Archive for July, 2009
How Can You Claim Moral Superiority Voting For Bob Barr?–UPDATED
Saturday, July 18th, 2009“Don’t blame me!” Bellowed one of my redneck relatives,”I voted for Ross Perot!” Did ya now? And that vote wasn’t a “screw you” vote, that felt inwardly satisfying while it also served Bill Clinton the presidency on a nice, silver platter (the one taking a prominent position on a shelf in his sprawling residence out on Long Island)? Oh no! It was a vote of conscience. It was a morally superior vote. Sniff.
Have conservatives, libertarians, and other factions on the Right learned nothing from history?
So now, people are coming out of the woodwork saying, “Don’t blame me! I voted for Bob Barr!” I ask you, Is that something to be proud of?
John McCain was a terrible candidate for a myriad of reasons I won’t list here. Rather than blogging anything negative, many times, I just held my tongue. (Other times, not so much.) Why? Do I and all conservatives who voted for John McCain lack a spine and principles? Some would say so. Did I hold my nose and vote for John McCain because I’m a conservative sellout?
I voted for John McCain for precisely the reasons we’re seeing right now. President Barack Obama is a statist. He’s a socialist. He wants to remake America into some liberal delusional utopian fantasy and he’s damn near succeeded at every single thing he’s wanted to do.
My brother was in Venezuela last week and talked to a local businessman who marveled of Chavez,”It’s amazing how much has changed in four years. How quickly it happened.” And it wasn’t good change. And he wasn’t hopeful. Do those who voted for Obama honestly think a slide of Venezuela-like proportions is impossible?
President Obama is a disaster for America and I hold those who voted for Bob Barr every bit as accountable as if the so-called principled person voted for Barack Obama himself. It was a vote that aided and abetted an enemy of freedom. How can a freedom-loving person be proud of this?
Stacy McCain’s defense for a Bob Barr vote is this:
A couple of days ago, I explained in a phone conversation with a buddy that, if I’m going to get screwed over, I’d much rather be screwed over by my enemies than by my friends.
Well, we’re not being screwed, these days. We’re being freaking gang-raped. And while I knew that a John McCain vote meant some serious discomfort in the future, there is no way in hell he would have presided like Barack Obama. Fiscal policy alone would have been drastically different. Does anyone really believe that a John McCain presidency would have sold out the country to the Unions? Does anyone really believe we’d have to be beating back the biggest power grab by the federal government ever?
The “teach you a lesson” folks want Americans and most especially, Republicans, to learn that Obama’s statist ideas are huge failures. After all these huge policy disasters come to pass, go ahead and say “Nah, nah, ne-nah nah!” That’s some hollow victory. America will have gone down the shitter. Yay, you! You were dead right! But dead.
Still, that does not mean that I believe conservatives and libertarians need to bend over now. Hells bells. We have nothing left to lose. And this is where I believe Ace is wrong. Here’s what Ace says:
But I really hope we don’t lose sight of the fact that we’re in a bad position — worse than we anticipated, I think it’s fair to say — and that winning is indeed preferable to “losing with principle and ideological integrity.”
Oh yes, we’re in a bad position. But the time to take on the mantel of appeasement is not now. Now is the time to push back against our squishy, fuzzy-headed Republican overlords. They have the equation all backwards. And since every branch of the government is now in the hands of the Left, conservatives and libertarians can fight nearly without restraint and expect the corrupt, bloated, entitled, DC power brokers to get in line or lose.
We are six months in on a four year hell sentence folks. If the Republican leadership can’t get religion in these circumstances, they deserve to lose. Again and again and again.
Here are some things that need to change:
King making: Don’t tell me Mitt Romney will lead us out of this mess. Please. Democrats love him because they know he is eminently beatable (just like McCain). Republicans should stop handing down the Republican nomination to the next guy who has done his time. It’s stupid. It nets us terrible candidates. Also, the NRSC needs to stop endorsing ANYONE. Let the local Republicans decide and then the party can throw their weight behind the Republican candidate (no matter how left, right, middle) with abandon. Ace is right about this: we need people with “R’s” behind their names.
Sniping: Some Republicans seem not to notice who the real enemies are here. FOCUS PEOPLE. We are getting our asses handed to us and we are helping the other side by piling on. If the RNC makes a mistake, if Michael Steele misspeaks, etc., unless someone is doing something horribly destructive (hello ACU), SHUT UP. For every one stupid thing Republicans do or say, there are fifty seriously stupid, hugely detrimental things Democrats are doing. How long must we bleed before we stop cutting ourselves? Turn the weapons on the enemy and then fight like badgers behind closed doors. Maybe this year at CPAC we can have a padded room and just let Republicans have cage matches. Get out our aggression and then get our sad asses together so we can return to the problems at hand–you know, a decimated economy, smothering socialist policies and on and on.
