Category Archives: Political Commentary

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

More Words Of Conservative Wisdom

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T. Coddington Voorhees VII is guest blogging at Iowahawk’s place again:

That conundrum of electoral calculus was the topic of much discussion two weeks ago, when my Nassau confreres and I were summoned to the White House for an intimate repast with the new President and his inner circle. Mr. Obama was radiant as ever, still basking in the afterglow of his historic victory. I admit to a recent wobble or two in my faith in him, as the severe beatings suffered by my various family trusts have necessitated some unanticipated cutbacks in my household staff. But that easy, commanding elegance was a bracing reminder of why I endorsed Mr. Obama as the true conservative presidential choice. After dessert (black walnut dacquoise with sections of quince) we retired to the Blue Room where chief of staff Rahm Emanuel entertained us with some droll tales of his days as terpsichorean with the Mossad ballet auxiliary, even treating us to a few thrilling, if f-bomb laced, arabesques. He was followed by Vice President Joe Biden, who put on a fine display of his famed wit and penchant for unpredictable cerebral infarctions. Amid the sparkling bonhomie the President solicited our views on the causes of — and solutions to — conservatism’s sad state. Seizing the opportunity for a tete-a-tete with the world’s most powerful, popular, and beautiful man, I explained the tragic plague of rubes who stand athwart our modernization program.

“Why not just drive them out?” asked the President, elegantly French inhaling his Marlboro Light 100. “Under the old bus, so to speak.”

“Alas, were it so easy,” interrupted Brooks, in a clumsy attempt to draw Mr. Obama’s attentions from me like some cocquettish debutante. Parker, Noonan and Frum were too lost in orgasmic schoolgirl giggling to offer anything more substantive. I ignored their embarrasing faux pas and pressed on with my thesis.

“We’ve tried, Mr. President,” I explained. “But there are unsavory elements within the party who keep bringing them back in.”

My reference, obviously, was to the self-styled luminaries of “populism” who hang like a millstone around the Republican neck — the Sarah Palins, the Plumbing Joes, the Bobby Jindals, the Rush Limbaughs, the motley middlebrow state college pretenders to the conservative throne. A shared contempt for these arriviste oafs unites the Nassau summitteers perhaps even more than our shared fondness for a snifter of well-behaved armagnac VSOP. I have made no secret of my feelings about la Palin and her grim brood of ill-mannered snowbillies, as well that horrid toilet tinkerer from Toledo whose fifteen minutes have somehow refused to expire. The recent emergence of Bobby Jindal and Rush Limbaugh in the intraparty maelstrom yet affords fresh opportunities for conservative dismality.

What is a conservative to do?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Probably Both

24 Comments

Roger Kimball wonders if the seeming wilful ongoing destruction of the American economy by the new administration is a result of incompetence or malice.

It’s hard to know for sure, of course. Back in the nineties, J. Porter Clark (at sci.space.*) came up with a variation on Clarke’s Third Law (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”), now known as Clark’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness/incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” I think it was in reference to spam, but it would seem to apply to current economic policy as well.

Political Commentary

A Voice Of Sanity Among Democrats

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I hope they’ll listen to Senator Bayh.

[Thursday afternoon update]

Stephen Spruielle makes a good point (that sort of occurred to me at the time):

If one accepts the dubious proposition that government spending is required to mitigate the effects of the recession, how can one oppose higher spending that would take place this year — especially after voting for the trillion-dollar stimulus package? All this handwringing over the size of the omnibus from the likes of Bayh and Specter is just comical. It’s like listening to a guy who downed an entire bottle of tequila lecture his buddies on the dangers of taking one more shot.

Sometimes it seems like the lunatics are running the asylum.

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

I Hope He Freezes In The Dark

52 Comments

Timothy Noah is cheering what he hopes is the upcoming demise of the nuclear power industry, in the wake of Obama’s closing off the Yucca Mountain option. I was never a big fan of Yucca Mountain — I think it a ridiculously overpriced solution to an hysterical non-problem. But for the money that they planned to spend on it, we could have come up with a safe and reliable launch industry, by using it as a market for storage on the moon.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Statists, Meet Petard

21 Comments

Northern Virginia and the other DC suburbs are going to be hit hard by the Obama tax plan. I’m guessing that these are areas that went overwhelmingly for The One, to give him his overall Virginia victory. Here’s a good example of Mencken’s dictum that democracy would give the people what they want, and ensure that they get it good and hard. And this points out the economic mindlessness and absurdity of picking an arbitrary income level to start punishing achievement:

Besides raising tax rates in 2011 on the highest income brackets, this year’s budget would lower the deductions families earning $250,000 can make from their income.

