The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Mika’s Not the Scariest Brzezinski

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 18 Comments

When I previously explained that Mika Brzezinski is smarter than you, a commenter called to my attention a video clip from Oct. 17. It’s of Mika’s father, Zbiginew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, in an appearance on Morning Joe:

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“You know, how many Americans are really fully aware of how many other good people, that’s like Warren Buffett and others, who really donate a lot of their earnings to charities, to philanthropy? But how many more are there in the hedge funds, in the banks, in a variety of other places who, on the basis of speculation literally make millions of dollars that it would take a century or two for the average person ever to make? I would like to see those lists. And they shouldn’t be that difficult to produce. And I think public pressure might have also some effect, not only in terms of moving towards more systematic international coordination and regulation. But also to pressure some of those people to give some of it back, back to society.”
— Zbiginew Brzezinski, Oct. 17, 2011

Does he sound like Dr. Evil or what? Let’s talk about “speculation.” What does Brzezinski mean by that word?

“Speculation” involves risk, which is the same thing expressed by the words “enterprise” or “entrepreneur.”

To launch any business endeavor is to take a chance. When I quit my job at The Washington Times in January 2008, it was with the belief that I might be able to make more as a journalistic free agent than I was then being paid in salary. While this speculative effort has not yet met revenue expectations, as the business guys might say, 400,000 page-views per month is nothing to sneeze at, and we’re working tirelessly to increase traffic and enhance the monetization. IYKWIMAITYD.

What the managers of banks and hedge funds do is a more lucrative field of endeavor than “blog proprietor” (or “New Media savant” or whatever you want to call it) because the work they do is more valuable. If I screw up or miss a day at work, what do you lose? Some political news, some snarky commentary and maybe hot chicks in lingerie. But if a hedge fund manager screws up, there goes your 401(k), there goes your retirement dreams, there goes your kids’ inheritance. Kinda more important than a blog, even a blog with 400,000 page-views per month.

Who am I — or who is Zbiginew Brzezinski — to say whether a financial manager makes “too much” money? Isn’t it true that everyone is, to some extent, dependent on the financial sector for their livelihood? Consider that I earn income from Amazon Associates sales (I remind you that this is “Black Friday Deals Week“). Isn’t Amazon a corporation that was launched by enterpreneurs funded with investments provided by financial managers? Wasn’t it “speculation” that led people to invest in Amazon in the belief that their online sales model would work, whereas many other such projects have failed?

If we want investment in the private sector — and we do — then what we want is what Zbiginew Brzezinski calls “speculation,” a word he uses as a derisive epithet, evidently assuming that others share his ignorant (or envious) contempt for people who make their living through “speculation.”

News flash for Zbiginew Brzezinski: People also lose money through “speculation.” For example, if you bought a house in Orlando in 2006, supposing that the market value would increase . . .

Well, that was “speculation,” and you got screwed, whereas the guy who sold that house, cashing out his equity while the market was hot, walked away a winner. And if he then invested his equity in gold — another sort of “speculation” — he’s sitting pretty right now.

Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. It’s speculation either way.

Nearly all of us engage in economic speculation of one kind or another, but because some ultra-successful speculators on Wall Street make millions of dollars, Zbiginew Brzezinski throws in the phrase “on the basis of speculation” as if it’s legitimate to hate bankers or hedge fund managers in a way we don’t hate professional athletes, pop singers or TV stars — like Zbiginew Brzezinski’s daughter Mika. She reportedly gets $4 million a year, but Zbiginew believes his daughter earns that money, whereas the investment banker is engaged in evil “speculation.” So he takes pride in his daughter’s success, but wants us to think that bankers are a bunch of crafty swindlers up to no good, robbing us blind and exploiting us.

This evil which Zbiginew Brzezinski imputes to greedy bankers is evidently the inspiration for his desire to have their names on a list, in order to subject them to “more systematic international coordination and regulation.”

That should scare the hell out of everybody, because who’s going to do all that “coordination and regulation”? Government-appointed bureaucrats, that’s who. And as bad as private-sector “speculation” may be, government regulators have the authority to send you to prison if you disobey them. For the guy who ran Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy to be demanding “systematic international coordination” of the private sector is highly ironic, and also scary.

By the way, did you ever notice that greedy Wall Street millionaires always have a fancy smart phone? Because that’s what it takes to make the big bucks nowadays. And it just so happens that Amazon’s having a limited-time special sale on smart phones — great bargains for you, a small commission for me.

