On Hannah Giles, ACORN, and the Fourth Amendment:
(A Dialogue)
This material was written in another publishing medium about five minutes ago. The positional adversary's words will be in dark green font.
So let me get this...everyone in here hates Acorn because they broke the law, but yet are supportive of Hannah even thought she too broke the law?
The colonists also "broke the law" when they threw tea into Boston Harbor. It was once "against the law" for someone to help black slaves become free because they were "property" of other people. Heck, into the twentieth century it was once "against the law" for a black person to drink from a "white drinking fountain." Something is not always moral or ethical simply because it is legal. Law should constitute justice but it is often perverted and used as a pre-text for inflicting evils upon others.
ACORN as an entity that operated in secrecy and yet received tax-payer money was just such a situation of the immoral and unethical who now try to hide behind the thin veneer of "the law." Hannah busted them and God bless her for it. As far as I am concerned, she deserves the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for this and James deserves "documentary filmmaker of the year."{1}
Acorn's lawsuit is based on the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution, so I feel like that is a fairly just claim since I support the US Constitution
Well if you support the Constitution, how about making even an elementary attempt at properly applying it rather than inventing things out of whole cloth as typical "evolving constitution" style nonsense sorts are prone to do. The Fourth Amendment was promulgated as a safeguard of the rights of individuals to provide reasonable privacy from intrusion by the government. Giles and O'Keefe are private citizens and not the government so this suit should be thrown out as the joke that it is. The key word is "should."
I also do not know how she took on this big corrupt firm on her own, CNN published articles about Acorn employees being tried nearly a year before Hannah's "breaking" story.
For election fraud sure. The corruption of ACORN goes far beyond that though. And the msm had stories on ACORN that they spiked during the 2008 election season because they did not want to make the "ObaMessiah" look bad. Furthermore, the depth of ACORN's rotted nature was not touched on by any media source prior to Hannah's expose.
Note:
{1} For some expository musings that I wrote on the subject of ACORN and corruption, see this weblog posting from earlier in the year:
On ACORN and Corruption (circa October 1, 2009)
Showing posts with label Stolen Elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stolen Elections. Show all posts
Thursday, October 01, 2009
On ACORN and Corruption:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:
Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)
Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.
To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.
Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.
ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!
Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.
There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.
Notes:
{1} And over 40 since July of this year.
{2} ACORN's Enablers
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:
Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)
Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.
To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.
Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.
ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!
Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.
There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.
Notes:
{1} And over 40 since July of this year.
{2} ACORN's Enablers
Friday, April 03, 2009
On Political "Front Runners" Historically, Sarah Palin's Prospects in 2012, Etc.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
To start with, talking heads in the msm are already (so soon after the last presidential election) opining about various political persons and their perceived viability or lack thereof in the 2012 contest. I however do not play the game of political prognosticating this far out for the simple fact that a year is an ice age in politics and four years might as well be like the Jurassic period metaphorically speaking. A lot can happen between now and then and I have traditionally been very accurate in my political prognosticating{1} to a good extent because I do not play this game that far out. However, there are certain trends politically that one can use to forecast with a greater degree of accuracy what will likely happen and I will at this time do that without currently making any definite predictions one way or the other.
To start with, politics as a vocation tends to be dynastic to a certain extent even though there have only been two presidential "dynasties" properly speaking thus far.{2} But to a certain extent, there are patterns one can refer to from the past to better help them forecast future probabilities. For one thing, though it is not by any means a universal, it is nonetheless true that presidents who are successful more often than not had previous experience as an executive in some capacity. This experience could come in a variety of ways from business owner to field commander in the military to mayor of a town or governor of a state but as a rule the best presidents have had this kind of experience and those who were not as good did not.
By contrast to those with executive experience, senators and representatives in Congress who later on become president are traditionally not as good though again this is not an absolute principle but instead more of a general rule. And having noted those things, we get to the issue of dynastic political elements which I will now touch on so the reader knows what I am talking about if they do not already.
Since the presidency of the businessman and general George Washington, those who were subsequently elected president have always had experience in government in some form or another. In Washington's cabinet was John Adams the vice president and Thomas Jefferson the secretary of state -both of whom had high profile government positions before serving in Washington's cabinet. Adams would succeed Washington as our second president and Jefferson was our second vice president and third president. Jefferson's secretary of state was James Madison who would succeed him as president and Madison's secretary of state was James Monroe who succeeded him. James Monroe's secretary of state was the heavily credentialed John Quincy Adams who had served in various government posts{3} prior to being Monroe's secretary of state.{4} Quincy Adams won the controversial 1824 election after not getting the popular vote against General Andrew Jackson who despite his popular image as the first "commoner" to be president{5} as well as the first of the Democratic party presidents{6} had previous experience as a senator from Tennessee, house member from Tennessee, judge on the Tennessee supreme court, general of the military, and military governor of Florida.
We could similarly trace this pattern throughout all of American political history but pointing to the patterns that we have seen since 1952 suffices to make this point. Let us begin the more modern era therefore starting with Richard M. Nixon who was the vice president for two terms under former army general and president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was the nominee for president in 1960 and we need not go over how the Democratic party machine in Chicago and other places cheated him out of victory in that election.{7} He later on was defeated in the California gubernatorial election of 1962. After losing that election (and claiming he was finished), Nixon came back in 1968 to capture the nomination and win the presidency and won re-election in 1972. Senator John F. Kennedy who narrowly failed to secure the vice presidential position at the 1956 Democratic party convention of course was the party nominee and "victor" in 1960.{8} His vice president Lyndon B. Johnson (Senate majority leader, former House member, and a candidate in the 1960 election) became president in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated and won in his own right the following year.
Having already covered the Nixon election wins, it bears pointing out that when his successor Gerald Ford{9} ran unsuccessfully for president in 1976, he was very nearly upset by former California governor Ronald Reagan -winning the nomination by a mere hundred odd delegates out of a couple of thousand cast. Reagan of course went on to win the next two presidential elections by monumental victory margins. One of his adversaries in the 1980 election was George H. W. Bush who was then added as his vice presidential candidate when Reagan locked up the 1980 the nomination for president. (He was to succeed Reagan by winning in his own right in 1988.) One of the Democratic party failed presidential candidates of 1988 was Albert Gore Jr. who was added as Bill Clinton's vice presidential candidate in 1992. After eight years of serving as vice president, Gore was nominated as his party's candidate and ultimately lost the 2000 election by failing to win the electoral college. Gore was opposed by former President Bush's son George W. Bush who won the general election after fending off a tough challenge from Sen. John McCain in the Republican primaries. McCain as we all know was the Republican party nominee in the 2008 election.
I have traced this historical sketch out to provide a glimpse of sorts into how history has gone to better enable readers to better gauge how future election history will go. For one thing, those touting a possible future candidacy for Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal are already behind the curve in that my good friend Kevin M. Tierney in one of the frequent political conversations we have had was calling Jindal a possible "dark horse candidate" back in 2008 and already predicted he would run in 2012 and be the favourite for the nomination that year. I am not sure if he has changed his prediction or not in the aftermath of the political ascent of Alaska governor Sarah Palin but I have him on record picking Jindal as far back as at least eight months ago if not more.{10} In the meantime, I know of some people who are currently picking Palin as the front runner in 2012.
Speaking of Governor Sarah Palin, insofar as she goes as a front runner in the 2012 presidential election for the Republicans, a bit of history of former vice presidential candidates who later ran as presidential candidates seems in order. (I should note that when I say "ran" I mean was actually successfully nominated to run as representative of their respective political parties.) The first of the major parties to cover is the Federalist party and the only vice presidential candidate they had who later ran for president was President Washington's vice president John Adams but this example as well as the one from the elections of 1796 and 1800 cannot be used.{11} The opposition Democratic-Republican party{12} never had a vice presidential candidate who became president so we can rule them out as well. In the divisions of 1824 from which today's Democratic party takes its true origin to the present day, there have been several vice presidential candidates who have become president but in all but one case they succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president.{13} The exception to the rule was the only vice presidential candidate who ever ran successfully as president later on and that was President Franklin D. Roosevelt.{14} There have been a number of former vice presidents from the Democratic party side who subsequently secured their parties nomination for president{15} but only FDR successfully won in his bid after securing the vice presidential nomination in a losing party effort.
On the side of the Whigs -a party that became the main opposition to the Democratic party in 1833 and eventually was replaced by the Republicans in 1854, two of their vice presidential candidates on winning presidential tickets became president but in both cases (Tyler in 1841 and Fillmore in 1850) it was because the president they ran under died in office.{16} On the Republican party side of things, seven successfully nominated vice presidential candidates ran for president later on. Of the seven, three succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president before they made their runs{17} and two of them won election as president in their own right.{18} Of the others{19}, none of them successfully was elected president in their own right after failing to win the vice presidency earlier.
The history of political dynastic voting patterns points to Governor Sarah Palin being the logical front runner in 2012. However, only once in US history has a candidate from any major party successfully been elected president in their own right after failing to win the vice presidency on someone else's ticket. Does this mean that Governor Palin is certain to fail in this endeavour? Not necessarily. Senator Bob Dole after being nominated as President Ford's running mate failed to be elected vice president in 1976 and later on failed to win the presidency in 1996. There is no record of this sort to go on from the Democratic side of things other than the example of FDR. But before people read too heavily into these things as spelling certain death for Governor Palin's chances, they need to consider the circumstances behind the failed vp and successful bid of FDR and the failed bids both times of Senator Dole.
To start with, FDR did not have any executive experience when he ran in 1920 as James Cox's vice president and they ran on the tail end of President Woodrow Wilson from their own party who for a variety of reasons{20} was unpopular. No Democratic candidate was going to win that year basically under the climate of the times. Subsequent to that point, Roosevelt was successfully elected governor of New York in 1928 and thus by 1932 he had executive experience to make his presidential bid more credible than it otherwise would have been. He also in his presidential run had the benefit of opposing the boneheaded governance of the incumbent President Herbert Hoover who was no laissez-faire president by any means.{21} Senator Bob Dole ran as vice president on the ticket of a non-elected president who had previously been appointed as vice president himself two years after the previous vice president of his party (and later the president he replaced) resigned in disgrace.
The Ford/Dole ticket faced a particularly stiff challenge from former California governor Ronald Reagan which while it galvanized the party contributed in the short term to narrow presidential defeat.{22} Twenty years later, Senator Bob Dole ran for president and in a situation where his party had moved to prevent the possibility of potential upsets akin to what Reagan nearly pulled off in 1976, the deck was stacked in the primaries to favour party insiders and make a repeat of the 1976 nomination scenario next to impossible.{23} As a result, the candidate who was the strongest party nominee by force of party connections (Dole) was probably not their best candidate for winning the general election against an incumbent president like William J. Clinton who had recently achieved some significant real and perceived victories against the opposition Republican congress.{24} Plus, Senator Dole though he ran for president in 1988 and also 1996 had not bothered in the time since he was Ford's vp candidate to acquire any executive experience.
So of the two examples we have of successfully nominated vice presidential candidates, we have one that succeeded (FDR) and one that failed (Dole). We can also point to circumstances of the times of the various elections that contributed in no small way to the success of FDR and the failure of Dole in their presidential aspirations. What this tells us ultimately is the general rule I spelled out at the beginning of this posting applied here and the successful example (FDR) had executive experience that the unsuccessful example (Dole) did not.
So readers need to take that into account ultimately when they attempt to write off the chances of Governor Sarah Palin to successfully get her party's nomination in 2012 and potentially win the general election. Like FDR and unlike Dole, she has executive experience having been both a mayor as well as a state governor. As for predicting a front runner for 2012, all I will say is if Palin and Jindal do not win their re-elections in 2010, they will not be the party nominee in 2012 and while I believe they will both be re-elected (particularly Jindal), I will not dare to make a political prediction of the overall viability for presidential candidacy of either of them until they do.
As far as Senator Hillary Clinton goes, her chances of running again depend on how she sees herself in 2012. If President Obama has a successful or average presidency, he will not have any opposition in his party to re-election. If however he is a trainwreck, then he may well receive the sort of stiff party challenge that Ted Kennedy gave President Carter in 1980. Senator Clinton came closer to a come-from-behind victory for the nomination than any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1976. If Obama really messes things up, she may well run again in 2012 for far from being "too old" she would know that she would be no older then (65) than Reagan was in 1976 when he challenged Ford (he was 65) and four years younger than Reagan was when he won the presidency in 1980 at 69 years of age.
If President Obama is a disaster as president, can anyone think of other Democratic party candidates besides former Senator and now Secretary of State Clinton to give him a political fight? Only two come to my mind offhand that could be similarly viable. One is former Indiana governor and current Indiana senator Evan Bayh and the other is Virginia governor Tim Kaine. Bayh is from a politically dynastic family and Kaine as of January 21, 2009 holds not only his position as Virginia governor (he is up for re-election in 2010) but also is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. It would seem far more probable to me that Kaine would be more the king (or queen) maker than the king himself in light of his new position as DNC chair so that would leave Bayh as the only candidate I can think of who could rival Secretary of State Clinton as a party challenger to President Obama if his presidency is floundering when 2012 approaches.
