Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Simberg may not be a conservative,
but he's definitely a neo-con

Posted by anonymous at October 31, 2006 08:13 PM

What exactly is that supposed to mean anon? Other than proving, once again, that you are an idiot I mean.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at October 31, 2006 08:23 PM

Rand,
In all seriousness, there's no chance in heck the Democrats will actually gain enough of a majority to override any of Bush's vetoes. The *legislative* impact of the Democrats taking over even both the house and the senate is practically nill. There's very little they could do to effect the economy, taxpayers, etc. that couldn't be dealt with by vetoes. Even in the worst case bludgeoning, you'd have to have all the democrats and something like 30-40% of the republicans voting against a veto to get anything through.

I have even less in common with democrats than I do with republicans (which is saying a lot), but I think this "if Democrats take over the house we're all doomed! DOOMED I SAY!" stuff is rather silly. The only thing that will happen with a democratic house or senate is investigations. And quite frankly, the country is never safer than when Congress is distracted or out of session.

In other words, it's a great theory, but I see some rather serious issues getting it to fit with reality. To paraphrase what some realist said back during what I think was the Iran-Iraq war "I wish that somehow they could both lose."

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at October 31, 2006 08:23 PM

In all seriousness, there's no chance in heck the Democrats will actually gain enough of a majority to override any of Bush's vetoes. The *legislative* impact of the Democrats taking over even both the house and the senate is practically nil. There's very little they could do to effect the economy, taxpayers, etc. that couldn't be dealt with by vetoes.

Jon, you ignore the power of life-long appointments. With the Dems controlling the Senate, the chances of a Supreme Court justice that would actually restore anything resembling original intent would be nil. Also, the tax cuts will expire in less than five years. With Charlie Rangel in charge of the Ways and Means Committee, that's almost guaranteed to happen. There are other negative consequences (Alcee Hastings in chage of Intelligence, John Conyers in charge of Judiciary, etc.) that are frightening, at least to me, to comtemplate. Truly a thought fit for Halloween...

The Republicans are awful. The Democrats would be worse, hard though that may be to believe.

Posted by Rand Simberg at October 31, 2006 08:30 PM

I think Jon is dead-on right.

Getting good Supreme Court justices confirmed shouldn't be hard. Even if the Democrats get a majority in the Senate, it will only be by one or two seats. A good justice will bring some Democrats across the aisle.

What happens with the tax cuts will depend on the economy at the time. They don't expire until a couple of election cycles from now, anyway, so it hardly makes sense to freak out about it now.

With regard to committee chairmanships & House leadership, I don't actually have a good notion of where things will fall out. The Democrats have put some loud and annoying people in leadership posts for the last few years, but I think that's because it's an advantageous tactic when you're in the minority: put some firebrands from safe districts who enjoy talking s**t on TV. It allows people in tighter races from talking as much s**t themselves. I sincerely doubt they'll act that way if they take control. (Unless they want to go into the desert for ten more years, that is.)

A lot of people seem to be treating this as a good guys vs. bad guys situation. It's nothing of the sort: it's two groups of bozos who want to lead. The current bozos offend me, so I'm happy to see them fired. I don't even know if the new bozos will be worse. I haven't seen them in action yet.

Posted by at October 31, 2006 09:27 PM

Ut;s just kind of funny to see Simberg say "Well, I'm not a Conservative", when he's been out flogging the
Neo-Conservative line the last 6 years.

Posted by anonymous at October 31, 2006 09:32 PM

Wow... I didn't see the neocon thing coming. I actually thought I'd see "no matter what, no more innocent children deserve to be forced to die fighting an unjust war."

Once again, I'm stunned by how much more over the top the actual trolling is...

Posted by John Breen III at October 31, 2006 10:00 PM

Rand,
Jon, you ignore the power of life-long appointments. With the Dems controlling the Senate, the chances of a Supreme Court justice that would actually restore anything resembling original intent would be nil.

Alas, the odds with a Republican Senate really haven't been much better. I mean, neither of the two supreme court justices appointed on Bush's watch are particularly evil, but both of them are rather ho-hum Big-Government conservatives. Hardly the stuff that original intent dreams are made of.

Also, the tax cuts will expire in less than five years. With Charlie Rangel in charge of the Ways and Means Committee, that's almost guaranteed to happen.

I just wish someone would cut the cost of government. So long as government continues spending (and at an accelerating pace), those tax cuts may look good to you older folk, but us in the younger generations who will have to foot the bills aren't so impressed by what really amounts to a tax shift. Tax cuts without also cutting back on government spending at the same time may have some small advantages, but on the net I think is just as harmful as tax-and-spend. I'd rather have some gridlock. Then at least there'd be hope that government expenditures would slow down a little. But even that's probably a fools hope.

There are other negative consequences (Alcee Hastings in chage of Intelligence, John Conyers in charge of Judiciary, etc.) that are frightening, at least to me, to comtemplate. Truly a thought fit for Halloween...