Stop Talking About A Constitution Or Third Party: It’s crazy talk. Stupid, moronic, dull-witted, self-defeating crazy talk. It won’t happen. It’s not going to happen. Let’s clean up the Republican house and start at the bottom. Get involved. And stop the delusional fantasizing.
Embrace Partisanship: How can any Republican still be squishy these days? How can a Republican not see that their party didn’t lose because of being so conservative but by being so all over the road? When Susan Collins and Olympia Snow voted for the Stimulus, they enraged Republicans further. If you can vote for huge spending, how can you consider yourself a Republican? I’ll allow for the social issues. Most thinking people understand that a Texas Republican is a different animal than a New England Republican. But can’t we all agree that smaller government which means more individual freedom is quintessentially Republican? If you’re not that… why are you Republican? Go. Away. Like Arlen Specter. Really, you’re already a Democrat.
Message better: Can we agree that John McCain is woefully inadequate at communicating either Republican or conservative values? I don’t see many doing much better. And yo, Tea Party people: If there’s someone who communicates the small government values well Let Them Speak. If they are actually a Republican, fine. Newsflash, people: The problem is politicians and the solution will be politicians too. It’s not like they’re a pure breed in a pure business.
Anyway, I don’t see any honor in voting Bob Barr. I don’t see any honor in losing. And I don’t see what we have left to lose. Conservatives and libertarians should come out with teeth bared and put some bite behind the bark. If that means going hard after fat-n-happy-n-lazy incumbents, fine. If the old guys are forced to stand on their unprincipled records, and fall, fine. But more than that, the lazy, disorganized and dithering local and state Republican party folks need to snap to attention. If they don’t, buh bye. This is where the Tea Party can be extraordinarily effective. And from there the party will change. And hopefully, for the better.
In the meantime, it’s fun to be the out-of-power party. Republicans are so far out of power, they literally are helpless before the Democrats socialistic onslaught. But in this position there is opportunity. Pick battles. Offer better alternatives. Regroup. Clean house. Tighten the belt. Get back in shape. And never lose an opportunity to point out how pure, unfettered liberalism is a destructive force. Highlight all the failures. And there will be many.
Before this is all over, conservatives, libertarians and everyone else is going to be reminded of why a bad Republican is better than the best Democrat on his best day. And that’s why I voted for John McCain. Because I already knew this and needed no reminding.
Since we lost, it’s time to give up going with crappy candidates. It’s time to rebuild the team. We can start making bad Republicans better or boot them and find great Republicans and elect them. Here’s my gamble: the Democrats are going to screw things up so badly, nearly any Republican will look good in comparison. We need to make sure that a nice solid conservative-small-government type is the Republican.
P.S. The Republicans who vote for these big government policies will pay. The policies will fail and they’ll be hugely unpopular with voters. Voting with a popular President buys you good press and immediate gratification but it’s a long-term losing, unprincipled decision.
UPDATED:
McQ opens a can of whup ass on me. He quite rightly notes that the Barr vote didn’t make a dent in Obama’s electoral superiority. A Barr vote did nothing except register discontent. What about the next election? You know, when there are more impure Republicans? Do the libertarians plan to vote for an independent or vote for a Democrat?
I’ll grant you, the choices have been grim. After this election, in a fit of pique I wrote that I was glad McCain lost. And McQ’s sentiment here rings true to me, too:
Barack Obama sits in the White House not because of Bob Barr or the libertarian vote. He sits there because the GOP has completely and totally failed to live up to its claimed philosophy and its word for decades. John McCain’s nomination told libertarians all they needed to know about the lack of seriousness within the GOP to remedy that situation.
If the GOP wants libertarian votes, then it had better mend its ways. We don’t do “tents” and we don’t do “plantations” and we don’t belong to the GOP. You want us, you’d better do what it takes to get us – and you’re not even close right now.
Fine. All I’m saying is that McCain WOULD be better than Obama and I don’t want to see the Right fracture into delusion that nets us socialists in charge. That is worse. Much worse. It is worse right now.