Furthermore, Secretary of State Clinton's current cabinet position as a political precursor to the presidency was touched on earlier in this note. While it is true that her cabinet position has not been as influential in the past hundred and fifty years as it was previously, it still bears noting that four of the first seven and six of the first fifteen presidents were secretaries of state for a previous president{25} before becoming president in their own right.
Notes:
{1} Though in 2008 I was less accurate than the norm because a lot of things went against type in that election year -the msm shedding the last vestiges of their pretenses of "objectivity" to whore for Barack Obama in a way that was both shocking as well as frightening.
{2} The first of these was John Adams and John Quincy Adams while the second was George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush.
{3} Including Ambassador to the Netherlands under President Washington, Ambassador to Prussia under his father President Adams, Member of the Massachussets state Senate from 1802-1803, Senator of Massachussets from 1803-1809, Ambassador to Russia under President Madison until 1814, negotiator at Ghent for an end to the War of 1812 (and subsequently Ambassador to England) under President Madison. He also served in the Massachussets House of Representatives after losing his bid for re-election in 1828 until his death twenty years later: the only former president to serve in "the people's chamber" after serving as president.
{4} See footnote three. Quincy Adams was also the mind behind the famous Monroe Doctrine as promulgated in 1823 by President James Monroe and one the more fervent early slavery abolitionists. To say that he got by far more on his own natural talents than riding his famous father's coattails than President George W. Bush did is well established and beyond any debate by rational people.
{5} Which to a certain extent is accurate in that he was the first president who was not from the aristocratic class of American society.
{6} The Democratic party does not date from the time of Thomas Jefferson however much modern Democrats may wish it did.
{7} Nixon wisely chose not to go the "Al Gore route" and accepted the election results.
{8} See footnote seven. I would like to add here that I do not think Kennedy personally had a hand in any of this though that his influential father did is pretty close to being beyond debate really.
{9} Who became president after he was appointed to succeed Spiro Agnew in 1973 as vice president and then sworn in when President Nixon resigned the presidency in August of 1974.
{10} I would have to check my archives to know for sure but I have to give Kevin his due for being ahead of the popular curve on Jindal.
{11} The reason is the current law of parties running specifically as designated presidential and vice president was not put into effect by constitutional amendment until after the election of 1800 when Jefferson and Burr tied in electoral votes despite Burr being intended initially to be the vice presidential not presidential candidate. Starting with the election of 1804, the practice as we know it today has been in force.
{12} Originally called the "Republican" party by its advocates who wanted to claim that they favoured republicanism and the opposing federalists were closet monarchists. The Federalists countered by calling them "Democrats" to associate them with the French Jacoban democrats who were the architects of the French Revolution and its anarchial aftermath. Today, they are referred to as the "Democratic-Republican" party to separate them from the later Democratic party formed by the Jacksonians and the later Republican party which originated from 1854 as a coalition of old Federalists and a good section of the then-dying Whig political party.
{13} These include Harry Truman in 1944 and Lyndon Johnson in 1963 -both of whom subsequently won elections to retain their hold on the presidency in the following presidential elections.
{14} Who was the vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket of 1920 to Ohio governor James Cox.
{15} These include John C. Breckenridge who was nominated vice president on the winning ticket in 1856 who ran in a split party election in 1860 (representing the south) and Hubert H. Humphrey who was nominated vice president on the winning 1964 ticket who ran as the party's nominee in 1968. There was also Walter F. Mondale who was nominated vice president on the winning ticket in 1976 and was the incumbent vice president on the losing 1980 ticket, and Al Gore who failed to be nominated in his own right in 1988 and was President Clinton's vice president for eight years. (And as we know, he failed to win in 2000.)
{16} Neither Tyler nor Fillmore despite running as incumbents were able to win the presidency in their own right later on.
{17} Chester A. Arthur (succeeded the assassinated President James Garfield in 1881), Theodore Roosevelt (succeeded the assassinated President William McKinley in 1901), and Calvin Coolidge (succeeded President Warren Harding who died in office in 1923).
{18} Roosevelt in 1904 and Coolidge in 1924.
{19} See footnote fifteen.
{20} Too numerous to go into here.
{21} Contrary to the revisionist historical nonsense paraded about today as "history" supposedly "teaches."
{22} President Ford made some pretty bad gaffes in debate against Georgia governor Jimmy Carter which also did not help him.
{23} This ultimately is why I told the Republicans to go to hell after the 1996 general election and have been an unaffiliated Independent voter ever since.
{24} See footnote twenty.
{25} Jefferson for Washington, Madison for Jefferson, Monroe for Madison, Quincy Adams for Monroe, Van Buren under Jackson, and Buchanan under Polk.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
To start with, talking heads in the msm are already (so soon after the last presidential election) opining about various political persons and their perceived viability or lack thereof in the 2012 contest. I however do not play the game of political prognosticating this far out for the simple fact that a year is an ice age in politics and four years might as well be like the Jurassic period metaphorically speaking. A lot can happen between now and then and I have traditionally been very accurate in my political prognosticating{1} to a good extent because I do not play this game that far out. However, there are certain trends politically that one can use to forecast with a greater degree of accuracy what will likely happen and I will at this time do that without currently making any definite predictions one way or the other.
To start with, politics as a vocation tends to be dynastic to a certain extent even though there have only been two presidential "dynasties" properly speaking thus far.{2} But to a certain extent, there are patterns one can refer to from the past to better help them forecast future probabilities. For one thing, though it is not by any means a universal, it is nonetheless true that presidents who are successful more often than not had previous experience as an executive in some capacity. This experience could come in a variety of ways from business owner to field commander in the military to mayor of a town or governor of a state but as a rule the best presidents have had this kind of experience and those who were not as good did not.
By contrast to those with executive experience, senators and representatives in Congress who later on become president are traditionally not as good though again this is not an absolute principle but instead more of a general rule. And having noted those things, we get to the issue of dynastic political elements which I will now touch on so the reader knows what I am talking about if they do not already.
Since the presidency of the businessman and general George Washington, those who were subsequently elected president have always had experience in government in some form or another. In Washington's cabinet was John Adams the vice president and Thomas Jefferson the secretary of state -both of whom had high profile government positions before serving in Washington's cabinet. Adams would succeed Washington as our second president and Jefferson was our second vice president and third president. Jefferson's secretary of state was James Madison who would succeed him as president and Madison's secretary of state was James Monroe who succeeded him. James Monroe's secretary of state was the heavily credentialed John Quincy Adams who had served in various government posts{3} prior to being Monroe's secretary of state.{4} Quincy Adams won the controversial 1824 election after not getting the popular vote against General Andrew Jackson who despite his popular image as the first "commoner" to be president{5} as well as the first of the Democratic party presidents{6} had previous experience as a senator from Tennessee, house member from Tennessee, judge on the Tennessee supreme court, general of the military, and military governor of Florida.
We could similarly trace this pattern throughout all of American political history but pointing to the patterns that we have seen since 1952 suffices to make this point. Let us begin the more modern era therefore starting with Richard M. Nixon who was the vice president for two terms under former army general and president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon was the nominee for president in 1960 and we need not go over how the Democratic party machine in Chicago and other places cheated him out of victory in that election.{7} He later on was defeated in the California gubernatorial election of 1962. After losing that election (and claiming he was finished), Nixon came back in 1968 to capture the nomination and win the presidency and won re-election in 1972. Senator John F. Kennedy who narrowly failed to secure the vice presidential position at the 1956 Democratic party convention of course was the party nominee and "victor" in 1960.{8} His vice president Lyndon B. Johnson (Senate majority leader, former House member, and a candidate in the 1960 election) became president in 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated and won in his own right the following year.
Having already covered the Nixon election wins, it bears pointing out that when his successor Gerald Ford{9} ran unsuccessfully for president in 1976, he was very nearly upset by former California governor Ronald Reagan -winning the nomination by a mere hundred odd delegates out of a couple of thousand cast. Reagan of course went on to win the next two presidential elections by monumental victory margins. One of his adversaries in the 1980 election was George H. W. Bush who was then added as his vice presidential candidate when Reagan locked up the 1980 the nomination for president. (He was to succeed Reagan by winning in his own right in 1988.) One of the Democratic party failed presidential candidates of 1988 was Albert Gore Jr. who was added as Bill Clinton's vice presidential candidate in 1992. After eight years of serving as vice president, Gore was nominated as his party's candidate and ultimately lost the 2000 election by failing to win the electoral college. Gore was opposed by former President Bush's son George W. Bush who won the general election after fending off a tough challenge from Sen. John McCain in the Republican primaries. McCain as we all know was the Republican party nominee in the 2008 election.
I have traced this historical sketch out to provide a glimpse of sorts into how history has gone to better enable readers to better gauge how future election history will go. For one thing, those touting a possible future candidacy for Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal are already behind the curve in that my good friend Kevin M. Tierney in one of the frequent political conversations we have had was calling Jindal a possible "dark horse candidate" back in 2008 and already predicted he would run in 2012 and be the favourite for the nomination that year. I am not sure if he has changed his prediction or not in the aftermath of the political ascent of Alaska governor Sarah Palin but I have him on record picking Jindal as far back as at least eight months ago if not more.{10} In the meantime, I know of some people who are currently picking Palin as the front runner in 2012.
Speaking of Governor Sarah Palin, insofar as she goes as a front runner in the 2012 presidential election for the Republicans, a bit of history of former vice presidential candidates who later ran as presidential candidates seems in order. (I should note that when I say "ran" I mean was actually successfully nominated to run as representative of their respective political parties.) The first of the major parties to cover is the Federalist party and the only vice presidential candidate they had who later ran for president was President Washington's vice president John Adams but this example as well as the one from the elections of 1796 and 1800 cannot be used.{11} The opposition Democratic-Republican party{12} never had a vice presidential candidate who became president so we can rule them out as well. In the divisions of 1824 from which today's Democratic party takes its true origin to the present day, there have been several vice presidential candidates who have become president but in all but one case they succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president.{13} The exception to the rule was the only vice presidential candidate who ever ran successfully as president later on and that was President Franklin D. Roosevelt.{14} There have been a number of former vice presidents from the Democratic party side who subsequently secured their parties nomination for president{15} but only FDR successfully won in his bid after securing the vice presidential nomination in a losing party effort.
On the side of the Whigs -a party that became the main opposition to the Democratic party in 1833 and eventually was replaced by the Republicans in 1854, two of their vice presidential candidates on winning presidential tickets became president but in both cases (Tyler in 1841 and Fillmore in 1850) it was because the president they ran under died in office.{16} On the Republican party side of things, seven successfully nominated vice presidential candidates ran for president later on. Of the seven, three succeeded to the presidency upon the death of the president before they made their runs{17} and two of them won election as president in their own right.{18} Of the others{19}, none of them successfully was elected president in their own right after failing to win the vice presidency earlier.
The history of political dynastic voting patterns points to Governor Sarah Palin being the logical front runner in 2012. However, only once in US history has a candidate from any major party successfully been elected president in their own right after failing to win the vice presidency on someone else's ticket. Does this mean that Governor Palin is certain to fail in this endeavour? Not necessarily. Senator Bob Dole after being nominated as President Ford's running mate failed to be elected vice president in 1976 and later on failed to win the presidency in 1996. There is no record of this sort to go on from the Democratic side of things other than the example of FDR. But before people read too heavily into these things as spelling certain death for Governor Palin's chances, they need to consider the circumstances behind the failed vp and successful bid of FDR and the failed bids both times of Senator Dole.
To start with, FDR did not have any executive experience when he ran in 1920 as James Cox's vice president and they ran on the tail end of President Woodrow Wilson from their own party who for a variety of reasons{20} was unpopular. No Democratic candidate was going to win that year basically under the climate of the times. Subsequent to that point, Roosevelt was successfully elected governor of New York in 1928 and thus by 1932 he had executive experience to make his presidential bid more credible than it otherwise would have been. He also in his presidential run had the benefit of opposing the boneheaded governance of the incumbent President Herbert Hoover who was no laissez-faire president by any means.{21} Senator Bob Dole ran as vice president on the ticket of a non-elected president who had previously been appointed as vice president himself two years after the previous vice president of his party (and later the president he replaced) resigned in disgrace.
