House of Eratosthenes

I still remember how it stung when I found out Ross Perot was crazy, and how this disuaded me from supporting the very idea of third parties for years afterward. Actually, right up until this week. But I also remember how Arnie was elected Governor of California. Gray Davis won the 2002 election, and we were scolded, tut-tutted, knuckle-rapped, that “The People Had Spoken” and Gov. Davis was the representation of that will, don’t we dare question it. The recall petition, therefore, was pre-destined to fail. Well, now. That isn’t how history unfolded, is it.

I’m looking at President Obama and I’m seeing another Gray Davis. The representation of vox populi…”mandate” and everything…we shall not question it…but what does one say, when we do so question, and this popularly-elected official is popped like a soap bubble Gray-Davis style?

I don’t understand Obama’s base at all, and I understand very little of what’s popular. But I do understand there is a common theme to the dissatisfaction simmering nationwide lately, and Obama’s policies, to the extent they can be defined, don’t seem to address this theme much.

Maybe it’s time.

If I wrote the platform, I notice I wouldn’t have to choose between “What I Know Is Right Come Hell Or High Water” and “What The People Want”. Those two appear to have merged. And they merge here…

Don’t Pass On More Debt to Our Children.

How would a party like that work out? It seems to me, if the Obama voters are being honest, a large chunk of their crowd would swarm over to my new party. How many times have we heard it…”spending under George W. Bush at an all time high, public debt swelled to ten trillion, expen$ive War in Iraq costing umpthyfratz billion a day, blah blah blah.” Would it not be fair to say this is part of Obama’s “mandate,” even though The Chosen One doesn’t seem to be acting on it?

I’d say, let’s take baby steps. Let’s start with passing on a public debt to our children, equal to or lesser than what it is now — adjusted for inflation. Let’s define a generation as twenty years.

Yes I know how the public debt swelled over the last eight years. The George Bush compromise was, support the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, mister democrat congressman, and I’ll put my signature under any feel-good social program you care to name. Maybe that’s just the way people behave once they get real power. Maybe it was even the responsible thing to do. I gotta admit, if you make me choose between a President who’s willing to bribe a congressman to protect the country, and a congressman who’s going to bitch and piss and moan about “war crimes” until he gets his bribe and then suddenly shuts up…I know which one I’d trust more, and it isn’t the congressman.

But I simply can’t get behind this. President Freeberg would have said, this is the right thing to do, and if you don’t support it I’ll do everything I can to make sure you pay a cost for failing to protect the country at the voting booth. And you won’t get one nickel of spending past my veto pen over this.

But then again, President Freeberg probably wouldn’t have achieved that compromise, or any other. It’s very likely President Freeberg would have been stuck in a shouting match with Congress, with no troops mobilized anywhere.

Still and all, I can’t accept that we need to nearly double our public debt anytime some asshole like Saddam Hussein starts making trouble for the sake of making trouble.

From what I’m gathering, the democrats are getting elected by faking this “responsible stewardship of nation’s purse strings” thing. Their support comes from the idea that Former President Bush, all by his lonesome, stuck a valve in the public debt innertube and started pump pump pumping away. I think the electorate voted for whoever would pay the debt down, or at least quit racking it up. This other stuff democrats want…tax cuts are evil, we need Europe to like us moar better, you’re not a citizen you’re a serf, every little thing different about you makes you part of a complaining advocacy group, all men are rapists, guns iz bad, ten commandments are offensive, black people can’t make it without help, seventy languages are better than one, and my all-time favorite, all elections were stolen unless the democrat won ’em — the public is not, repeat not, on board.

I think the public wants fiscal conservatism.

I think they’re sold on the notion that tax hikes aren’t the answer. I think if you pass a true-false test around, with one question: “If you raise a tax rate 20%, you collect 20% more revenue” — the vast majority will, rightfully, choose FALSE. Furthermore, I think the public understands it is not only possible, but probable, that the public policy can raise more money by cutting tax rates.

