does, something’s bollywonkers & gunnybags.

One other interesting point: John McCain is #1.

I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in a parallel universe in which Fred Thompson secured the nomination. And then lost. And then the Mirror-Universe John Hawkins gathers together his list of repellant conservatives. Think the former Senator from Tennessee would be Numero Uno? Think he’d even be on the list?

Hah!

This has a lot to do with another thing I’m often fond of saying. When people invite you refute something unflattering about you, it’s a mistake for you to think, by the energies you’re about to channel into doing this, you’ll get ’em to do what you want. That’s the mistake conservatives made this year. The talking point got trotted out that conservatism was a consistent and unwavering excercise of bad ideas…so John McCain became the nominee, so that Republicans could show off how adept they were at wavering. See? Look at us. We can waver.

And the electorate patted the Republicans on the head, said “that’s nice,” then toddled off to vote for the other guy.

And muttered a few words as they toddled, here & there, about what in the hell it was the Republicans were trying to say.

Life is like that. That’s the way people react when you dilute yourself, and your message. Whatever reservations people had about you before, remain; all you really dissipate by doing this, is the confidence that was there before.

Two Visions

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

On the one hand, as I said before, I’m sick of politics.

On the other hand, this is the kind of thing that makes me sick of politics. It’s beyond obvious that on the right-wing ship, something has to get pitched overboard and something else has to replace it, toot sweet. What is to be tossed? What is to be brought aboard? That is the question.

Some say extremism is the problem. Republicans have to get more moderate. Yes, that’s it…

You do the math: America has a moderate majority — 50% of Americans are centrists, compared to 20% who are liberal and 30% who call themselves conservative. Independents are the largest and fastest growing segment of the electorate. Republicans need to appeal to the center and find common cause with independents in order to win. And that’s something they have increasingly failed to do over the past decade.

That’s a popular viewpoint, but not a unanimous one. This guy, for example, asserts something quite different:

Our party has become too fearful of our own ideas. Since 1997, congressional Republicans began a steady retreat from principled leadership to political expediency. A party built on spending discipline and government reform succumbed to the siren songs of government expansion and earmarked giveaways. Republicans squandered the opportunity to limit and reshape the relationship between the federal government and the individual.

Where do I stand on this? If you skim over my conservative platform, it will become obvious.

I find it implausible to support the idea that these people we call “conservatives” need more moderation. They’re moderate already. In a nation that was founded 232 years ago specifically for the purpose of adopting a strong nationalist identity, to profer the notion that we should continue to keep it and build on it, is the essence of moderation. It certainly isn’t extremist.

Not when, if you don’t like it, there’s a whole planet covered with other internationalist countries that are nothing more than prefectures in a global colony…to which you can emigrate if you choose. We’re the one spot on the globe with it’s own identity. What’s this drive to exterminate it? Why should I think of that as “moderate”? I don’t care what exactly the subject under discussion is for the moment…when you move to exterminate the last of something, you’re not being moderate.

Identities are good. They’re good for countries, and they’re good for political parties too. In fact, from where I’m sitting, it looks to me like Republicans lost this thing because they didn’t have much of an identity to sell. Their identity was “No We’re Not!” from beginning to end…since the day Fred Thompson threw it in, the party spent the entire time on the defensive.

The bullcusations would come out, and Republicans said “No, We’re Not!”

The liberal activists bullcused the Republicans of being mean and nasty, and the Republican position was: Nuh huh!

The liberal activists bullcused the Republicans of being against women, blacks and gays. Republicans denied it — which had the effect of legitimizing it.

Republicans were bullcused of voting with George Bush “ninety percent of the time.” McCain did something abysmally stupid in response to this: He trotted out some examples of issues on which he disagreed with Bush. You can hardly blame the electorate for what they did — which was to say to themselves “huh, that must be the other ten percent” and go ahead & vote for the other guy.

If the G.O.P. was simply doing a half-assed job of selling a brand name, like a salesman selling Pepsi products instead of Coke, it wouldn’t be nearly so aggravating. But that’s not what was happening here. Republicans were offering an alternative to ideas that have been proven not to work…this is going to become only too obvious to us in the years ahead. But that’s what this election was about. Are we so determined to change the status quo that we’ll forget what it is we’re trying to change, and therefore put in motion exactly the chain reaction history has shown us leads to the most damaging problems the most reliably? And the voters replied — Oui! They weren’t given an incentive to vote any other way.

My solution is simple. It is moderate. Here it is: Just name the damn thing. That’s what was missing. If you don’t put a name on the product you’re trying to sell, then surely your competition will do it for you. And if you ask the guy-in-the-street what Republicans were all about, you’ll get back a big ol’ mish mash of stuff that will prove the competition named the product. Oppressing homosexuals, bombing Iran, spending lots of money, starving old people and keeping gas prices really high.

Republicans aren’t about keeping gas prices high. “Drill Baby Drill” doesn’t have anything to do with keeping gas prices high. If they’re for keeping gas prices high, then George W. Bush must be just as much an incompetent boob as people keep saying, because I bought some gas today and paid easily two bones a gallon less than I paid a couple months ago.

Properly marketed, this should be a sure-fire winner. So properly market it.

Drill.

People get to keep their guns.

Pull your money out, if you want to, and use it to send your kid to a private school.

Fiscal responsibility. If they’ve gotten away from it, let ’em get back to it.

Local control. People in Newark don’t decide how fast you drive in Denver.

If you’re not born yet but you’re growing in your momma’s belly already, you’re safe. No vaginal finish line you have to cross before you count.

If a bully picks on you on the schoolyard and you don’t throw the first punch but you do throw the last one…you’re good. Bully gets punished, you walk. A midnight holdup in a back-alley — same doctrine. International conflicts, same doctrine.

You do something stupid, you’ve a right to do it. Nobody will fix it for you. That way you learn.

You say something stupid, you’ve a perfect right to do that as well. And you can reap the whirlwind.

Someone else says something stupid to you while they’re beating you up, they get arrested. Just for beating you up. No enhanced penalties for having the wrong thoughts…because in a free country, you can’t get going on that kind of thing.

You keep your 401k.

If you want to leave something to your kids in your will, you can. And they’ll get it.

I don’t expect anyone has too much more of an apetite for my opinions, and if they do, they can just chase down the link above to find the complete platform. But you know what I call this? I call this something that would get it sold instantly. My name for it would sell it like ice-to-eskimoes…except we need this far, far more than any eskimo needs ice.

My name for it?

The “Pursuit Of Happiness” party. That is the vision for America; let’s get back to it. You don’t have a right to happiness here, but you certainly have a God-given right to pursue it. And if you find it, then God bless you, for no mortal man may interfere.

If that’s extreme, I don’t wanna be moderate.