And who owes the GOP anything? The party owes the faithful an apology for treating the base with contempt. And it would help, like I said above, if the Republicans wouldn’t undercut their own position by being corrupt, arrogant, and big government, but not quite as big as Democrats, they would still have a party. Thus, my bringing up Snowe and Collins.
But the Libertarians don’t help anything by flopping around at the edges and indulging in third party fantasies. Libertarians needs to put their formidable energy into the Republican party at the bottom and take the party back to constitutional greatness.
President Obama Promised Help “Immediately”
Friday, July 17th, 2009How immediate is immediately?
Four months later……
And what little stimulus money that has been spent (more on that at the end) has gone to keeping government bureaucrats in their cozy little jobs doing much of nothing. The private sector (where the vast majority of us work) is the one taking the pounding here.
I posted a sample of state unemployment yesterday, showing the spread of unemployment like a cancer across the nation. Today we can add historic unemployment in Kentucky, Idaho and Illinois. Is the stimulus package working? Of course not! The money is not getting out of the lethargic and bloated federal bureaucracy. The latest numbers on the 6 federal organizations I have been tracking is as abysmal as it has been for the last 5 months since the liberal stimulus-pork experiment was rammed through Congress. Here are the charts as of last week (July 10th, 2009).
And MaxedOutMama, my favorite economist says:
So we could be seeing a knock-on effect from the depressed manufacturing areas. It’s hard to know. It’s also possible that the auto parts dealers followed the regular shutdown schedule. My impression based on some of the county data is that we are moving into the scorched-earth cycle for the more depressed areas in which small businesses start shedding employees or shutting down, and small retail mostly gives up the ghost.
I hope I’m wrong, but I have unemployment heading to around 11% in 2010.
There is another problem with seasonal adjustments in times of rapid economic change. Conceptually, closing of school systems or the closing of auto plants has a set effect on jobs related to the actual number of those jobs, and if claims are high from other layoffs, the Seasonal Factor (because it is expressed as a percent of the whole) may either under or over correct. This problem is kind of blatantly obvious in continuing claims this week, which are reported to have dropped 642,000, when in actuality they rose close to 64,000.
Yeah. Not too immediate.
Small Businesses Screwed By Dem Health Care Plan & The Poor & Middle Class Will Suffer
Friday, July 17th, 2009Head count. Reducing head count is the quick and dirty way for companies to cut costs because employee salaries make up the biggest percentage of overhead in most businesses. So, when other costs go way up, when the economy is too weak to support raising prices, what’s a businessperson to do? He must, to stay in business, reduce head count.
Usually, the employees lost are not the guys creating new products or the guys selling the products (if they sell well). Usually, the first employees to go are the support staff, the less productive, the less value-added. They are usually pay less well. That is, while the necessary decision-makers might take pay cuts, the support staff just get cut. The head guys can get their own coffee and read their own email and fax their own contracts, if they must.
And so, during the worst economy since Jimmy Carter and Disco, the Democrats introduce a Health Care Plan that will force small business owners to make very difficult decisions. If they want to stay in business during this oppressive economic environment, while being compliant with this new bill, they’ll have to lose employees. They will agonize over these choices because small businesses are like families. They know one another. They know the struggles. They’ve slipped a suffering employee something extra to make it. They’ve not paid themselves so that no one gets fired.
But everyone’s hand gets forced sometimes and the government is going to be forcing some hands. Jimmie Bise, once again, has a must-read American Issues Project post. He gives an example:
Let’s up the ante a little bit. Company B consists of an owner, who also doubles as general manager (and pays herself a rather modest $80,000 per year), and ten part-time employees who each make $35,000, for a payroll of $430,000. That’s large enough to trigger the full 8 percent penalty, which comes to $34,400. Well, that’s just about one employee’s salary, so out he goes, which not only covers the fine but also brings Company B under the $400,000 threshold, which means a potential smaller fine next year. Bonus!
Company B could easily be a car dealership, a local insurance office, a mid-sized construction company or contractor, or a retail store where the salespeople work at least partly on commission. This could be the final straw that convinces the owner to say “To hell with it.”
This isn’t just a thought exercise, though. There’s an action component as well. Look at the businesses you patronize regularly or even just the ones you drive past on the way to work. Look at your own employer, or the businesses where your friends and family work. How many of them will face the choice of firing someone to pay for the Obamacare fine or to limbo their payroll under the Democrats’ bar? Will that perpetually-cheerful cashier at the local convenience sore still be there this time next year if Obamacare passes? How about that electrician with the young wife and baby who always does great work and let you slide on a service call that one time? Shouldn’t they know what could be coming their way?
