2008 archive
Wingnut Meltdown 7
John McCain is a conservative hack.
He’s probably one of the few conservative hacks with some integrity left, but his “maverick” reputation is sorely overblown.
It seems to have more to do with his willingness to actually talk to reporters while not reading from a teleprompter than with his voting record.
So why are the wingnuts so unhappy with him? According to Brendan, who is strong-willed enough to subject himself to right-wing talk radio, Glenn Beck went into full meltdown mode today.
Kojo Nnamdi promised to explore that question on his show today. From the website:
So I devoted 32 minutes of my evening to listening to that segment (Realplayer), and, when it was done, I had had a few chuckles and was 32 minutes older.
But there were no answers to the question of “Why is the Republican Party determined to devour its young (or, in McCain’s case, its old)?”
I do have a few stray thoughts, but they are not well-formed enough to stand on their own.
-
Perhaps it is that he opposes torture, the wingnuts’ Viagra;
-
or that he can see that illegal immigrants, in addition to being illegal, are also human beings (Oh! I forgot! He sold out on that one. Hack.);
-
or that he thinks candidates should not necessarily be for sale to the highest bidder (whereas it is a principle of wingnutism that everything is for sale to the highest bidder).
It seems clear that, of the candidates for the Republican nomination, McCain is the one who has the best chance of winning the general election.
He’s a conservative hack, but he’s not an empty suit.
Let’s hope the wingnuts have their way, he loses the nomination, and, for the good of the nation, the Republican Party disappears from political discourse so that the nation can redeem its virtue and save itself from both moral and financial bankruptcy
Family Values 0
Steve over at ASZ has the scoop on them.
Corner Cabinet 0
A few years ago, I built a corner cabinet for the kitchen.
I should have waited and bought this one.
Empty Suit 3
John Cole on “Conservatives”:
But when folks say “conservative,†and they will say it seriously as if it means something, no doubt also invoking the “mantle of Reagan,†just laugh at them. They might as well be talking about phlogiston. Whatever conservative used to mean, if anything, it no longer does.
we have created a hell of conundrum for ourselves 14
Conundrum defines an intricate and difficult problem. This is in regard to use of ethynol as a automobile fuel. The price of a bushel of corn doubled last year, from 2 to 4 dollars a bushel, causing food prices to rise to record levels. This sets up a painful problem: even if oil prices fall it will cause us to use more ethynol because we will drive more. Since our gas is mixed with corn oil, food prices will rise even higher causing, real hardship for families especially. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. We finally get lucky, but we don’t save a dime.
Willies 2
No, not Willys. That was the company that created the jeep (which is now just another Chrysler hunk o’ junk). I saw one on the road today that actually looked like a Hummer rip-off for heaven’s sake).
That what’s Hillary Clinton gives me, as I’ve mentioned several times before.
Susie has a post linking to a satirical debunking of Obama’s positions. It’s really quite clever (No, I haven’t researched how factual it is).
But it doesn’t still my case of the willies, because there is more to candidates than positions.
(Aside: Hell, if policy positions mattered all that much, George Bush might have turned out to be at least a mediocre president, rather than a moral and political disaster who lied the country into a fraudulent war and has been leading the middle class into poverty.)
Booman has this video up. I’m not saying that I agree whole-heartedly with the hero-worshipping last five minutes of the video–I’m old, I don’t have heroes any more, just hopes–but the first ten minutes or so sure puts the finger on part of what about Senator Clinton gives me the willies:
Unfinished Business 0
Things have been pretty busy in the world of cooling towers lately, and I’ve left some loose ends dangling.
My hypocrisy watch is over. Now Senator Thompson has returned to being a retired faux district attorney. There is no longer any need to keep waiting for Waste of Newsprint to show the same concern for Senator Thompson’s family as he showed for Senator Edwards’s family.
(In a related matter, Steve over at ASZ points out the Waste of Newsprint doesn’t seem to realize that he’s part of the media.)
I missed Blogroll Amnesty Day. Something about working all weekend, I think. Always late to the party, that’s me.
I hereby retroactively refuse amnesty to anyone on my blogroll. Sorry, folks. You’re all still on my blogroll.
Primary Colors 0
I just got back from my polling place. No lines–that’s why I chose to go at 10:00 a. m–but one of the poll workers told me that turnout had been pretty good. As I left, three people were arriving.
We shall see what we shall see.
Drinking Liberally . . . 0
. . . should be fun on Super Tuesday. Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Center City Philadelphia, 6 p. m. tomorrow.
Podcast FAQ 1
My two or three regular readers know that, since I got an MP3 player and a podcatcher, I’ve become quite a fan of podcasts.
Yeah, I listen to a lot of NPR stuff and I listen to a lot of techie stuff also.
Todd Cochrane, over at Geek News Central, has a new completely ad-free wabsite about podcasting and listening to podcasts.
If you are interested in podcasting, either as audience or as cast, I recommend it highly.
It Is To Laugh 0
While listening to the morning news on a station that I will not humiliate by naming it, I actually heard a reporter refer to Republicans as “fiscal conservatives.”
Yeah.
Q. Why Do Bushies Love Torture? 3
The medieval practice is illegal and morally indefensible.
Mukasey’s twisted arguments in defense of waterboarding only serve to further diminish America’s standing in the world.
And for what?
The effectiveness of torture in obtaining intelligence is questionable at best.
It produces false confessions and undercuts legal interrogation and intelligence gathering techniques that actually work.
If anything, torture further inflames those who want to harm the United States. In other words, waterboarding could be causing more harm than good.