Democracy’s Fair Weather Friends

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can be voted down…but it might go to court over it. It thinks you can be reasoned with. It feels pity, remorse, fear, phony compassion, and tons and tons of guilt. And it might stop, before you are dead. Maybe. Or it might maybe undo you.

Doesn’t have the same ring as Kyle Reese’s classic line, does it?

And yet, the killer robot that “absolutely will not stop, EVER, until you are dead!” engaged in such a spectacular display of wishy-washiness, that a better example I do not believe I have ever seen:

In an appearance Sunday on CNN, [California Gov. Arnold] Schwarzenegger said the state Supreme Court might overturn Proposition 8, the Los Angeles Times reported. He also said it is likely Proposition 8 will have no effect on the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages already recorded in California.

“It’s unfortunate, obviously, but it’s not the end,” Schwarzenegger told CNN. “I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area.”

The comments seem to represent a change in Schwarzenegger’s thinking, the Times said. In the past he has said he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, but he has also said the matter should be decided by voters or the courts and he opposed Proposition 8.

How un-Terminator-ish can you get. He goes on to say backers of same-sex marriage should “never give up,” which fits into the theme of chasing Sarah Connor down until she’s dead, dead, dead. But then again, are the voters deciding this or aren’t they?

The courts have no business intruding on this one. None at all. You might as well declare it unconstitutional to swear in a new President because he’s been palling around with a long list of America-hating asshole friends of his.

How outrageous this is, might perhaps be lost on someone from a different corner of the union…and this is the innernets, with all geographic boundaries rendered obsolete, or mostly so. So let me give some background.

This would still be an outrage, even if the electorate had not voted properly on Proposition 8…which they damn well did. It’s an outrage because our referendum process is an enormous joke in this state. Every election cycle, bond issue after bond issue after bond issue is thrust in front of the voters by gutless politicians who don’t want to take the heat. And then it’s up to Joe Six-Pack in the voting booth to figure out if $165,000,000 is too much for the state to spend on a new water supply system, or light rail system, or raise for the prison guards. On and on it goes. This year, we had, I think, fourteen of these beauties, and that was an exceptionally light year.

I think it’s fair to say the situation’s gotten ridiculous when most people are flipping coins over these matters. And really, California’s there. Been there for awhile.

But nobody, on either side, was flipping a coin over Prop 8.

We are seriously strapped for cash here. Our state is. It raises taxes…businesses move out. The tax receipts fall short, and so the state raises taxes again. Lather, rinse, repeat. We have no damned business spending good money to put propositions on ballots, and then when the votes come back in some way contrary to the wishes of some grand high muckety-muck like our Royal Terminator Governor, deciding hey, that doesn’t count. If it doesn’t count, save some nickels then…don’t put it on the ballot. Don’t ask the question if you didn’t want the answer.

But generally speaking, when a high-profile politican such as Arnold says something, and the FARK kids start going giddy about it and repeating it over and over again, we’re looking at a new meme we’ll be seeing echoed in the years to come. In this case — CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES SHOULD NOT BE DECIDED BY VOTING. Maybe.

It’s a good thing, for the sake of this argument, that we’re well past the point of deciding anything according to intellectual honesty and logical consistency. Because intellectual honesty and logical consistency are not friendly to this one. If a class of people possesses an attribute that deprives its members of one or several options under our laws, as they now exist, that is a violation of civil rights…and perhaps this should place the matter into the courts auto-magically, with the popular vote of a specific region having absolutely nothing to say about the matter.

Okay. As a dude, I want to have a say on when pregnancies should be continued. Personally. If I get someone pregnant, I want a legally-binding, equal vote. It’s unfair that I’m deprived of this just because of my sex. If you say no, you’re depriving me of my civil rights.

It’s exactly the same logic.

Exactly.

Nope, it doesn’t work that way. Men don’t get pregnant. Homosexuals aren’t “married,” if this is contrary to a regional culture. One-legged guys don’t have a right to kick butts. Women can’t pee in the snow and write their names. Some of us are missing options that are available to others…and that’s just the way things are.

In fact, if every class of person could do everything every other class of person could do, then the classes would lose all meaning. And this is the very last thing desired by those who choose to make an issue out of such things…over and over again. Now, go away. If the people have spoken about President-elect Obama, then surely they’ve spoken about same-sex marriage.

Is Scott Adams Making a Comment About the Incoming Obama Administration…

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

…or is he just trying to come up with a 21st-century version of the Tytler Cycle.

As loyal readers of The Blog That Nobody Reads might’ve predicted, the panel below in particular is by far my favorite. I have captured it and expect to use it very often over the next four years, and of course I shall give proper credit. As if the creator isn’t obvious to the casual observer already.

But boy howdee. You certainly don’t need to wait around for a high-tech project to get a green light, nowadays, to see plenty of this…

If you toss aside the funny papers, and jump to the front page of my local newspaper this morning, you see this already coming to pass. Peculiar nonsensical tidbits morphing into common knowledge. What a challenge the new President Obama has with juggling the economy with a bunch of other things…and some journalistic curiosity, perhaps, about what He’s going to do when He so juggles? Ha! Ha! You should live so long. Nope. A detailed exploration of His racially mixed ancestry, and how good that makes everybody feel. Paragraph upon paragraph about what He is…after a nearly two-year-old campaign in which someone could’ve explored what He’s going to do…but very seldom did anyone anywhere, outside of the right-wing blogs, so explore.

He is all about being, and not about doing. That is His style, that is His schtick, it is His public image. He is something…what He does, nobody knows, and nobody who has a voice is overly curious about that.

Being over doing. He is a leader for our times, after all.

Update: On that note, this cartoon strikes a chord as well. H/T to The Anchoress for finding it:

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Nerds in the Age of Obama

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

I wonder how technology is going to do now. I hear it’s going to get better, more prosperous, better nurtured, more flourishing. Now that we have that Texas cowboy outta there.

I don’t know. I really don’t.

As I say fairly often (moreso in technical circles than here, at The Blog That Nobody Reads)…it’s easy to forget that technology is the process of doing something other than what everybody else is already doing. You cannot con-form and per-form at the same time. And I remember what happened when Clinton got in. Yeah, yeah, e-mail, innernets, etc….you do realize, don’t you, that most of that was protocol, hook-ups, etc.? The technology came along in the years prior.

But I dunno. If there’s a line of people who’ve been disappointed at the state of technology during the Bush years, I’m surely at the head of it. I don’t wanna be an ingrate, but post-2001, we haven’t got squat. A bunch of stuff that hauls around your music collection. Vista. Miniaturization of what we had in the years before…on an impressive scale…and it runs much faster. But still. Oh, and don’t forget the social networking sites. FARK, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Myspace, etc. etc. etc. There’s a difference between mixing up stuff you’ve done before with the innernets, Reeses-chocolate-peanut-butter-style…and actually inventing something new.

