Rep. Ron Paul (R, Tex.) knew that I liked him, and that I was voting for him — although that didn’t stop me from co-writing a story about the history of racist comments in newsletters he published. Bob Barr knew that I liked him, and trusted me enough to tell me, off-the-record, what he thought of people. I kept that trust with people, and people kept it with me. In this business you have to keep that trust or no one will talk to you, and then you can only learn what people want you to know. . . .
Yeah. It’s all about access. But . . . access to what?
Yes, Michelle Malkin has declared this Kagan Kabuki Week in the Judiciary Committee, where Democratic senators will pretend that Kagan is a moderate pragmatist, and Republican senators will pretend that they’re still relevant. Some quick hits:
When I was an assistant editor at The Washington Times, I waged a one-man campaign against using the language of violence to describe political debate. That kind of headline depicts the Republican Party as a gang of ruffians ready to assault the nominee.
He just became the best kind of Democrat, joining the sainted ranks of those who can no longer demagogue and pander their way to power, who no longer tax honest people into poverty so that their less industrious neighbors can be bribed with “free” government giveaways, and about whom even Republicans feel compelled to say nice things.
American children not yet born will pay the debts incurred to build all those pork-barrel edifices that now must be renamed the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Wastewater Treatment Plant, etc.
I realize that Paul Krugman is to the Ivory Tower what my Congresstool is to the Administration: an unattractive cheerleader sans pom-poms. But Krugman appears either to speak another language that merely looks like English, or be completely toys in the attic.
But future historians will tell us that this wasn’t the end of the third depression, just as the business upturn that began in 1933 wasn’t the end of the Great Depression. After all, unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.
In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.
As far as rhetoric is concerned, the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence. As a practical matter, however, America isn’t doing much better. The Fed seems aware of the deflationary risks — but what it proposes to do about these risks is, well, nothing. The Obama administration understands the dangers of premature fiscal austerity — but because Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress won’t authorize additional aid to state governments, that austerity is coming anyway, in the form of budget cuts at the state and local levels.
If you look at a generator, the real work occurs at the rotor/stator level. There is a governor, but what does it do? It governs the rotor to deliver the product at a desired frequency. If you ask an engineer how he’s going to tweak the governor so that the governor can produce more electricity, he’s going to look at you like you’re totally new, or an Eclownomist.
Say the rotor is rotating too slowly. The governor needs to detect that, and open the throttle on the engine which turns the rotor. Engine output increases, rotor speeds up, governor eases off the throttle. This is a closed-loop system. Useful systems are usually closed-loop, because that implies stability.
What is dawning upon citizens around the world, who are neither stupid nor instinctively political, is that the world is governed by thieves and morons that are stupid and all too political. No good can come of this open loop system of debt and more debt. Like an idiot savant dope fiend on a bender, the best result of Krugmanism might be a slightly lengthened euphoria before an even more devastating crash.
Not everyone is keen on these delaying tactics, Mr. Krugman. One of the hallmarks of maturity is a desire to front-load the bad news. We all know it will be bad. We knew the promises of the politicians were bogus at campaign-time. The governor has swamped the generator in debt. Things have to change, or the system will overheat, and the smoke will come out of the windings. We know that the depth and severity of the brownout will be decreased if it comes sooner rather than later.
We all realize that you’re basically a paid court jester, Mr. Krugman. You write what you’re paid to write. The notion of liberty in general, and economic freedom in particular, might strike you as far too egalitarian for your world. You really believe that the governor makes the juice.
But people are not generators, Mr. Krugman, and the governor is a part of the load, not the driver.
Maybe studying a bit of engineering would disabuse you of your foolishness.
The editors at the Huffington Post have an editorial: G-20 Leaders Pledge To Halve Deficits By 2013. We here at The Other McCain would like to get rid of that spurious ‘L’ in the title: G-20 Leaders Pledge To Have Deficits By 2013. This implies that, yes, the deficits will still exist by the time 2013 rolls around. That is, unless the whole global economic ball of wax has melted down into a puddle of that substance known as Bushdidit.
Beyond this sad typo in the title, let’s examine the rest of THP’s Orwellian outing:
Wary of slamming on the stimulus brakes too quickly but shaken by the European debt crisis, world leaders pledged Sunday to slash government deficits in the most industrialized nations in half by 2013, with wiggle room to meet the goal.