The Ford/Dole ticket faced a particularly stiff challenge from former California governor Ronald Reagan which while it galvanized the party contributed in the short term to narrow presidential defeat.{22} Twenty years later, Senator Bob Dole ran for president and in a situation where his party had moved to prevent the possibility of potential upsets akin to what Reagan nearly pulled off in 1976, the deck was stacked in the primaries to favour party insiders and make a repeat of the 1976 nomination scenario next to impossible.{23} As a result, the candidate who was the strongest party nominee by force of party connections (Dole) was probably not their best candidate for winning the general election against an incumbent president like William J. Clinton who had recently achieved some significant real and perceived victories against the opposition Republican congress.{24} Plus, Senator Dole though he ran for president in 1988 and also 1996 had not bothered in the time since he was Ford's vp candidate to acquire any executive experience.
So of the two examples we have of successfully nominated vice presidential candidates, we have one that succeeded (FDR) and one that failed (Dole). We can also point to circumstances of the times of the various elections that contributed in no small way to the success of FDR and the failure of Dole in their presidential aspirations. What this tells us ultimately is the general rule I spelled out at the beginning of this posting applied here and the successful example (FDR) had executive experience that the unsuccessful example (Dole) did not.
So readers need to take that into account ultimately when they attempt to write off the chances of Governor Sarah Palin to successfully get her party's nomination in 2012 and potentially win the general election. Like FDR and unlike Dole, she has executive experience having been both a mayor as well as a state governor. As for predicting a front runner for 2012, all I will say is if Palin and Jindal do not win their re-elections in 2010, they will not be the party nominee in 2012 and while I believe they will both be re-elected (particularly Jindal), I will not dare to make a political prediction of the overall viability for presidential candidacy of either of them until they do.
As far as Senator Hillary Clinton goes, her chances of running again depend on how she sees herself in 2012. If President Obama has a successful or average presidency, he will not have any opposition in his party to re-election. If however he is a trainwreck, then he may well receive the sort of stiff party challenge that Ted Kennedy gave President Carter in 1980. Senator Clinton came closer to a come-from-behind victory for the nomination than any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1976. If Obama really messes things up, she may well run again in 2012 for far from being "too old" she would know that she would be no older then (65) than Reagan was in 1976 when he challenged Ford (he was 65) and four years younger than Reagan was when he won the presidency in 1980 at 69 years of age.
If President Obama is a disaster as president, can anyone think of other Democratic party candidates besides former Senator and now Secretary of State Clinton to give him a political fight? Only two come to my mind offhand that could be similarly viable. One is former Indiana governor and current Indiana senator Evan Bayh and the other is Virginia governor Tim Kaine. Bayh is from a politically dynastic family and Kaine as of January 21, 2009 holds not only his position as Virginia governor (he is up for re-election in 2010) but also is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. It would seem far more probable to me that Kaine would be more the king (or queen) maker than the king himself in light of his new position as DNC chair so that would leave Bayh as the only candidate I can think of who could rival Secretary of State Clinton as a party challenger to President Obama if his presidency is floundering when 2012 approaches.
Furthermore, Secretary of State Clinton's current cabinet position as a political precursor to the presidency was touched on earlier in this note. While it is true that her cabinet position has not been as influential in the past hundred and fifty years as it was previously, it still bears noting that four of the first seven and six of the first fifteen presidents were secretaries of state for a previous president{25} before becoming president in their own right.
Notes:
{1} Though in 2008 I was less accurate than the norm because a lot of things went against type in that election year -the msm shedding the last vestiges of their pretenses of "objectivity" to whore for Barack Obama in a way that was both shocking as well as frightening.
{2} The first of these was John Adams and John Quincy Adams while the second was George Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush.
{3} Including Ambassador to the Netherlands under President Washington, Ambassador to Prussia under his father President Adams, Member of the Massachussets state Senate from 1802-1803, Senator of Massachussets from 1803-1809, Ambassador to Russia under President Madison until 1814, negotiator at Ghent for an end to the War of 1812 (and subsequently Ambassador to England) under President Madison. He also served in the Massachussets House of Representatives after losing his bid for re-election in 1828 until his death twenty years later: the only former president to serve in "the people's chamber" after serving as president.
{4} See footnote three. Quincy Adams was also the mind behind the famous Monroe Doctrine as promulgated in 1823 by President James Monroe and one the more fervent early slavery abolitionists. To say that he got by far more on his own natural talents than riding his famous father's coattails than President George W. Bush did is well established and beyond any debate by rational people.
{5} Which to a certain extent is accurate in that he was the first president who was not from the aristocratic class of American society.
{6} The Democratic party does not date from the time of Thomas Jefferson however much modern Democrats may wish it did.
{7} Nixon wisely chose not to go the "Al Gore route" and accepted the election results.
{8} See footnote seven. I would like to add here that I do not think Kennedy personally had a hand in any of this though that his influential father did is pretty close to being beyond debate really.
{9} Who became president after he was appointed to succeed Spiro Agnew in 1973 as vice president and then sworn in when President Nixon resigned the presidency in August of 1974.
{10} I would have to check my archives to know for sure but I have to give Kevin his due for being ahead of the popular curve on Jindal.
{11} The reason is the current law of parties running specifically as designated presidential and vice president was not put into effect by constitutional amendment until after the election of 1800 when Jefferson and Burr tied in electoral votes despite Burr being intended initially to be the vice presidential not presidential candidate. Starting with the election of 1804, the practice as we know it today has been in force.
{12} Originally called the "Republican" party by its advocates who wanted to claim that they favoured republicanism and the opposing federalists were closet monarchists. The Federalists countered by calling them "Democrats" to associate them with the French Jacoban democrats who were the architects of the French Revolution and its anarchial aftermath. Today, they are referred to as the "Democratic-Republican" party to separate them from the later Democratic party formed by the Jacksonians and the later Republican party which originated from 1854 as a coalition of old Federalists and a good section of the then-dying Whig political party.
{13} These include Harry Truman in 1944 and Lyndon Johnson in 1963 -both of whom subsequently won elections to retain their hold on the presidency in the following presidential elections.
{14} Who was the vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket of 1920 to Ohio governor James Cox.
{15} These include John C. Breckenridge who was nominated vice president on the winning ticket in 1856 who ran in a split party election in 1860 (representing the south) and Hubert H. Humphrey who was nominated vice president on the winning 1964 ticket who ran as the party's nominee in 1968. There was also Walter F. Mondale who was nominated vice president on the winning ticket in 1976 and was the incumbent vice president on the losing 1980 ticket, and Al Gore who failed to be nominated in his own right in 1988 and was President Clinton's vice president for eight years. (And as we know, he failed to win in 2000.)
{16} Neither Tyler nor Fillmore despite running as incumbents were able to win the presidency in their own right later on.
{17} Chester A. Arthur (succeeded the assassinated President James Garfield in 1881), Theodore Roosevelt (succeeded the assassinated President William McKinley in 1901), and Calvin Coolidge (succeeded President Warren Harding who died in office in 1923).
{18} Roosevelt in 1904 and Coolidge in 1924.
{19} See footnote fifteen.
{20} Too numerous to go into here.
{21} Contrary to the revisionist historical nonsense paraded about today as "history" supposedly "teaches."
{22} President Ford made some pretty bad gaffes in debate against Georgia governor Jimmy Carter which also did not help him.
{23} This ultimately is why I told the Republicans to go to hell after the 1996 general election and have been an unaffiliated Independent voter ever since.
{24} See footnote twenty.
{25} Jefferson for Washington, Madison for Jefferson, Monroe for Madison, Quincy Adams for Monroe, Van Buren under Jackson, and Buchanan under Polk.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Ultrabriefly on the Election Results:
I intend to write an analysis of the election trends of 2008 in a post-election commentary to be published sometime later this month. However, at the moment I am mulling over how I want to approach this. The intention is to try to make this commentary shorter than past election commentaries have been but without sacrificing essential points that need to be covered.
I do not intend prior to the publishing of that commentary to say anything about the election unless it is a response to reader email.{1} Furthermore, even after that commentary is published through at least the final months of President Bush's term that is how I intend to approach this matter. It is also with that commentary that I will debut a new blog tag for the president-elect{2} befitting the new station to which he will be ascending and which will be used for all postings pertaining to him after the inauguration.
The more I ponder these matters, the more I conclude that I am probably not of the same mindset on this matter that many who would identify themselves as "conservatives" may be. But that is par for the course I suppose -my approach to these matters is one that recognizes the whole panorama of conservative views rather than one narrow school of thought that is prevalent today. Nonetheless, the commentary will explain this to some extent and I will at that point not discuss election related issues until after January 20, 2009.{3} For a long election campaign has been concluded and battles that will need to be fought starting at that time{4} require one to conserve their energies on these matters.
Notes:
{1} And that is assuming that I even bother to respond to reader email on this subject of course should any be forthcoming. (It is still quite early in the aftermath.)
{2} Who shall likely not be mentioned at this weblog until that time.
{3} The one exception to this pledge is that I may comment further if somehow Dino Rossi wins the governors race for the second time between now and when that commentary is completed and published.
{4} I may however in that interim and as time allows for it sketch out a rough draft of the second of two initiative ideas I want to get on the ballot for Washington State in the 2010 election. (The first idea was sketched out nearly five years ago on this humble weblog and may be revisited again in the interim prior to the election as well.)
I intend to write an analysis of the election trends of 2008 in a post-election commentary to be published sometime later this month. However, at the moment I am mulling over how I want to approach this. The intention is to try to make this commentary shorter than past election commentaries have been but without sacrificing essential points that need to be covered.
I do not intend prior to the publishing of that commentary to say anything about the election unless it is a response to reader email.{1} Furthermore, even after that commentary is published through at least the final months of President Bush's term that is how I intend to approach this matter. It is also with that commentary that I will debut a new blog tag for the president-elect{2} befitting the new station to which he will be ascending and which will be used for all postings pertaining to him after the inauguration.
The more I ponder these matters, the more I conclude that I am probably not of the same mindset on this matter that many who would identify themselves as "conservatives" may be. But that is par for the course I suppose -my approach to these matters is one that recognizes the whole panorama of conservative views rather than one narrow school of thought that is prevalent today. Nonetheless, the commentary will explain this to some extent and I will at that point not discuss election related issues until after January 20, 2009.{3} For a long election campaign has been concluded and battles that will need to be fought starting at that time{4} require one to conserve their energies on these matters.
Notes:
{1} And that is assuming that I even bother to respond to reader email on this subject of course should any be forthcoming. (It is still quite early in the aftermath.)
{2} Who shall likely not be mentioned at this weblog until that time.
{3} The one exception to this pledge is that I may comment further if somehow Dino Rossi wins the governors race for the second time between now and when that commentary is completed and published.
{4} I may however in that interim and as time allows for it sketch out a rough draft of the second of two initiative ideas I want to get on the ballot for Washington State in the 2010 election. (The first idea was sketched out nearly five years ago on this humble weblog and may be revisited again in the interim prior to the election as well.)
Monday, November 03, 2008
Miscellaneous Musings on Threads of Interest:
A few threads pertaining to the election which is 48 hours away{1} seem to be appropriate at the present time so here goes...
An ACORN Whistleblower Testifies in Court (John Fund)
Here is a bit from the above article...
The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.
But remember folks, Sen. Obama has had no affiliation with ACORN. He told us so, remember ;-) Moving on we have this article on voting from someone who has not been mentioned on this weblog in a few years...
Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote (Karl Rove)
Here is a tidbit from the text to whet the appetite:
Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.
For our part, we at Rerum Novarum will be voting on Tuesday regardless of the so-called "lead" that the msm will assign to Sen. Obama.
Obama and the Politics of Crowds (Fouad Ajami)
Another article well worth reading -I will quote the summary to give an idea of what the article will cover:
The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.
That my friends is something we all need to remember: if we place as some kind of integral source of our happiness weight on who the president is, who runs congress, etc., Ultimately happiness has to come from within because otherwise we would cede to others control over our own happiness which it is never wise nor prudent to do. Then there is this tidbit from the LA Times...
The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics
The title says it all as far as I am concerned, give the article a read to see another example of mainstream media double standards as far as this election is concerned. But it appears finally folks that we may have the "October Surprise" coming out in November and this could affect the outcome of the voting in several key states. Here is the story and some of the reactions from some of those states:
Hidden Audio: Obama Tells SF Chronicle He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry
Here is just a taste:
Imagine if John McCain had whispered somewhere that he was willing to bankrupt a major industry? Would this declaration not immediately be front page news? Well, Barack Obama actually flat out told the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Gate) that he was willing to see the coal industry go bankrupt in a January 17, 2008 interview. The result? Nothing. This audio interview has been hidden from the public...until now.
Here is the response from some of the states which would be affected by the Obama energy plan as it pertains to coal starting with West Virginia -a state with five electoral votes and where the GOP has had a weak lead up to now:
Coal official calls Obama comments 'unbelievable'
Here is one from Ohio which is a state that was tending towards Obama and which has 20 electoral votes:
Ohio Coal Association Says Obama Remarks Make It Clear: Obama Ticket Not Supportive of Coal
Other states where Obama is weakly leading which could be affected by this latest news include Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes) and Virginia (13 electoral votes). There is also Indiana (11 electoral votes) where McCain's hanging on by his fingernails which could be bolstered by this latest news not to mention North Carolina (15 electoral votes) where Obama has a very small lead who also has a coal industry.