Mukasey tried to justify waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
But it’s impossible to make a convincing case, given that waterboarding has long been considered torture and violates international law and U.S. statutes.
A. It is their Viagra.
Spectator Sport (Updated) 3
It is rather amusing watching the Republican Party turn upon itself:
>. . . Because McCain has a conservative problem that he’s trying to solve. A huge number of American right-wingers despise him – Ann Coulter even said she’d campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain wins the Republican nomination – and he’s not quite sure what to do about it. If it was a simple disagreement over issues, McCain might be able to flip-flop his way out of it, and indeed, he’s tried.
(snip)
It hasn’t worked. Many conservatives have been willing to excuse Romney’s flip-flops on a whole number of issues, from immigration to abortion to gun control, but not McCain’s. They’d rather throw their lot in with the former one-term governor of the most liberal state in the union than vote for a senator with an 82% lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) voting record, who rails against pork-barrel spending and voted against the Bush initiative to have Medicare pay for prescription drugs for old folks.
Hope they keep it up.
Addendum, 2/2/2008:
Experience Is Highly Overrated 0
I find it interesting and completely irrelevant that, in the Democratic primary race, Hilary Clinton keeps touting her “experience.”
Now, I do not agree with those who would dismiss her experience as First Lady as irrelevant. Whatever the dynamics of the Clintons’ relationship, it is clear that Hilary Clinton was no Dolley Madison, whose reputation was made on White House parties and dinners.
And before the White House years, she was a successful lawyer, who graduated in the era when, if a woman applied for work at a law firm, she was offered a job as a secretary, whether or not she had a law degree.
“Experience,” in this context, of course, means “managerial experience in government,” as, opposed, to say, experience in leadership, experience in administration, or experience in management.
A critical analysis of American history indicates that experience in government is, at best, an “independent variable” and, at worst, completely irrelevant to performance in the office of President.
In other words, job experience does not make a president. Leadership, integrity, and foresight make a president.
And those qualities are forged by life, not by a job history.
(It’s a long windy post. I suggest you just agree with me, but, if you wish, you can read on.)
I will consider our greatest presidents. They are, as far as I am concerned,
- George Washington
- Thomas Jefferson
- Abraham Lincoln
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Franklin Roosevelt
(No, Ronald Reagan does not make the list. He did far more damage than good, despite Neocon myth-making.)
George Washington had little experience in government. Before the Revolutionary War, he was a successful planter and a so-so officer in the Virginia Militia. He servered in the Colonial Virginia House of Burgesses (the legislature), but had not govermental managerial experience.
During the Revolutionary War, he managed to win two battles: The Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Yorktown. And he would not have won the Battle of Yorktown without the presence of the French fleet in the York River, which cut off the British from any retreat, and a large contingent of French troops.
(He was, however, a wise enough commander to realize that the American revolutionary troops did not have the resources to beat the British is the traditional (at that time) style of pitched battle of massed troops on an open battlefield. He chose, instead, to wage a war of insurgency.)
(Yeah, there were other victories on the battlefield for the Revolutionary army: Saratoga, Cowpens–which was sort of the basis for the movie, The Patriot–and Kings Mountain–but Washington wasn’t involved in them).
He could have been King–or President for Life. And he turned it down. Because, like the rest of the Founders, he feared most that this country would fall into the hands of despots, and he wanted to set the againsts despotism.
Conclusion: Managerial experience in government: minimal.
Thomas Jefferson similarly had limited experience in government.
Like Washington, he served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and also served as Governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War. He also served in the First Continental Congress for two years, but, frankly, it had little or no purpose except to try to fund the Continental Army.
Yes, he had served as ambassador to France, taking him away from the nation during the early years of the Revolutionary War, and he served as Vice President under John Adams. He served as Secretary of State for a while under George Washington, but had little or no influence; Alexander Hamilton was in ascendancy.
He was Vice President under John Adams. At that time, the Vice President was the person who came in second in the presidential election. As Jefferson and Adams had opposed each other for the presidency, Jefferson had almost no influence or roll in the government. (As part of that election, the Federalist Party enacted the spiritual ancestor of the “Protect America Act.”
As President, he doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase, avoided War with Britain (the War finally came in 1812), and engineered the demise of the Federalist Party.
It can easily be argued that his greatest contributions were as a political thinker and as leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, rather than as an elected leader.
Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government almost non-existent.
Abraham Lincoln was a corporate lawyer. In those days, that meant he was a lawyer for the railroads, the dominant corporations of their time. He served in the state legislature for eight years–a part time post–while he pursued his legal career.
He also served as a Captain–an elected post–of the militia in the Black Hawk War. He served for 90 days and saw no action.
Many consider him to have been the best president in the history of the United States.
Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Goverment: Minimal.
Theodore Roosevelt served a term in the New York State legisture. Later, he ran for governor of New York and lost. He subsequently served on the United States Civil Service Commission, the Board of New York City Police Commissioners, and other boards and commissions, as well as UnderSecretary of the Navy.
He was elected Vice President to President McKinley in 1900 and because president when McKinley was assassinated.
Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government: High, but complete irrelevant to his election.
Franklin Roosevelt served as a Senator in the New York State Legisture for five years. Later, he served as Assistance Secretary of the Navy during World War I and, a decade later, as governor of New York.
Elected president in 1932, he led the nation through the Great Depression and, because of his commitment to helping persons who were starving and out of work, was hated by Republicans and termed a “traitor to his class.”
Conclusion: Managerial Experience in Government: Moderate.