Most of the Democrats, though, are clueless about how business actually works. More importantly, they don’t care. With their focus on redistribution, what they don’t realize is that small businesses can MAKE themselves smaller, still survive, to stay compliant with egregious government rules or pay fines that cost them less than the rule.
Hopefully, all this won’t matter. Hopefully, for once, Congress will listen to the people, who are now resoundingly against Obama’s plan.
Tsk, Tsk Black Man! You Need To Be More Like A Wise Latina!
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Why can’t all minorities understand that white liberals know what’s good for them? Why do they have to get all uppity and think differently? Further, why would a black man want to rely on facts instead of his empathy?
Bad minority via Ed Morrissey who says, “I just love it when white politicians set themselves up as arbiters of racial authenticity, especially when they try to scold minorities for drifting off the political reservation. It belies a “soft” bigotry, if you will, when Barbara Boxer assumes all black people think the same and hold the same opinions — or even worse, that they should.”
Good minority via Townhall. See what fawning praise a good minority gets for being good and compliant and empathetic–which is to say, hold all the correct view held by liberal white betters:
No wonder Sarah Palin must be punished. She has ovaries and disagrees. How dare she?
Health Rationing & You!
Thursday, July 16th, 2009There are two ways a company can make more money: increase fees or cut overhead. Overhead, for government run insurance would be….well, YOU. So, the way to cut overhead would to make it so you go to the doctor less, get less time with the doctor, and the doctor will get paid less. All in all, a suck-ass way to deliver health care.
How do we know this plan will stink? Because it’s the systems our buds the Brits and Canuks already use and they hate it so much they save up their money, try not to die, fly to America and enjoy our state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology and health care so they can do convenient things like live.
[P.S. The other way for the company to make more money: charge more. That would be taxes and that will happen, too.]
My friend Emily made a fab video–only 2 minutes of your life to laugh (or cry) at the government run health care to come via the Health Administration Bureau:
You know what Europe IS good for? Art and architecture. That’s what they’re good at.[Check out Rachel Lucas' Hillbilly Travelogues] Self defense? Not so much. Health care? Sucks. Innovation of any kind? Meh. BMW and art.
Back to health care: If you haven’t yet, watch some of the Senate Doctors shows. Regular citizens ask excellent questions, call in (you can, too) and email. Doctors Coburn and Barrasso answer intelligently and give great answers about Republican ideas. Send questions at Twitter.com/senatedoctors
A Cautionary Tale From California And Michigan
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Some people DO get somethin’ for nothin’ and those people are costing the people who actually work a lot of money. In California and Michigan, the governments are deep in debt and losing workers by the thousands (and therefore, tax revenue). California is consuming 1/3 of U.S. welfare dollars and has only 12% of the population. These charts tell the harrowing story.
Why do the Democrats want to push the failed policies of those states on the whole country and during a recession no less?
How Far Behind Venezuela Is America?
Thursday, July 16th, 2009How far behind Venezuela does America lag in the populist, socialist, state-run “solution” to the perceived injustice and unfairness of our formerly great capitalistic state? In this podcast, I interview my brother who is in Venezuela doing business and how the people there perceive the changes. The subjects of Sotomayor’s intelligence, the NRSC Toomey endorsement, and Obama’s socialist health care and taxation policies make up the show.
Melissa’s show can also be found on RFC Radio every Monday and Wednesday night at 10:00 pm Eastern.
To subscribe on iTunes, just click here!
When Melissa isn’t on the radio, you can find her at melissaclouthier.com and on Twitter. Her username is MelissaTweets.
How Dare A Caucasian Male Question A Wise Latina!
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Is there a more pathetic creature than a liberal white male bathed in the identity-politics undermining his own credibility by damning white males? Exhibit “A”: Craig Crawford. It makes sense for Maureen Dowd to hide behind her persecuted vagina, but why would a man do the same thing?
Why would one middle-aged white man deride other white men for having the temerity to ask Sonia Sotomayor a tough question? Oh, right. It’s not that the old white male asked the question, it’s how he asked the question. Because, you know, older white men shouldn’t get uppity. It’s not their place to question a Wise Latina. Really, no one should. She deserves a position on the Supreme Court because she has a vagina, tawny skin, a compelling life story and most importantly of all, she’s a liberal.
It’s clear that the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor has nothing to do with her ability and everything to do with her ethnicity, gender, and leftist credibility.
Matt Lewis also has an interesting take on identity politics. Tread carefully Dems, lest you be hung by your own rope.