I’m hungering like Dagny Taggart for the next tidal wave of Wozniak’s and Jobs’. Where’s the guy building an entire industry in his garage. Where’s the guy saying “hey, if you put out this kinda signal, you can make a gadget that does this”…and a zillion onlookers cursing themselves for having not thought of it first.

So we’ll see.

If we’re feelin’ all hopey-changey and hopeful and optimistic and setting new goals for ourselves because The One inspires us to do so — you know, we could start with that. Beats the hell out of unplugging our cell phones from the wall to save the planet from some carbon boogeyman.

D’JEver Notice? XV

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

File this one under lessons to keep in mind for 2012, I guess.

The theme here is distinguishing a candidate from the left-wing against which that candidate seeks to compete. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems to me if there was one huge letdown among the many, many errors of the McCain campaign, that would have to be the big one right there. Obama talks to you for five minutes, and you hear all kinds of stuff about The Failed Policies Of The Bush Administration, and McCain Voted With Bush Ninety Percent Of The Time. Change, Hope, Hope, Change.

You listen to McCain for five minutes, and you get the impression it really doesn’t matter very much who’s in charge of things.

The intellectual error committed by McCain is really quite simple. You can distinguish yourself from the opposition in your policy approach, and you can distinguish yourself from the opposition on the spectrum of class. These should, by rights, not be mutually exclusive messages…but somehow we got this rule going that if anyone associated with McCain started giving reasons why we’d regret putting Obama in the White House, that would cross the line into an “ugly smear” campaign.

Obama labored under no such burden. And if the onus was ever placed upon him to work with such surgical precision, criticizing-without-criticizing, he’d have easily been able to pull it off. He benefitted throughout the election season from a comfortable disconnect with regard to his gaffe-prone running mate — let alone his slobbering, angry fans. As in, okay maybe that attack on John McCain for his POW status was over the line, but prove The Messiah had anything to do with that. Okay, it was a bad moment to make fun of McCain’s inability to use a computer, when it’s his beatings at the Hanoi Hilton that leave him physically incapacitated…but Obama had nothing to do with that, either. Then someone screams something less-than-diplomatic at a McCain/Palin rally, and McCain Must Apologize. And if nobody screams anything, the press will just make up fancy stories about someone crying “Kill Him!” McCain was connected by default to anyone doing or saying something ugly; Obama was disconnected by default from such things on his side. Meanwhile, if McCain and Palin didn’t go so far as to actively campaign for Obama/Biden, they were somehow “crossing a line.”

All of which meant that McCain had to make the right choice — distance himself from his opponent through policy, or distance himself from his opponent through superior character. Simply put, McCain made the wrong decision. You can’t prove you have superior character to someone whose mind is already made up about you. You certainly can’t prove it when you’re viewed through the lens provided by a third party, who has already made up their mind about you.

It was a futile endeavor. Maybe it would’ve worked if Obama was known for being class-less. But He simply isn’t, and He won’t be. He could rape a hundred girl scouts in broad daylight and the talking point would be that George Bush made Him do it. (Here’s something else…if anybody actually read The Blog That Nobody Reads, I’d have to apologize for that metaphor and then flog myself.)

So the memorandum that emerges with regard to 2012, to be opened and studied by whoever is nominated at that time, is this: Distinguish yourself through policy…not through class. Run a clean campaign, but don’t talk about how clean your campaign is. Keep it to yourself. Let people make up their own minds about you, because they will anyway.

Policy, policy, policy, policy, policy. The template should be one of McCain’s brighter moments — during the debates when he asked “Why would you want to raise taxes on anyone in this economy?” That was good.

Yes, The Walking Luminescence will be running for re-election. His acolytes and minions will begin reverberating with their mindless chatter that you’re going over the line. Let them. It bears repeating: People will make up their own minds, one way or the other. Respect that. Go over the pundits’ heads, straight to the people.

Talk about cause-and-effect, cause-and-effect, cause-and-effect. When you subsidize something, you get more of whatever it is, when you tax something, you get less of it. Repeat that over and over until people associate your name with that sequence of words, and if people think that simple reminder somehow reveals an inner ugliness about you, go ahead and let ’em. Keep it away from the personal, and that counterattack will enjoy no domino effect. I promise.

In fact, mock this little mini-debate about “civil tones” once in awhile. Take it on directly, like Palin did. Talk about making a major purchase of an appliance that is expected to last four years or more, like a television set or a refrigerator, and somehow obsessing over the package in which the appliance was shipped. Then get straight back to cause-and-effect so people are reminded why the appliance itself is far more important. Without admitting you crossed a line. Because you didn’t.

Active on the policy.

Passive on the class.

Show us why you are so spectacularly different on the policy. The debate on the class issue will resolve itself.

If you argue instead that you’re a classy guy, people will just look to The Annointed One to see how classy He is, notice that he sits up straight and smiles so well, and decide He’s the superior one. When you’re the guy who started that debate, the standard imposed on the opposition, is breathtakingly low; if he picks his nose on national TV, but with his pinkie properly extended, alrighty then. That’s class. As to whether that is the most important issue to decide, they’ll see that you brought it up in the first place and make up their minds it was all your idea. And they’ll be right.

The voters were not terribly concerned with policy in this election. They weren’t given too much reason to be.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Heartbeat of Stupid

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Quoting myself, as I engage in debate about this regular sixteen-year event in which the youngest guy wins the election on behalf of a new generation without offering any good ideas.

Why, I wonder, is this a post-World-War-II thing. Young people have always wanted to go out and make their mark; change the world. This notion is fairly young — that this world-changing should be done by voting, with a large mob of people who are of like mind and similar age, to elect the candidate closest to your young generation, without demanding he define what “change” he’s bringing. A hundred years ago, the whippersnapper with stars in his eyes would talk about what HE is going to do. “And then I’m going to marry that girl! Over there! I just know it!”

Okay, some of that I’m conjuring up from movies, which is always a mistake.

But the point stands. There’s been an insidious attack upon the individual sometime during the 20th century. For all the bluster raining down upon us throughout the generations, it seems, looking back, that is the single most significant political transformation within our shores during that hundred years; the individual doesn’t matter very much. Achievement is something you do after you “come together,” and what exactly it is you do, together with the ultimate effect of it, are just meaningless trivialities.

ABC News is reporting that Obama will inherit a bad economy. That’s some rich spin right there; The Messiah In Chief will milk that one for…well, forever. If we repealed term limits and he was in there for ninety years he’d still be playing that one up: I didn’t screw up anything, it’s the “failed policies of George W. Bush.”

You know what ABC is trying to tell you? Obama won the election, and then the Dow tanked the next day.

That’s highly unusual, you know. It’s sufficiently unusual that it really says something about The Chosen One, and it isn’t good. The market is an emotional construct — but not completely so.

For those who’d care to activate the left side of the brain as we proceed to inspect this…it doesn’t require much inspection at all. There’s not much to inspect, because we don’t know a great deal about what The One will do after His Holy Hand comes off the Bible.