But I think they further understand that raising the revenue is not the problem. Spending the revenue is the problem. Congress is entrusted with a responsibility of which, by design, it can never be worthy. My guys are doing a great job, your guys are demanding all these stupid line items in the budget we don’t really need. The system is not hospitable to the process of trying to bring a budget under control. We know this for a fact, because we have pretty much the same governmental structure in the states and they’re having exactly the same problem.

This is the source of the public’s discontent. They desperately want to send the message to Washington that spending should be brought under control — we don’t want all these feel-good programs, we don’t see ourselves as that weak, and we don’t need some burgeoning, bloated, tricked-out nanny state to tell us when our kids need to be wearing seat belts, or to put miniature trampolines under the trees for when those poor squirrels fall out of ’em.

And they don’t want a huge mess o’bailouts.

That’s why it’s so rare for the politicians to really come out and support the bailouts. It’s always the other guy supporting them. The guy you’re talking to, he hasn’t got a word to say about it, he just votes for the bailout.

That’s wrong, and the electorate knows it. They want it fixed. This time, neither one of the major parties is up to the task…or if either one really is, it isn’t really inspiring confidence in that department.

Well, you wouldn’t trust a software program until you had seen it compile and done some testing. What could we do to check out a third party before we put it in charge of the entire country? We should run it on a smaller system, yes? Something like one forth of the country. But what do we have that is national and about a quarter of the country? The only thing that comes to mind is the Democrat and Republican parties. If you are serious, there will be no third party, because any group of people rated to run the country have the skills to take over one of the two parties and make them like it. If they can’t do that, then they are doomed to bloody failure and the crippling of their goals, as they hand elections to the party most unlike them by splitting the vote. It is still a winner take all system. As Jessie found out, you can run as an Independent, but the parties will still be there. Or are you planning a bloody purge?
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 01/28/2009 @ 12:27
Those other fellows put their software module in charge of everything, after “it” hadn’t been tested anywhere. It seems to have worked out extraordinarily well for them. At least, as far as getting the software sold.

It occurs to me the negotiating of ideas is very much like the budgeting process. The mistake we’re making in evaluating the ideas, is exactly the same as what Congress is doing with the budget. Certain “line items” deserve to bite it. Period, end of story — they deserve to be bounced out. But it isn’t happening. We’re living in this weird era in which everything, no matter how non-sensical, is deserving of consideration.

That’s where McCain went wrong: Too good at compromising. And that’s an indictment against the Republican party bosses because it was precisely what they ordered up, precisely what they thought would precede a win. They were dead wrong. McCain doesn’t really say anything because he doesn’t reject anything. If you aren’t willing to cross anything off, you aren’t really willing to jot anything down…and then, what you become, is a lousy messenger. People don’t have confidence in you. He was alright on abortion, but what other conservative principle did he uphold, hell-or-highwater, no matter what, come-what-may? Certainly not fiscal conservatism.

So here we have this irony: Perhaps the most skilled and capable messenger in the White House, ever, right now. But is the electorate completely satisfied? All arguments people want carried to the capitol, carried there, and implemented? Not hardly. There’s a blistering frustration, and it’s gonna get worse…even thoough this election was so wonderful and firework-ey and hopey and changey.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and all these “Obama’s Still Wonderful!!” newspaper headlines properly echo the sentiments of my countrymen. I don’t think I’m wrong, though.

I’m not proposing something quite so much as announcing an inevitability. The People have been denied the opportunity to relay a message they desperately want relayed. Some kind of way will be found. Just like those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park finding a way to breed: Life will find a way. Perhaps that will come at the expense of the existence of the Republican party, as we know it today. That is, after all, how it came into being in the first place — serving as a conduit for a message the citizens wanted sent, that the two parties at that time were not conveying.
- mkfreeberg | 01/28/2009 @ 14:23
I think the public wants fiscal conservatism.

I think they want the 21st century equivalent of bread ‘n’ circuses. The “public” doesn’t give a Big Rat’s Ass about much of anything except American Idol. The proof is in the pudding, innit? The “pudding” being the election…
- Buck | 01/28/2009 @ 14:51
So all that rhetoric about “George Bush’s expensive war in Iraq” was expendable? The election would’ve turned out exactly the same way without all that?

Let’s turn it around: How much campaigning did you hear about “put us democrats in charge again so we can spend money like it’s going out of style”? Did you hear that, even once?