Anyway, this may be the silver bullet we have been looking for in this election folks...we will only know for sure after tomorrow.
Note:
{1} Though for our part we at Rerum Novarum voted by mail the other day.
A few threads pertaining to the election which is 48 hours away{1} seem to be appropriate at the present time so here goes...
An ACORN Whistleblower Testifies in Court (John Fund)
Here is a bit from the above article...
The FBI is investigating its voter registration efforts in several states, amid allegations that almost a third of the 1.3 million cards it turned in are invalid. And yesterday, a former employee of Acorn testified in a Pennsylvania state court that the group's quality-control efforts were "minimal or nonexistent" and largely window dressing. Anita MonCrief also says that Acorn was given lists of potential donors by several Democratic presidential campaigns, including that of Barack Obama, to troll for contributions.
But remember folks, Sen. Obama has had no affiliation with ACORN. He told us so, remember ;-) Moving on we have this article on voting from someone who has not been mentioned on this weblog in a few years...
Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote (Karl Rove)
Here is a tidbit from the text to whet the appetite:
Polls can reveal underlying or emerging trends and help campaigns decide where to focus. The danger is that commentators use them to declare a race over before the votes are in. This can demoralize the underdog's supporters, depressing turnout. I know that from experience.
For our part, we at Rerum Novarum will be voting on Tuesday regardless of the so-called "lead" that the msm will assign to Sen. Obama.
Obama and the Politics of Crowds (Fouad Ajami)
Another article well worth reading -I will quote the summary to give an idea of what the article will cover:
The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat -- by now unthinkable to the devotees -- will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won't be solved by a leader's magic.
That my friends is something we all need to remember: if we place as some kind of integral source of our happiness weight on who the president is, who runs congress, etc., Ultimately happiness has to come from within because otherwise we would cede to others control over our own happiness which it is never wise nor prudent to do. Then there is this tidbit from the LA Times...
The Los Angeles Times’s Strange Notion of Journalistic Ethics
The title says it all as far as I am concerned, give the article a read to see another example of mainstream media double standards as far as this election is concerned. But it appears finally folks that we may have the "October Surprise" coming out in November and this could affect the outcome of the voting in several key states. Here is the story and some of the reactions from some of those states:
Hidden Audio: Obama Tells SF Chronicle He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry
Here is just a taste:
Imagine if John McCain had whispered somewhere that he was willing to bankrupt a major industry? Would this declaration not immediately be front page news? Well, Barack Obama actually flat out told the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Gate) that he was willing to see the coal industry go bankrupt in a January 17, 2008 interview. The result? Nothing. This audio interview has been hidden from the public...until now.
Here is the response from some of the states which would be affected by the Obama energy plan as it pertains to coal starting with West Virginia -a state with five electoral votes and where the GOP has had a weak lead up to now:
Coal official calls Obama comments 'unbelievable'
Here is one from Ohio which is a state that was tending towards Obama and which has 20 electoral votes:
Ohio Coal Association Says Obama Remarks Make It Clear: Obama Ticket Not Supportive of Coal
Other states where Obama is weakly leading which could be affected by this latest news include Pennsylvania (21 electoral votes) and Virginia (13 electoral votes). There is also Indiana (11 electoral votes) where McCain's hanging on by his fingernails which could be bolstered by this latest news not to mention North Carolina (15 electoral votes) where Obama has a very small lead who also has a coal industry.
Anyway, this may be the silver bullet we have been looking for in this election folks...we will only know for sure after tomorrow.
Note:
{1} Though for our part we at Rerum Novarum voted by mail the other day.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Dialogue on Sen. Obama, Sen. McCain, Basic Economics, and the Upcoming Election:
(With Kevin Tierney)
Kevin's words will be in burgundy font with his sources italicized.
Well, it's finally happened. The One has demonstrated that he isn't really "change we can believe in." On second thought, maybe he is. He's worse than the most petty and vile of politicians. Deceitful as Bill Clinton may have been, Clinton never sacrificed his own family to advance his career. (As Obama did when he shamefully threw his infirm grandmother under the bus during the Reverend Wright scandal.) The Clintons certainly never demonstrated their prowess by insulting people with disabilities or those with debilitating injuries, as Obama has just done.
Obama stated this week "the gloves are finally coming off" for the 4th time since securing the Democratic nomination. In a recent ad, Mr. Obama mocks GOP presidential candidate John McCain for apparently being computer illiterate. The ad says the following:
"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,"
There is also the whole "still doesn't understand the economy" schtick. McCain is no economist but he understands the concept of lower taxes stimulating the economy and higher taxes stifling it. He understands the sort of dynamics that are involved in people's economic behaviour and does not naively presume as Obama and company do that raising taxes will increase revenue. It never does past a very low threshold point because people do not respond to these things statically.
Obama on the other hand when it was pointed out to him that every time the capital gains tax is raised it brings in less revenue still favours doing it on principle because the income disparities "are not right." That is the view of an ideologue and I will take McCain's frank admission that the economics are not his strong suit coupled with his familiarity with the dynamics of how an economy runs over a know-it-all like Obama who presumes to talk out of his ass a lot on a subject to which he is either ignorant or disingenuous about. And considering the Gestapo-like tactics he and his goons are involving themselves in, I do not believe I am obligated to give them the benefit of the doubt on these matters.
Obama is also claiming that McCain's campaign is the "dirtiest in history" which shows how ignorant he is. What about the 1800 election??? The 1828 election??? The 1876 election??? The 1884 election??? The 1912 election??? The 1960 election??? The 1964 election??? The 1980 election??? The 2000 election??? Every one of them an argument can be made was worse than this election and they are not the only ones. But objectively I would say the ones from 1800, 1828, 1840, 1876, 1884, 1912, 1964, and 1980 were worse than this one.
If part of dirtiness is the attempt to steal an election on the part of Democrats then we could throw 2000 and 2004 in there as well particularly the last one. I say particularly the last one cause the same people who bitched about winning the popular vote last time when the total was less than a half million nationwide difference tried to steal Ohio in 2004 despite GWB winning the nationwide popular vote by about three million. Not to mention the silence like whores in church from the Dems viz. what happened in the Washington governors race which was as I called it then "Grand Theft Election."
Heck, I just when writing this response took a minute and made a tab on my weblog on those posts and the others I could find on a quick archive search that discussed the subject of stolen elections. But that is neither here nor there as their hypocrisy knows no bounds obviously -and not just in that area.
Where do we begin? First off, Obama better hope he gets those young liberal voters. He has certainly now conceded just about every senior citizen. (Not to mention those working class individuals like my father who have never used a computer in their lives, and went on to become region directors of unions.) This in itself makes it a stupid ad. However, as Jonah Goldberg points out, this ad is not only stupid, its downright insulting:
"Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "extraordinary." The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe (March 4, 2000):
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
Bob Klaus{1} is right that Obama has most of the under 30 voters but McCain was not going to win that demographic anyway. Though if he can take about 40% instead of the more probable 30% that would basically along with the older contingent and the blue collar worker sorts like my late father who identified himself as a Democrat most of his life{2} despite almost never voting for them.{3} The younger crowd go for the charisma and the rhetorical bs. They also do not vote in large percentages whereas the largest demographic in the country is senior citizens. And if my late father (God rest his soul) was alive, he would be screaming to listen to them insult McCain in that way.
McCain is a war hero. PERIOD. That war wounds prevent him due to injuries from doing some things all that well is a given but to mock that is disgusting. I have to say though that his love of Ted Williams tells me something because 'ol Ted was a pretty interesting personality and I can see shades of the Williams persona in McCain. (Both the good and the bad.) I recommend you all read Leigh Montville's fascinating biography of Ted Williams if you really want to see the complexities of the man and get an insight into one of McCain's self-admitted influences.{4}
As Goldberg points out in his Corner post, perhaps we should condemn the governor of New York since he doesn't know how to drive, since transportation is important to the economy. Oh wait, Governor Patterson is blind. Perhaps we should have condemned FDR because the man couldn't walk beyond a few steps, because being mobile is certainly required to be a president. Oh wait, FDR was paralyzed.
Indeed. And when it comes to "dirty campaigning" how about condemning Grover Cleveland for having an affair which resulted in a child? That was a major media sensation back in 1884 when he ran for the first of his two non-consecutive terms.{5} The illegitimate child issue was huge in 1884 as was the 1828 election where the issue of President Jackson's wife was huge. More could be noted but just those two alone trump anything we are seeing this year. Oh and for what it is worth, I do not recall McCain or Obama's campaign basically saying that their opponent deserved to be in the lowest pit of hell as this famous 1840 campaign ditty opposing President Van Buren did:
Who never did a noble deed?
Who of the people took no heed?
Who is the worst of tyrant's breed?
Van Buren!
Who like the wily serpent clings,
Who like the poisonous adder stings,
Who is more base than basest Kings?
Van Buren!
Who would his friend, his country sell,
do other deeds too base to tell,
deserves the lowest place in Hell?
Van Buren!
But then again, Obama has gotten a lot of easier to verify facts wrong so why should we expect him to get the harder stuff correct???
There are two explanations for this fact. The first is that he legitimately did not know that McCain, due to his injuries in service of his country, was prevented from these things. A little while ago Obama claimed that the fact he ran such a great campaign proves he has more experience than VP nominee Sarah Palin, and was proof he is ready for President. You don't hear much about that argument in the past week, and this is more evidence why you don't. It's obvious his campaign is not as strong as he thinks it is. As Mark Hemmingway so eloquently put it, Obama can send an email, but apparently can't do a quick search on Google.
And when the msm is emphasizing how "even" this race is, that is another clue that the Dems are behind because if the situation was reversed and Obama led by 3-5 points among all voters (and 10-12 points among likely voters), they would present it as if he was "pulling away from Sen. McCain in this race" or some equivalent.
Second, Obama knew about this, but just didn't care. Then he becomes worse than even the most vile of politicians. John McCain's injuries in the service of his country are something to be praised, just as are the injuries of all veterans. Not mocked! I'll refrain from saying it is this option. If this is the case, then it says something very troubling about the kind of person Obama is, and suggests something that is beyond despicable about his nature.
Agreed.
So we are left with just being flat out stupid. That's a harsh statement, but its true. Would he like to condemn my good friend John who just came back from Iraq? John can't lift that much because of injuries he sustained fighting for this country. Would Obama like to call him less a man because he cannot lift heavy objects?
Well said Kev.
Notes:
{1} One of those on the thread.(Last name omitted barring permission from him to note it here.)
{2} His father was a Republican who only voted for one Democrat that I am aware of (Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 over Pres. Eisenhower). My father identified with President John F. Kennedy and was looking forward to voting for him in 1964 (his first presidential voting election) which never happened.
{3} His first presidential election was 1964 (for Goldwater) When I asked him about it, he only remembered voting against Johnson due to what he learned about the man when doing long haul trucking through Texas in the early sixties. In fact, except for the Nixon elections and 1992, my union man father voted for Republican candidates for president.
{4} Montville later authored a similarly solid biography on Babe Ruth which is also well worth reading but I digress.
{5} He lost in a re-election bid in the electoral college despite winning the popular vote in 1888 and then defeated President Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 contest four years after that.
(With Kevin Tierney)
Kevin's words will be in burgundy font with his sources italicized.
Well, it's finally happened. The One has demonstrated that he isn't really "change we can believe in." On second thought, maybe he is. He's worse than the most petty and vile of politicians. Deceitful as Bill Clinton may have been, Clinton never sacrificed his own family to advance his career. (As Obama did when he shamefully threw his infirm grandmother under the bus during the Reverend Wright scandal.) The Clintons certainly never demonstrated their prowess by insulting people with disabilities or those with debilitating injuries, as Obama has just done.
Obama stated this week "the gloves are finally coming off" for the 4th time since securing the Democratic nomination. In a recent ad, Mr. Obama mocks GOP presidential candidate John McCain for apparently being computer illiterate. The ad says the following:
"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,"
There is also the whole "still doesn't understand the economy" schtick. McCain is no economist but he understands the concept of lower taxes stimulating the economy and higher taxes stifling it. He understands the sort of dynamics that are involved in people's economic behaviour and does not naively presume as Obama and company do that raising taxes will increase revenue. It never does past a very low threshold point because people do not respond to these things statically.
Obama on the other hand when it was pointed out to him that every time the capital gains tax is raised it brings in less revenue still favours doing it on principle because the income disparities "are not right." That is the view of an ideologue and I will take McCain's frank admission that the economics are not his strong suit coupled with his familiarity with the dynamics of how an economy runs over a know-it-all like Obama who presumes to talk out of his ass a lot on a subject to which he is either ignorant or disingenuous about. And considering the Gestapo-like tactics he and his goons are involving themselves in, I do not believe I am obligated to give them the benefit of the doubt on these matters.