We know things are supposed to be better for everyone because He is going to spread the wealth around. As I’ve pointed out before — we’re not that young of a nation. We’ve spread the wealth around before. Always, a generation or two have to pass on by before we think it’s a good idea worth trying again. If it worked out okay, we’d just start doin’ it and stick with it. That didn’t happen.

We also know he’s going to tax the snot out of any company involved with producing oil, so that we pay less for gasoline. Now, remember: We’re thinking with the left brain here. Cause and effect. Facts and conclusions. Reason. You make it more expensive for a company to do business, and the price of the product that company produces, comes down? Come again?

And we know universal healthcare is coming. A lot of other countries have universal healthcare. American patients who need medical care, are not going there to get it. The people who live there, come here.

He’ll end the war no matter what. Wars are ended through negotiation and coordination involving both sides. The point of decision is part of those negotiations. You don’t walk into them with your own commitment already in hand, written up, ready to be tossed on the table. When one side decides to end the war without any concessions from the other, they have a name for that: Surrender.

Other than those…well, if we’re tuning out passions and just sticking to logic and reason, the bottom of the barrel’s been scraped hasn’t it? We’re down to how young and handsome and charismatic he is, and “there’s just something about him!” and tingling feelings in the leg and (planted) schoolgirls fainting when he speaks at those rallies of his…and hope…and change.

And I guess, in 2024, we’ll be doin’ it again. By which time Obama will look like a silly old buffoon, like Bill Clinton, and all the “young” people who voted for him. Well there is some satisfaction in that.

But this isn’t a timeless trend, this heartbeat of stupid. It has an origin, and if you go back in time before that origin, it isn’t here yet. Therefore, it must have a terminus somewhere. How is that brought about, that’s the question. This is still a wonderful, mighty nation that can survive an onslaught of underqualified, lackluster leaders, even in the White House. But it doesn’t deserve to be condemned to an endless, pulsating supply of ’em.

Compassionate Conservatism

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Melissa Clouthier doesn’t want the phrase to be used anymore.

You know what? I’m gonna go ahead and agree with that one. The event Tuesday night could be regarded not so much as a final burial of President Bush’s legacy, but more like a final burial of the dreaded and dubious c.c.

It certainly is a legitimate argument to present, and worth pondering, that c.c. was the primary target of the referendum Tuesday night. Lessee…President Bush was the universal pariah, no question about it. Liberals just plain hated him because of the “R” after his name, plus that whole cowboy smirk/swagger thing. Conservatives recoiled from the ballooning budget. Didn’t hear too much, in 2008, about “thousands of soldiers killed and no WMD.” That doesn’t seem to be the hot topic of the hour. Not post-surge. It’s more all about financial issues. Our government spends too much freakin’ money.

What Happened to Smaller Government?The “compassionate” part of compassionate conservatism, seems to have something to do with making it spend even more. It could be about something else; but I don’t think so. Like President-Elect Obama, it has little definition because it needs little — its intellectual appeal, what there is of it, lies in the fact that its name has been repeated over and over again. It is therefore up to each individual paying attention to form his own understanding of what it is.

And I think it is this: An organized response to what took place in our nation’s political scene, pre George W. Bush. Pre Clinton, actually. Back in the Tip O’Neill days. This is the problem, for which compassionate conservative was formulated as the solution. At least, in my mind…

The most eye-opening civics lesson I ever had was while teaching third grade. The presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest. I decided we would have an election for a class president. We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote.

To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members. We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have. We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot.

The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids. I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he got lots of parental support. I had never seen Olivia’s mother. The day arrived when they were to make their speeches. Jamie went first. He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best. Every one applauded. He sat down and Olivia came to the podium. Her speech was concise. She said, “If you will vote for me, I will give you ice cream.” She sat down. The class went wild. “Yes! Yes! We want ice cream.”

She surely would say more. She did not have to. A discussion followed. How did she plan to pay for the ice cream? She wasn’t sure. Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it. She didn’t know. The class really didn’t care. All they were thinking about was ice cream. Jamie was forgotten. Olivia won by a landslide.

Every time Barack Obama opens his mouth he offers ice cream, and fifty percent of America reacts like nine year olds. They want ice cream. The other fifty percent know they’re going to have to feed the cow.

Compassionate conservatism was a response to this. It was, from the beginning, a solution in search of a problem because orthodox conservatism already had two good responses.

It used to be the response was something like “You’re Americans, and Americans are better than this.” That worked. It meant people should work, get back up again after being knocked down now and then, do things every day a little bit better than they did ’em the day before — in the land of opportunity, sooner or later they’d have their ice cream. Well, Vietnam took care of that, and then Watergate really took care of it. People don’t want to be lectured about decency, from people they know to have done indecent things.

And then, with the Reagan era, people were persuaded to understand the difference between freedom and coercion when it came to helping others less well-off. The Gipper had an easygoing charm and a soft, non-militant adoption of Ayn Rand principles — people saw this, and saw the logic. The light went on. When you labor under state-imposed requirements to remit funds that the state will then, in turn, remit to others…this does not make you a decent person.

This second wave seems to have just kinda gone-somewhere. Nobody’s been able to define what exactly happened to it. Logically, it should’ve worked; historically, it did; it seems it was ultimately defeated by attrition. The younger voters do not like to cast their first ballots over a lifetime, in a landscape in which problems have been solved. They do not like to believe that. The younger generation always wants to believe everything that could’ve been screwed up, has been, and it’s up to them to fix it.

And anyway, since Reagan’s election, the democrat party put up so many “Olivias” to give away ice cream. One of them was named William Jefferson Clinton. Politicians like to solve problems with politics first, you know…you knew that, right?

And so, that second-wave argument didn’t work anymore. Enter the solution in search of a problem. Compassionate conservatism.

Roughly translated:

Hey, let’s have our side give away ice cream too!

The rest is history…and so, today, we find ourselves in the aftermath of Election Day 2008. Compassionate Conservatism. Coffin. Nail. Hammer. Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.

The lesson is a rather simple one. Actually, there’s more than one lesson. First of all — Reagan had it right. You can’t legislate a nation into a state of decency, into feelings of compassion, into caring for others less well-off. These things do not come from a nation’s laws, for the concept of requiring a citizenry to turn over their production to the tax man is antithetical to real charity and compassion. It has to be voluntary or else it doesn’t count.

Secondly: Any principled movement in politics, is monolithic or else it is nothing. You do not compromise these and then expect to prevail over the long term, because by compromising, you’re admitting that the other side is probably correct. This makes it look like you’re trying to snooker someone, even if that isn’t really the case. Think of going out camping and then getting into that argument over whether the driest tinder should be gathered for the campfire, or is it alright to dump any ol’ mossy mess in a pile and try to set it ablaze. You do not say “dry wood burns the best, but in a spirit of compromise let’s gather up some stuff that is kinda sorta wet.” If you know you’re right, and you have the interests of the camping party at heart, you would not be making such a concession. Makes you look like a flim flam man.