So buy a smart phone and become a Wall Street millionaire. Don’t let Zbiginew Brzezinski stop you. Because capitalism is beautiful.


Category: Economics, MSNBC

Sen. Schumer’s Deed Shall Live In Infamy

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 26 Comments

by Smitty

Chuck Schumer appears to have achieved a full metamorphosis: he may be the first Senator to have achieved the full odiousness of the British Parliament which the Founders opposed. From a Freedom Works email:

We observed all the rules. Senator Mike Lee reserved the room for us weeks in advance. Every “i” was dotted and every “t” crossed. But when Senate Democrats got word that we planned on doing their job for them … that we planned to suggest real cuts to the budget … well, that’s when they got scared and pulled the plug.

Tyranny!

I submit that every right-thinking blog should post this video, and increase the pressure on Congress. The Tea Party Budget is all about doing the job that Congress abdicated. Senator Schumer should be disciplined and ejected, so that his falsehood is no longer a drag on our government.

Update: linked at Dell’s Bottom Line.

Update II: linked at Garnette’s View.

Update III: linked at Marfdrat and The Vail Spot.

Category: Budget, Democrats, New York

Shameless Insincerity

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

The stench of everything coming out of the Beltway is rancid. One case in a thousand points of mold is Elena Kagan, via American Power: Douglas also links IBD:

Should a justice who participated in ObamaCare’s creation recuse herself from the court’s review of that law? Of course. But then a nominee who lies in confirmation hearings shouldn’t be on the court anyway.
If Justice Elena Kagan were a person of character, she would sit out the Supreme Court’s hearing of the challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
But during her confirmation hearings in June of last year, she indicated she would not. And since this Monday, when the court announced it would take the case, she has done nothing to suggest she will recuse herself after all. Nor has the court made any statement about her recusal, a convention it usually follows when a justice takes himself or herself off a case.

and:

Nearly lost in this is the possibility that Kagan lied during her confirmation. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had not been asked about the legal issues of ObamaCare nor had she offered any views on them. The emails, however, seem to tell a different story. Two exclamation points plainly show that in her legal opinion, ObamaCare was constitutional.

Also under fire, per CNSNews, is the Worst Attorney General in American History:

Senate Republican leaders sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday expressing their view that testimony he gave in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week on the Justice Department’s handling of then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s involvement in litigation arising from the administration’s health care legislation was “belied by the facts.”
The senators also urged Holder to comply with requests that have been submitted to the Justice Department by Congress seeking information about Kagan’s involvement in the matter and expressed their view that Kagan’s activities as solicitor general may have triggered two different provisions of a federal law that governs when a Supreme Court justice must recuse from a case.

From all appearances, pretty much everyone appointed by BHO is a shameless, amoral, ideological hack of mediocre skill at best. In the case of ObamaCare, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to get enough lift under that pig to make it fly. The discussion, I’m guessing, will revolve around how to reject ObamaCare narrowly enough that the ground remains un-laid for the next obvious step: realizing that the SCOTUS under FDR beclowned itself by not rejecting the New Deal. Progressives have cherished 10th Amendment violations to protect, you see. Commie morons.

Step back though, and let’s consider a post-Progressive era. For surely this noise cannot continue. How in the world do we restore faith and transparency in our institutions after BHO, Holder, and Kagan? We’ve got a collection of people in higher office that don’t seem to understand anything, anything at all, except power. What do we do about that?

Is voting these clowns out, on its own, enough? Or do they leave enough residue of abuse, enough tradition of disregard, even rejection, of the Enlightenment principles that inform our founding documents that this administration completes the ‘mission kill’ of our Constitution by Progressivism?

That’s a hard thought, coming as it does in a context of economic ruin. However, as with calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, the sooner we face fact that the effect of Progressivism has been an Article V amendment of the Constitution via ‘settled law’, the sooner we can set about unwinding the evil the Progressives wrought.

Update: linked at The Daley Gator.

Category: Democrats, Progressivism

Mika Brzezinski Is Smarter Than You

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 19 Comments

Watching Fox News makes people stupid, according to experts at Fairleigh Dickinson University. And if you watch Fox, you’re obviously too stupid to argue with experts so . . . the science is settled!

Of course, the lead author of the study was kind enough to include his phone number on the press release, so if any Fox viewers want to call Daniel Cassino at 973-896-7072, I’m sure he’d be willing to explain to you how stupid you are.

