Year: 2010

Analysis Of Lefty Reaction To Sarah On Leno

Posted on 12 Comments

by Smitty

Dan Riehl has Stewart’s analysis. Riehl on Stewart, emphasis mine:

Any grand conclusions are silly at this point. But as for the Palin versus Romney match up on TV he looks at, he’s spot on. These types of match ups just don’t work well for Romney. Unfortunately, that’s as much about Romney’s trouble connecting with audiences and crowds, as it is about any Palin charm. Someone with a more Romney-like resume and a dash of Palin’s looseness and grassroots appeal might give her a run for her money in the big picture that matters most, assuming she’s serious about running in 2012.

Only Governor Tim Pawlenty comes to mind.
The Recovering Liberal alludes to Stewart, and then shifts to analyzing Lee Seigel from The Daily Beast. Trying to get into the Lefty head, RL finishes:

Siegel concludes that Palin’s mastery will lead to “the joke being on us” (the left) as she ascends the podium at the 2012 Republican Convention” The only thing that might prevent this is others on the thinking left waking up to the very real threat Palin poses to them and instead of continuing down the same, aloof, strident, attack path recognise that they have, in no small part, created a rod for their own back and create a real opposition to her (which oddly has only come from the, condescending, intellectuals on the right). If they don’t, then they should sit back at enjoy her ascent from a purely social observer vantage and wonder at the blindness of their colleagues.

The Left is giving Sarah the stress test they never gave BHO, possibly out of guilt.
The “condescending intellectuals on the right”, fearing the loss of primacy and priesthood to an outsider, pile on.
All this is more ‘feature’ than ‘bug’. If the lady survives the napalm shower, then she’s answered the mail on whether she can become ‘the American Margaret Thatcher’. If she decides to hang out on the fringe, then fair enough. If she decides to run in 2012, then it’s all over but the get-well-soon cards for the opposition, on the left or right.
I commend her sticking to something she knows, energy policy, but think that hydrocarbons are peripheral to the #1 problem we face: the debt/deficit. It remains to be seen whether anything can be done by anyone about that, however.

Paco’s Struggle Against Homo Bureaucratus

Posted on 4 Comments

by Smitty

With some formatting help from me, Paco notes the sad state of the State:

The ostentatious policy-wonkishness of the Obama administration is something that I now have the misfortune of living with every day at my own agency. The primary feature of this bureaucratic fantasy world is an unprecedented number of political employees solidly committed to carrying out Obama’s big-government agenda, but not having the first clue as to how to go about it (or even what “it” is). These people have

  • an insatiable need for information,
  • a congenital inability to effectively process it,
  • a misplaced sense of urgency, and
  • a naïve belief in their ability to influence national policy from within the bowels of a small federal agency that exists pretty much at the margin of economic activity.

They are like piano tuners who, through some extraordinary mix-up in communication, have been called in to do a plumbing job, but are not about to let their ignorance of the difference between an elbow fitting and a drain trap prevent them from tackling the assignment; and they are perfectly willing to run the risk of flooding your basement, secure in the knowledge that, by the time you discover your pool cues and your tax papers floating about like so much debris after a hurricane, they will have moved on to do the Lord’s work elsewhere.

Belief in the soteriological capacity of the State is among the chief bugaboos we must fight.

Yglesias Is As Unimpressive As Brooks

Posted on 4 Comments

by Smitty

Here is Matthew Yglesias at Think Knucklehead arguing against Judd Gregg. Yglesias, whose literacy seems challenged, appears to misread deliberately what he quoted from Gregg:

The Senate was structured to be the place where bills which rushed through the House because they have a lot of rules that limit debate and allow people to pass bills quickly, but they don’t have any rule in the House called the filibuster which allows people to slow things down.

The Founding Fathers realized when they structured this they wanted checks and balances. They didn’t want things rushed through. They saw the parliamentary system. They knew it didn’t work.

Sure, in a brief passage, Gregg did not enumerate the various nuances of the State constitutions which, along with the Articles of Confederation, informed the Constitution. Yglesias’s attention is drawn to Amar’s book.  Here one important point: the Constitution was written, among other motives, to minimize the likelihood of the dreck peddled by the 111th Congress and this Administration having a chance to succeed.

Yglesias then piles on:

Meanwhile, just to point out that Gregg is an idiot, where on earth has he gotten the idea that the Founding Fathers “saw the parliamentary system” and “knew it didn’t work?” There were no countries operating on a modern parliamentary system when the constitution was written.