That’s the lesson for the Republicans from this one. They tried to put together their own program for giving away ice cream, and in so doing eradicated the meaningful distinction between themselves and the other guys. This has always mystified me about national politics. Compromise, to me, might make some good sense when you’re not in office yet, and you’re trying to get there. Once you’re in, I have the sense that politicians are not too much aware of exactly how rapidly the electorate becomes tired of ’em — it makes far less sense to expunge the defining differences between yourself and the other guys, when you’re in there, being talked-about every single week, with your welcome being a little more thoroughly worn-out by the minute.

So let’s bring the whole compassionate-conservatism train wreck to a halt, right here and now. Real compassion is voluntary. You can’t require someone to be compassionate. And government with regard to domestic matters, no matter what the issue being discussed, is all about force. It has nothing to do with anything that’s elective, and therefore is entirely removed from any discussion about what innately good people we are, or aren’t. Compassionate conservatism is illogical, causes far more problems than it solves, is more expensive than anything we can afford, and politically, over the long term, doesn’t work anyway.

If bodies are to be tossed overboard on the Republican ship, they can start with that bloated carcass right there. Within the realm of American politics, it emerges eminently as the big boondoggle of the new milennium.

Best Sentence XLVII

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

The 47th Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes out tonight to FrankJ…who clinches this, actually, with four sentences. Plus a headline too. It’s a glitch we’ll have to learn to tolerate, as we learn to tolerate something else far less tolerable, so that should make it easy.

Hey, Europe!
Posted by Frank J. on November 4, 2008 at 9:44 pm

So how many black leaders have you elected?

Yeah, I thought so. So shut up.

Racist crackers.

Obama’s Directive 10-289

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

He’s going to try fleshing it out in real life. For the uninitiated, Directive 10-289 is ratified roughly halfway through Atlas Shrugged as an emergency measure. It locks the economy in place.

As they learned the hard way in the subsequent pages, economy, like an education, is motion, not a status, position or level. To lock it in place is to kill it.

Point One: All workers, wage earners, and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment…

Point Two: All industrial, commercial, manufacturing, and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit, nor leave, nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business…

Point Three: All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes, and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift…

Point Four: No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive…

Point Five: Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as is, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more or no less…

Point Six: Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more and no less…

Point Seven: All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive. (But taxes will be allowed to increase as needed for the public good)

Point Eight: All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions shall be final.

It wouldn’t…couldn’t…happen in real life? Could it? We would never do such a silly thing. Or surely, if we did, those responsible would be carved in the concrete of history ignominously. Their names would never enjoy high honor ever again…there’s no way we would do such a thing as, for example, stamp their profiles into our ten-cent pieces and leave them there.

Whoops, though, yes we did such a thing. Yes it did happen. And his face is right there on the dime in your pocket.

Obama’s New Deal No Better Than Old One
By Michael Barone

With victory in sight, Barack Obama’s supporters are predicting that he will give us a new New Deal. To see what that might mean, let’s look back on the original New Deal.

The purpose of New Deal legislation was not, as commonly thought, to restore economic growth but rather to freeze the economy in place at a time when it seemed locked in a downward spiral. Its central program, the National Recovery Administration (NRA), created 700 industry councils for firms and unions to set minimum prices and wages. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), the ancestor of our farm bills, limited production to hold up prices. Unionization, encouraged by NRA and the 1935 Wagner Act, was meant to keep workers in jobs that the unemployed would have taken at lower pay.

These policies did break the downward spiral. But, as Amity Shlaes points out in “The Forgotten Man,” they failed to restore growth.
:
The postwar Republican Congress elected in 1946 dismantled some New Deal anti-growth policies. Labor unions’ powers to strike were sharply restricted. Tax rates were lowered, and wage and price controls were dismantled. Many hold-the-economy-in-place policies were retained until the deregulation of the 1970s and 1980s. But the New Deal was transformed sufficiently to permit buoyant economic growth for two decades after the war.

Obama seems determined to follow policies better suited to freezing the economy in place than to promoting economic growth. Higher taxes on high earners, for one. He told Charlie Gibson he would raise capital gains taxes even if that reduced revenue: less wealth to spread around, but at least the rich wouldn’t have it — reminiscent of the Puritan sumptuary laws that prohibited the wearing of silk.

Here in the 21st century, after millions of schoolchildren have been indoctrinated to the notion that FDR “saved us from the Great Depsression,” economists are just starting to wake up to the idea that the Depression ended in America not because of the New Deal, but in spite of it.

We’re just starting to catch on to that…that the New Deal, like the fictional 10-289, harmed much more than it helped. A vote for Obama on Tuesday says, essentially, “Prove It.”

It’s just like renting this movie. How it ends is guaranteed, even if you’ve not yet personally acquainted with it. The question is whether you’re up to sitting through the frustration, suffering, boredom and misery that will deluge you before the inevitability unfolds. The dialog surrounding the build-up is nothing more than a suffocating formality, no matter how much skilled line-delivery and hopey-changey goodness you want to mix in.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

The Obama Supporter’s Bedfellows

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Go ahead and vote for your Messiah. Just know who’s punching the same chad you are, that’s all I ask.

After all, some of you have been making quite a lot of noise about our bedfellows. It’s only sensible that you put some thought into who’s under your own sheets.

JongErica Jong, and some of her comments as translated from an interview she gave to the Italian magazine Corriere della Sera:

Here’s a translation of Jong’s more spirited quotes to the Milan-based Corriere, as selected by [Christian] Rocca.

“The record shows that voting machines in America are rigged.”

“My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”

“My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.”

“After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…”

“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”

“Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”

She also laments that not all of America’s men of letters share her devotion to Obama.

“Tom Wolfe and John Updike are men of the right and Philip Roth is at this point a hermit who leads a monastic life in Connecticut, far from everything and everybody.”

I would also request you watch the first four minutes of Idiocracy (2006), specifically, the part about what happens to the human race once it is free of natural predators. No natural predators. The necessity to think independently, to resist, to defend, to try and try again, to simply string together words that make some sense — all removed. Nothing left to do except to get along with each other…by sharing a conviction to vote for a thoroughly underqualified candidate for U.S. President.

That’s exactly what’s happening.

Think of an entire species of humanoid, isolated in an ecosystem, each specimen of which is so delusional and addle-minded to seriously believe Dick Cheney is pulling troops out of Iraq in case Obama loses and blood starts running in the streets so he can lead them against the citizenry. Think of such a species starting from scratch, with the wheel yet uninvented and fire yet undiscovered. How far would they get? Indoor plumbing? Electric heating? Calculators? Nuclear fusion?