As for myself, I’ve been trying to raise my IQ lately by watching MSNBC. By next week, I expect to be smart enough to achieve cold fusion and also cure cancer, but this morning I was still struggling to comprehend the transcendent genius of Mika Brzezinski:

Disgusting. . . . I’ve got nothing else. I’m so disgusted by that . . . I’m sickened by that . . . It’s fair to say he’s in the 1%, correct? He’s telling the 99% to take a bath and get a job? Really? . . . Who is this man? Who does he think he is? And why is he surging in the polls? I don’t get it. . . . It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. . . . And it literally made my skin crawl.

Now, you Fox News viewers are probably too stupid to understand what’s so “disgusting” — absolutely disgusting! — about Newt Gingrich telling the Occupy Wall Street protesters to take a bath and get a job. But you fail to grasp this key fact: Mika Brzezinski knows that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are virtuous, just like she knows Republicans are greedy, and everybody she respects shares this knowledge.

To dispute Mika’s knowledge is to challenge her superiority, to suggest that you know as much as (or perhaps even more than) Mika knows, which is a personal insult to her and her equally knowledgeable friends. Who are you — you mouth-breathing cretin — to claim equality to such admirable people as Mika and her friends like E.J. Dionne?

It is impossible for people of good faith to disagree with Mika, because disagreeing with Mika is proof of bad faith. And if you weren’t so dumbed-down from watching Fox News, you’d understand that.

To Mika and her friends, sympathy toward the Occupiers is not merely an emotional feeling, but rather an objective fact: “These are good people. Their cause is worthy. They deserve support.” 

Using pepper-spray on student Occupiers at UC-Davis is therefore objectively evil, and anyone who criticizes the Occupiers is disgusting. Mika and her friends think like this because they have been permitted to “own both the tools and the rules for cultural discourse,” as Jeff Goldstein explains:

It should be evident, from the Occupy Movement and the attempts by the Obama Administration to normalize class warfare rhetoric . . . that students are being taught — and not even necessarily overtly — to internalize the assertions and assumptions of Marxism and socialism. . . .
[W]e as a country and a culture have allowed the feel-good emotionalism of the leftist pitch to convince us to adopt and institutionalize ideas that are fundamentally and structurally anathema to the thinking that willed this country into being.

Obviously, Jeff Goldstein isn’t a good person like Mika Brzezinski, or the editors at the Washington Post who published a manifesto by the ideological godfathers of the Occupy movement:

For two heady months, the amorphous encampment in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park had been the symbolic heart of Occupy Wall Street, the birthplace of the greatest social-justice movement to emerge in the United States since the civil rights era. This primal cry for democracy sprang from young people who could no longer ignore the angst in their gut — the premonition that their future does not compute, that their entire lives will be lived in the apocalyptic shadow of climate-change tipping points, species die-offs, a deadening commercialized culture, a political system perverted by money, precarious employment, a struggle to pay off crippling student loans, and no chance of ever owning a home or living in comfort like their parents. Glimpsing this black hole of ecological, political, financial and spiritual crisis, the youth and the millions of Americans who joined them instinctively knew that unless they stood up and fought nonviolently for a different kind of future, they would have no future at all.

If your reaction is to dismiss this as left-wing lunatic gibberish, you’ve just proven how stupid you are. Probably because you watch Fox News. Maybe you should call Daniel Cassino at 973-896-7072. He’s an expert, and might be able to help you learn to enjoy watching Mika Brezinski on MSNBC, so you can be smart, too.

UPDATE: Because I’m so stupid (from years of watching Fox News), I forgot to remind you to shop our Amazon Associates “Black Friday” specials this week. Great deals for you, a small commission for me.

UPDATE II: Of course, our readers are mostly stupid Fox News viewers, so you probably don’t read “books” (as Mika and her smart friends call them), but maybe it’s time to try something new.

They sell everything at Amazon — even “computers,” which are machines that only smart people who watch MSNBC know how to use.

Category: MSNBC

We’ve All Gone Crazy

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 61 Comments

Folie à deux — shared psychosis; a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another.

Who’s nuts: David Frum or the Republicans who hate him?

It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. Some will tell you so. Others will indulgently humor you. Still others will avoid you. More than a few will demand that the authorities do something to get you off the streets. . . .
It’s possible that my friends are right. I don’t think so — but then, crazy people never do. . . .
When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions — crime, inflation, the Cold War — right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.

