by Smitty
Good show, give it a watch:
The Tweet of the Week thing is cool. Kruiser should also do a top three for the various hash tag games, as the riffs are also brutal there.
Thomas Sowell On #OccupyWallStreet
by Smitty
I don’t know if Thomas Sowell has the same problem Herman Cain does with black authenticity, but Sowell makes just as much or more sense as Cain does:
Watch the whole thing:
Via Sowell on Twitter
They Truly Hate Liberty
by Smitty
Ladd Ehlinger links Zilla of the Resistance in support of Donald Douglas, who has come under real-world attack for supporting the truth.
It is increasingly hard to give anyone on the Left the benefit of the doubt. On political questions, I am nearly at the point of thinking anyone on the Left is guilty until proven innocent. And even the evidence of innocence may be rigged. They campaign on transparency, then do precisely the opposite. Not acutely, but chronically, as though the truth were their urinal, and any semblance of classically liberal thought merely an act.
What to do?
First, I think we avoid being drawn solely into the moment. In the death throes of Progressivism, they are wildly wrecking as much as they can. Fools that they are, they live only in the present tense. Stay calm and adult. Remember that, after this societal kidney stone is passed, we still have to live with our actions. We that have a conscience and moral compass, that is. Expect the Left to lack such.
Second, don’t lose sight of compassion. There may be a tiny fraction of the Left that are salvageable. While dispensing 99% tough love to the 99% idiot crowd, keep the eye peeled for the 1% whose reasoning faculties are not totally shot.
Thirdly, don’t expect it to end soon. Progressivism may be dying, but, like some vast serpent in a Lovecraft story, it’s got significant thrashing to do. The Left wants you to give up and join the Cthulhu worship. Then there is the dirty diaper of debt that Progress leaves. It really isn’t clear to me that anyone knows just how bad things are, financially. Remember: they want you to despair. Resist we much.
Fourth, yawn at these appeals to foolish authority. The people that claim they can fix it are the people who have been tubing it for decades. If they sound stupid, or speak in contradictions (you have to tell your life story to fly, but can’t show government ID to vote) it is quite likely that they are stupid. Touching on #3 above, I frequently cite the Book of Exodus in the context of how long it is going to take to un-trash the American mind. These #OWS people are slaves, and they will beget slaves, but perhaps by the third generation we can again be a land of promise.
Foreign Policy and the Cult of Experts
Daniel Drezner at Foreign Policy mocks Herman Cain:
So I thought I’d go over to Cain’s campaign website and spend an equal amount of time to analyze his foreign policy thinking.
I found…. a total of five paragraphs on “national security.” That’s it. No white papers, fact sheets, bullet points, or list of advisors. So you gotta think that these are going to be the most awesome and mind-blowing foreign policy paragraphs ever!!!
Drezner is “professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University,” and his mocking commentary exemplifies a widespread attitude within the foreign policy/national security elite that expertise is essential in all such matters.
Turn back to 2008, however, and this insistence on national security expertise was nowhere to be seen, as John McCain — a man who had specialized in such matters even before being elected to Congress — was scorned in favor of the parvenu Barack Obama, whose only claim to foreign-policy expertise was having spent several years of his childhood in Indonesia.
Obviously, Cain expects the election to be fought over domestic economic issues, his own field of expertise, as a successful businessman. His occasional comments about foreign policy have not demonstrated a reassuring mastery of the subject, but one suspects he’s also losing points with the elite because he doesn’t talk the kind of talk that Obama talks. When Chris Buckley praised Obama’s “first-class temperament,” this was what he was praising: Having attended the right schools (Columbia and Harvard Law), Obama talks like . . . someone who attended the right schools.
Morehouse College and Purdue University graduate school, preparatory to a career in the food-service industry, do not impart the same sort of attitude as do Columbia and Harvard Law, preparatory to a career in academia and government.
Cain’s seeming indifference to expertise, his evident unwillingness to learn to talk the way politicians are supposed to talk about foreign policy, is what’s really being criticized here. But Cain may be smarter about this than his critics suspect. The grassroots voters are apt to think back over the past few years and wonder exactly what we’ve gained by listening to the soi-disant experts in foreign affairs. And so when Cain says wild stuff that sets the tongues of the punditry wagging, I’m not sure that’s going to cost him many votes in the Iowa precinct caucuses.
It may be no comfort to Daniel Drezner or Chris Buckley, but I hope David Brooks will be reassured to know that the creases of Herman Cain’s pants are always meticulously pressed. And if he ever needs to know anything about Vanuatu, I’m sure he’ll ask the expert.
Savage Weirdness at Final Boarding: Did Team Perry Put the Blame on Rubio?
The National Affairs Desk, in the smoking lounge at
Dulles International Airport, 1:10 p.m., Monday, Oct. 17, 2011
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Less than hour until final boarding for my flight to LAX en route to Vegas, and no time to waste on trivia now. While I was checking in the one-way rental car ($164), I was on the phone with Sarah Rumpf, who told me a bizarre reverse-angle on the Rubio/Romney conspiracy theory. Pagan Temple had picked this out of Javier’s post earlier:
Convoluting matters further, one of Perry’s top campaign consultants was also Governor Charlie Crist’s consultant during the 2010 Senate race before Crist jumped ship and ran as an Independent, and that Perry’s Florida team was being led by Rich Heffley, Jim Rimes and Randy Enwright. Heffley was responsible for fabricating the infamous “truthaboutRubio” attack website against now Senator Rubio.
