We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I for one will not mourn the last Christmas in America. Good riddance to the flaunting of borrowed money and the heedless, desperate purchase of valueless "goods" as gifts for an insolvent nation awash in too much of everything but common sense, integrity, gratitude, accountability and healthy living.
I would think the NAACP would be embarassed about this statement, with its implication that the main black policy agenda is to get stuff from the government.
"If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns." Leaving the rest of us to be helpless sheep in the face of criminals and reckless lunatics.
How did Canada's gun registry work out? After billions spent and years dedicated to it, not one crime solved. Duh. Bad guys do not own legal firearms. They obtain illegal ones on the street or they steal them.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
... it is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus while denying it for such matters as choosing your child’s school or joining a union.
Key quote from the latter post: "Government has become the one-stop shop to replace all personal inadequacies." And from poor judgement and poor decision-making, I would add, but I guess they come under the category of personal shortcomings.
For better or worse, we in the US have had extensive government-controlled redistribution for generations in myriad forms. The real issue is not redistribution, it's how much, from whom, to whom, in what form? Further, it's a question of at what point forced, as opposed to voluntary, redistribution interferes with freedom, growth, initiative, and opportunity for all.
My favorite form of redistribution is the one I practice daily: I voluntarily buy things and services from other people. I buy a fish taco from a food truck in mid-town Manhattan, and I buy my work shirts at Brooks Brothers, made in the USA. I give generous tips, and big tips in December. It's a pleasure. During Christmastime I do most of my charitable giving too, while ramping up my redistribution of my "wealth" in exchange for material things to give to others.
Over the course of a year I redistribute a heck of a lot of my income. Last year, according to my Quicken, it was around 85% including taxes. Greedy Capitalist Pig that I am, I did fail to redistribute 15% of it to preserve for my future wants or needs to minimize the likelihood that I might have to humiliate myself to desire redistribution to myself someday. I put that filthy un-redistributed 15% in the solicitous care of Vanguard but, even to them, I am required to redistribute some small % of it.
Markets are geniuses at redistributing wealth in exchange for some sort of value-added.
Stashing away 15% was not easy to do, since my redistributed city, state, and federal taxes already approach 50% of my fairly-decent but far-from-wealthy salary this year. I do it because, while I enjoy my more immediate pleasures and indulgences - boat, dinners out, girl friends, beer, theater, travel - I have ambitious plans for my future too which will cost money to try to make happen. Sometimes I wonder how much wealth is redistributed from parents to kids, directly.
I am, and will be, one of the proud work horses pulling this big government wagon. No choice. Nobody has ever said "Thanks." I also help carry the free enterprise wagon, and am happy to be able to do so in whatever ways I can, within reason.
It is sad that so much of what Hanson is describing in this article is coming to pass. While Obama exploited the tribalism to get elected and re-elected, he is not the cause of such divisive politics. One only has to work in a university environment to see where such a racial spoils system is fully entrenched and how counter-productive it can be.
There is no longer a left or liberalism in America. There is only a politics of victimhood that looks on all allocation of employment, college admissions, rewards of any kind as a spoils system to be divided based on formulas that favor formerly underrepresented groups. Visit any website offering jobs of any kind at a university and it will advertise that they are favoring women and minorities.
This is not unfamiliar to anyone who was part of the new left in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The people who had worked so hard to end segregation, create vast new opportunities for women and had pushed for a more human rights oriented foreign policy allowed their movement to be taken over by those who sought to use their cause to fuel their own personal ambitions. That is how a movement with humane ideals could degenerate so quickly into a collection of interest groups promoting their own aggrandizement at the expense of the common good.
“Causes begin as movement, develop into businesses and end up as rackets.” This quote or some similar wording is attributed to Eric Hoffer and I believe that it represents what we are seeing transforming America. The Democratic Party did not create this mess but it has cynically exploited it to gain the presidency where it rewards its supporters by filling the federal bureaucracy and judiciary with advocates for the racial, gender and ethnic spoils system.
