The Other McCain

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

Letter To An Anonymous Blogger

Posted on | July 3, 2011 | 21 Comments

by Smitty

The shiny new blog Political Clown Parade is a welcome addition to the dextrosphere. Check this excellent bit of Thaddeus McCotter juxtaposed with The Gipper:

Blogging is a rush, but you can’t have peaks without valleys. We are all members of the chorus of self-government. We succeed or fail insofar as we show up to work as Presidents of our own lives. The pressure to ‘compete’ is a bit of a distractor; you remain a welcome member of the chorus. More is better. We don’t all get the solo moment, but the whole of the chorus is far more important than whichever soloist is varying the theme of liberty at any given time.
It is a historical accident that the buck must stop somewhere. That is, admitting we require a President to accept the blame, or credit, for events is a sad existential epedience. The stuck-ee for being President after the election settles is less important than whether or not the person stands for Liberty.
But don’t spend all day reading me; get your doggone blog on, you Curmudgeon!
Warm regards,
Smitty

P.S.: pay no attention to the Prince of the Malodorous. He daft.

Update: Nice Deb has video of Thaddeus McCotter announcing. Go, Thad!

Category: Uncategorized

How Fannie and Freddie Screwed Over Taxpayers and Wrecked the Economy

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 16 Comments

Amazing to see this on PBS:

UPDATE: Linked by The Lonely Conservative and Dan Collins at The Conservatory — thanks! Meanwhile, reviewing Reckless Endangerment at Barron’s, Gene Epstein writes:

It starts at the beginning — in 1991, when Jim Johnson, a political operative and former top aide to Sen. Walter Mondale, took over as Fannie Mae’s CEO. Previously, Fannie had been run as a business; afterward, it was run like a political machine.

George Will also praises the book:

Put on asbestos mittens and pick up “Reckless Endangerment,” the scalding new book by Gretchen Morgenson, a New York Times columnist, and Joshua Rosner, a housing finance expert. They will introduce you to James A. Johnson, an emblem of the administrative state that liberals admire.
The book’s subtitle could be: “Cry ‘Compassion’ and Let Slip the Dogs of Cupidity.” Or: “How James Johnson and Others (Mostly Democrats) Made the Great Recession.”

Category: Corruption

Why Doesn’t Obama Come Right Out and Say, ‘Democrats Want to Raise Taxes’?

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 24 Comments

There is a cynical saying among political strategists on Capitol Hill: “Do we want the bill or do we want the issue”? That is to say, is it to our advantage to pass legislation to address a specific issue, or is it to our advantage to keep the issue alive as a controversy going into the next election campaign? If all you care about is gaining political advantage, that’s how you think about such matters, and this seems to me what President Obama is doing with the current budget debate:

President Obama used his weekly address to reiterate his demand for ending tax breaks for “millionaires and billionaires” in any budget deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.
“It would be nice if we could keep every tax break, but we can’t afford them,” Obama said. “Because if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or for hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners, or for oil and gas companies pulling in huge profits without our help — then we’ll have to make even deeper cuts somewhere else.”

Watch the video of his weekly address:

Obama knows — or at least, he ought to know — that ending the “tax breaks” he talks about so vaguely would contribute a neglible amount of revenue in terms of shrinking a $1.4-trillion annual deficit. Furthermore, because the policy he advocates would be a disincentive to investment, it might extend the recession and actually decrease federal tax revenue.

Now let’s drop the president’s political euphemisms about ending “tax breaks” and instead speak the plain truth: President Obama wants to raise taxes.

Or does he? Read more

Category: Barack Obama, Budget, Conservatism 101, Taxes

Watch It, Cuz!

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 15 Comments

My cousin, LaGrange (Ga.) News columnist Pepper Ellis Hagebak, is telling tales again:

My own favorite family nut is still with us. When we were growing up, he was always into something. He was brilliant and hyper, and for most of his teen and young adult years, he thought he was Rod Stewart. In his defense, he does bear a striking resemblance to the raspy-voiced rocker, but you can see why the entire family knew early on that he was our generation’s loony-toon. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but I won’t vouch the truth of any of it. However, I will not specifically deny any accusation, because then Pepper might start telling a whole ‘nother bunch of stuff. And trust me, there’s a lot of stuff.

But cousin: “Loony-toon”? Why, I’m an award-winning professional journalist! Not that the two things are utterly incompatible . . .

UPDATE: And while I’m at it, I have no comment on these salacious rumors that Bob Belvedere is spreading.

Category: Family

Better A Bald Head Than A Cheese Head

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Yet another scurrilous cheap shot from the Trog bog over my enthusiasm for a Thaddeus McCotter candidacy. For such abuse to be unexpected, there would have to have been some element of surprise. The Troglopundit never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to comport himself in a civilized fashion.
How could the state which produced a Paul Ryan have also emitted such a sad bloviator as Trog?