Translation: when a budgetary Houdini is at work, wiggle room makes any restraint an avant garde fashion statement. ‘Les boys do cabaret’.
They generally sided with cutting spending and raising taxes, despite warnings from President Barack Obama that too much austerity too quickly could choke off the global recovery.
“Serious challenges remain,” they cautioned in a closing statement. “While growth is returning, the recovery is uneven and fragile, unemployment in many countries remains at unacceptable levels, and the social impact of the crisis is still widely felt,” according to the document from the Group of 20 major industrial and developing nations.
Briefly: theater is about scripts. Reality is about meaning, which you’ll find elsewhere.
Summit participants navigated a careful course between Obama, with his emphasis on growth, and fellow leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel who advocated spending cuts and even tax increases.
“Advanced economies have committed to fiscal plans that will at least halve deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce government debt-to-GDP ratios by 2016,” according to the statement. The gross domestic product (GDP) measures the value of all goods and services, and is considered the best gauge of economic health.
Translation: we have felt things in anticipation of elections. We are committed to feeling something else later.
At the same time, the statement incorporated Obama’s cautions against pulling back government supports too quickly. “To sustain recovery, we need to follow through on delivering existing stimulus plans, while working to create the conditions for robust private demand,” it said.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the summit host, told a wrap-up news conference that “fiscal consolidation is not an end in itself” and that there is “an ongoing role for stimulus in the short term.” Summit participants have been using the term “fiscal consolidation” to refer to spending cuts and tax increases.
Translation: when we say “plan”, we don’t really consider any timeframe beyond our next round of bond sales. Also, people are glomming onto the fact that we are not using terms like “cuts” in any meaningful way. Instead, we’re instituting new, more vague and abstract terminology to help us get past the sad demise of public liberty and government accountability.
“G-20 still has a lot to do to fully entrench the global recovery but these are important steps forward. They are steps that Canada has been seeking,” Harper said.
A White House statement said the G-20’s Toronto agreement carries through with existing stimulus programs while recognizing that deficit-reduction “needs to be calibrated … and tailored to national circumstances.”
The protester wrecking crew was quite a success at the G-20. Plans are underway for G-20palooza, a worldwide urban renewal tour where heads of state gather for photo ops and speechifying, while a nameless, yet curiously well-funded mob cuts right through inconvenient local interests to clear property in preparation for the future.
The US, in particular, views this as a handy work-around for obstructions presented by the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment, and the ridiculous population of bitter cling-ons who insist on impeding Holy Progress.
Brown’s possible defection from the bill increases the chance of a successful Republican filibuster this time unless Democratic leaders can find another vote.
Democrats control 57 seats in the Senate and Republicans 41. Two independents usually vote with the Democrats. It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster.
“While I’m still reviewing the bill’s details, these provisions were not in the Senate version of the bill which I previously supported … I’ve said repeatedly that I cannot support any bill that raises tax,” Brown said.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid had no comment on Saturday when asked if Brown’s concerns posed a serious obstacle to final passage of the bill.
The three other Republicans that voted for the financial regulatory reform package in May were Senator Susan Collins and Senator Olympia Snowe, both of Maine, and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa.
A spokeswoman for Grassley said he was still evaluating the conference report.
Two Democrats, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Maria Cantwell of Washington, voted against the Senate financial regulatory reform package in May.
I’m all for seeing a de facto shut down of Congress until the next election.
Nothing good has, or likely can, come from the slow-motion heist known as the 111th Congress.
Update: Senator Byrd is in the hospital. Pray he comes to and does no harm.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Alabama Republican 2nd District congressional candidate Rick Barber:
A source close to the campaign asked my opinion of the ad, and all I could say was, “You’re going to get heat, but you’re going to get light, too.”
The GOP primary runoff is July 13, and Barber is a Tea Party underdog up against a well-funded establishment candidate. So, as they say in Vegas, it looks like Rick is going “all in.”
We might assume, arguendo, that regular readers have been following The Other McCain’s relentless mockery of the 2010 World Cup. However, for those who may have joined the mockery in progress and missed the set-up for this particular running gag, let’s recall how liberals have portrayed American contempt for soccer as inherently racist:
“I was reminded about why when the United States wins in international tournaments, it can bring a nasty undercurrent in its wake. . . .
“It’s yet another reminder why it is so important for progressives to not just thrill to the joys of sport but be conversant in the politics of sports. The right will forever try to pump the worst kind of racist, nationalist garbage through our play, even at moments that by all rights should be above and beyond politics and just about the electric thrill of the moment.”