Within days of the election we have seen Democratic Party appointed judges vote to void the Michigan law, Proposal 2, by which Michigan voters reaffirmed the racial neutrality of the fourteenth amendment. And we have seen the EPA refuse to allow Iowa farmers to use their corn as food and feed grain because environmental extremists demand that it be turned into ethanol. While clearly, this policy is supported by those with an economic interest in it, it could never be allowed without the support of a “sustainability” movement that is incapable of considering the overall economic consequences of its environmental extremism.
The future is not promising. Title IX extremists will now use it to attack American science, attempting to create gender equality of numbers in engineering and physics the way it creates equal numbers of athletes receiving athletic scholarships. In the process it will create an entire new bureaucracy of regulators and compliance officers who will be paid to ensure that college admissions, scholarships and assistantships, post-docs, conferences, speakers at national meetings and the like are assigned to assure that the number of females is greater than or equal to the number of males receiving such rewards. And when people try to resist it, the armies of regulators and compliance officers will respond by declaring that such resistance is a war on women and is evidence that the problem is that we don’t have enough regulators and compliance officers.
I am a generally optimistic person but it is hard for me to see how this is going to end in anything but disaster.
Interesting premise, but one which goes back to the ancient Greeks. At the family homestead on Thanksgiving evening, we do three things: take a long walk with the dogs, put football on one TV and a movie on another. It's my turn to pick a film.
Marco, my pal, remember this one thing: When they ask you a question you must assume it's a trap. They don't care about what you think, they are just looking for a gotcha. If you respond as if it were a casual conversation with somebody truly interested in your thoughts, you will be burnt toast. This is not a chat in a pub with friends.
Bill Clinton was good at this. He often responded to trap questions with something like "Oh, that's gooood." Then he would immediately ignore the question and switch to the talking point he wanted to convey.
Watch out for all the traps, you ambitious conservatives. As lawyers warn you, the prosecutor is not your friend nor is the plaintiff's attorney. They may act friendly, but they are enemies.
By the time Sandy hit the northest coastline, she was no longer a hurricane. She had degraded into a husky Nor'easter, but, with the coincidence of a full moon, her storm surge was well above that of the ordinary Nor'easter. Not a "megastorm" as the news hyped it.
I knew that just by taking a walk outside on that Monday evening. Blustery, but not hurricane-blustery. In the northeast, we are accustomed to the inconveniences of powerful Nor'easters. Trees fall down. The sea surges over the beach. Not unusual.
However dramatic and destructive Sandy was, she was nothing like other storms of the past century. What has changed is not storms (we've had far fewer in recent decades). What has changed is coastal development in historic flood zones in the densely-populated northeasern US.
It's a bad idea, and should never have been subsidized by the federal government. It's the same stupidity on the gulf coast. Free market flood insurance would have largely prevented most of the damage because people would not have built things in flood zones. Subsidized flood insurance had the predictable unintended consequence of promoting development of flood zones. A perverse incentive. Flood zones should be for animals, not for peoples' houses.
It has long been my view that the O is/was a celebrity candidate, a fluffy media creation lacking in substance and in mastery of anything but smooth talk. A sweet-talking guy. For a related essay, see A Tale of Two Cities - Hollywood’s influence on politicians advances not inexorably but in cycles.
I began to make a mental list of the potential news items over recent years which would have been pounded, would have been subjects of relentless, damaging front-page stories, had Obama been a Republican.
- More Americans in poverty than in decades - More homeless than in decades - The Food Stamp/EBT Card Presidency - Ongoing urban addiction, despair, and fatherless kids - Worst recovery from a recession in history - Benghazi would already be worse than Watergate - Mexican gun-walking scandal - The Hurricane Sandy mess - The catastrophic "Arab Spring" - Obama's compulsive lying - The taxpayer's loss of billions on GM - The taxpayer's loss of billions on green energy, crony failures - Obama's time on golf courses - Obama's divisiveness - Obama's coziness with Wall St. moguls - The Obama family's carbon footprint and insanely lavish vacations - Obama's errors of fact, eg 57 states. (Remember Dan Quail and potatoes?)
Add your own lists and items in the comments. It's therapeutic!
I think he's right, at least in part. Rush's tendency is to imagine that voters apply hard logic. It puzzles him when they do not. However, in retail politics, cultural signals and tribal signals matter. Policy wonks like me think it's superficial, but you can't get a policy until you win an election. There are plenty of low-info voters out there who vote on emotion, affinity-feelings, and things like that.
