From the monthly archives: May 2010
I was pondering today the phenomenon of people who fetishize “divided government” (i.e., always voting to keep different parties in different branches of our political system – e.g., Democrat in the White House, Republicans in Congress).
I was pondering this because some of the otherwise smart people I know who are like this (you know who you are), are seriously saying that they will vote for a generic Republican this fall, simply in order to try to get us into “divided government”. This is even the case where the person believes the GOP is generally bankrupt in terms of ethics, ideas, policy prescriptions, etc.
At the end of all this pondering, I was left with a question. If the merits of the people you are voting for in order to make obeisance to the Gods of Divided Government are so unimportant, would you consider voting for party of trained monkeys? Or perhaps a party made up of robots that were programmed to randomly vote with the party, say, 95% of the time?
I know this question sounds cheeky but I’m serious. Please enlighten me!
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I am really fed up with everyone (left and right) being enamored of the fantasy that Obama could use his magical fire breath to cap the oil spill (and save the maidens fair).
Peggerton Noonanshire is particularly insane on this:
The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration …That is one of the worst, reality-free pieces of hackery I’ve read in a long time. This woman is far beyond her mental golden years.
Just another great example of why Rand Paul is such a low-key, reasonable libertarian who will likely remain in Gherald’s small-government dreams:
Such a maverick! Only problem is – birthright citizenship is IN THE F’ING CONSTITUTION:Paul recently suggested to a Russian TV station that the U.S. should abandon its policy of granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants — even if they’re born on U.S. soil. [...]
The real problem, Paul said, is that the U.S. “shouldn’t provide an easy route to citizenship” because of “demographics.”
According to Paul, the proportion of Mexican immigrants that register as Democrats is 3-to-1, so of course “the Democrat [sic] Party is for easy citizenship.”
He added: “We’re the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.”
The position is wrong for a variety of reasons, but of particular interest, Paul and his allies claim to base their positions on a strict reading of the Constitution. And yet, the text is unambiguous: the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that those “born … in the United States” are “citizens of the United States.”
For that matter, the Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that a baby born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was legally a U.S. citizen, even though federal law at the time denied citizenship to people from China. The court said birth in the United States constituted “a sufficient and complete right to citizenship.”
In my estimation, the failure of our publicly-run education system is a devastating rebuke of the model. I do not think progressives should be taken seriously until they come to terms with the widespread scale of this failure, stop trying to patch up or throw more money at our broken system, reverse course and support ending the monopoly on public funds for education.
It seems to me that a quality education system is way more important for this country’s future than other issues that get more sensationalist attention–like say, climate change. Yet progressives and their government-run schools continue to fail us badly. And because their politics is beholden to the public school teacher’s unions, they continue to resist sane market-based reforms that are our only sure way out of this.
So I ask you: what will it take? How badly must our publicly-run schools fail and how much money must we continue to waste on them before we reintroduce competition and end the mad monopoly on public funds?
LONDON—Embattled BP officials assured the public Thursday that despite the setbacks of the past month, the company was still “fiercely committed” to remaining an enormously powerful moneymaking industrial conglomerate. “We promise the good people of Louisiana or Texas or wherever that this horrific oil spill will not, even for a moment, stop us from pursuing unspeakably massive profits,” BP spokesman Reginald Clacton-Thorpe told reporters. “We are even now working around the clock to make this historic PR disaster as painless for us as possible.” Clacton-Thorpe stressed that “neither the terrible errors of our past nor the inevitably worse ones of our future” would affect that ultimate mission.
Some classic Al Giordano – and he makes a very good point:
I don’t know how to cap the big oil leak in the Gulf and truth is neither do you. And even if it is capped in five minutes from now, the damage is already done.
That said, as a longtime vocal opponent of off shore oil drilling, and proponent of renewable energy, I wish to publicly disassociate myself from all the newly concerned voices screaming at the top of their lungs that the government must “do something” if they don’t come with concrete suggestions for what exactly can be done. They do not represent me and please don’t ever confuse me with them, okay?
Without an easy solution in sight, and with the knowledge sinking in of just how harmful this oil gusher will be to the Gulf of Mexico, its shores, its fishing and tourism and quality of life, a lot of people seem to be screaming that somebody should yell louder and point their fingers harder.
Okay, just this once, I will point fingers. You know who is to blame in addition to BP and the government that allowed this oil rig to be built? Every single one of us that ever drove a car, got in an airplane, or drank from a plastic bottle (they’re made from petroleum, too). The heavier our “carbon footprints” the greater each of us is to blame. Go yell at yourself now. [...]
But you know what? Even though I would be somewhat justified in yelling and pointing fingers at you, I’m only being tongue in cheek about it here to make a point. Yelling doesn’t solve anything. And it sure won’t plug the leak or make anyone else do it faster, because nobody has yet figured out a surefire way to do it. But they sure ain’t gonna think faster with you yelling in their ears.
Yelling is for panic, and panic is for losers. In the movies, you know, the scary ones where soldiers or zombies or aliens come and kill whomever they find in their path, don’t you remember who always gets eaten first? The idiot who screams hysterically! That’s who you are behaving like today. And if you keep thinking that screaming at others to yell louder and share your misery aloud is going to save the earth, you and the rest of your pestilent species are already doomed. The earth will carry on. It’s you who won’t. And at least it’ll be a lot quieter around here, then.
I would just like to go on the record and say that it’s pretty amazing that Sarah Palin and Keith Olbermann both seem to agree on one point: “ZOMG, the government ISN’t Doing enufffff!!!1111!!!!!“
Yes, all of you kvetchers, please do tell me how the government could be doing much of anything to, you know, plug the fucking leak?
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I thought so.
By my headline, I’m not suggesting that liberals are more prone to agree with libertarianism, it’s just that I have generally found my liberal friends and favorite liberal bloggers to be much more capable of at least understanding what true libertarianism really, you know, means.
See, e.g., my favorite former Bush-lover turned libtard John Cole today:
I still don’t understand why there are caps at all:I really don’t understand why anyone thinks the current Republican Party and libertarianism have anything of true substance in common — they don’t.
Republican Senator James Inhofe has stepped up to the plate yet again for big oil, pledging a Republican filibuster against legislation offered by New Jersey’s Robert Menendez that would completely lift the $75 million liability cap currently protecting big oil companies from claims of economic damage from oil spills.Again, it would seem to me the free market solution is to lift the caps, and if it becomes more pricey to drill oil safely, then companies will just have to pass that cost on to the public, who will, as they did when prices for fuel skyrocketed during the Bush years, adjust their behaviors and purchases accordingly. Additionally, auto companies who have made advances in fuel efficient cars and companies which have already worked to lower their fuel consumption will reap the competitive advantage they deserve. And should deepwater drilling become prohibitively expensive, oil companies will re-examine fields they before thought were too expensive, but now are, by comparison, cost-effective.
And, for no particular reason:
THE GRAPEVINE