Obama is also claiming that McCain's campaign is the "dirtiest in history" which shows how ignorant he is. What about the 1800 election??? The 1828 election??? The 1876 election??? The 1884 election??? The 1912 election??? The 1960 election??? The 1964 election??? The 1980 election??? The 2000 election??? Every one of them an argument can be made was worse than this election and they are not the only ones. But objectively I would say the ones from 1800, 1828, 1840, 1876, 1884, 1912, 1964, and 1980 were worse than this one.
If part of dirtiness is the attempt to steal an election on the part of Democrats then we could throw 2000 and 2004 in there as well particularly the last one. I say particularly the last one cause the same people who bitched about winning the popular vote last time when the total was less than a half million nationwide difference tried to steal Ohio in 2004 despite GWB winning the nationwide popular vote by about three million. Not to mention the silence like whores in church from the Dems viz. what happened in the Washington governors race which was as I called it then "Grand Theft Election."
Heck, I just when writing this response took a minute and made a tab on my weblog on those posts and the others I could find on a quick archive search that discussed the subject of stolen elections. But that is neither here nor there as their hypocrisy knows no bounds obviously -and not just in that area.
Where do we begin? First off, Obama better hope he gets those young liberal voters. He has certainly now conceded just about every senior citizen. (Not to mention those working class individuals like my father who have never used a computer in their lives, and went on to become region directors of unions.) This in itself makes it a stupid ad. However, as Jonah Goldberg points out, this ad is not only stupid, its downright insulting:
"Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "extraordinary." The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the Viet Cong in service to our country. From the Boston Globe (March 4, 2000):
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
Bob Klaus{1} is right that Obama has most of the under 30 voters but McCain was not going to win that demographic anyway. Though if he can take about 40% instead of the more probable 30% that would basically along with the older contingent and the blue collar worker sorts like my late father who identified himself as a Democrat most of his life{2} despite almost never voting for them.{3} The younger crowd go for the charisma and the rhetorical bs. They also do not vote in large percentages whereas the largest demographic in the country is senior citizens. And if my late father (God rest his soul) was alive, he would be screaming to listen to them insult McCain in that way.
McCain is a war hero. PERIOD. That war wounds prevent him due to injuries from doing some things all that well is a given but to mock that is disgusting. I have to say though that his love of Ted Williams tells me something because 'ol Ted was a pretty interesting personality and I can see shades of the Williams persona in McCain. (Both the good and the bad.) I recommend you all read Leigh Montville's fascinating biography of Ted Williams if you really want to see the complexities of the man and get an insight into one of McCain's self-admitted influences.{4}
As Goldberg points out in his Corner post, perhaps we should condemn the governor of New York since he doesn't know how to drive, since transportation is important to the economy. Oh wait, Governor Patterson is blind. Perhaps we should have condemned FDR because the man couldn't walk beyond a few steps, because being mobile is certainly required to be a president. Oh wait, FDR was paralyzed.
Indeed. And when it comes to "dirty campaigning" how about condemning Grover Cleveland for having an affair which resulted in a child? That was a major media sensation back in 1884 when he ran for the first of his two non-consecutive terms.{5} The illegitimate child issue was huge in 1884 as was the 1828 election where the issue of President Jackson's wife was huge. More could be noted but just those two alone trump anything we are seeing this year. Oh and for what it is worth, I do not recall McCain or Obama's campaign basically saying that their opponent deserved to be in the lowest pit of hell as this famous 1840 campaign ditty opposing President Van Buren did:
Who never did a noble deed?
Who of the people took no heed?
Who is the worst of tyrant's breed?
Van Buren!
Who like the wily serpent clings,
Who like the poisonous adder stings,
Who is more base than basest Kings?
Van Buren!
Who would his friend, his country sell,
do other deeds too base to tell,
deserves the lowest place in Hell?
Van Buren!
But then again, Obama has gotten a lot of easier to verify facts wrong so why should we expect him to get the harder stuff correct???
There are two explanations for this fact. The first is that he legitimately did not know that McCain, due to his injuries in service of his country, was prevented from these things. A little while ago Obama claimed that the fact he ran such a great campaign proves he has more experience than VP nominee Sarah Palin, and was proof he is ready for President. You don't hear much about that argument in the past week, and this is more evidence why you don't. It's obvious his campaign is not as strong as he thinks it is. As Mark Hemmingway so eloquently put it, Obama can send an email, but apparently can't do a quick search on Google.
And when the msm is emphasizing how "even" this race is, that is another clue that the Dems are behind because if the situation was reversed and Obama led by 3-5 points among all voters (and 10-12 points among likely voters), they would present it as if he was "pulling away from Sen. McCain in this race" or some equivalent.
Second, Obama knew about this, but just didn't care. Then he becomes worse than even the most vile of politicians. John McCain's injuries in the service of his country are something to be praised, just as are the injuries of all veterans. Not mocked! I'll refrain from saying it is this option. If this is the case, then it says something very troubling about the kind of person Obama is, and suggests something that is beyond despicable about his nature.
Agreed.
So we are left with just being flat out stupid. That's a harsh statement, but its true. Would he like to condemn my good friend John who just came back from Iraq? John can't lift that much because of injuries he sustained fighting for this country. Would Obama like to call him less a man because he cannot lift heavy objects?
Well said Kev.
Notes:
{1} One of those on the thread.
{2} His father was a Republican who only voted for one Democrat that I am aware of (Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 over Pres. Eisenhower). My father identified with President John F. Kennedy and was looking forward to voting for him in 1964 (his first presidential voting election) which never happened.
{3} His first presidential election was 1964 (for Goldwater) When I asked him about it, he only remembered voting against Johnson due to what he learned about the man when doing long haul trucking through Texas in the early sixties. In fact, except for the Nixon elections and 1992, my union man father voted for Republican candidates for president.
{4} Montville later authored a similarly solid biography on Babe Ruth which is also well worth reading but I digress.
{5} He lost in a re-election bid in the electoral college despite winning the popular vote in 1888 and then defeated President Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 contest four years after that.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Miscellaneous Musings on Threads of Interest:
Briefly...
Politicians as Comics: A Sideshow on Pop TV (Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times)
The line between reality and fiction continues to blur.
Justice Scalia on 60 Minutes About Bush vs. Gore, the Jurisprudence Involved, Etc. (CBS News)
A couple tidbits on each point starting with Bush vs. Gore from 2000:
"I say nonsense," Scalia responds to Stahl’s observation that people say the Supreme Court’s decision in Gore v. Bush was based on politics and not justice. "Get over it. It’s so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two," he says, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision that the Supreme Court of Florida’s method for recounting ballots was unconstitutional.
Furthermore, says the outspoken conservative justice, it was Al Gore who ultimately put the issue into the courts...
There is also a nice tidbit in the thread above on originalism{1} as it pertains to the subject of abortion -something that many who call themselves "pro life" would do well to consider.{2}
But on the court issue, it is nice to see Justice Scalia affirm something we have long said and last year finally wrote a bit on for this weblog:
And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there was no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place...In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during an election cycle. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
We thank Justice Scalia for finally coming to see this matter our way ;-) As for those who continue to whine about this matter or even tacitly act as if it somehow is or ever was a credible position, some song lyrics from The Eagles come to mind from their Hell Freezes Over tour in 1994 which will end this posting:
You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass
Get over it...
Notes:
{1} I last noted the issue here but the upcoming post on the necessary third way in politics between the unconstitutional liberal common approach and the unworkable approach commonly posited by conservatives who "love the Constitution" will to some extent deal with the subject of originalism.
{2} Though written at length by us before, to summarize it in a nutshell, there notion of a "constitutional right to abortion" is obviously absurd but there is also no provision in the Constitution for making abortion illegal. Justice Scalia recognizes both of these factors in his judicial reasoning and even though he personally is opposed to abortion, he does not allow his personal views to dictate how he rules on cases. This is what a solid originalist justice is supposed to do and why we need as many originalists on the court as we can get.
Briefly...
Politicians as Comics: A Sideshow on Pop TV (Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times)
The line between reality and fiction continues to blur.
Justice Scalia on 60 Minutes About Bush vs. Gore, the Jurisprudence Involved, Etc. (CBS News)
A couple tidbits on each point starting with Bush vs. Gore from 2000:
"I say nonsense," Scalia responds to Stahl’s observation that people say the Supreme Court’s decision in Gore v. Bush was based on politics and not justice. "Get over it. It’s so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two," he says, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision that the Supreme Court of Florida’s method for recounting ballots was unconstitutional.
Furthermore, says the outspoken conservative justice, it was Al Gore who ultimately put the issue into the courts...
There is also a nice tidbit in the thread above on originalism{1} as it pertains to the subject of abortion -something that many who call themselves "pro life" would do well to consider.{2}
But on the court issue, it is nice to see Justice Scalia affirm something we have long said and last year finally wrote a bit on for this weblog:
And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there was no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place...In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during an election cycle. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
We thank Justice Scalia for finally coming to see this matter our way ;-) As for those who continue to whine about this matter or even tacitly act as if it somehow is or ever was a credible position, some song lyrics from The Eagles come to mind from their Hell Freezes Over tour in 1994 which will end this posting:
You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass
Get over it...
Notes:
{1} I last noted the issue here but the upcoming post on the necessary third way in politics between the unconstitutional liberal common approach and the unworkable approach commonly posited by conservatives who "love the Constitution" will to some extent deal with the subject of originalism.
{2} Though written at length by us before, to summarize it in a nutshell, there notion of a "constitutional right to abortion" is obviously absurd but there is also no provision in the Constitution for making abortion illegal. Justice Scalia recognizes both of these factors in his judicial reasoning and even though he personally is opposed to abortion, he does not allow his personal views to dictate how he rules on cases. This is what a solid originalist justice is supposed to do and why we need as many originalists on the court as we can get.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Miscellaneous Musings:
Briefly on some subjects of the past week...
--When it comes to the economy and the stock market, there is far more mixed signals on the matter than seems to be the msm's inclination to portray. One thing we do know for sure is that the economy has slowed down but as for an actual "recession", it is still too early to tell.
--I will be posting in the days after Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary a thread series containing my most detailed view of Senator John McCain yet -along with some of my most critical statements about President Bush as well. But not until after the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday.
--On the upcoming primary in Pennsylvania, I noted already my sense of schadenfraude viz. how the Democrats are acting now with Senator Clinton considering how in the past they have played the "keep fighting" card even when the latter was genuinely hopeless. But this is hardly a case of a hopeless campaign for Senator Clinton because the very structure of the Democratic party nominating process has made this an open race. Heck, there is less than a ten percent margin in the delegate counts between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama!!! If that is cause for her to throw in the towel, then the Democrats who have whined about Florida since 2000{1} and Ohio since 2004{2} should apologize to everyone whose ear drums had to be subjected to their screeds over many years and give Senator Clinton her "recount" equivalent in this race by at least finishing it.
--As far as predictions on Pennsylvania go, I predict Senator Clinton will win by approximately 5%.
--I have not said anything about the pope's visit except in private to some friends. It is obviously great on one level that he came to America but there are other factors that I cannot ignore in the overall assessment. Here with some heavy editing out of material of a more confidential and other nature are some of the bits from one of those conversations six days ago with my interlocutor's words in dark green, my words in light blue font, and some structure added to the substance of my comments as well as theirs where needed:
BTW, are you doing anything with the Pope's visit.
with the pope coming...I am going to take a wait and see basically. I respect him tremendously
sure
I hear a but coming
much as I did [John Paul II]...but
I was right
I am concerned with the attitude many take on different fronts on different matters. Basically, I am a subsidiarity fella: it is how I approach things constitutionally and geopolitically. It is also how I approach things ecclesially
which would rule out distributism, obviously
that does not (lol)
mean I rule out the pope disciplining people of course. But we have two extremes I think need to be avoided. We need to avoid on the one hand a micromanaging pope
I think I see where this is goin.
engaging in a kind of ecclesial extreme federalism to the detriment of diocesan issues but at the same time we need a check on the tyranny of diocesan bureaucracies. It is ironic
and on the tyranny of individual bishops
that there are those in dioceses who complain about the Vatican intervening in their dioceses but they then act as if people in the dioceses owe them a much greater obedience than they owe the pope.
Boy, you said it.
This applies to bishops as well as lay people in bureaucracy...the balance needs to be struck. I will be honest...I think you at times err towards the "put their heads on the Tiber bridge" approach :P but then there are others who take too lax an approach. Basically if dogma or canon law is being violated, the pope has a responsibility to step in. Otherwise, more care is needed.
I do hope Benedict talks with the bishops about the pedophilia scandal though along with the college heads about the importance of JP II's ex corde ecclesiae on catholic college identity issues.
