Month: February 2010

Reinhold Neibuhr Was a Subversive Pinko (and Other Conservative Insights)

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One of the more amusing tendencies of certain “conservative intellectuals” — the scare-quotes are necessaary, if you know the type of people I have in mind — is their habit of name-checking famous (dead) conservatives in pursuit of arguments about the unworthiness of famous (living) conservatives.

Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter will say something that gets the liberals in a tizzy, and next thing you know, some ambitious parvenu will sniff that these allegedly obnoxious expressions by Limbaugh or Coulter are a betrayal of the conservative tradition of, say, William F. Buckley Jr.

What is wrong with these reverential invocations of Glorious Dead Famous Names is that Buckley and other now-respectable icons of conservatism were quite controversial in their own day, denounced as vociferously by their liberal contemporaries as Limbaugh and Coulter (or Mark Levin and Glenn Beck) are today.

Our latter-day “intellectuals” who repudiate Limbaugh et al. as being unworthy of the Buckley legacy are therefore guilty of  Continue reading Reinhold Neibuhr Was a Subversive Pinko (and Other Conservative Insights) →

Evan Bayh Announces Retirement

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He was seen as a leading vice-presidential contender for the Democrats in 2008, but Joe Biden got that job, and now Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh has announced he won’t seek re-election.

Philip Klein at the American Spectator writes:

This is further indication that moderate Democrats running in red states are eager to jump ship in what they expect to be a rough November. 

Once again, President Obama keeps delivering on his campaign promise of Change We Can Believe In — if by “we,” you mean Republicans. But I’m curious as to the political explanation for Bayh’s decision:

Though political observers said the race has become more competitive given the current political climate, Bayh still appeared likely to win a third term.
Three recent polls all pegged his favorability rating among Hoosiers above 50 percent.
Late last week, Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said Bayh was returning to Indiana this week to film commercials for his re-election campaign. Bayh’s communication staff began scheduling interviews in his home state. . . .

Weird. Has the National Enquirer been snooping around or something?

The Protocols of the Elders of CTHULHU II. Economic Wars

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by Smitty (INTRODUCTION)

The route to Schloss Braunschlag had been designed in such a way that, cut into the mountain above the road, the prevailing wind kept it clean, blowing snow into the now impassible road.

The shock of his ruthlessness quickly faded. The audience members cast their minds back to recent history. How quickly names were selected, granted 15 minutes of fame, then discarded.
The resemblance of the world stage to a school playground came into focus, as this speaker droned on, describing what marionettes all of the world leaders were.
He really didn’t move much appearing to glide at the head of the…disturbing table, which ratther a solid, slate-like stone obelisk on its side.
No one had anthing to drink. At their average age, I expect half should be unconscious listening to this. Yet they stare, with only the occasional tremor coursing their otherwise still flesh.

“We shall have wars both great and small: they are propaganda goldmines.
But we should ensure that real territory swaps are minimized, as they lead to lingering strife, e.g. the Golan.
No, we will drive further economic wars, in which opponents are pitted against each other, frittering away their strength, so that their States welcome our conquest.

The administrators, whom we shall choose from among the public, with strict regard for their capacities for servile obedience, will not be the perons trained in the arts of government, and will therefore easily become pawns in our game in the hands of men of learning and genius who will be their advisors, specialists bred and reared from early childhood to rule the affairs of the whole world.

Also, we’ve owned the press for some time.

The part played by the press is to keep pointing out requirements supposed to be indispensible, to give voice to the complaints of the people, to express and create discontent.

While they have been our lapdogs for some time, we cannot sit idly by while the Internet threatens to allow the formation of thought and rival organizations among the commoners, the mob, the proletariat. We cannot own all speech; therefore we must instead judiciously direct it in desirable directions over time.”

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Quin Hillyer Argues the Alabama Governor’s Race IN ALL CAPS!

