Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Good News

2 Comments

The Democrats will have an uphill political battle to screw up our health care the way they want to.

[Update a couple hours later]

Blue on blue on health care:

“It is all about Democrats,” said Adam Green, chief executive officer of Change Congress, which launched the Nelson campaign. “We only need 50 votes. We could conceivably have 60 votes on our own if we keep Democrats unified. It is a matter of convincing Democrats whose conventional wisdom is based on the old political order. This is an extremely popular proposal spearheaded by an extremely popular president, and it is OK to support it.”

As Michael Barone points out, it’s only popular among young people, who don’t care about it that much, and don’t vote that much. Those of us whose actual health is on the line will fight it tooth and nail, and the “moderate” Democrats know it.

[Mid-morning update]

The Dems have lost the AMA. I applaud the crumbling of this coalition.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More here, from the Gray Lady:

The opposition, which comes as Mr. Obama prepares to address the powerful doctors’ group on Monday in Chicago, could be a major hurdle for advocates of a public insurance plan. The A.M.A., with about 250,000 members, is America’s largest physician organization.

While committed to the goal of affordable health insurance for all, the association had said in a general statement of principles that health services should be “provided through private markets, as they are currently.” It is now reacting, for the first time, to specific legislative proposals being drafted by Congress.

The devil’s always in the details…

Humor, Political Commentary, Space

Another Unprovoked Interplanetary Attack

5 Comments

This is like Pearl Harbor all over again:

It is set to impact in the lower-right section of the moon’s near side (see image). Coming in at a very shallow angle – nearly parallel to the ground – the probe has a high chance of skipping across the surface, like a stone across a pond.

It’s all right, though, I’m sure that another presidential apology will be forthcoming directly.

Political Commentary

Europe Coming To Life?

9 Comments

An interesting piece on the recent electoral revolt:

The last few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it—criminalizing “incitement of racism, xenophobia, or hatred against a racial, ethnic, or religious group” in 2007, for example—and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

I hope that Americans will wise up as well, next year.

[Update a few minutes later]

As I noted in comments here, immigration, multi-culturalism, democracy. Pick any two.

[Update just before noon]

Here’s a familiar theme:

The situation in Spain is a reminder that not all “right turns” are created equal. If the Danes have affirmed individual liberty, human rights, sexual equality, the rule of law, and freedom of speech and religion, some Western Europeans have reacted to the mindless multiculturalism of their socialist leaders by embracing alternatives that seem uncomfortably close to fascism. Consider Austria’s recently deceased Jörg Haider, who belittled the Holocaust, honored Waffen-SS veterans, and found things to praise about Nazism. In 2000, his Freedom Party became part of a coalition government, leading the rest of the EU to isolate Austria diplomatically for a time, and last September, his new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, won 11 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. Or take Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has called the Holocaust “a detail in the history of World War II” and advocated the forced quarantining of people who test HIV-positive—and whose far-right National Front came out on top in the first round of voting for the French presidency in 2002. The British National Party (BNP), which has a whites-only membership policy and has flatly denied the Holocaust, won more than 5 percent of the vote in London’s last mayoral election. Then there’s Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), formerly Vlaams Bloc, whose leaders have a regrettable tendency to be caught on film singing Nazi songs and buying Nazi books. In 2007, it won five out of 40 seats in the Belgian Senate.

For establishment politicians, journalists, and academics, these parties serve an exceedingly useful purpose: their existence makes it easy to tar any nonsocialist party with the fascist brush—labeling it racist and xenophobic, equating its leaders with the likes of Le Pen and Haider, and stigmatizing its supporters. No party in Europe has been subjected to more unfair attacks than Norway’s Progress Party, whose extraordinary electoral successes have outraged that country’s socialist elite. Like other parties on what we may call Europe’s respectable right, the Progress Party has expressly distanced itself from parties like the National Front and Vlaams Belang. Yet despite these disavowals, American media have routinely echoed the leftist establishment’s unjust calumnies.

Yes, not “all right turns” are created equal. Particularly when they’re only turns to a slightly different “left” direction. There’s little that fascism has to do with classical liberalism.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Stimulus”

4 Comments

The $787B mistake:

…the 1930s Keynesian model that was used to sell the idea of fiscal stimulus to Americans was eliminated from economics decades ago.

And this abandonment of Keynesian multipliers does not reflect any ideological or partisan issues that divide conservatives and liberal economists. Rather, it is because the old Keynesian model does not come anywhere close to meeting today’s standards for economic analysis…

…modern economic analysis shows that the impact of government spending on the economy depends on what it is being spent on and how it ultimately is paid for.

The upshot of this new research is that multipliers are nowhere near the numbers that were cited in support of ARRA and, in fact, can be negative, depending on how the spending is ultimately financed. Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel laureate in economics who specializes in macroeconomics and government policy, recently remarked that the promise of large multipliers presented by private macroeconomic consulting firms in support of ARRA was “schlock economics.”

One of the infuriating things about the rush to passage of that disastrous legislation was the continual lies, from people like Ed Rendell, and Chuck Schumer and others, that most economists agreed that it was essential to recovery when, at best, there was merely a consensus that something should be done to soften the blow of the financial implosion, but not ARRA. And the media, of course, never called them on it. And of course, the president and others trotted out their usual straw men, and false choice, saying that anyone who didn’t want to implement that legislative atrocity wanted to do “nothing.”

Simply suspending the payroll tax for the rest of the year would have been a lot more effective, and cost a lot less, without creating this huge new tidal wave of debt in the out years.

[Lunchtime update]

Rasmussen: 45% say cancel the rest of the stimulus spending. Only 36% disagree. Expect that number to go higher. And that’s not “adults.” It’s likely voters. Democrats will ignore this at their peril next election season.