The problem, as I've maintained all along, is that the ecclesiastical structure promotes arrogance, blind deference and a lack of accountability and transparency. This is true of all hierarchical, bureaucratic systems, religious or secular (e.g.USSR)
and that does not include those who get excited at every new papal document that comes out as if the pope needs to speak on every issues under the sun so that they can check their brains at the door in true prot caricatures of brainless dimwit catholics from polemical eras past.
The problem w/Benedict on the clerical sex-abuse problem is that I find him to be too much of an esoteric academic. He likes to make subtle messages (such as immediately accepting McCarrick's pro forma resignation) but some of that subtlety is beyond the minimal IQs of some of the bishops.
As I told the [discussion] list and others, I do not need any authority to do my thinking for me nor do I want it. If it is a matter of dogma or a doctrine that is evidently definitive (i.e. the bans on abortion or women priests) that is one thing but even those matters have certain subtleties that many do not appreciate...
and on geopolitical matters, history does not give me comfort the more I study it on the wisdom of Vatican geopolitics in general. That does not mean I do not respect the popes and the role they have to play on those matters of course. But those who treat geopolitical interventions as matters of unquestioning assent do not do the matter proper justice. [Excerpts from a Chat Correspondence (circa April 14, 2008)]
My geopolitical disillusionment is also not helped by the seeming obliviousness of His Holiness to several key factors that undermine particular geopolitical stances he has taken in recent years either. The question is how to respectfully address them{3} without the usual suspects accusing me of being "disrespectful" as if somehow the pope is above any and all criticism. But enough on these matters for now.
Notes:
{1} And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there was no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place. (4-3 if Scalia had recused himself also though the connection he had to Bush was far less solid.) In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during an election cycle. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
{2} As for Ohio in 2004, the irregularities there were no different than what happens in a lot of states though I do not recall the Democrats calling for investigations into the election oddities in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which were if anything more suspicious than Ohio. Oh yes, they won those states so there could not have been voting irregularities!!! [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
{3} One of these matters will be addressed closer to the election in a few posts written last year which I decided to hold back at the time on posting. Another is the death penalty for reasons I noted here.
Briefly on some subjects of the past week...
--When it comes to the economy and the stock market, there is far more mixed signals on the matter than seems to be the msm's inclination to portray. One thing we do know for sure is that the economy has slowed down but as for an actual "recession", it is still too early to tell.
--I will be posting in the days after Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary a thread series containing my most detailed view of Senator John McCain yet -along with some of my most critical statements about President Bush as well. But not until after the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday.
--On the upcoming primary in Pennsylvania, I noted already my sense of schadenfraude viz. how the Democrats are acting now with Senator Clinton considering how in the past they have played the "keep fighting" card even when the latter was genuinely hopeless. But this is hardly a case of a hopeless campaign for Senator Clinton because the very structure of the Democratic party nominating process has made this an open race. Heck, there is less than a ten percent margin in the delegate counts between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama!!! If that is cause for her to throw in the towel, then the Democrats who have whined about Florida since 2000{1} and Ohio since 2004{2} should apologize to everyone whose ear drums had to be subjected to their screeds over many years and give Senator Clinton her "recount" equivalent in this race by at least finishing it.
--As far as predictions on Pennsylvania go, I predict Senator Clinton will win by approximately 5%.
--I have not said anything about the pope's visit except in private to some friends. It is obviously great on one level that he came to America but there are other factors that I cannot ignore in the overall assessment. Here with some heavy editing out of material of a more confidential and other nature are some of the bits from one of those conversations six days ago with my interlocutor's words in dark green, my words in light blue font, and some structure added to the substance of my comments as well as theirs where needed:
BTW, are you doing anything with the Pope's visit.
with the pope coming...I am going to take a wait and see basically. I respect him tremendously
sure
I hear a but coming
much as I did [John Paul II]...but
I was right
I am concerned with the attitude many take on different fronts on different matters. Basically, I am a subsidiarity fella: it is how I approach things constitutionally and geopolitically. It is also how I approach things ecclesially
which would rule out distributism, obviously
that does not (lol)
mean I rule out the pope disciplining people of course. But we have two extremes I think need to be avoided. We need to avoid on the one hand a micromanaging pope
I think I see where this is goin.
engaging in a kind of ecclesial extreme federalism to the detriment of diocesan issues but at the same time we need a check on the tyranny of diocesan bureaucracies. It is ironic
and on the tyranny of individual bishops
that there are those in dioceses who complain about the Vatican intervening in their dioceses but they then act as if people in the dioceses owe them a much greater obedience than they owe the pope.
Boy, you said it.
This applies to bishops as well as lay people in bureaucracy...the balance needs to be struck. I will be honest...I think you at times err towards the "put their heads on the Tiber bridge" approach :P but then there are others who take too lax an approach. Basically if dogma or canon law is being violated, the pope has a responsibility to step in. Otherwise, more care is needed.
I do hope Benedict talks with the bishops about the pedophilia scandal though along with the college heads about the importance of JP II's ex corde ecclesiae on catholic college identity issues.
The problem, as I've maintained all along, is that the ecclesiastical structure promotes arrogance, blind deference and a lack of accountability and transparency. This is true of all hierarchical, bureaucratic systems, religious or secular (e.g.USSR)
and that does not include those who get excited at every new papal document that comes out as if the pope needs to speak on every issues under the sun so that they can check their brains at the door in true prot caricatures of brainless dimwit catholics from polemical eras past.
The problem w/Benedict on the clerical sex-abuse problem is that I find him to be too much of an esoteric academic. He likes to make subtle messages (such as immediately accepting McCarrick's pro forma resignation) but some of that subtlety is beyond the minimal IQs of some of the bishops.
As I told the [discussion] list and others, I do not need any authority to do my thinking for me nor do I want it. If it is a matter of dogma or a doctrine that is evidently definitive (i.e. the bans on abortion or women priests) that is one thing but even those matters have certain subtleties that many do not appreciate...
and on geopolitical matters, history does not give me comfort the more I study it on the wisdom of Vatican geopolitics in general. That does not mean I do not respect the popes and the role they have to play on those matters of course. But those who treat geopolitical interventions as matters of unquestioning assent do not do the matter proper justice. [Excerpts from a Chat Correspondence (circa April 14, 2008)]
My geopolitical disillusionment is also not helped by the seeming obliviousness of His Holiness to several key factors that undermine particular geopolitical stances he has taken in recent years either. The question is how to respectfully address them{3} without the usual suspects accusing me of being "disrespectful" as if somehow the pope is above any and all criticism. But enough on these matters for now.
Notes:
{1} And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there was no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place. (4-3 if Scalia had recused himself also though the connection he had to Bush was far less solid.) In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during an election cycle. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
{2} As for Ohio in 2004, the irregularities there were no different than what happens in a lot of states though I do not recall the Democrats calling for investigations into the election oddities in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which were if anything more suspicious than Ohio. Oh yes, they won those states so there could not have been voting irregularities!!! [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 29, 2007)]
{3} One of these matters will be addressed closer to the election in a few posts written last year which I decided to hold back at the time on posting. Another is the death penalty for reasons I noted here.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Miscellaneous Threads Worth Reviewing:
Just a few as time is too short to say much at the present time...
Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead
I have two predictions on the above thread's information. First of all, Chavez will do whatever he can to not lose on the referendum including cheat to "win." Second, supporters of Chavez -not a few of whom are deluded enough to think that Bush "stole" an election in 2000{1}- will care about as much as Washington state Chavez supporters cared about the fact that the corrupt King County election machine stole the governors election from Dino Rossi in 2004.{2} The evidence for the latter dwarfs the former like Snow White dwarfed Sneezy but it goes to show the sorts of unethical double standards that many activist sorts will go to in propagating their particular weltanschauung.
Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants - Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers (Michelle Malkin)
Nicely done Michelle!!! Does anyone care to bet that theClinton Cable News Network will not allow Republican declared questioners at the next Democratic Party debate???
Planet-saving madness (Christopher Booker)
None of this is a surprise -indeed readers of this weblog know that we pronounced on the global warming matter some time ago{3} but it does not hurt to remind readers of this considering the magnitude of the confidence trick many are attempting to pull with the so-called "global warming" schtick.
Notes:
{1} And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there were no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place. (4-3 if Scalia had recused himself also though the connection he had to Bush was far less solid.) In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during the waning days of an election cycle when the results have to be certified by a fixed date. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account.
As for Ohio in 2004, the irregularities there were no different than what happens in a lot of states though I do not recall the Democrats calling for investigations into the election oddities in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which were if anything more suspicious than Ohio. Oh yes, they won those states so there could not have been voting irregularities!!!
{2} A few threads were written by us on that event at the time which are noted here from oldest to newest:
"Grand TheftAuto Election" Dept. (circa December 5, 2004)
A Reluctant Rerum Novarum Prediction That Has Unfortunately Come True (circa December 23, 2004)
"Grand TheftAuto Election" Dept. -The Saga Continues (circa December 30, 2004)
On the Washington GovernorsHeist Race and Other Tidbits (circa January 16, 2005)
{3} On the Fraud of "Global Warming" With Greg Mockeridge and Kevin Tierney (circa April 16, 2006)
Just a few as time is too short to say much at the present time...
Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead
I have two predictions on the above thread's information. First of all, Chavez will do whatever he can to not lose on the referendum including cheat to "win." Second, supporters of Chavez -not a few of whom are deluded enough to think that Bush "stole" an election in 2000{1}- will care about as much as Washington state Chavez supporters cared about the fact that the corrupt King County election machine stole the governors election from Dino Rossi in 2004.{2} The evidence for the latter dwarfs the former like Snow White dwarfed Sneezy but it goes to show the sorts of unethical double standards that many activist sorts will go to in propagating their particular weltanschauung.
Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants - Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers (Michelle Malkin)
Nicely done Michelle!!! Does anyone care to bet that the
Planet-saving madness (Christopher Booker)
None of this is a surprise -indeed readers of this weblog know that we pronounced on the global warming matter some time ago{3} but it does not hurt to remind readers of this considering the magnitude of the confidence trick many are attempting to pull with the so-called "global warming" schtick.
Notes:
{1} And no to any Bush Derangement Syndrome readers of this humble weblog but there were no presidential "stolen" elections in either 2000 or in 2004. The Supreme Court made the correct decision under the law in 2000 with the blatant crime being the activism of the Florida Supreme Court on that matter.
Yes we all know that the vote to stop the recount was 5-4 for Bush, but there is more to the story than that. For example, 2 of the 4 who sided with Gore concurred with the majority that there was no uniform standard of vote counting and that there were constitutional issues in what the Florida State Supreme Court was requiring. Further still, one of those justices who concurred with the majority but did not vote with them was a personal friend of Al Gore and therefore he arguably should have recused himself. With such a recusal of course a 5-3 vote on the matter would have taken place. (4-3 if Scalia had recused himself also though the connection he had to Bush was far less solid.) In other words, 7 of the 9 justices concurred on the problems in Florida but had a plurality of views on how to remedy the problem.
More could be said but the constitutional problems in Florida with the vote counting -to say nothing of 50,000 military absentee ballots which were ignored and the military vote for Bush would have been at least 70%- presented a problem that could not be resolved during the waning days of an election cycle when the results have to be certified by a fixed date. Besides, Bush had already won four recounts anyway. There is no rational way to conclude that Florida was "stolen" in 2000 when all the factors above among other ones are taken into account.
As for Ohio in 2004, the irregularities there were no different than what happens in a lot of states though I do not recall the Democrats calling for investigations into the election oddities in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin which were if anything more suspicious than Ohio. Oh yes, they won those states so there could not have been voting irregularities!!!
{2} A few threads were written by us on that event at the time which are noted here from oldest to newest:
"Grand Theft
A Reluctant Rerum Novarum Prediction That Has Unfortunately Come True (circa December 23, 2004)
"Grand Theft
On the Washington Governors
{3} On the Fraud of "Global Warming" With Greg Mockeridge and Kevin Tierney (circa April 16, 2006)
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Miscellaneous Threads Worth Reviewing:
These threads were taken from the weblog Sound Politics which we read on occasion and definitely recommend for those who want to get a view of what is going on in my neck of the woods. Briefly on a few of the recent threads...
Prop 1 on Election Night
Bottom line: if it is not close, the election manipulators in King County cannot successfully cheat.
King County Elections scores own goal for I-25!
Readers who remember my fury over the stolen governors election back in 2004 see more of what the problem then was: King County Elections not being held accountable. I predict more fraud in any election touching on King County this time around.
Boondoggle Two-fer
My proposed alternative to the "sound transit" mass transit boondoggle is in the combox at the link above.
These threads were taken from the weblog Sound Politics which we read on occasion and definitely recommend for those who want to get a view of what is going on in my neck of the woods. Briefly on a few of the recent threads...