Penicillin? Voting machines?

Sense to come in out of the rain?

We’re thinking of putting — about to put — people in charge who ought rightfully be sat at the far end of the dining hall, at the kiddie table. Seriously.

Hope Ms. Jong’s back gets better.

H/T: Boortz.

She’s Jumping Ship

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

The democrat faithful who are jumping ship, represent a real event. It’s really going on. Don’t know how big of a phenomenon it is; know way to really find out before Tuesday night.

But I like the substance of what I see of it.

Instead of celebrating [Joe the Plumber’s] aspirations, they were mocked. He wasn’t “a real plumber,” and “They’re fighting for Joe the Hedge-Fund manager,” and the patronizing, “I’ve got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber.”

Having worked in politics, I know that absolutely none of this is on the level. This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines” — a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news. [emphasis mine]

H/T: Neal Boortz.

D’JEver Notice? XIV

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Think of this as an extension of D’JEver Notice? I, in which I made the point that each one of the industries that have “let us down,” if you take the time to inspect how that industry works and how it has morphed in recent history, you find it fails to stand as an example of the weaknesses of capitalism because it no longer adheres to any capitalist model. You have education, healthcare, the world oil market, and — since I wrote that above installment, which has turned out to be prescient — we’ve had this huge ol’ dealy-do with the subprime lending mess.

Capitalism didn’t create those problems. It didn’t leave us; we left it. We started messing around with some cross-breeding against the marxist way of life and that is when the real problems started.

Big Red FlagNow there’s an election upon us in which we get to figure out an answer to the central question: Are we ready to give up on capitalism? Are we ready to put the socialists in charge of our government, unopposed, when they aren’t even ready to admit they’re socialists? And it occurs to me:

Capitalism is “failing” because we have seen it fall short of a standard that is so inherently silly, we cannot even say what it is, out loud, and still preserve a healthy, decent sense of shame. That standard is this:

To motivate all those involved in a financial transaction, to act in the interests of other parties similarly involved, to the detriment of their own.

And here, I’m specifically calling out those “Wall Street traders” who sold those Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) to suckers, along with the banks that made those bad loans in the first place that later on were packaged into these SIVs. That’s your failure of capitalism, there; people failed to look out for one another because we had this “Wild, Wild West” thing going on in the lending industry. Capitalism unfettered and running amok.

To make this look like the Wild West, you’d have to have a very special Wild West. Basically, you’d have to have the Marshal acting as a Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE), sitting on a huge sack of gold bullion. Sort of insuring the town saloon — if Frank Miller shows up on the noon train and starts smashing up the town saloon, the Marshal would have his bag of gold ready. Except he wouldn’t offer a settlement to the saloon owner to replace his big ol’ bar mirror he bought in St. Louis. No, he’d be giving the gold bullion to Frank Miller for smashing up the saloon.

See, the government’s standing behind these bad loans…that’s the genesis of the problem. Now, the bank has to make bad loans. It would be irresponsible of the bank not to. Look at all that free money from the government just waiting to be snatched up out there. That isn’t capitalism.

But anyway. The point is, socialism…which is running for President in six days, and true to form, is afraid to call itself socialism…also has a thoroughly miserable job of living up to this impossible standard. Motivating people to engage in transactions, looking out for everyone else. It doesn’t succeed at this any better than capitalism does. The difference is, a) unlike capitalism, socialism is internally structured to count on meeting this impossible goal; and b) unlike capitalism, when socialism fails to meet this impossible goal, we have a lot of people running around who don’t remember. Seems the folks who suffer from the shortest memories have the loudest voices about this.

In my opinion, Barry O needs to get his talking points in order. Right now, the issue that confronts him is that the people who don’t want to see him win, are making the point Barack Obama wants us to become a socialist country and socialism doesn’t work! And the Obama/Biden campaign has responded with two rejoinders that really should put us in our place:

No he isn’t…

…and…Yes it does.

I know he’s all hopey-changey and makes the leg tingle, etc. But shouldn’t voters at least press him to pick one of those two mutually exclusive responses? No I’m not, and Yes it does. He’s supposed to be so clean and articulate and he likes to use the cliche “Let’s be clear” a lot. Fine. So be clear.

Is an Obama presidency all about giving up on capitalism, or not?

Image credit: Yet another outstanding cartoon resource linked by Rick.

Hopeful Signs

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

File this one under “optimistic exuberance, possibly to the point of derangement.”

…there is another story out there that the MSM refuses to address…I’m referring to the widespread phenomenon of registered Democrats openly supporting John McCain. There are numerous “Democrats for McCain” type organizations. There are numerous websites and blogs written by Democrats touting McCain’s candidacy. There are pro-McCain grassroots efforts being led by Democrats. And we all know friends or relatives who are Democrats, who voted for John Kerry in 2004, and who are no fans of President Bush – but who are going to vote for John McCain this year.

I don’t put a lot of stock in this, for the record. To me, this is unfolding the same way it did sixteen years ago, and I think that’s exactly the stupid little moebius strip under our feet right now.

And that’s exactly the way things are going to stay.

Right down to those first twenty-two months of a youthful, male, charismatic, unopposed, hard-left-liberal presidency…which will bring the wrath of the midterms down on its own arrogant head, in November of 2010. At which time we’ll see a second “Gingrich” revolution — under exactly the same circumstances as in ’94. For exactly the same reasons.

Except this time, with a longer-lasting legacy.

That’s my prediction. You read it here first.

But I still like reading this. Hope this guy turns out to be right, and I turn out to be wrong.

Hat tip: Roland the Gunslinger, at The Saloon.

Perhaps This Will Get the Message Across…

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

…even where all other techniques fail. I’m having such good luck lately commanding the innerwebs to do my bidding, that I have to assume I’m on some kind of a roll and try to make the most of it.

If it doesn’t work, I’m in a position to guarantee it’ll still come in handy. Moreso than I want.

Donated to the public domain. Steal away.

I Am NOT Liveblogging

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

This is not liveblogging, got it? I don’t live-blog.

Having said that, it’s 1813PDT, and I think McCain’s doing alright here. Shaky start, but he landed some blows on this Joe the Plumber thing.

Nobody’s nailing The Enlightened One on this “cut taxes for 95%” thing. He uses it as a catch-all, which is a sign of being backed into a corner.

McCain proposes a spending freeze (1817). I wonder how that’s playing in Peoria.

Schieffer wants to know what he’ll do line-item by line-item. The correct answer is that the President doesn’t get to decide this. Our two candidates are debating what kind of plan they would signal Congress would be warmly received at the White House. Which is a powerful influence, but it’s not appropriate for Presidential candidates to define their plans to that detail, because they don’t control it that way.

Obama wants to lose the war (1820) in order to balance the budget. He’s using different words, but that’s his plan.

McCain retorts with what’s obviously a pre-canned talking point. He delivered it okay, though. Hope it does some damage.