Mitt Romney was an excellent candidate on paper, but too many voters just couldn't "relate" to the guy. Actually, he did quite well, all things considered. A quote from Ace's post:
This was Breitbart's main idea, that politics was simply the expression of choices and preferences that had already been decided by the culture.
The "culture" doesn't care what gays do, and doesn't want to know or to think about it. The "culture" likes pop music. The "culture" is squeamish and ambivalent about abortion, and prefers to sort-of accept it and ignore it. These things are signals, not real policy issues. Let's face it: Conservatism and Libertarianism is a bit dorky. Mitt Romney probably never heard of Beyonce, and all I know of her is the name. Would not know her from Adam. I am more of a JS Bach guy. An East Village dork, but you wouldn't know it if you met me in the pub.
Everybody's probably sick of reading pontifications about the election, but I think Ponnuru's The Party’s Problem is worth a glance. Here's a quote (my bolds):
The Republican story about how societies prosper — not just the Romney story — dwelt on the heroic entrepreneur stifled by taxes and regulations: an important story with which most people do not identify. The ordinary person does not see himself as a great innovator. He, or she, is trying to make a living and support or maybe start a family. A conservative reform of our health-care system and tax code, among other institutions, might help with these goals. About this person, however, Republicans have had little to say.
In the days since the election, Republicans have received (and given one another) a lot of advice: Step up the ground game. Soften on immigration and abortion. Embrace same-sex marriage. Appeal more to single women, Hispanics, and young people. Run the younger, more charismatic candidates Republicans have waiting in the wings. Some of this advice is good, and some of it bad. But the weakness of the Republican party predates the emergence of same-sex marriage as an issue, the development of Democratic micro-targeting strategies, and the growth of the Hispanic vote. And wasn’t Josh Mandel, the losing Ohio Senate candidate, supposed to be one of those great young conservative hopes? However much charisma and brains the next crop of Republicans brings to their campaigns, they need a stronger party.
The perception that the Republican party serves the interests only of the rich underlies all the demographic weaknesses that get discussed in narrower terms.
Is it possible he really doesn't know what is going on? I recall reading that, at the Harvard Law Review, he never did any of the work or ever wrote anything, and would just stop in occasionally to briefly say Hi to everybody. It's curiously unengaged, and many hard-working people might term it lazy.
Why pursue the job if you don't like to work? Or is the presidency really the easiest job in the world in which 99.9% of the effort is delegated? How many private sector CEOs play as much golf and basketball as Obama does?
Roger has opined here that the job is to be a political figurehead on the bow of a great partisan ship. You show up once in a while, and some PR person tells you what to say. You say it in mellifluous tones, then run off to the golf course or to a fancy fund-raising party where everybody kisses your behind.
President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society represents the third great Progressive wave. With the liberal label firmly in place, the goal was now qualitative – to rescue liberalism from the materialism of the New Deal and to empower government to add meaning to the lives of the average person. The Great Society would end poverty and assure abundance for all. But, that was no longer enough. As Johnson explained: “’But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destination where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.’”
What followed was a cultural revolution and a fundamental change in the relationship between the people and the federal government...
As I asked ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo some years ago, "What's next on the liberal agenda after government medical care?"
If you adopt the position that government is God - that government can do everything, can fix everything, can and should make everything in life nice for everybody (which is even far beyond what God does), then naturally government failed to provide perfect safety from hurricane/Nor'easter Sandy.
Also, this one: Devastated Rockaways residents lash out at Bloomberg during unannounced visit. Excuse me, but the Rockaways do sometimes rock away. They are barrier islands, like Cape Hatteras. What do people expect? Barrier islands are just temporary sandbars. Like flood plains, one should try to live there at one's own peril. People should know a little geography. Heck, Long Island itself is just a temporary large barrier island, made of glacial sand from the recent ice age.