Prop 1 on Election Night
Bottom line: if it is not close, the election manipulators in King County cannot successfully cheat.
King County Elections scores own goal for I-25!
Readers who remember my fury over the stolen governors election back in 2004 see more of what the problem then was: King County Elections not being held accountable. I predict more fraud in any election touching on King County this time around.
Boondoggle Two-fer
My proposed alternative to the "sound transit" mass transit boondoggle is in the combox at the link above.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
On the Exodus of Karl Rove:
[Note: This thread was written ten days ago but only finished for posting (with some last minute adjustments including omitting parts of the text for a later posting) today. -ISM]
As far as thesoon-to-be exit of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, I have a mixed view. Ultimately he is to President Bush what Dick Morris was to President Clinton: a tactician whose pluses outweighed his minuses in that area. He also was one who was no small source of irritation to those whose views he worked at opposing.{1} My initial hunch despite claims made by Rove that this is family motivated is that there is a political reason also but that should not surprise readers of this weblog presumably.
I am not claiming that Rove is lying about the family claim as people can and do make decisions for a variety of reasons. But he is a political animal and taking the politics out of someone like Rove is not easy to do. I am sure at some election level, Rove will have involvement in 2008. But back to my personal view of Rove which is mixed and always has been. The main burr under my saddle with him was the support of the illegal immigrants amnesty: that is effectively dead for the time being though it will rise like Jason in a bad Friday the 13th sequel as soon as the 2008 elections are over -of that we can be sure so vigilance is definitely called for in that area. But that is a subject for another time and back to the subject of Karl Rove we go.
I am sure there will be many who will try to make Rove's accomplishments look far more meager than they are among the Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) crowd. After all, he is Senator Palpatine to Bush's Darth Vader to that crowd. Plus, there is a tradition of treating the president as an idiot who has his strings pulled by nefarious behind the scenes sorts remains alive and well it seems -except this time the fixture of the caricature was not Jewish.{2}
I also suppose the lack of a Jewish mastermind who pulls the president's strings is a minor improvement worth noting though I suspect that the BDS crowd will point to Kristol, Wolfowitz, and Ledeen and probably claim Rove was their puppet or something along those lines. Unless they try and claim that Rove's real name is Rovestein or something along those lines -who knows what the Mother Jones and World Socialist Review sorts will do in this area. About all I will predict is that it will be a standard illogical diatribe or more and have a number of very predictable operative presuppositions behind it -one of which is to blame the Jews for everything though not usually as brazenly as the John Birch Society sorts do.{3}
But however those sorts spin it, Karl Rove is gone now from the Bush Administration. I also predict that if the Republicans win back congress and retain the White House in 2008 that we will hear the predictable "stolen election" crap that has been the stock in trade of those moonbats since they tried it in 2000{4} and for the sake of not going off on another tangent will spare the readers at this time examples of the hypocritical double standards of the latter sorts of people.
Notes:
{1} The difference is that people who were opposed to Clinton had a begrudging respect for Morris despite their annoyance at him. By contrast, those suffering from BDS (see the main post text above) froth at the mouth when talking about Rove every bit as much as they do with Dubya.
{2} This pattern if memory serves started in the adminstration of President Woodrow Wilson who was the supposed "dummy puppet" of Col. Edward Mandell House his chief advisor. (House also was an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the latter's first term.)
{3} I have been planning to write a bit on the conspiracy theory mindset and why it is not worth taking seriously so part of this post can be considered a prelude of sorts on that subject much as a few others in recent months have been.
{4} And many of which are still deluded enough to believe was an accurate description of reality.
[Note: This thread was written ten days ago but only finished for posting (with some last minute adjustments including omitting parts of the text for a later posting) today. -ISM]
As far as the
I am not claiming that Rove is lying about the family claim as people can and do make decisions for a variety of reasons. But he is a political animal and taking the politics out of someone like Rove is not easy to do. I am sure at some election level, Rove will have involvement in 2008. But back to my personal view of Rove which is mixed and always has been. The main burr under my saddle with him was the support of the illegal immigrants amnesty: that is effectively dead for the time being though it will rise like Jason in a bad Friday the 13th sequel as soon as the 2008 elections are over -of that we can be sure so vigilance is definitely called for in that area. But that is a subject for another time and back to the subject of Karl Rove we go.
I am sure there will be many who will try to make Rove's accomplishments look far more meager than they are among the Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) crowd. After all, he is Senator Palpatine to Bush's Darth Vader to that crowd. Plus, there is a tradition of treating the president as an idiot who has his strings pulled by nefarious behind the scenes sorts remains alive and well it seems -except this time the fixture of the caricature was not Jewish.{2}
I also suppose the lack of a Jewish mastermind who pulls the president's strings is a minor improvement worth noting though I suspect that the BDS crowd will point to Kristol, Wolfowitz, and Ledeen and probably claim Rove was their puppet or something along those lines. Unless they try and claim that Rove's real name is Rovestein or something along those lines -who knows what the Mother Jones and World Socialist Review sorts will do in this area. About all I will predict is that it will be a standard illogical diatribe or more and have a number of very predictable operative presuppositions behind it -one of which is to blame the Jews for everything though not usually as brazenly as the John Birch Society sorts do.{3}
But however those sorts spin it, Karl Rove is gone now from the Bush Administration. I also predict that if the Republicans win back congress and retain the White House in 2008 that we will hear the predictable "stolen election" crap that has been the stock in trade of those moonbats since they tried it in 2000{4} and for the sake of not going off on another tangent will spare the readers at this time examples of the hypocritical double standards of the latter sorts of people.
Notes:
{1} The difference is that people who were opposed to Clinton had a begrudging respect for Morris despite their annoyance at him. By contrast, those suffering from BDS (see the main post text above) froth at the mouth when talking about Rove every bit as much as they do with Dubya.
{2} This pattern if memory serves started in the adminstration of President Woodrow Wilson who was the supposed "dummy puppet" of Col. Edward Mandell House his chief advisor. (House also was an advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the latter's first term.)
{3} I have been planning to write a bit on the conspiracy theory mindset and why it is not worth taking seriously so part of this post can be considered a prelude of sorts on that subject much as a few others in recent months have been.
{4} And many of which are still deluded enough to believe was an accurate description of reality.
Friday, March 03, 2006
On Geopolitical Issues, the 2006 Elections, Shifting Voting Demographics, Etc.
(Dialogue With Mark Bonocore --Part I of IV)
Mark's words will be in shale font in this four part dialogual sequence. Any citing of statements of mine prior to this material will be in blue font. Previous citations of Mark's words will be in fire coloured font. Any sources I use will be in darkblue font any exceptions to the pattern just outlined will be explicitly noted. And while admittedly I wax and wain a bit on the whole Hillary election thing, in general my views are what was expressed when Mark and I conducted this dialogue on a discussion list last year.
Mark (and company):
I have moved this discussion to a different thread because it was simply getting difficult for me to follow after a while. For the sake of easier reading, I have divided this response into four parts and (along with the previous threads) may blog it if time or circumstances permit it. But without further ado...
On 10/22/05, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
In a message dated 10/20/2005 5:08:44 PM Pacific Standard Time, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX writes:
I am aware of what they are trying to do Mark. It is just that they have not adapted yet to the alternative media formats. Their sort only dominates when they can handcuff disputations and set it up so that it is several libs against one token conservative. But in the alternative media (which is the future of media), they not only cannot do this but they are at the mercy of people being able to select what they want and do not want to listen to or watch.
True. But, you don't think Hillary's going to let Sean Hannidy or Fox News moderate her debates, do you? :-)
She will have to engage the alternative media to some extent Mark...this is not 1992 where it could be avoided (or even 1996 when it was still an upstart). The alternative media has been the deciding factor in the past three elections (2000, 2002, and 2004) and Hillary is smart enough to know that they cannot be avoided completely if she wants to move beyond her base of supporters.
As a result, newspaper circulation has declined significantly, the major news programs are losing ratings, and FoxNews is beating CNN, MSNBC, and CBS combined!!!
Again, all true ... But most people who can vote don't watch the news. Many get their politics from John Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central! How scary is that?
My sister just ordered a "John Stewart in '08" sweatshirt Mark...I am not unaware of this. However, most [with my sister's outlook] know that The Today Show is a fake news program.
On the radio, it is not even close..are you aware that Air-America is on the verge of collapse because they cannot turn a profit??? No one is listening to them except the "bush-is-hitler" crowd and they are a very small minority at best. In cyperspace, the libs are also losing the war of persuasion. All they have is scaremongering propaganda and prevarication and guess what: those cards are not playing well anymore.
Yes. But, might I suggest that you are an intellectual with intellectual tunnel vision here.
I have been called a lot worse than that before so go ahead ;-)
Again, the vast majority of Americans (who have the same right to vote as informed and sensible people) don't follow politics or the news. It is this "mob" that the dems will try to appeal to.
And a good percentage of those people do not even vote to begin with...a key factor you are not taking into account. By contrast, people who view things as we do generally speaking are a growing number and we do vote.
They just need a good reason ( e.g. a dip in the economy; some disaster in Iraq, etc.) to do it. This is why Bush is commonly blamed for everything bad that happens, and that mentality trickles down to the common man, who is willing to believe it. Katrina = Bush's fauly; the riot in Cleveland = Bush's fault; Sadam's trial is postponed = Bush's fault. :-) The technique is to establish a psychological "manta" of sorts for the idiots in our society. And we have no shortage of idiots.
But need I remind you that this tactic failed in 2000, it failed in 2002, and it failed in 2004??? As long as the Democrats do not give people a reason to vote for them, human nature is not to change course; ergo apathy in this case plays into our favour.
And do the people who can vote really care anything about this??? I refer to the soccer moms and the other disciples of Oprah. :-) It's not about ability, it's about popularity. Scary!
[Snipping heap big historical documentation on my part pace Mark's earlier comments]
That is an excellent historical analysis, Shawn; but I think you're missing two elements --the two elements that the modern Democrats rely on: 1) the power of the media, which is a far more useful tool than it was in the days of Roosevelt; and I'm not talking about news programs and the like, but the ability of the entertainment industry ( e.g. TV, music, movies, etc.), which has a air of "royality" about it for most Americans, to indoctrinate people on a cultural level and weaken the resolve of their nominally Christian/conservative convictions (there was nothing like this in the days of Roosevelt or JFK ...I refer to a united liberal control of the entertainment industry),
The same media who has pulled out all the stops the past six years and failed to carry the day in a single election??? Mark, I think what you are not recognizing is that this approach has run its course aka what Arianism did by the late 300's. Will it still be a factor in the next election and into the future??? Sure the same way the Arians were after 381 or so. The MSM's heyday was 1964-1994...starting with the Johnson political smear of Goldwater and ending with the Republicans sweeping into the Congress. Since that time, they have been losing ground on all fronts and have been throwing more and more public temper tantrums. And the past six years, things have solidified and we are seeing a paradigmatic tilt in the direction of the MSM having significantly less influence and diminishing by the year.
and 2) the growing stupidity on the part of average Americans.
Actually, I think the stupidity factor also peaked sometime in the 1990's. That is not to say that there is a shortage of stupidity out there today...God knows there is not...but I am not so sure anymore that this is a growing factor anymore.
If some TV news show did a man-on-the-street interview in c. 1960, the man-on-the-street would be reasonably well informed ( e.g. knowing who the Vice President was, etc.); the interviewer would get intellegent answers to their questions, and the person would respond in full sentences. If one does a man-on-the-street interview today, unless it's someone like yourself (a rarity), they will get blabbering nonsense and a lot of blank states and embarrassed laughter. This is the fruit of a liberal-run NEA and intentionally declining standards in our school systems. In short, people have been "dumbed-up"; and "dumbed up" people are easily led ...to vote Democrat. :-)
I would have agreed with your analysis ten years ago Mark. However, the structures were different then...the MSM had a monopoly on public discourse and there were no substantial alternative voices. Again, voter turnout in 2000 and 2004 was high (particularly 2004) and we know what happened in those elections. 2002 was not high but midterms generally are not anyway. 2006 will be a midterm election and low voter turnout favours incumbants as a rule. You still seem to be seeing things through the lens of a monopolistic MSM apparatus I am afraid...
The one and only thing that seriously threatens Hillary's bid (not that Bush has made the same mistakes as his dad and allowed the media the demonize him with no response or counter-move) is the war and the threat of terror.
There is also the economy. If it remains strong through 2008, she will not win. PERIOD.
Could be. But Carval et al are very clever.
True. But they have a lot more against them now than they did in the 1990's Mark. It is not the same playing field anymore and if Carvel does not realize this (and I am not so sure he does actually...based on what I have seen of him on the talking heads programs the past couple of years), he will not be as effective as he was in the past.
If the person the Republicans pick can be demonized, it will be relatively easiy to position Hillary as the one who will "preserve our present prosperty."