Get it? Sarah has a post about this that provides links to the dots – including Javier’s post from Friday – but leaves it to the reader to imagine how those dots might be connected. What am I getting at? Some of Rubio’s allies suspect that the Crist/LeMieux/Perry forces in Florida, eager to strike a blow against Romney, and also damage the hated Rubio, spread the rumor of a Romney/Rubio conspiracy to move up Florida’s primary to Jan. 31. By blaming it on Rubio’s chief of staff, Cesar Conda, they help LeMieux in next year’s Senate primary, because Rubio is also viewed as an ally of Adam Hasner.
Rubio has tried to stay officially neutral in both the presidential primary and the Florida Senate primary but – if this connect-the-dots theory is true – somebody in Team Perry managed to spread a damaging rumor in such a way that they must have known would reach me. Because I had solid sources telling me as first-hand knowledge that the Romney/Rubio conspiracy (with Conda as the middleman) was true. Were my sources duped? Or were they part of the Perry plot? Or is the original conspiracy theory true, and this new reverse-angle theory a defensive spin to protect Romney’s operation in Florida? The fact that Rich Heffley was one of the first Florida operatives hired by Team Perry suggests the possibility of dirty tricks, and by now the possibilities have multiplied so much I don’t know who or what to believe.
You see that we’re deep into savage weirdness at this point and, of course, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. But now I’ve got less than half an hour until they call final boarding, so I’ll have to leave all that for later, and finish with the Five Most Important Words in the English Language: Hit the freaking tip jar!
Fear and Loathing (and, Yes, Sweet Vengeance) On the Road to Feb. 1, 2012
Today’s the day I fly off to Las Vegas to cover Tuesday’s crucial Republican presidential debate. It’s a long flight from Dulles to LAX, then a four-hour layover before I catch the plane to Vegas. I’ll be crashing in Barbara Espinosa‘s suite at the Sands, while Smitty and Wombat — both of them got their media credentials for the debate — will fly in Tuesday.
But while I’ll be in Vegas the next four days to cover the debate and the Western Republican Leadership Conference, it’s important to remember that this isn’t about Vegas. This is about getting my revenge on those [insert obscene epithets] in the Florida GOP leadership who screwed up the campaign schedule, ruined Christmas and wrecked my life by moving their primary to Jan. 31.
And we know why they did it, don’t we? Continue reading Fear and Loathing (and, Yes, Sweet Vengeance) On the Road to Feb. 1, 2012 →
Day By Day Speaks Truth To Overlords
by Smitty
An excellent play by Muir. This prompts me to drop in a bit of Chickenfoot:
‘Howdy. Thank You, Erick.’
Those were the first four words of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s announcement speech at the Red State Gathering in Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 13. At the time, I was the only one who saw Perry’s diss of Iowa Republicans — his deliberate attempt to upstage the Ames Straw Poll held the same day — as an ominous portent of doom.
Perry’s decision to make his announcement in South Carolina was widely viewed at the time as a genius move that would lock down his support in a crucial early primary state, and once he emerged as the most viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, Perry would have no trouble making up whatever he’d lost in Iowa by dissing Ames.
Such was the conventional wisdom in August, but now today (via Wombat’s “Live at Five” aggregation) we see this headline:
Cain Takes Lead In South Carolina
ATLANTA — Herman Cain holds a decisive lead in the South Carolina Republican primary, according to a survey conducted Sunday for The Augusta Chronicle.
The InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research poll of 476 registered voters likely to vote in the GOP primary gave Cain 32 percent, twice the share of Mitt Romney’s 16.
Rick Perry holds 12 percent, making him essentially tied with Romney because the difference is within the 5 percent margin of error.
“In this case, South Carolina is a three-man race,” said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery. . . .
In a telephone conversation over the weekend, a Perry supporter tried to convince me that the Texas governor is still the only viable alternative to Romney, that Herman Cain can’t possibly win the nomination, and that anyone who is supporting any candidate other than Perry is therefore effectively pro-Romney.
Believe what you want to believe, sweetheart. And for all I know, you may be right. I don’t even get invited to BlogCon, so I must be a complete idiot, which is why Perry is in fifth place — single digits! — in recent Iowa polls, while The Guy Who Can’t Possibly Win the Nomination is leading Romney by eight points in the Hawkeye State.
I’m a complete idiot who knows nothing about politics or blogging (just ask Tabitha Hale), so it is beyond my ability to explain that, or to fathom why Rick “Viable Alternative” Perry is in sixth place — trailing Jon Huntsman! — in the recent New Hampshire polls.
By the time you get to the Stacy Wasn’t Invited Conference in Denver, my dear Perry-loving friend, maybe all of this will have changed.
Maybe Rick Perry will have bought $15 million worth of debate mojo, and maybe Herman Cain will have forgotten how to tie his own shoes. And then all the bloggers in Denver can laugh at me some more, just like you’ve been laughing at me all along.
If you don’t think I’m an idiot, please: Hit the freaking tip jar!
UPDATE: By the way, I mean to get an explanation from the Cain campaign about this video snippet from ABC News:
Either (a) somebody in Iowa isn’t doing their job right, or (b) ABC News invented a story. Either way, it’s not encouraging.