— David Zirin, The Nation, June 23
Anyone who has read Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed (as everyone should) recognizes in this a signature trope of elitist liberalism: “We are enlightened and sophisticated, whereas conservatives are benighted and bigoted.”
Sowell summarizes the danger of this tendency in his book’s subtitle: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. That is to say, liberals support certain policies not because those policies are demonstrably effective, but because supporting such policies makes liberals feel good about themselves.
This nonsense about conservatives hating soccer because we are xenophobic jingos is merely a variation on the argument that conservative opposition to nationalized health-care is motivated by racism. The liberal worldview needs to be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how, which was the primary motivation of World Cup Fever — Catch It! — here:
This recap is not necessitated by any need to allay fears that I’m turning into a soccer-loving elitist faggot, but rather to set up the punchline:
At one point in our Twitter exchange, Johnson used the term “wetback,” and asked what slur I would apply to the Ghana team.
This demonstrated that he did not recognize the premise of the joke, i.e., to employ derogatory terms for various nationalities — French “frogs,” Irish “micks,” Italian “dagos,” etc. — whereas Johnson had in mind racial slurs, which terms I had of course avoided. At one point, I asked readers to suggest an epithet for Algerians, a situation where generic anti-Arab terms would not do.
Charles Johnson is simply too dull-witted to get the joke. Members of the Mexican soccer team are obviously not “wetbacks,” a term referring specfically to illegal immigrants. If they were “wetbacks,” they’d be playing for the USA and voting for Obama. Had the U.S. team ever played Japan, I might have been in trouble, but we need not waste much thought on that moot possibility now that America’s World-Class Losers have been eliminated.
Too bad Charles Johnson didn’t seek my advice before contacting R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., as I might have warned Charles that it has been a standard policy of The American Spectator since its inception to report all disgruntled letter-writers to the FBI for investigation as subversives.
We’ll wait and see whether I collect that $20 from Weigel.
UPDATE (Smitty): Clarification of “s32porchmanque” can be located here. Summary: ya got nothin’. Keep trying.
UPDATE II: Well played, Admiral, well played, indeed! Smitty’s penchant for Carrollesque word-play is notorious, as his authorship of Oedipotus Wrecks and Waiting for O-Dough demonstrates. His choice of monikers when installing SiteMeter for the new WordPress version of the blog was, perhaps, not what I would have advised. Yet he did not seek my advice, so I suppose he must suffer whatever pun-ishment is apt.
Johnson’s obsession with the SiteMeter calls attention to an interesting fact: Little Green Footballs does not display a SiteMeter link, so that no one can study LGF’s traffic trends. Whereas, as recently noted, June has been the Best. Month. Evah! hereabouts, and anyone can study the SiteMeter to analyze the trend.
While you’re mentally extrapolating November’s traffic based on a trend of April 106K to June 165K, take a gander at The Rules, a/k/a “How to Get a Million Hits.” Among the growth strategies advised is Rule 3: “Make Some Enemies.” So I guess that worked pretty good.
This recent drama — including an evidently authentic comment by Mad King Charles himself — occurred while I was briefly asleep. Donald Douglas at American Power displays the unfunny cartoon that one of the lizards composed.
We now have a Memeorandum thread, so I suppose I’ll be drinking free next time I run into Dave Weigel. Many conservatives have asked me about Dave — “How can you be friends with that dirtbag?” — and I admit that this is becoming a difficult thing to defend. But I’m averse to the Total Vengeance mode of blogging, the compiling of Enemies Lists, trying to get people fired, and so forth.
The propaganda of dehumanization, turning individuals into symbols — Emmanuel Goldstein in the Two-Minutes Hate — is what incites such episodes as Michelle Malkin being swarmed by an Alex Jones-led mob in Denver. Having been vilified in that manner, I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.
Charles Johnson has played the game so long that he has forgotten it’s a game. He is now just a semi-professional bully. As I said of his vindictive campaign against Pamela Geller, if CJ was a Sioux, his tribal name would be Fights With Girls.
Bullies are not attractive, except to people who admire sadism. And I wasn’t raised that way. Generosity and kindness ultimately triumph over selfish cruelty, and honesty over lies. I don’t owe Bob Belvedere a hat-tip for this lesson.
“And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city . . .”