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On Friday I began my American Spectator column this way:

Tim James was Tea Party before Tea Party was cool. Before the federal bailouts, before most Americans had heard of Barack Obama, before Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck became household names, James helped lead the 2003 effort to stop a tax increase proposed by Alabama’s Republican Gov. Bob Riley.
The battle over Amendment One, as Riley’s $1.3 billion tax measure was known, was a defining moment for the state’s conservatives. James, who had challenged Riley in the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary, sided with the anti-tax activists who organized an opposition campaign that became known as the “Alabama Tea Party.”
Alabama voters rejected the proposal by more than a 2-to-1 margin in a September 2003 referendum and, if politics were logical, James would be the front-runner in this year’s GOP gubernatorial contest. Instead, one recent poll showed that the early leader is Bradley Byrne who, as a state senator in 2003, voted for Riley’s tax-hike plan. . . .

You can read the whole thing, if you haven’t already. My friend Qun Hillyer promised Friday to reply to that column, and has done so at the American Spectator today:

Anyway, overall, Riley’s tax plan raised far more money IN THE SHORT TERM than it would have “cost.” But it did so in the context of one of the smallest combined state-and-local government spending records in the country. Tim James’ father had cut the state budget to the bone, and then Democrat Don Siegelman’s spending hikes were largely taken back through a process called “proration” when the economy temporarily went bad. Meanwhile, among states that have property taxes, Alabama’s property taxes were something like the second-smallest in the nation. Its sales tax rates, though, were absurdly high, and its exemption threshold for paying income taxes started at an absurdly low $5,000 (well below the national average of about $16,000). Plus, huge swaths of land were effectively off the books because of what amounted to a huge exemption on taxes for lands used for timber — even if the timberland wasn’t actually being used in commerce, but just allowed to sit there as a nice big, untaxed private preserve.
What all this meant was that Alabama’s tax system was literally regressive — not regressive in the modern liberal sense of not being “progressive” enough for liberal tastes, but actually more burdensome on the poor than on the rich. . . .
But overall, in the short term, the Riley Plan raised more than a net $1 billion overall, mostly by raising the incredibly low property tax rates . . .
And this was exactly when the second round, i.e., the larger and more supply-side round, of the Bush tax cuts were going into effect, so that EVEN FOR THOSE WHOSE STATE/LOCAL TAXES WOULD GO UP OVERALL UNDER THE RILEY PLAN, THEIR COMBINED LOCAL/STATE AND FEDERAL TAX LOAD WOULD BE SMALLER THAN IT HAD BEEN JUST TWO YEARS BEFORE. In short, even for the 30% who would have been moderately “hurt” by the Riley plan, their overall financial situation, in terms of taxes, would be better than it had been in 2001. . . .

You can read the whole thing. The basic problem here seems to be this: In 2003, Quin committed himself as an advocate of the Riley Plan. Alabama voters rejected that plan by a 2-to-1 margin. And seven years later, Quin is still trying to win the argument.

Or WIN THE ARGUMENT, as it were.

Re-hashing the arguments of 2003 — the “regressive” nature of Alabama’s tax system, the putative benefits of the Riley plan, etc. — is a futile exercise, politically. The voters of Alabama rejected those arguments seven years ago, and I doubt they’re in a mood to hear them again now. If Quin Hillyer thinks Bradley Byrne can win the Republican primary by defending his vote for the Billion-Dollar Bob tax . . . well, good luck with that.

Or perhaps I should say, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

P.S.: How is having “huge swaths of land . . . effectively off the books” a bad thing?

I’m in favor of having the private sector “off the books” as much as possible. That’s why, even when I pay my restaurant bill with a credit card, I always leave the tip in cash. I have never advocated tax evasion (such advocacy can be prosecuted a federal crime), but if the waitress doesn’t report 100% of her cash income to the IRS, that’s none of my business.

Is Goldman Sachs Too Big to Fail?
Is Kevin Smith Too Fat to Fly?

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Is the Clerks filmmaker too fat to fly? Southwest Airlines says so. I’m interested only because some people say Ace of Spades vaguely resembles “Silent Bob.” Not that Ace is fat or anything, but certainly Drew M. could stand to lose a few pounds, and maybe this news is kind of a warning. Watch those carbs, Ace.