I like how Sarah Palin’s running mate is doing tonight. He’s on the attack, but he doesn’t look desperate. You can’t really ask for more than that, all things considered…

Obama supports clean coal technology. I hope he cleared that with his running mate.

Save (1822). This is NOT liveblogging.

We’re getting into negative campaigning as a campaign issue (1824). You SUCK, Schieffer. How’s that for negative campaigning. This is not a legitimate issue. It isn’t worth talking about. Period. If we want to elect the best guy, the candidates should be able to tell us how they’re better than the other guy…PERIOD. And yeah, that includes William Ayers’ buddy up there.

Oh, that’s clever. McCain is going after the money angle. Yeah Obama spent more money on negative campaigning because he’s had several times more cash to spend on campaigning period. But it’s truthy.

Obama says a hundred percent of McCain’s ads have been negative. Let’s keep an eye out for those “fact checkers” to go to work on this.

Did Obama just say that campaign ads (1828) should be about policy? Did he really say that? So…he says “McCain’s policies are 90% the same as Bush’s policies” that’s what he’s got in mind? I’m sorry — who the hell is falling for this??

Save (1829). This is NOT live-blogging.

Uh…I think McCain just lost the Dallas Cowboy Fan Vote.

I’ve made this point before. People in the crowd who shout things when Gov. Palin speaks…they are somehow connected in some substantial way, a way not definitively named, to John McCain. Every little left-wing sympathizer who makes jokes about Sarah Palin’s vaginer, however, is acting indepdently and nobody else is responsible for the content. On the left-wing side of the fence, nothing is connected to anything else — so there’s more complaining about what’s said in McCain/Palin’s defense, even though the Obama/Biden supporters say nastier things, and say them much more often.

This is such a moose-feces issue. Can we please move on? (1833)

Saving…this is NOT liveblogging.

Ah…he landed a blow on the tee shirts. Obama protests that he has no control (or something, it was kind of a half-sentence). The proper thing for Palin’s running mate to say, would have been a reiteration of what I just said — how come I’m fastened to anything and everything, and my opponent isn’t responsible for anything??

(Even better) Are we ready for that lack of accountability in the Oval Office?

It didn’t happen. We’re still hashing over this phony issue. Yawn (1835).

Obama’s obsequiously chuckling and shaking his head at the mention of ACORN, a signal that he’s going to stick with his talking point that he has nothin’ to do with ’em nowadays. Note to self, this is another place to check for how the “fact checkers” handle this. Obama’s tossing out a bunch of stuff with regard to this, which is all fodder for the fact-checking “process” we have in place (1838).

Obama just said democrats and Republicans have shaped his ideas. Huh. I wonder what Republicans those would be.

What’s really called for here, is a challenge for Sen. Obama to lend his support to a call going out to ACORN, to clean up their shenanigans. That’s only reasonable.

Obama says Joe Biden has great “foreign policy credentials.” I wonder if he read this.

Fox is asking people to text their votes about “Who Won The Debate?” to a number, A for McCain, B for Obama. We’re only forty-one minutes in. Who’s texting?? I can’t think anybody can be more decided on this than I am, but I wouldn’t dream of texting something now…isn’t it traditional for a fight to be over before it’s “won”?

Saving again. But don’t call it live-blogging, because that’s not what I’m doing (1843).

Obama’s been slick and polished throughout this first hour. He starts talking about Gov. Palin, and it’s like his teleprompter burned out. Uh, er, uh, er…sounds like Ted Kennedy when he’s sober. Wonder what that means.

Just finished dinner (1928). Hey — they were talking about education when I left, they’re talking about education now that I’m back. **burp** Anyway, I’m not live-blogging so it’s okay.

Obama…policies of the last eight years. “Failed policies.” Should’ve made a drinking game outta this. For a guy looking forward into the future and change we can believe in, he sure spends a lot of time looking back over the last eight years.

Hey, I just noticed something. He said if we give him his vote, he’ll work tirelessly on “your behalf.” Now, I’m not votin’ for him, and I don’t make more than 250k a year…but what if both of those were the case? I don’t think jacking up my taxes so that he can “spread the wealth” he took away from me, is working on my behalf. That would come under the heading of “common good” or some such rot, wouldn’t it? Isn’t that a lie right there?

Joe the Plumber got fifteen mentions from McCain and another five from Obama. Ha! Yay, Joe. Draft Joe. I like Joe. Hey, there’s his last name on the screen…crickey…I think I could memorize Mr. Spock’s last name quicker. W-u-r-z-e-l-b-a-c-h-e-r. Huh. Palin/Wurzelbacher/2012. It does have a certain ring to it.

Best Sentence XLIV

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

The forty-fourth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes to a nameless interviewer in a New Yorker cartoon. The interviewer, conducting a job interview, has a line that is reconciled against the situation involving unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers, buddy-n-pal of Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

I’m trying to find a way to balance your strengths against your felonies.

H/T: Kate at Small Dead Animals.

I’ll Pick You Up, No Questions Asked

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Priceless. And adorable.

Everyone in the commercial seems to have been born well after Jimmy Carter left office. And yet they seem so sure of themselves. Cute.

What I Really Want to Learn from the Debate Tonight

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

More than anything else…is…

…what’s the setting on the thermostat in Obama’s hotel suite? It isn’t 72 degrees, is it?

McCain’s Positions, The Messiah’s Glorious Name

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

What happens when you pair the two of them together?

What indeed…

Simply amazing. Each one of these folks casts a vote every bit as influential and meaningful as yours.

Wouldn’t it be great if the questioner went on to say, “…and what do you think of all these people who say Sarah Palin is unqualified? What do you think their real motivation might be?”

But you can’t have everything, I suppose.

H/T: Black and Right, and thanks to Phil for pointing it out to me in an offline.

Negative Advertising

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

I was just wondering when, exactly, it became known as “going negative” to rattle off one or several reasons why people should vote for you over the other guy. Along comes Thomas Sowell

When the truth about what he actually did as governor was brought out during the Presidential election campaign, the media were duly shocked — not by Dukakis’ record, but by the Republicans’ exposing his record.

John Kerry, with a very similar ultra-liberal record, topped off by inflammatory and unsubstantiated attacks on American military men in Vietnam, disdained the whole process of labeling as something unworthy. And the mainstream media closed ranks around him as well, deploring those who labeled Kerry a liberal.
:
…those in the media who deplore “negative advertising” regard it as unseemly to dig up ugly facts instead of sticking to the beautiful rhetoric of an election year. The oft-repeated mantra is that we should trick to the “real issues.”

What are called “the real issues” are election-year talking points, while the actual track record of the candidates is treated as a distraction — and somehow an unworthy distraction.

Yup. Invariably, when someone says “let’s get back to the real issues” the next two or three sentences that come after have something to do with “eight years of Bush.” These are people who credit themselves with looking boldly forward into the future. And so seldom do I get to see ’em do it.