Wow.  If he dared entertain a bit of history, would discover that the British Parliament passed, for example, the Stamp Act of 1765, which was as offensive to Americans then as this non-argument is to Americans now. He throws up this “modern parliamentary system” distinction as if, by offering a difference that makes no difference, he now has the ground to call Gregg an idiot. He doesn’t, and has successfully painted himself as such in the process.  Unless, of course, there is some meaningful distinction other than a nearly ~300 year temporal separation to be drawn.  Maybe there is.

Context-free arguments such as this seem a staple of Lefty propaganda. It’s quite easy to reference the relevant passage in the Constitution. Sure, Gregg might choose to polish the phrasing of his point, given the chance. But what is the point of such when an attacker is more intent on hair-splitting, mis-placed literalism, and weasel-wording than they are in seeking to grasp the point? Oh, yes: Gregg’s point is both

  • valid, and
  • torpedoes the Leftist agenda.

Oops.

As far as I can tell, Mr. Yglesias, far from achieving the noble liberal goal of trying to understand the opposing view, give credit where due, and offer some sort of compromise position on an issue, is more intent on ad hominem attacks, and calling attention away from the principles at stake, in favor of an agenda.

Looking at Wikipedia, I see that this chap graduated from Hahvud. Way to make your alma mater look good there, buddy.

(Via Memeorandum)

Update: Director Blue is excellent on the topic, as usual.

F(orget) The Dumb S(tuff)

Posted on 6 Comments

by Smitty

Via Instapundit, there is yet more talk of wrenching on the tax code. FTDS, as we used to say in my early days in the Navy.

Maybe Paul Krugman or some other Eclownomist can explain how the country is helped by

  • Having one pack of fools write an unintelligible tax code,
  • Necessitating the government to hire a phalanx of bureaucrats to implement that code, in turn
  • Generating wholly specious jobs in the private sector trying to make heads or tails of the resulting mess.

FTDS.
This is the Information Age, Americans!
Anyone with shred #1 of experience in information systems knows that complexity is Not Your Friend.
Not only do we need to take a machete to the kudzu-like tax code, we need to inject something sufficiently toxic into the root that it cannot return. Let us make repealing the 16th Amendment a serious priority, people!
In the Perfect Smith Future, we have a Federal budget that is reasonably transparent, and all of the tax code, like chess pieces, sits in plain sight. The country was founded, inter alia on the idea of ‘No taxation without representation’.
FTDS: let’s have ‘No taxation without simple, complete explanation’. There is no technical reason why we cannot hold our elected leaders accountable to the people for making the source code for all tax calculations available in a read-only way.
What we have to do is grow past the passive acceptance of whatever tyranny those who bethink themselves our betters would impose.
A photo I’d seen before but which was at Big Journalism today captures the point exquisitely:

The donkey is the engine of the economy, and the government is the cart. The government cannot drive the system. All progress is due to the donkey. More tax code in particular, and government load in general, does not improve the system.

‘Message to the National Republican Establishment: Stay Out of Our Primary’

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Ever since John Cornyn and the NRSC backed Charlie Crist in Florida last May, that’s been the basic message of Not One Red Cent. But if you thought Florida Republicans were outraged at national GOP meddling in their primary, just wait until you see the ‘Bama buzzsaw that hits John Boehner when he gets to Huntsville on Monday:

Not long after invitations were sent out for a Rep. Parker Griffith fundraising event, headlined by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), several local organizations from both sides of the political spectrum announced plans to protest the event. Planned for March 8, 2010 at the Space & Rocket Center, starting at 5:00 pm, the the protest will include members of the Huntsville Tea Party, Left In Alabama, Athens-Limestone Tea Party Patriots, AAMU Democrats Student Club, The Dale Jackson Show, North Alabama Healthcare for All, Madison County Republican Executive Committee, and the Limestone County Republican Executive Committee. AFL-CIO will be holding a press conference at the Marriott Hotel near the Space & Rocket Center in protestation, before the protest event and the fundraiser.  Organizers invite the public to attend.
“We are sending a message to the national Republican establishment: stay out of our primary.  . . . We’re pushing back against the political machine,” said Christie Carden, founder of the Huntsville Tea Party. . . .