You can read the whole thing, but I think the basic problem can be traced back to the Bush administration, when we were told that profoundly un-conservative things — “No Child Left Behind,” the USA-PATRIOT Act, Medicare Part D — were in fact fundamental to the conservative agenda. And when those things failed (either as policy or politics), the “brand damage” to the Republican Party was blamed on conservatives who had advocated those things.

Cronyism in federal appointments (“Heckuva job, Brownie“) is no part the conservative agenda, and yet when FEMA screwed up, conservatism got the blame. Micro-managing public school curricula from D.C. isn’t conservative, but when No Child Left Behind forced schools to “teach to the test,” enraged teachers didn’t blame liberals, did they? And you can’t find anything reading Burke, Kirk or Buckley that would support a policy of encouraging lenders to give poorly documented mortages to unqualified buyers, yet this is what the Bush administration did — and called it “conservative”!

We are dealing with the results of a confusion, one which previously developed during the administrations of Eisenhower and Nixon, and which recurred under Bush. This confusion is between:

  1. The policies pursued by Republicans; and
  2. The policies advocated by conservatives.

Frum is a wonk very much concerned with the question of what legislative and policy initiatives can be feasibly enacted (and politically defended) by Republican elected officials.  That’s a very different thing than declaring, broadly, what the ultimate objectives of the conservative movement should be.

For example, were it in my power to accomplish one thing in Washington, D.C., the federal Department of Education would be abolished and its employees summarily dismissed from public service. Except for funding necessary research and providing educational benefits for military veterans, we would get the federal government entirely out of the education business.

This is not how wonks talk or think, however, because nobody in Wonk World has that kind of profound loathing for federal bureaucracy. When you suggest a genuinely bold proposal like zeroing out the Department of Education, a Republican wonk immediately imagines the hue and outcry from the Democrats, the teachers unions, and the New York Times. They can’t imagine Republicans withstanding such angry criticism and, they’ll point out, Reagan never followed through on his promise to abolish the Department of Education.

So your bold proposal is immediately dismissed as “unserious,” impractical as either politics or policy, and you’re back to arguing about how the Department of Education can be reformed, as if there is some conservative way to reform a bureaucracy that — by conservative principles — shouldn’t exist to begin with.

Also, abolishing whole departments of the federal government would deprive the next Republican president of the opportunity to appoint their cronies to top jobs in those departments. Maybe you have no desire to be an assistant deputy undersecretary in the Department of Education, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t well-connected Republicans who covet such posts. So you’re messing with the “jobs for the boys” factor of partisan loyalty, which doesn’t matter to you — the rank-and-file voter — but matters a great deal to young GOP operatives who see an administration position as a stepping stone to a lucrative career as a K Street lobbyist.

What can be done? I think the important thing is to be honest about motives, and to clarify the difference between long-term objectives and near-term legislative proposals. Keep in mind that Hubert Humphrey and other liberals were advocating for nationalizing health care as early as 1948. it took them until 1965 to get Medicare and Medicaid, and until 2010 to get ObamaCare.

Democrats are willing to push relentlessly for their policy preferences, and to suffer political unpopularity to achieve their goals.

Republicans, by contrast, have developed a habit in the past 30 years of looking around for a chance to support something that seems popular — Bomb Saddam! — then lashing the hell out of anyone who criticizes them — Un-American! — and thereby confusing people about first principles. (The democratization of Mesopatamia might be a good thing generally, but is it really so central to the conservative agenda that it must be implemented at all hazards?) While I don’t want to turn this into a schismatic dispute among paleocons and neocons or between any other of the various cliques inside the Big Tent, can’t we agree that the “brand damage” legacy of Bush-era Republicanism had something to do with the ascendance of certain people and certain ideas to positions of dominance in the GOP coalition over the past 10 or 15 years?

When we see GOP primary voters embrace the populism of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain, or the libertarianism of Ron Paul, we have to recognize this as a reaction to what went wrong with the GOP between 1995 and 2006. Populism involves a rejection of the elite, and who can deny that the Republican elite has made a botch of things in the past 15 years? Libertarianism involves a hostility to statism, and who can deny that the GOP didn’t become entirely too statist during the Bush years?

Over the weekend, I exchanged e-mails with Brad Thompson, author of Neoconservatism: Obituary for an Idea. Critics of neoconservatism have had something of a field day since the 2006 mid-term elections brought the collapse of what we might call the “Bush bubble.”  Whether Dr. Thompson’s criticisms are fair or unfair, I can’t say, as I haven’t read his book. But I would suggest that what we’ve seen in the past three years suggests that, if neoconservatism is implicated in the “brand damage” issue, is it because of whatever there is of elitism and statism in the neoconservative worldview.