On the other hand, Goldman Sachs could bring down the entire international financial system, which is a lot more serious issue than a couple of chubby bloggers:

We now learn – from Der Spiegel last week and today’s NYT – that Goldman Sachs has not only helped or encouraged some European governments to hide a large part of their debts, but it also endeavored to do so for Greece as recently as last November.  These actions are fundamentally destabilizing to the global financial system, as they undermine: the eurozone area; all attempts to bring greater transparency to government accounting; and the most basic principles that underlie well-functioning markets.

If Greece goes down and takes the Euro with it, maybe people will start re-thinking this “too big to fail” argument.

Exit question: If Kevin Smith is too fat to fly, how does Michael Moore get around?

Tactically Bad vs. Strategically Bad

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by Smitty

Instapundit points to the Las Vegas Sun with an article about the Tea Party movement going full-on third party.
Insty:

I think it’s smarter for Tea Party activists to target primary races, rather than starting their own party as seems to be happening in Nevada. Two words: “Ross Perot.” Two more: “Ralph Nader.”

As a Perot voter during my virgin booth-screwing, I take just the slightest umbrage. Bush41 was just another affable Progressive. You can argue there was a Cold War to finish off, but he was just as domestically committed to the collapse of e pluribus into unum as the Bubba that won in ’92.
The substantial difference in Bush vs. Clinton would seem to be the rate at which they were going to have DC devour the rest of the country. The Bush route may have been slower, more genteel, but so what?
Full circle, then, I say let Nevadans express their political will as desired. Succumbing to some brow-beating about the folly of dividing the conservative vote may afford as much fallacy as validity, depending on whom the GOP are running.

The Protocols of the Elders of CTHULHU I. Might Makes Right

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by Smitty (INTRODUCTION)

A set of steps were the only available means to cover the last quarter mile of the climb to Schloss Braunschlag from Davos.

The androgynous speaker began in sinuous tones. I’ll call him ‘he’ for convenience, though the small frame in the plain kimono, so light for a room this cold, lacked post-pubescent indicators.
The black hair pulled straight back to a short ponytail offered nothing. The English was perfect, and scary in its lack of accent other than something of a lisp on ‘s’, and a softness in palate, as with a native Hindi speaker on the ‘r’.
Skin tone and features were no help, either. He was from everywhere and nowhere.
The message to this group of elite power brokers was simple: it was the time to strike the death blow to the ancien régime.
There was no response from the audience except to stare at the speaker. The eyes of some of the more pacifistic in the audience widened slightly.

“The peaceful intelligence preparation of the battlespace is complete.

The best results in governing are attained by violence and terrorization, not by academic discussions.

We snuffed the last altruist centuries ago.

The idea of freedom is impossible of realization because no one knows how to use it with moderation.

It falls to us, then, to offer a realpolitik alternative.
The political has nothing in common with the moral. Your morals are your own. Politics is about what is ethical. We will launch a new line of ethical clay once the turbulence settles.
The masses, or mob, are self-defeating:

It must be understood that the might of a mob is blind, senseless and unreasoning force ever at the mercy of a suggestion from any side. The blind cannot lead the blind without bringing them into the abyss: consequently, members of the mob, upstarts from the people even though they should be as a genius for wisdom, yet having no understanding of
the political, cannot come forward as leaders of the mob without bringing the whole nation to ruin.

No, the program we’re laying out is emphatically not one that appears to be inclusive and representative. Reality so often achieves a 180-degree shift from appearance, no?

A satisfactory form of government for any country is one that concentrates in the hands of one responsible person.

That responsible person, of course, is our tool.”

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SFW Video: Hookers In The Graveyard

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by Smitty (h/t Digg)

The video will not entomb in our page, but you can see it here.

As technology improves, I foresee more of this sort of thing. While the sheer voyeurism of catching others trading hormones excites me not (boring monogamist that I am) I had thought of getting on the Beltway with someone riding webcam, and taking clips of other clown-tards who really hate safety, their driver’s licenses, and perhaps life itself.

While Big Brother with a whole bunch of fixed cameras is an Orwellian nightmare, Little Brother and that YouTube sensation might be just the feedback loop that will help Hot Rod McSmith make better decisions.