No, this is a fiscally conservative nation. Republicans were put in when they promised to put a brake on things, and they got booted out when they failed to do so. Simple as that.
- mkfreeberg | 01/28/2009 @ 15:32
This is a fiscally conservative nation that also wants to see things get done. Bush understood that which is why he was the best president a fiscal conservative could hope for. Unfortunately he was betrayed by the “base”, which wanted to tilt at windmills while the Democrats kept raking in the pot. You would think seventy years of trying to beat something(the New Deal) with nothing would teach the “base” that it’s time for a new strategy. The Republicans did put a brake on things, did spend less on earmarks and general spending then the Democrats, but it wasn’t good enough for the “base”, which had to teach “them” a lesson. Now we are seeing the Democrats plan to spend trillions. Once again the “base” was happy to have the perfect kill the good, and slide the country down the Socialist slope in the process. So it goes…….
- Robert Mitchell Jr. | 01/28/2009 @ 15:46
Let’s take a look at what wasn’t good enough for the base, shall we?

1
2
3
4

There’s more out there, all you have to do is look…

Your points would be well-taken, Robert, if over the last ten years or so Republicans really were “good.” Unfortunately, they weren’t — they were “compassionate,” which means, “spend money to grease the rails with social advocacy groups rather than selling your plans on the merits,” something the democrats have been doing consistently since 1932. So the electorate pretty much acted as one on this thing. Why settle for an imitation brand, they figured?

Why did the rest of us vote for McCain? To stop something bad from happening. McCain, personally, was successfully intimidated from selling himself that way. So your quibble is not with the “base”; McCain’s campaigning style relied on main-street voters, people who don’t give a rip about politics, reading between the lines and figuring out for themselves that there was something toxic being pushed here, McCain had a pint of it, Obama had a quart.

That dog just won’t hunt. This is America — people may not put as much thought into what they’re buying as they should, but once they decide on what to buy, they want LOTS of it.
- mkfreeberg | 01/28/2009 @ 16:05
“Time for a Third Party?”

Damn it, you mean I missed the first two!?! Ah come on man, I’m telling ya’ those rumors are totally exaggerated. Invite me next time will ya’?

Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Snow is pilling up so I’m trying to stay in a good mood.

Anyways, a Third Party system won’t work. In short you’ll just end up dividing the votes even more. Theoretically a president could then be elected with, what 34% of the vote?

As for the Dem’s screaming “George Bush’s expensive war in Iraq”, that was just BS just like, “The Army is broken”, “Anyone who joins the military is either poor and/or stupid”, “There’s not enough armor”, “4000 deaths!!!,” etc. Just them grasping at straws to try and make BOOOOSH’s war look bad.
- tim | 01/28/2009 @ 16:09
As for the Dem’s screaming “George Bush’s expensive war in Iraq”, that was just BS just like…

The purported concern over penny pinching might have been BS, in many cases. But my hard data trumps your rhetoric, I’m afraid.

Going all the way back to the Gingrich revolution, Repubs have done a horrible job of slamming the treasury doors shut on things. Is there really a point of disagreement here?

Seventy-six years ago, even FDR was reluctant to engage in deficit spending, which somehow seems today to be a point of agreement between dems & reps…at least, the beltway ones.
- mkfreeberg | 01/28/2009 @ 17:01
Maybe we’re comparing apples and oranges. I won’t disagree that Americans by and large want less spending but I just took exception to that particular example coming from the Left. They we’re just so disingenuous concerning everything in that regard which clouded my reasoning and I missed your intended point.

And you are correct that R’s have done a horrible job concerning spending our money, and I’ll never understand it. (Your example is worthy of considering). It’s the one thing many people, even those who don’t consider themselves R’s or Conservatives, being confident about them adhering to. The line has now been blurred and voters look to other issues to vote on since there is no difference between the two parties. Maybe that’s why when McCain was up by two points in Sept. he consequently lost after the financial crises erupted.

My two cents, carry on.
- tim | 01/28/2009 @ 17:31

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Time for a Third Party?Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

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Wednesday, January 28th, 2009