Sorry Rand, I just don't scare that easily. If the Republicans had a sterling record in handling intelligence (they don't), or Justice (they don't either), maybe it'd be something. But some of us are so disgusted with the mess that republicans have made of both of those, that we can hardly see how even the Democrats could do worse.

The Republicans are awful. The Democrats would be worse, hard though that may be to believe.

Keep telling yourself that. I'd much rather not have all three branches of government under the control of the same party. Concentrating that much power is stupid. Period. Full-stop. I usually try not to allow fear to govern my actions.

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at October 31, 2006 10:10 PM

The Democrats would be worse, hard though that may be to believe.

You got the second part of that right.

Tax cuts IN FIVE YEARS might return to the crushing levels of the longest economic expansion in U.S history!!!!

The Bush administration will not be able to appoint all those 'original intent' judges it has lined up to the Supremes, instead of those 'executive get a blank check' types its favoured so far.

Sorry, Rand, but the optics look like "scary black men in positions of power!!!! BUGABUGA BOO!!!" And that is just kinda ugly and unworthy of you.

If there is one thing that the executive needs now, it's aggressive oversight. GOP congressional committees issued a thousand subpoenas during the Clinton years, and not one for Bush despite the this whole 'losing two wars' business, or the matter of lying to Congress about the cost of Medicare part D, or even the Abu Ghraib disaster.

Hopefully the Dems have learned the lesson of their feeble performance in 2002 in the run up to the war.

Posted by Duncan Young at October 31, 2006 11:10 PM

Americans need a third party - something centrist that would take votes from both of the two established parties. After all, that's where the vast majority of the voters are, right in the middle.

Posted by Ed Minchau at November 1, 2006 01:01 AM

Ed,
Its been tried (see Clinton, Bill and Bush, G W circa 2000). The problems are the following;
* In a 50 state federal system, political parties are going to be very weak. Its very difficult to set a clear ideological agenda - party platforms have been meaningless for decades. The Contract with America is probably the exception that proves the rule - given its original strong anticoruption themes and the final result of the GOP House of Pork 2006.
* Winner take all single member electorates suppress the formation of new parties - more than two isn't stable outside of special circumstances. Ortherwise, like the Greens and Reform Party before them, new parties are simply spoilers. New Zealand went from fifty years of two represented parties to six in the change from a electoral to a mixed electoral/proportional system in 1996.
* Even given that, centrist parties arent stable, popular entities even in proportional systems. Without a motivated base to provide manpower and that is willing to endure the grueling campaign process (especially in an individual cadidate system), your party is going nowhere. Are you going to spend a year licking stamps for the party of the sensible consensus, Ed? Or will you be beaten out by those desperately defending their job (labour), their civil rights (NOW, NAACP, ACLU, NRA), or waging God's war against the Sex and Mexican gardners (which seems to be whats left resonating of the GOP base's platform).

The irony is that as more of the population becomes satisfied, the political apparatus becomes dominated by the most insecure. This is what happened during the ninities, and why things got so out of wack in the wake of 9-11 - an entire political infrastructure based on insecurity was lying there, ready and waiting to amplify everybody's irrationalities.

Stable third parties, where the do exist, are based on regional resentments (e.g. Bloc Quebec or the Scotish Nationists), ethinic resentments (Le Pen's group in France or the New Zealand Maori Party) or personal ego (Winston Peters's New Zealand First Party).

There are of cource some exceptions, the consistently underwelming Lib Dems in the UK, VVD in the Netherlands (a "conservative liberal party") and the Australian Democrats, but they are consistantly junior members of governing coalitions, if they matter at all.

Posted by Duncan Young at November 1, 2006 03:57 AM

"Though I'm not a conservative..."

You make this claim and also claim that you're not a Republican. But it's pretty clear from your website that you identify with Republican and conservative causes over 90% of the time. So you don't like the label, but the shoe fits.

Posted by Jim Smith at November 1, 2006 05:45 AM

You obviously mistake a strong distaste for Democrats and leftists for an affiliation with Republicans and conservatives. I'm not a Republican or conservative, but I'm not a Democrat or leftist even more. I'm a classical liberal.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 1, 2006 05:55 AM

Rand, could a classical liberal bring himself to vote for George Allen in this election? From Virginia where I'm at, Allen has steadily gone from bad to worse to shooting himself repeatedly in the foot. He started with insulting an Indian-American, discovered his Jewish roots after vehemently denying them, and has now become, as George Will so aptly writes in today's WP, a literary critic finding offense with sexual passages in Webb's novels about war, a topic Allen knows nothing about. So, should I, for the reasons Rand offers, vote for George Allen or Jim Webb? When a Republican candidate repeatedly insults the intelligence of the voters he wants to represent, even registered Republicans such as myself can't vote Republican with a clear conscience.

Posted by Independent at November 1, 2006 06:51 AM

I wouldn't be able to vote for Allen (there are very few Republicans who I would be able to vote for, though there are far fewer Democrats), but I could vote against Webb. Unfortunately, the only practical way to do that is to pull the lever for Allen. That's what the title of this post is all about. It's bad, or worse. Make your choice.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 1, 2006 06:56 AM

I disagree. Voting a party line vote with no consideration of the particular individual you are voting for isn't classical liberal at all. It's almost fascist.