Nor is anyone accused of “going negative” when they spew their bile and venom about “Bush.” Somehow, that ‘un gets a pass.

She Said What??

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Hillary Clinton, in response to the “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra of the Republicans…

“Jobs, baby, jobs”

Well…now we know which one of the Clintons has the ballz. If I was her, this was the last thing I’d say.

Quoting myself from last week…and not a damn thing’s changed since then, so far as I know…

Sometimes the right side of the issue is to “do something!” and the left side is “don’t do that!”…With raising the minimum wage, it’s the left that says we should do something and the right that says we should not…But here’s something that remains consistent:

The “left” answer always has to do with making things more expensive.

And the drilling, which is supposed to be exactly what Hillary had in mind, is a great example of that. Import our oil and don’t drill for it, gas stays expensive; import it and drill it, price of gas comes down. Supply and demand. So of course the democrats are opposed to drilling. They say it’s all about global warming or the caribou or “pristine arctic wilderness” or some such rot. But with this issue, and many others, the democrat way keeps prices high, high, high.

And Hillary’s concerned about jobs baby jobs? The jobs directly connected to the drilling that the democrat party voted down — all by themselves — may number in the thousands.

And then, as just a few of the hundreds of comment authors noted directly, there is the matter of how to tax the businesses that would be creating these jobs. But look at the rest of the comments. They think this three-word rejoinder of Hillary’s was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So the democrats are all about creating jobs? While making it more expensive to employ people, in every single way they possibly can?

I don’t blame the politicians; I have to blame the people who fall for this. What is it with people on the left? Do they honestly believe when you make something more expensive for people to provide, you’ll get more of it? Or do they just not care?

BQIHORL

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Dozens and dozens of times now, this blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, has been handing out awards for the Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL). We started calling it that when we realized it was senseless to hand out awards for “This Year’s Best Sentence” or “This Week’s Best Sentence.” That’s the nature of wonderful sentences; you can go eons without hearing anything worth repeating, and then wham bam, twice in a single day you’ll get some real gems. We wanted to be prepared. So we made the time increment entirely arbitrary. And, of course, sometimes you hear these things, sometimes you read ’em. Heard Or Read covers all that.

This has worked out great. Until now. Blogger friend Phil has come up with what is, undoubtedly, the Best Question I’ve Heard Or Read Lately. I mean, there’s lotsa questions that are good; this one’s a humdinger.

It’s got to do with the Bradley Effect. Go on, read up if you need to.

Here we go…

Question about the so-called “Bradley Effect”

Has anybody asked if the so-called “Bradley Effect” might not be so much to do with whites not wanting to appear biased toward the white candidate, but to blacks not wanting to admit that they’re voting for the white guy?

I mean, I can’t see too many whites giving two whits about the skin tone of someone I voted for. But it appears to me that if you’re black and you’re not voting for the black candidate … you’re some sort of sell-out, Uncle Tom, traitor to your race.

Just askin’. I always hear it portrayed as a phenomenon having to do with whites. Has the flip side of that question even been asked?

I suppose it doesn’t very much matter. If you have a Bradley Effect, you can measure it in terms of a number of percentage points, go forward the next election cycle, and extrapolate that many percentage points to recalibrate what’s going to happen against your polling data. That would work, except for — one candidate or the other is a bigger jackass than either of the candidates four years previous…or the region is different (one in the deep south, one not, for example). My point is, the reason would be irrelevant — which demographic is most heavily affected, would be irrelevant.

But Phil’s point is well-taken. Conventional wisdom, as summed-up in the Wikipedia article, is that “some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation.” Conventional wisdom, therefore, is going out of its way to make white voters look like dickholes. Phil’s theory relies on the premise that the social stigma involved in shunning a candidate of color is at least as odious within the black community, as it is in the white community. And, to us, this just seems obvious. We think Phil’s on to something. For whatever it’s worth.

How could it become relevant? Well, some regions of this great country have more or less of a ratio of African-American voters than others. As a whole, the last census indicates the population to be 36 million out of 301, or just under 12%.

Barack Obama is currently leading John McCain by 7.3 percentage points. Some polls have him ahead by six. Some less than that.

This is a problem for The Chosen One.

Dont’ look at me. I’m white; I’m voting against The Messiah, not because of the color of his skin, but because I want more terrorists killed. That’s the way I’m voting and that’s exactly what I’m telling the pollsters, so there’s no Bradley Effect going on here…but I live in California, which Obama’s going to win by a double-digit margin anyway.

“Doesn’t Anybody Have a Conscience Anymore?”

Friday, October 10th, 2008

Newsbusters again

Gov. Sarah Palin parachuted into a phone interview on the Laura Ingraham show in the last minutes of the program today at about ten minutes to Noon eastern. She urged citizens (and by extension, the media) to demand answers from Barack Obama and Joe Biden about Bill Ayers, ACORN, and Obama’s record of voting against protections for infants born alive after an unsuccessful abortion.

“I don’t see the other ticket being asked to be truthful and give details,” she said. She added that Obama’s positions are “so far left,” but they’re being “packaged up to look pretty and mainstream, and they are not.”
:
On Ayers, Palin said Obama hasn’t told the “total truth” about his long-time association with an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” On ACORN, she said they are pushing voter fraud. “Doesn’t anybody have a conscience any more?” She urged, America to “wake up and ask thse questions.”

Based on some experience watching some talking points blossom and others die on the vine, it seems to me our problem is with these “soft referendums” that pass unanimously without being put to a vote. Like for example: What’s mean? We’ve somehow decided what’s mean and what isn’t, to the complete advantage of liberal democrats, without any meaningful dissents, and without actually casting ballots.

Sen. McCain points at Sen. Obama during a townhall debate and uses the words “that one.” That’s mean. Obama’s official campaign makes fun of Sen. McCain because his wartime injuries leave him unable to use a computer keyboard…that isn’t mean.

What’s bipartisanship? That’s another one. John McCain has made a big show out of being able to work with Barack Obama and other liberal democrats. I haven’t heard of Sen. Obama making any similar and opposite declarations about his readiness, willingness, or ability to work with Republicans. All I’ve seen him do is blame Bush for any little fly in the ointment…often changing the subject, to the point of offense, to do so.

And yet among those who think the answer to our problems is to “rise above partisanship and do what’s best for the country” — the overwhelming consensus is to flock to The Chosen One, whom any honest analysis would declare has very, very little to do with rising above partisanship. How does this dovetail with their decree that partisanship caused our problems and bipartisanship will end them? What’s that got to do with an Obama administration? Again: It’s a soft referendum. It was put to “The People,” supposedly, but decided, unanimously, without voting.

People like to run around babbling a bunch of stuff and nonsense about what independent thinkers they are. It just ain’t so.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.