A harmless dodo?
The next year should be fun to watch. The establishment in this country is living in denial. Obama supporters are seemingly unaware that unless there’s some kind economic miracle he’s headed for electoral disaster. It doesn’t matter who the GOP nominates. The election will be about the hapless President Obama. Check out this Politico piece by Roger Simon…
Cain is a genial, harmless dodo who thinks running a country is just like running a business. But it isn’t.
In business, your competitors rarely strive to develop nuclear weapons like Iran (a subject Cain knows almost nothing about). In business, rarely do your competitors have the capacity to clash in ways that could involve the armed forces of the United States, such as China with Taiwan or Israel with its neighbors (two areas of the world that Cain has demonstrated remarkable ignorance about). And in business, you don’t have to feed the hungry, house the homeless or heal the sick.
True, Cain is a man with a domestic plan. Unfortunately for him, it is an utterly hopeless one. Whatever the economic merits of his 9-9-9 plan, it is doomed to political failure because, among other things, it would have Americans give up something they like — their home mortgage interest deduction — for something they won’t like: a 9 percent national sales tax that would be levied on top of state and local taxes.
The only thing “remarkably ignorant” is Simon’s claim that Cain “a genial, harmless dodo.” Writers like Simon live in a delusion bubble. It’s a crowd of similar thinking cocktail drinkers who have spent the better part of the last six years telling us how great Obama is despite the fact he wasn’t qualified to be governor of any state or even manage a t-ball team, let alone the President of the United States. Polls have shown over the last month that GOP voters are satisfied with the current field. The only people who aren’t satisfied are people in the establishment.
Herman Cain’s biggest asset at this point is that he’s not a politician. It’s not like Cain fell off a turnip truck. He’s been a very successful businessman. In fact, Cain’s list of accomplishments is impressive. If he’s a dodo what is Roger Simon? It’s also odd that Simon attacks Cain’s economic plan as “utterly hopeless” when at least he has a plan. I guess I shouldn’t expect much from someone who thinks Obama “the greatest orator of modern times.” In 2007, the liberal press refused to do anything except carry Obama’s water. Barack Obama never said or did anything of any consequence. He simply existed.
Obama still exists, but now we are stuck with the train-wreck that is his administration. The chattering class may turn a blind eye on Solyndra and the ATF “fast and furious” debacle, but the American people are watching. If the choice comes down to Obama versus Cain it’s not even close. Obama speaks and says nothing and Cain speaks and says a lot. There’s no risk in electing a non-politician when the current head of state is inept. People like Simon are going to be shell-shocked come November 2012.
Gossip Girl or serious journalist? After watching the Republican debate on MSNBC last night I'm leaning toward Gossip Girl.
As usual, Henshaw made some good points about last night’s Republican debate, though I’m not sure I agree with his winners and losers. Alas, it is quite difficult to come up with an objective list of winners and losers since a debate isn’t quite as easy to score as, say, a boxing match. And even boxing matches that declare a winner without a KO are sometimes controversial.
Even so, here’s my list of winners, losers and those who fought to a draw… Winners: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. Losers: Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. Draw: Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum.
Part of my problem scoring and declaring a winner is that these debates don’t allow for much explanation by any one candidate, thus they tend to stick to rhetoric and key words. Even when it’s narrowed down to two candidates during the Presidential race, debates don’t offer much substance.
Still, the candidates could make a move away from the pack by better articulating core principles. In the case of a conservative candidate, one of these core principles, and what is perhaps the most important one, is the role of the Federal government.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain came closest to hitting the mark on this, though no one’s really listening to them. The others danced around it and the moderators probably don’t know the difference between Federalism and oligarchy, though they certainly know how to gossip (“A friend of your campaign manager said that Rick Perry is a wussie. Why is he a wussie?”)
There was a golden opportunity at this debate to point out that the governors in the debate did the best they could with the circumstances specific to their states and the needs of their constituents. And that’s the point. Who best to make decisions for the welfare of its citizens than local and state government? And, who is more accountable to their voters than local and state government?
You can yammer on and on about this and that you did as governor, or that this governor had this much or this little job growth in his state, but it’s just a waste of time. Just once I’d like to see a candidate point out that an ever-encroaching Federal government endangers the individual and his liberty. The growth of the Federal government is, in fact, a move toward oligarchy; rule by the few over the many. Moreover, it’s an oligarchy that favors certain people and groups over others, destroying the concept of equality before the law. The bailouts, stimulus and health care bamboozles are striking examples of this inequality created by cronyism.
Still, I don’t know how much you can blame the candidates for their shallow answers. The moderators made it quite difficult to provide any depth by purposely pitting one candidate against the other and framing the questions to make it sound as if they were defending the indefensible. “Rick Perry, Romney said or did this. Respond,” or, “Why are Republicans so heartless?” Bullshit. Ask them a real policy question.