Without wanting to sound heartless because the suffering of others is painful to all regardless of the cause, there must be a point at which people are responsible for their own welfare. Has government created an illusion of safety from the hazards of life and the hazards of poor choices? If so, government has done a grave disservice to people. Here's what government did do:
- They have long marked out built-up areas labeled as "Flood Zone A." That includes beach areas, filled-in old coastal marshlands, and barrier beaches. That means that, if you want to live there, you will get flooded and have been flooded historically. Maybe governments should make you sign a piece of paper saying "I understand that I elect to live here in some danger and at my own personal and property risk." Not a great idea to live in flood zones, but if you want to be there you should expect it. In fact, if you live there, you likely are required to own federally-subsidized (big mistake there) flood insurance. People should never have been permitted to build in such places on the taxpayer's nickel, but it happened long ago and has a history of multiple wipe-outs over the past 300 years. I am in favor of free-market flood insurance only.
- Days before Sandy hit land in NJ, Mayor Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacutation of Zone A. No, they cannot force you to leave. This is America. It is a legal misdemeanor not to leave, however.
- For days, radio and TV warned about an especially high storm surge in flood zones due to the full moon and reinforced the evacuation order. They had tons of shelters for those with nowhere to go.
- Local police and fire departments went around all Zone A neighborhoods (Zone A pop. 300,000 on Staten Island alone) with loudspeakers sending out warnings on Sunday and Monday before the storm.
This reminds me of the old church story: The Mississippi is rising, the levee has a hole in it, and the guy looks out his first story window and hears police warnings to flee for higher ground. He prays "God, I have no fear because I know you will rescue me from this flood." A little later, he's had to move to the second floor and again asks God for help. Some guys in a canoe paddle by, but he lets them go while waiting for God. Finally, he's on the roof praying, and a helo goes overhead offering to drop a radio so he can call for help. He waves them off, trusting in the Lord. Yes, he drowns.
OK, I'll add the punchline: The man asks God why he let him drown and God answers "I sent the police, a canoe, and a helicopter. What more were you expecting from me?"
Popcorn time, but popcorn with a deathly flavor. Now that the MSM has their candidate elected, perhaps they might take interest in this colorful story. Colorful, except for the terrible and avoidable deaths of good, valiant, and innocent Americans who seem to have been pawns in a larger political game. They are the only heroes here.
The awful story has illicit sex, glory, spies, ambition and careerism, perfidy, dishonor, innocent deaths, Moslems, an election, the White House, the Pentagon, Hillary - everything. It's a Tom Clancy.
As for me, I question the timing with "King David." The cover-up always gets them. Best to admit tragic error right away, but people are less likely to admit calculated decisions.
Believe me, Petraeus' "betray us" was known well-before the FBI began snooping. Nobody gets a senior job without a meticulous colonoscopy. If you were ever cheating, they pursue every rumor and know all about it. Unless one is an elected Democrat, of course, in which case one's sexual history is irrelevant.
Funny how much the MSM loved the Hurricane Sandy story much better, despite the fact that it is really another Katrina story. Well, mostly white folks were flooded out, so who cares? No lasting narrative there. Where is Staten Island anyway? Mostly middle-class Republican Italians, right?
The Dems sure do have their number, don't they? Remember all of those Obama ads we thought we so vulgar, retarded, and full of lies? They worked on single women, and other people too. They knew who they were talking to. It should be remarkable that Romney did as well as he did.
It's easy to forget, living as many of us do among people who have an abiding interest in policy, economics, and politics, that most people have only a casual interest in these things except insofar as they might directly affect them or excite them with tingles.
Reagan had the knack of reaching the low- and high-information voter at the same time. He could deliver boob bait for the Bubbas and Bubbettes while offering an inspiring theory of freedom and free markets to the more sophisticated. Perhaps Obama does the same, with a theory of serfdom and government markets for the bubbettes, the poor-but-happy dependents, and urban metrosexuals. Serfdom is hip these days and dependency is cool. The New America.
This is h/t Black and Right. I think the fat gal just hopes she might need Planned Parenthood someday. Maybe if she gets him drunk enough on Tequila shots she can earn her free abortion.
Barro at Bloomberg 
Girls Not Coming of Age 
Perhaps it can be, if you are never engaged with any of the details. In response to our link this morning to 
Popcorn time, but popcorn with a deathly flavor. Now that the MSM has their candidate elected, perhaps they might