And note this:

A plurality of government employees believe speeding up the stimulus will be good for the economy. However, those who work in the private sector strongly disagree.

In other words, the people who understand how the economy works (because they’re the ones who make it work) are opposed to this, while the people who get their money from it are in favor. The goal of the Big Government party (on both sides of the aisle) is to increase the latter and decrease the former, not understanding that, eventually, this will cause the collapse of the nation.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

Here’s a nice visualization:

History, Political Commentary

A Disturbing Comment

4 Comments

General Petraeus is a brilliant military tactician and strategist, but he doesn’t seem to understand much about politics in the Middle East:

You can tell a lot about a person’s views (and values) by the way he answers the following question: “Would a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solve the problems of the Middle East, or would solving the problems of the broader Middle East — namely, Iran — one day bring about a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?”

Someone should ask him to elaborate on his views.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Presidential Misogyny

43 Comments

Speaking of American Sharia, why does Barack Obama have it in for Muslim women?

You haven’t told your parents, but you don’t want to be a Muslim anymore. You hate wearing the hijab and would tear the damn thing up — but you’re afraid of another beating. You don’t discuss Islam with your father — the beating put a stop to that, too. Your friend Susan doesn’t know about the beating, but she says it’s wrong to make you wear the hijab. “This is America. You have rights. Women are equal here.”

True, you think, and we’ve got a new president, Barack Obama. He’s not right-wing, like George Bush. He’s a Democrat who believes in equal rights. He’s black, an outsider, so he’ll know how you feel. And some of his family are Muslim. He says he wants to reach out to Muslims. He’ll speak for you. Then you hear his Cairo speech:

It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit — for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism.

You laugh. Not the carefree laugh of your childhood, but a hollow, bitter laugh.

He panders to Islamist sensibilities at the cost of the rights of half the population of “the Muslim world.”

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

A Warning To Republican Conservatives

9 Comments

Beware of extremists! And principles:

The moderate is the lifeblood of any viable political party. There is no winning without attracting their capricious support. The moderate, though, is a delicate flower that must be cultivated carefully. Its one goal in life is to appear reasonable, but there is no reasonableness that accompanies the adamant demands of conservatives. The conservatives keep asking that the Republican Party abide by its own ideals, but nothing — nothing — scares away moderates like steadfast principles.

Luckily, the Republicans have a friend like Colin Powell to prevent the destructive influence of conservatives and their beliefs. Powell is the ultimate moderate. When his party nominated a squishy moderate for president last year that the base had to hold its nose to vote for, he still voted for the other party. Now that is a moderate we can all learn from. He knows exactly what the American people want: two parties virtually indistinguishable from each other. That way if people ever begin to dislike one party, they can just vote for the other as a protest without having to worry about it differing from their values.

Eventually, people are going to dislike the Democrats — maybe thinking they’re going too far on spending (or not far enough) — and then Powell’s Republican Party will be waiting there as a completely innocuous alternative.

Conservatives could not see this simple wisdom, though. Rush Limbaugh (or “Fatty Fat Fat Stupid Druggy Fat Fat,” as I like to call him) had to pick a fight with Powell. His firm stances on issues scare away moderates like light startles cockroaches (cockroaches who often vote, mind you). All Rush did was point out the differences conservatives have with Powell — like how he supported Obama, is pro-choice, and is for bigger government. If Rush (who is fat and does drugs) had any actual concern for the party, he’d focus on what Powell and conservatives have in common like … uh … um … how they both don’t wear pants on their heads. Can’t we build a party around commonalities like that?

I think that Ross Perot tried it. Except toward the end, he was almost to the point of wearing his pants on his head.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Dauphin Of Detroit

1 Comment

Will Wilkinson:

Some are grumbling about Deese’s lack of relevant experience. (He has driven a car and once slept in the parking lot of a GM plant!) But the real issue isn’t Deese’s resume. The real issue is why anyone should have the power to “rewrite the rules of American capitalism.” Unlike Deese, Treasury Secretaries Paulson and Geithner are men of experience. But what kind of experience could justify the immense, arbitrary power they’ve exercised in the wake of the financial meltdown? Experience centrally planning the global economy?

Deese’s embarrassing rawness is actually welcome, for it draws our attention to the invidious inequalities inherent in a government with unconstrained discretion. Deese isn’t going to pick the colors for the Chevy Malibu. But he could. And Obama can tell us that Congress won’t dictate which factories GM should close. But it will.

Liberals used to care about inequalities in power—and they were right to. Because equality of power ensures freedom. Being equal in our basic rights, no one has a natural right to rule over another. This kind of liberal egalitarianism is the root of the prohibition on titles of nobility found in the American Articles of Confederation. It is also the root of the very idea of limited government—the idea that a government’s power is legitimate only if it is carefully parceled out, well-checked, and limited in scope to tasks only a government can perform.

The answer is simple: they’re not liberals and haven’t been in a long time, if they ever were.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The prescience of Robert Heinlein — he saw the future of the US auto industry.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

A History Lesson

3 Comments

…for Senator Shelby:

I understand the Senator’s need and desire to to protect the jobs of his constituents at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center, but attempting to force an either/or choice between Federal and commercial space transportation is not the answer. That’s as false a choice as Moon vs. Mars and manned vs. robotic space exploration. Both NASA and NewSpace have valid and valuable roles to play, so let’s please not waste time and energy creating a schism where one need not exist.

Well, actually, while that’s true for wealth-producing activities, which is a non-zero-sum game, when the only real goal is job (and not wealth) creation, it is a zero-sum game with a fixed federal budget. So it’s not surprising that Shelby, a man of few political principles other than getting reelected, will make the choice that he thinks best achieves that goal, history and reality be damned. I guess Elon should have invested in a production facility in Huntsville.