Read all of that. Just as with Cornyn’s support for Crist against Marco Rubio, Boehner’s backing of Griffith puts the national GOP establishment in the position of campaigning against the exact kind of dynamic young leaders they need to be supporting. Republican candidate Les Phillip:

“Congressman Boehner coming to Huntsville to raise money for Parker Griffith goes to show exactly how out of touch Washington D.C. is with the rest of America and their refusal to listen to “We the People”,” remarked Phillip.  
“Two of our local Republican executive committees specifically asked the National Republican Congressional Committee to stay out of this race and let the people of North Alabama decide who our best candidate is, but they refuse to listen because they think they know better than we do what is best for the fifth district.” . . .
“John Boehner and the NRCC are supporting Griffith with the notion that he will lure more Democrats to switch parties. This approach does not take into consideration the conservative nature of Republicans in Alabama’s 5th district, or Griffith’s record of voting with Nancy Pelosi nearly 85% of the time, more than many of his former Democrat colleagues.”

The liberal blog Left in Alabama has announced support for Monday’s protest:

Griffith is everybody’s problem.  Sure, I won’t agree with everyone at this protest on every single thing — maybe not on most things.  But we all agree that Griffith has got to go, and for now that one common purpose will let us stand on the same sidewalk in near perfect harmony.

Wingnuts and Moonbats unite! You have nothing to lose but those clueless morons at the national GOP!

UPDATE: Just got off the phone with a conservative operative who disagrees with my criticism of Boehner. “It’s his job. It’s what he’s got to do.”

Yes, I know, and it’s time for a change in the job description.

National party interference in contested primaries is poisonous, and if Griffith was promised help in the primary in exchange for switching parties, he was promised something that he had no right to expect. And let me explain something else that should be obvious: Good candidates don’t need the national party to bail them out in the primaries. 

Just go down the list of worthless assholes that the national GOP has wasted money on in recent years: Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, Charlie Crist — see a pattern here?

Speaking of worthless assholes: Bob Corker. But I digress . . .

As I told my friend in our phone conversation, the major problem at GOP-HQ — encompassing RNC, NRCC, NRSC and the rest of the D.C.-based party apparatus — appears to involve staffers who combine arrogance and incompetence in a particularly dangerous way. I refer you to last October, when House conservatives confronted NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions for the Scozzafava screw-up:

Sessions was called out by conservative members of the caucus, and challenged when asked why NRCC resources — cash and personnel — were being used for Scozzafava. “We have a conservative running in this race, and the Republican Party is not with him,” says a conservative House member who attended the meeting. “There are a number of us who are profoundly embarrassed by this race, and while we don’t blame Pete, we do blame the NRCC staff for apparently not doing its job.” . . .
According to NRCC staff, Scozzafava was viewed as the “most cooperative” candidate of a group put forward by local Republican Party bosses in the 23rd District. “She wasn’t going to be a loose cannon and the money was happy with her,” says one NRCC source . . . “Ideally, we wanted someone who could self-finance, but we didn’t have anyone like that,” says the NRCC source. “Then we went with someone who would have a natural pool of donors; [Scozzafava] met that criteria.”

Where do they find idiots like this? Does the NRCC personnel department have a special program for hiring feeble-minded dimwits? Is there a stupid quota at GOP headquarters, or are these staff jobs reserved for particularly inept relatives of major Republican donors? “Don’t worry about flunking out, son. If all else fails, I’ll get you a job with the Republican Party.”

Which brings me to the Powerpoint mess from earlier this week:

The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.  . . .
The 72-page document was provided to POLITICO by a Democrat, who said a hard copy had been left in the hotel hosting the $2,500-a-head retreat, the Gasparilla Inn & Club. Sources at the event said the presentation was delivered by Bickhart and by the RNC Finance Chairman, Peter Terpeluk, a former ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush.

One GOP donor got his knickers in a twist over the “uncivil” tone of that presentation — Dan Riehl addressed that complaint today — but complaints about incivility miss the larger point: What moron was responsible for this stupid mess and who hired him?

When I saw the Powerpoint presentation, I was stunned by its crude, amateurish quality. On Page 10, the presentation says RNC raised $81 million in 2009, so why couldn’t they have spent a few bucks to hire someone with minimal competency in graphic design? Pages 29-31 of this thing look like they were scripted and designed by an eighth-grader.

Maybe Jed Clampett is a major Republican donor and Jethro is in charge of graphic design at the RNC. But the point is that the stupidity of the person who designed this Powerpoint presentation is exceeded only by the stupidity of the person who hired the person who designed it, both of whom are less stupid than the idiot responsible for it ending up in the hands of the Politico.

At some point, this kind of stupidity and incompetence at Republican Party headquarters ceases to be a series of random incidents and begins to be discernible as a pattern. Maybe the grassroots activists in Alabama are wrong to blame John Boehner for the deal that requires him to support Parker Griffith, but they are certainly right in their belief that the national GOP has exceeded its stupid quota.