Speaking of BS, how about that brief foray into “science”? The Charlie Crist-like Huntsman took a sideways swipe at Perry, playing the ever-so-reasonable-and-moderate Republican card. He’s pro-science because he has not an ounce of skepticism about the wild-eyed lunatic-fringe claims of a madman (Al Gore)?
Meanwhile, Perry’s response was less than adequate. Once again, a golden opportunity to put the nail in the coffin of the climate change debate wasted. Will anyone rise to the occasion and point out simple logic? As a reminder, logical and thought-provoking arguments Perry could have made include:
- The sun may have something to do with our climate, given that it accounts for 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system
- The climate has been changing for more than four billion years; it always has and it always will. This would mark the first time in the history of earth that a species was willfully unable to adapt to a changing climate. Who’s more stupid, the dinosaurs who simply didn’t know they needed to adapt, or human beings who drown in extremely slow-rising water because they thought the government was going to do something about it?
- Do Climate Changelings/Global Warmongers really believe that we have the power to regulate the earth’s thermostat, and if we did, what is the proper setting?
- Further, if we had the power to regulate the climate, who makes the decision about where to set the thermostat and who benefits from the settings? Will the entire earth be like San Diego, or will only those parts the enviro-nitwits care about live eternally in San Diego’s climate?
- Global warming is far better for life on earth than is global cooling. You can look it up. But the beauty of “climate change” is that you can claim the climate’s changing no matter what’s going on globally or locally. A little warmer this year? Climate change! Unusually cold another? Climate change! No change? Climate change!
The whole thing is absurd, as is the case for a larger and more meddlesome federal government, and yet it’s nearly impossible to get a cohesive, coherent and concise answer on either subject from the candidates. Immigration? I know that Rick Santorum’s grandparents were immigrants, but that doesn’t tell me jack diddly about his plan.
Perhaps most absurd, and also the best part of the debate, was the commercial produced by Californians for Population Stabilization, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there’s a special interest group for anything and everything these days.
Californians for Population Stabilization is against legal immigration. That’s right, legal immigrants are taking jobs away from Californians and Californians for Population Stabilization wants to end this travesty. What’s next? Californians against Seeing Eye Dogs and other Working Dogs?
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryd1-xco9cg
That’s a rhetorical question. The mainstream press is obviously biased. What better way to start off the week that an article from Politico with the headline, “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” The article is a must-read if you’re brain-dead, but most people will stop at the headline. The article even includes quotes from Paul Begala! Now that’s objective news reporting!
This morning I was reading an article titled History according to Glenn Beck over on the Politico. Far be it from me to defend Glenn Beck, but it seems liberals do have a real problem with history.
The common narrative in History 101 is that the Soviets were on the left and the Nazis on the right. I’m not sure why exactly. The two ideologies shared a lot in common: genocide, nationalism, state control of corporations, and military imperialism. The two states also started World War II by invading Poland together. Glenn Beck is only pointing out these similarities. I guess he’s finally reading Jonah Goldberg’s excellent book Liberal Fascism.
The Politico article uses the basic progressive journalistic approach. Find some “professors” in the very liberal academic community and dismiss the argument as crazy. Remember, yesterday’s New Left terrorist is today’s respected English professor.
Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Life at Boston College, said that the film not only isn’t accurate, but that Beck “lives in a complete alternative universe.”
Nazi Germany was “not evil because of their economic program,” said Wolfe, which he noted included a few programs designed to promote public health.”It was evil,” he said, ” because it aimed at the extermination of European Jewry.”
There you have it. State control isn’t evil. It’s only when state control ends in genocide that we should be concerned. It’s too bad that state control and genocide go hand in hand. The human rights record for the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and every other socialist regime speaks for itself.
There’s certainly a lot of blame to go around about the latest foiled airplane bomber; however, I don’t get all the ire toward the President. I understand the nature of politics. It’s not just the Right that’s beating up Obama. It’s the Left. When Maureen Dowd bashes Obama there’s definitely a problem. As the Politico has pointed out, Bush didn’t receive this kind of press after Richard Reid tried to blow up his Air Jordans.
I think this stems from the Katrina Effect. After Bush was reelected in 2004 the press and the Left became adept at blaming everything on the Executive Branch. As I’ve stated before, Katrina was a natural disaster that was the most poorly-covered event in my lifetime. Since that time the President isn’t getting a pass on any issue. The nation’s press is so mired in negativity even Obama can’t rise above it. Sure, I have some real problems with this administration’s attitude on national security. There’s no doubt that the White House’s war with the CIA isn’t good for our nation’s security; however, the press won’t cover that angle. Given the way the press is covering events Obama is in deep trouble politically if he faces any kind of disaster.
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