Category: Uncategorized

Necessary But Not Sufficient

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Insty)

I don’t disagree with the mighty Scott Ott’s practical approach to a deficit deal, insofar as reality affects the thinking of the current POTUS, which is somewhere around ‘not at all’. Framing the discussion in terms of increasing revenue is both valid, and in keeping with Ott’s gentle humor.

Past the friendly cajoling, though, there is this: you have to tell me what we’re doing to re-constrain the federal government to its enumerated powers, or you haven’t told me much.

Restated, the outcome of our current series of Constituiontal crises is that we are either returning to the existing Constitution, as amended, and with respect to technological improvements like the Air Force that fall within the spirit of the document, or we just need to scuttle the flipping document entirely, and embrace the European suck.

There is some room for moderation, where something akin to Ryan’s plan may be more politically attainable, for the decades it will take for the Progressive-era herd to die off (sorry, mom & dad), but we have to cut the nonsense on the false EUtopia pushed by the Progressives. If it’s not a bridge to a Federalist, properly Constitutional, limited government, then any transition plan or compromise is an invitation to continued Progressdecay.

Stick to your guns, Boehner.

Category: Budget

Ruh-Roh: Rick Perry Staffing Up in Iowa? And What About Sarah Palin? In or Out?

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 33 Comments

First, the news:

The group “Americans for Rick Perry,” which made headlines in the last two days for trying to light a fire for the Texas governor in the form of support at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa next month, is making hires – including a top former Newt Gingrich staffer, sources told POLITICO.
Craig Schoenfeld, a veteran Iowa strategist, has been brought on board and has started nascent discussions with others about six-week contracts – meaning the duration of the lead-up to the Ames poll, the sources said.

OK, now the gossip: When I was at Right Online, I talked to a Republican communications operative who had just returned from Texas and said he was certain Perry would run. I didn’t report that conversation at the time, because when I started asking questions, the source said he didn’t have any “inside knowledge,” but was just saying that “all the signs” from Perry’s people were that they were gearing up for a campaign.

This “Americans for Rick Perry” is a shadow-proxy operation — not an official campaign — but if you put 2 and 2 together, it adds up to . . . he’s getting in. And this changes the whole game.

Personally, my feeling is that American voters aren’t ready for another Texas Republican governor, and Perry’s got a few weak spots that his GOP opponents may hit. What Perry does have going for him is the nation’s hottest state economy — Texas is booming, despite the recession — and some serious fund-raising potential.

Next, the raw speculation: Is Sarah Palin in or out? Read more

Category: Election 2012, Iowa, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin

Michele Bachmann, Neo-Confederate?

Posted on | July 2, 2011 | 35 Comments

Here’s an unexpected bonus of yesterday’s post about Michelle Goldberg’s rant against Mark Halperin: If you’ll watch video of Goldberg’s Democracy Now interview — Donald Douglas posted the video yesterday — she makes reference to Bachmann’s law school mentor John Eidsmoe, who was highlighted in a June 14 Daily Beast article Goldberg wrote:

Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at the Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University . . .
At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as “one of the professors who had a great influence on me.” . . .
In 2010, speaking [at] a rally celebrating Alabama’s secession from the Union, [Eidsmoe] claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Say what you will, Eidsmoe is right about that. It has been pointed out (by the late Joe Sobran, among others) that there is no evidence that Lincoln ever read the Federalist papers. Lincoln had little formal education, and became a lawyer by “reading law” as the informal process of legal education was then called. By contrast, John C. Calhoun was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, and Calhoun’s Disquisition on Government is one of the most profound treatises on constitutional theory ever written. Jefferson Davis was a precocious scholar who entered Kentucky’s Transylvania University when he was just 13, and graduated West Point at age 20. He later served as Secretary of War and was a U.S. Senator. Davis’s memoir Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government shows him to be a thoughtful and erudite student of constitutional principle.

Of course, Bachmann isn’t campaigning for the GOP nomination on a neo-Confederate platform, and Michelle Goldberg cites Eidsmoe’s recent activities merely as a guilt-by-association smear: How is Bachmann, who studied with Eidsmoe 25 years ago, to be held accountable for everything her former professor says today? Liberals considered it unfair to blame Obama for Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s demented ravings, when Obama sat in Wright’s pews for 20 years and named one of his books after the title of a Wright sermon.

But Goldberg’s article might actually help Bachmann in the campaign. One can easily imagine some good-old-boy Republicans in the key early primary state of South Carolina who, having previously disdained the Minnesota congresswoman as just another damned Yankee, discover Bachmann’s Eidsmoe connection to the Lost Cause and say, “Hot dang, fellers — she’s one of us!”

Category: Election 2012, History, Michele Bachmann
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