What Women Can Learn From Porn Stars
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009Enough time has passed now and enough damage done, that the long-term effects of plastic surgery, especially facial plastic surgery, can be observed on the forever young faces of Hollywood, and, as it turns out, porn celebrities. In nearly all cases, the results are nothing short of horrific. [The link to Stacy McCain's porn star pictures. Safe for work, but not your stomach.]
Younger women who get some work can look fresh and still normal, but when women hit around 50 and continue down the slick and smooth face attempts, it gets freaky fast.
Not Just Pro-Abortion: The Obama Administration Is Anti-Life–UPDATED
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009The Leftist ideology descends quickly into intellectual madness. Meddling with the average person’s life, making choices for them because they’re too stupid to make choices for themselves, devolves into believing that some people are so stupid and worthless that they shouldn’t be born. The earth is better off without some people. And then, in a further devolution, people shouldn’t exist at all, or should exist in fewer and controlled numbers because humans mess things up and really don’t deserve a place in the natural world.
Michelle Malkin writes a must-read piece about the newest unconfirmed, un-publicly vetted and powerful Obama Czar. The new guy? He’s the Science Czar and has a rich history of promoting population control. Here’s what Michelle found:
A Time magazine profile of Brown published when his book came out in 1954 reported: “Scientist Brown is not confident that anything can be done, but he insists that population control is the first and essential measure; only by cutting their birth rates drastically can the crowded agricultural countries hope to enjoy the benefits of industrialization.”
If, as the White House claims, Holdren no longer believes that “that determining optimal population is a proper role of government,” then why does he still pay homage to one of the country’s most renowned population control advocates and plug his half-century-old tome advocating better-living-through-engineered-abortions? Don’t just take my word. Believe your own eyes:
Please go read the whole thing. It’s alarming and illuminating.
Michelle rightly notes Holdren’s proximity to Health Care. Should government run health care pass, Holdren will be part of the government that runs it. He will be one of the smarter-than-you ideologues deciding who does and does not get care.
UPDATED:
Via Steve Schippert there’s this from the aptly named Dieoff.org:
A scheme that might possibly avoid such a collapse was proposed by John Holdren of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. The Holdren scenario (Holdren, 1991) postulates expansion of the human population to only 10 billion and a reduction of average per-capita energy use by people in industrialized nations from 7.5 to to 3 kilowatts (kW), while increasing that of the developing nations from 1 to 3 kW. The scenario would require, among other things, that citizens of the United States” cut their average use of energy from almost 12 kW to 3 kW. That reduction could be achieved with energy efficient technologies now in hand and with an improvement (by most people’s standards) in the standard of living.
While convergence on an average per-capita consumption of 3 kW of energy by 10 billion people would close the rich-poor gap, it would still result in a total energy consumption of 30 TW, more than twice that of today. Whether the human enterprise can be sustained even temporarily on such a scale without devastating ecological consequences is unclear, as Holdren recognizes. This will depend critically on the technologies involved in the future as reserves of fossil fuels, especially petroleum, are depleted. Perhaps through funkier development and widespread application of more benign technologies (such as various forms of solar power and biomass-derived energy), environmental deterioration at the peak of human activities could be held to that of today.
And Glenn Reynolds links to Reason magazine that notes the “disturbing record” of Holdren:
In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.
It’s not surprising. Holdren spent the ’70s boogying down to the vibes of an imaginary population catastrophe and global cooling. He also participated in the famous wager between scientist Paul Ehrlich, the now-discredited Population Bomb theorist (and co-author of Ecoscience), and economist Julian Simon, who believed human ingenuity would overcome demand.
Holdren was asked by Ehrlich to pick five natural resources that would experience shortages because of human consumption. He lost the bet on all counts, as the composite price index for the commodities he picked, including copper and chromium, fell by more than 40 percent.
Then again, it’s one thing to be a bumbling soothsayer but quite another to underestimate the resourcefulness of mankind enough to ponder how “population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution,” as Holdren did in Ecoscience in 1977.
The book, in fact, is sprinkled with comparable statements that passively discuss how coercive population control methods might rescue the world from … well, humans.
When I called Holdren’s office, I was told that the czar “does not now and never has been an advocate of compulsory abortions or other repressive measures to limit fertility.”
If that is so, I wondered, why is his name on a textbook that brought up such policy? Did he not write that part? Did he change his mind? Was it theoretical? No straightforward answer was forthcoming.
And leftist insanity is couched in the most scientific of terms making it seem so reasonable.