Unlike David Brooks — I walk out of room the minute he starts talking — David Frum is someone I consider a friend, which causes me to get a lot of heat from some of my conservative friends, including those friends whom Frum has attacked by name.

Frum stubbornly believes he’s right (and also, Right), and any attempt to argue him out of his position is doomed to failure, simply because it’s his position and he feels honor-bound to defend it. Being rather mule-headed myself, I can relate to that, even when I know Frum is wrong, wrong, wrong (as is anyone who disagrees with me). However, I believe the point of arguments among conservatives is always to find the best way to stomp liberalism into smithereens. And I wish Frum would stop carping so much about conservatives, and start stomping some liberals.

By the way — have you shopped our Amazon Associates “Black Friday Deals Week” specials? I’ve been flogging this all day, and I’ll keep on flogging it as long as necessary: You get low prices, I get a small commission, and we all have a Merry Christmas. That’s the kind of agenda I think all True Conservatives can support.


Category: Conservatism 101

Smitty Loves His Kindle

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 5 Comments

While he was in Afghanistan, our beloved Admiral developed a serious addiction to his Kindle, downloading e-books to read when he wasn’t fighting the Taliban fleet. I don’t know if he’s tried the new Kindle Fire, but you can buy one for just $199 this week through our Amazon Associates link and it kicks me a little commission to help pay the bills.


Category: Amazon

Call Sign: ‘Nash One’

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 7 Comments

You never know where a good story’s going to lead. Sunday morning, I found myself thinking about that Catholic schoolgirl who cussed out Jeff Goldstein in Denver. Where do these kids get their ideas? How can we get through to them? And why do these Occupy protesters get on my very last nerve?

What bugged me — and you could see this in my long Saturday post — was the evidence that these kids evidently are taught nothing about the heroes of America’s long fight against Communism. All they seem to know about that era is (a) “McCarthyism” was bad and (b) hippie peaceniks protesting the Vietnam War were good. With that kind of education, is it any wonder they think Occupy Wall Street is cool?

While I was brooding over that, a childhood memory flashed in my mind and I started Googling about a pilot whose name I knew, but whose history I’d never researched. At first there didn’t seem to be much information available, although I was able to learn his Air Force call-sign. Then I found a blog where one of his relatives had posted a 1988 news article about him, and went to work. It took several hours to produce my American Spectator column today:

Kids who visit the park in Douglasville, Georgia, just call it “Hunter Park,” although its proper name is Hunter Memorial Park, and most of the children running around the soccer fields and picnic areas never stop to study the monument that pays tribute to the park’s namesake. He was voted “Most Talented” his senior year at Douglas County High School, where he won acclaim for his artistic abilities, starred in the school play and was editor of the student yearbook, but his name is not well known today, when he would have been 70 years old.
Robert Gerald “Jerry” Hunter left his native Douglas County to attend the Citadel, where he graduated with honors. He joined the Air Force, became a fighter pilot, and was deployed to Vietnam. On May 25, 1966, Hunter was on his 34th combat mission when his F-105 jet was shot down near the Laotian border. He bailed out — his comrades saw the parachute — and it was initially believed that he had survived. The 25-year-old pilot was listed as missing in action, and the Air Force promoted him from first lieutenant to captain while rescuers searched for him. Hunter’s family, including his young bride Laura, prayerfully waited for word that he had been recovered safely. Seven weeks later, however, the sad news came that his remains had been found in Laos, where he had apparently died of injuries. First Baptist Church in Douglasville overflowed with mourners at his funeral and local businesses closed early that afternoon in honor of Captain Hunter, Douglas County’s first casualty in the Vietnam War. Hunter Memorial Park was dedicated a year later, when I was in second grade, and I remember as a boy reading his name on the monument at the park. . . .

Please read the whole thing, because you never know where a good story’s going to lead.

SOURCES:

Category: American Spectator

He’s an Expert on ‘Fools and Clowns’

Posted on | November 21, 2011 | 17 Comments

“I have a structural hypothesis here. You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. And that’s the Republican problem. . . . The Republican base does not want Romney and they keep on looking for an alternative. And Newt, although — somebody said, ‘He’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.’ But he is more plausible than the other guys they’ve been pushing up.”
— Paul Krugman, on ABC News This Week

Category: ABC, Election 2012, Liberals
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