Posted by Independent at November 1, 2006 07:23 AM

Voting a party line vote with no consideration of the particular individual you are voting for isn't classical liberal at all.

Who is advocating that?

It's almost fascist.

What an astoundingly stupid statement. You're apparently one of those people who have no idea what the word means, simply using it as a blunt instrument to denounce anything you disagree with.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 1, 2006 07:30 AM

> In all seriousness, there's no chance in heck the Democrats will actually gain enough of a majority to override any of Bush's vetoes.

Bush is the problem. With a Dem majority, he's likely to do dumber things than he's likely to do with a Repub majority.

I note that none of the folks bashing Simberg for his "Republicanism" have bothered to argue that Dems are better; they just bleat that Repubs are horrible. Since Simberg regularly posts the latter, it's unclear what they're adding to the discussion.

BTW - There are at least two alternatives to tax increases to pay off the debt (and the tax rate increases do not necessarily result in more revenue). The smart one is default....

Posted by Andy Freeman at November 1, 2006 08:57 AM

Duncan, Canada has had a viable third party for decades, and in the 1990s actually had five viable parties. Since then, two of those parties (the marginally right wing ones) merged and now form the government.

Posted by Ed Minchau at November 1, 2006 10:15 AM

Ed,
Since then, two of those parties (the marginally right wing ones) merged and now form the government.
I think that was my point. Regional third parties needed to merge to put themselves into leadership position. Bloc Quebec stands alone. And Canada is somewhat of a special case given of the total immolation of Progressive Conservatives in the 1993 wave election and resulting realignments. Something like that will never happen in the US with the current electoral system short of civil war.

And the NDP are even more lame than the Lib Dems.

Posted by Duncan Young at November 1, 2006 01:02 PM

Jim, let's see some data. Ninety percent of what?

Unless I have drastically misread him, Rand is, to pick a few current examples, not opposed to gay marriage, not opposed to Roe v Wade, not opposed to the historical sciences (eg, paleontology and evolutionary biology), and not opposed to embryonic stem-cell research. I'd say he's in, at most, 30% agreement with conservatism.

Find a real conservative and ask them how they'd evaluate someone like that.

Posted by Jay Manifold at November 1, 2006 03:12 PM

To clarify, I'm not thrilled about gay marriage, but on the other hand, I'm even less thrilled about government involvement in marriage at all. I'm all in favor of science (i.e., not creationism/ID) and not intrinsically opposed to any form of stem-cell research or cloning.

I have major issues with Roe v. Wade, not because of any particular beliefs on abortion, but because it was such an appallingly argued decision on Constitutional grounds.

As for abortion itself, I think that it is a federalism issue (i.e., should be left up to the states).

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 1, 2006 03:54 PM

Ah, let's see "Simberg isn't in favor of government
involvement in marriage, but, he still votes for the
party that wants to ban gay marriage".

Simberg is no tin favor of creationism, but, he votes for
a president who supports that.

Sounds
a lot like Cognitive Dissonance.

Posted by anonymous at November 1, 2006 08:25 PM

Have you no English language comprehension skills at all anonymoron? Your picking one or two issues on which Rand and Bush are at odds is simply sophomoric.

Read slowly so that you might (possibly, I won't count on it) understand:

Bush is not perfect but he is better than anyone the Democratic party has put forth on the national political stage thus far. The same goes for the Republican party in general vs the Democratic party.

I don't need to speak for Rand but in a nutshell I think that is pretty much what he has said time and time again. If you can't comprehend that then the problem is with YOU.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at November 1, 2006 09:05 PM

Both parties are opposed to gay marriage (not that I care about the issue that much, one way or the other), so there's no real choice there. No cognitive dissonance, anonymous moron.

Neither party is going to correspond to all of my views, so I have to decide which are the most important. Right now, I'm supporting the only party that takes the war seriously, regardless of how bad it is on so many other issues (and on most of those issues, the Dems remain worse). Everything else is secondary.

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 2, 2006 05:05 AM

Rand

You claim the GOP takes the war seriously.

Can you explain cutting taxes in the middle of a war?

Can you explain not training translators in the middle of a foreign war?

Can you explain not equipping the troops properly for occupation?

Can you explain why if you believe in this war, you haven't
bought any Liberty Bonds?

Posted by anonymous at November 2, 2006 08:10 AM

Wish I had some popcorn!

Posted by Cecil Trotter at November 2, 2006 08:14 AM

I can explain tax rate cuts quite easily. They end up generating revenue.

As to the others, I don't necessarily have an explanation. But what I have even less of is any sense that the Dems would be any better. Particularly when many of them don't even seem to believe that we are at war at all (a viewpoint that I suspect you actually share, anonymous moron).

Posted by Rand Simberg at November 2, 2006 08:14 AM

Post a comment