“In my district, we have a high household income, but I would say two things about that,” Himes said. “No. 1, there’s huge diversity in my district. It includes some of the poorest families in the country and some of the wealthiest.

“And second, income has to be held against expenses. We have one of the highest costs of living in the country as well, which is problematic for all sorts of things,” Himes said.

The median sales price for a home in Greenwich, according to the real estate website Trulia, is $735,000, but that’s down significantly. Bloomberg reported in February that home sales in Greenwich, where the nation’s hedge fund industry generally lives, plunged 84 percent in January 2009 compared to a year earlier.

It’s still cheaper to buy a home in Fargo, where the average listing price is $192,436, according to Trulia. It’s also safe to say that wages are a little lower in the Red River Valley.

There is a reason that federalism is a good idea. Like a national “minimum wage,” to the degree that such a thing should exist at all, it’s ridiculous to apply a one-size fits all to the entire country. Both tax rates and wage and price controls should be left to the states, not Washington. But hey, they wanted “change.” Don’t come crying to me.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Is Rush Limbaugh…

38 Comments

…Barack Obama’s Goldstein?

There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama — the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market — but these are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn’t been talked about so much and, of all the things he does, it makes me the most queasy.

It’s pretty subtle, but I think it’s worth keeping an eye on because, if it were to become full-blown, it has the potential to be the most socially damaging element of his presidency.

I’m talking about what I’m going to call his Goldstein-ism, his tendency to make veiled, dark allusions to a recently vanquished “other”, an evil being (he is never specific) who is, he always implies, the real cause of all our problems.

George Orwell wouldn’t have been one of the rubes.

[Mid-morning update]

Obama’s sledging tactics of intimidation.

Why does this administration keep reminding me of my trip to the museum?

[Update late afternoon]

Rush makes the president an offer he can’t accept.

They want to have it both ways. If the White House really wants to portray Rush as the leader of the Republicans, then why not have the leader of the Democrats debate him? Harry Reid already found out what happens when you pull on Rush’s tail.

Business, Political Commentary

The Case For Bankruptcy

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Mickey Kaus says that it’s time for GM to bow to the inevitable. I agree — bankruptcy wouldn’t make things any worse, and could improve many things (including not having to bail it out with taxpayers’ funds any more). As a member of a GM family, I don’t say that with any cheer, but at some point, reality must be accepted.

[Update in the afternoon]

Here’s one more reason for GM to throw in the towel. The “Cap and Trade” in the budget bill will kill the industry, and Michigan.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

A Question For Obama ApologizerSupporters

36 Comments

Is there anything that he’s done for which you would criticize him?

[Wednesday morning update]

Victor Davis Hanson has some advice for the Messiah, that he won’t take.

You see, as in the case of any other politician, one must look to what he does—and has done—not what he says for election advantage.

And in the case of Sen. Obama, in his nascent career in the Senate, he had already compiled the most partisan record of any Democratic Senator. He had attended religiously one of the most racially divisive and extremist churches in the country. His Chicago friends were not moderates. His campaigns for state legislature, the House and the Senate were hard-ball, no-prisoner affairs of personal destruction, even by Chicago standards. Campaign references to reparations, gun- and bible-clingers, and Rev. Wright’s wisdom were not words of healing.

But the rubes bought it, anyway.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Making War On Prosperity

34 Comments

A lot of discussion of the impact of the president’s plan to punish anyone making over a quarter of a million bucks. What is particularly disgusting is all of his lies and rhetoric about the free market providing jobs, and the importance of small business and entrepreneurs. Watch what he does, not what he says.

[Update in the evening]

Carl Pham in comments suggests a variation on Martin Niemuller’s famous quote: “First they came for those making $250,000, and I said nothing, because I didn’t make that much…”

[Update a little while later]

If you work less to avoid taxes, are you a tax dodger?

I think it’s worse (or will be worse) than that. You’re an enemy of the state.

[Update a few minutes later]

Planned impoverishment?

It’s certainly a theory that fits the facts.

[Update at 7 PM Eastern]

Going John Galt.