That is why you are not likely to see a front runner prior to the 2006 elections...
making it seem as if the Rep is an outsider who will want to take it away from us.
Again, this is from the old playbook which has failed to work the past three elections (read: since the coming-of-age of the alternative media).
If Gingich runs, I am confident that they will do something like this.
Gingrich would be a good choice to act as a distractor...he cannot win the nomination but for people like the Dems to spend their time and money demonizing him to allow someone else (i.e. a mirror opposite of Gingrich) to be the nominee: in baseball they call this a "changeup."
Hillary = a Senator whose been "keeping America strong" ....as if she was part of the Bush administration, etc. :-)
Um Mark, put the peyote down...NOW!!! ;-) ;-) ;-)
It's hilarious, but look at what people will believe these days!
You are approaching this without recognizing the change in political dynamics the past eight years...almost like Mondale in 1984 with all due respect ;-)
I should note that lest this be misunderstood that I actually do appreciate you playing "Mr. Thunderstorm" here since I am sure there are many who hold your view in at least a macro sense. My response here is one of cautious optimism based on historical precedent -both the previous hundred years of presidential history as well as the last three elections in the age of the increasingly discredited MSM.
But, the liberals are working on this too. Have you seen that new show on one of the networks starring Gena Davis, called "Commander in Chief." It's about America's first woman President, and notice the title. :-) She becomes President during the war on terror, etc. No accident.
True. However, Geena Davis is a babe and Hillary is not.
I know a lot of people who think otherwise. :-) ..sick people, to be sure; but Hillary is considered very "easy on the eyes" in some circles.
Maybe at a blind person's convention...though frankly Hillary could get a grimace out of Ronnie Milsap.
Women also tend to see her this way --i.e., her new "warm and motherly" (vs. "cold and dykey") make-over via her Senatorial run. :-)
In New York sure but winning in NY does not translate into winning nationally. You may not know this being from Philly and all but we folks out west here (with our "stagecoaches", "shootumups at noon", and "tumbleweeds") as a rule despise you eastern folks as uppity elists bums, etc. (Present company excluded of course.) We are aware that back east there is a general view that everyone west of the Hudson River (and south of Mason-Dixon) are a bunch of "inbred Jeds." Hillary has sought to identify herself as an eastern establishment type and that does not play well out here anymore. If you do not believe me, ask Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, Paul Tsongas, and Michael Dukakis.
The only times an eastern establishment type mentality has succeeded is when packaged in "good 'ol boy attire." That explains Clinton, Carter, and LBJ. I remind you that Humphrey failed in 1968, McGovern in 1972, and Mondale in 1984. They were all northern liberals -in Humphrey's case a more honourable northern liberal but the same stigma nonetheless.
Hillary would have been wiser to have run as a Senator from Arkansas (or some other southern state) to set herself up presidentially but she would not have had a prayer in Arkansas. That is why she went with New York where being liberal gives you a thirty point head start in the polls if not more.
Again, Mark, truth be told: we "rednecks" despise the eastern establishment and its self-anointed "ivory tower intellectuals." That may not be evident from out there in Philly, etc. but trust me: it is true. And if you doubt me, look at the presidential maps in 2000 and 2004 and check out all that red. (Though in truth, we should be blue since the Democrats are the true marxists and thus are properly coloured red.)
Even in Washington state, the last governors race needed to be stolen from us by the corrupt King County machine...which in this election coming up there are actually lifetime Dems supporting one of the GOP candidates because of a recognized need to break the back of the city machine. There is even talk about partitioning off King County after the city limits into another county...that is how pissed off many KC residents are with the way their county is monopolized by the Seattle machine (and has been for decades now).
My point is Mark, we are seeing a seismatic shift taking place with a political realigning which started in 1980 and has been moving ever since (with very few signs of stopping). This political realigning is to our advantage; ergo I am cautiously optimistic most of the time.
I'm taking that line directly from a Saturday Night Live sketch. My hope of course is that she ages badly over the next two years. :-) Yet, there's always plastic surgery, I suppose.
She is not to be underestimated certainly. However, you overestimate her.
This is an attempt (not a very successful one, I'll grant you) by the media machine to get America ready and comfortable with Hillary by casting, not a dykey shrew, but a "Mary Tyler Moore" type actress in the role of the President --the hope being that it will help people to embrace the "icon" that Hillary will personally fill.
But Hillary does not have the physical looks of Geena Davis or 1960's-1980's Mary Tyler Moore. See my previous comments.
Sorry, I think I didn't make my point clear enough. The reason I mentioned Mary Tyler Moore was because she is an icon of "the girl next door" in American mythology. Geena Davis has this same quality, which is why they cast her as the President, rather than Glenn Close or Meryl Streep, etc.
Close would have been a good actress to try and clone Hillary for a TV show...except Close is easier on the eyes.
Now, granted, Hillary is no girl next store. But, the mentality in casting Geena Davis is to get Americans comfortable with a female war-time President who is archetypally female. For, if a "girly-girl" can be president during a war, then so can Hillary. Admittedly, it's a pretty lame attempt to win over the psych of the country. But, they're trying. ...and it could have worked. :-)
Wouldas and couldas do not escape from the fact that it has not been working.
So far, the show's ratings have been terrible. :-) But, give the liberals a chance. That's just one tactic of many for trying to influence the American electorate. You ain't seen nothing yet. :-)
Actually, we saw a lot in the 1990's with the BS over so-called "budget cuts", we say a bunch of BS in the 2000 presidential campaign, we saw even more BS in the 2004 campaign as well. There is nothing new in any of it nor will there be in what they will try for 2006 or 2008.
I agree Mark but perhaps you should consider what the bad ratings for that show signify in part. I have heard through the grapevine that it is not a bad show. They certainly have good actors ( i.e. Geena Davis, Donald Sutherland). So the show is not failing because it is a bad show but instead for another reason.
Well, I think the show is failing because of the "law of diminishing demands" ---a little facet of business that the entertainment industry never seems to learn. The target audience for the show is already occupied with "The West Wing." So, I think that's the real problem. For example, if you put on a show about a red-haired kid with his "cool" Italian buddy growing up in the 1950's while "Happy Days" was already on the air, it would not do well because "Happy Days" owns the market. The producers of "Commander in Chief" basically concluded that their show will be successful because it's "The West Wing meets Gilmore Girls" (or however they pitched it). :-) In other words, they overestimated the popularity of "The West Wing" with audiences (assuming that folks "couldn't get enough" of West Wing), and perhaps their blind spot was their desire to use the popularity of West Wing (which was created during liberal Hollywood's euphoria over Clinton) as a piece of propoganda to promote Hillary. The interesting thing, of course, will be to watch whether or not the network actually pulls the show. :-)
Your analysis is good but it points out the weakness in our adversaries. As for whether the show will or will not be pulled, here is my prediction: not before the 2008 primaries.
Hollywood has a history of permitting failing financial enterprises to continue because they support their ideologies. ...i.e., every anti-Christian movie ever made ( e.g. The Last Temptation of Christ) looses money, yet Hollywood continues to make them. Why? :-) I thought it was "show business"? Not.
Precisely.
But, these only work with thinking people. What about the millions upon millions of morons out there, all of whom have the same vote as you or me?
I am one who favours making voters not of equal weight.
Amen! :-) White, educated, male, landowners. :-) ...Okay, at least educated landowners. Hee hee.
I favour everyone who is of age being able to vote. However, votes should be weighted by various factors. We need to recognize that the current voting criteria has been outstripped and adjust it accordingly.
And I have serious problems with women voting too.
And people wonder why Mark is a bachelor ;-) ;-)
They consistently prove (as a demographic) that they don't know what they're doing ---that they do not make reasonable, but emotional, choices ( e.g. "Oh, he's so handsome, so I'm voting for him.").
But now you are engaging in your own kind of activism Mark. It is the height of inconsistency to rail against self-serving activism from the so-called "left" and then do it yourself. This is a major reason why the Miers nomination is in trouble...people like me who do not want to see activism on any side.
It is no accident that Black men were given the vote in this country before women were. An all-male (head of the household) electorate produces unity in families, which in turn are the building-blocks of society. Giving women the vote has pitted wives against husbands and done much to undermine the structure of the family. No one is willing to address this right now, but history will see it very clearly.
We shall see...
I have not worked out a system for it yet but it would start with a civics test. Those who cannot pass it either lose half a vote or those who pass it gain a half a vote.
Actually, I think one has to be careful there, given who will design the test. :-) If it's some state bureaucracy, you can bet that liberals will have their hand in it to tilt things "leftie" and disqualify those who think differently than they do. I think the better test would be being a "mench" (the Yiddish word) in the local society. If you are a known doctor, or other professional, who has attained a certain ("patrician") standard in our fluid society (in which a poor person can advance himself through opportunity in education and the economy), then your vote counts more than that of an unemployed crack addict. I think this is justice.
That is part of it yes. However, then there is the issue of anyone using the federal government for their own self-interests. The role of the federal government is supposed to be a small one for many reasons. Claude Frederic Bastiat noted them as succinctly as anyone when he explained that the role of law is justice plain and simple. And using the federal leviathan to rob one class of people to enrich another is no more just than if you were to rob your neighbour to enrich yourself.
Another way to deal with it would be to base it on income tax returns. If they must tax our income, then it should benefit out right to vote. So, if you're "flipping more of the bill," you should get more say in how the government spends your money.
See my previous comments.
Then there is private property ownership. Since those who own property should have a greater stake in controlling the federal leviathan, a half a vote more for property owners. Then there is marriage...it is a stable bedrock of society and contributes to both just public order as well as society's common good. For that reason, half of a vote more for married people than unmarried people.
Good ideas.
By this scale, a married property owning person who can pass a civics test would have three times the voting influence over someone who does not own property, is not married, and cannot pass a basic civics test. Oh and btw, those who get divorced are stripped of the half a vote they gained when they were married.
:-) Very nice. They should also be taxed more (the woman as well as the man), since they are damaging society. It's too easy to get out of a marriage today. The personal "pursuit of happiness" does not give people the right to mess up society for everyone else.
(Shawn M circa 10/19/05) This is where I have sought to address things through the matrix of Bastiat's three fundamental rights of man Mark. My contribution to that classical theory is to bring out in greater explicitness the implied "common good" aspect in Bastiat's work and add to the equation the principle of "public order" as defined by [Dignitatis Humanae]. The long and short of it is this: I have sought to codify an explicit template for addressing ALL societal issues that is completely consistent and not at all arbitrary. And in doing that, inexorably one must seek the needs of the many over the wants of the few. (Mr. Spock was right in essence.)
These people are not influenced by intellectual argument, but by the content of media entertainment and their "feelings." The liberals know this; we haven't learned to do it yet ...nor do we seem driven too. It's all about the packaging, my friend. The media can sell people feces if it's packaged correctly and has a catchy jingle. :-)
I know Mark. However, there is a growing percentage of people who have learned the way the media distorts things...have you read Bernie Goldberg's best seller Bias by chance???
I have not. But, I would submit that that "growing percentage" is among educated, thinking people (who are also commonly led by the media), not among the majority of Americans.
But again, most Americans who are uneducated do not vote. And all the media attempts to get them to do so have as a rule not been successful. It is one of the few benefits we get from the general apathy actually...
Look at at how Arius converted 80% of the Empire --not with sound theological argument, but with catchy hymns ( e.g. "There was a time when He was not."). It's this easily-led moron factor that Hillary and the Clintons will use against us. If Kerry had tapped into it successfully in 04, he'd be the President right now. The Clintons are far more skilled at it.
You overestimate the jingle factor.
Do I? :-) And how many Catholics blindly follow both the jingles (and so the advertised "morality") of the singer who calls herself "Madonna"? ...or plung in your more modern example. What you have to appreciate is that Bill and Hillary are not political figures. They're "movie stars." ...ergo, they are "media royalty."
See what I noted previously about the media and their actual influence on these matters. Might I suggest that as a man of the media you are overestimating things a bit in the current milieu???
Futhermore, neither John Kerry nor Hillary Clinton has the kind of "pied piper" charm that Bill Clinton did.
Bill wasn't running with Kerry. :-) ...nor was the media machine really behind Kerry. ...nor could it be, since Kerry didn't have any "media magic" ---that's what pretty-boy Edwards was for, and they didn't use him properly.
It is true that he was a master manipulator but he was also naturally charismatic and personable. Kerry was not and Hillary is not. And this is a more important factor than the "packaging"
Shawn, did you ever hear anyone describe how Fred Astair made Ginger Rodgers "look good" when they danced?? :-) Astair was the real dancer; she just followed his lead. Bill and Hillary have the same media dynamic. If he gets up there and looks at her with "love" in his eyes, etc., it will "read" for people. This is the act. :-) It's a stupid one, and we see it (because we know better); but most Americans do not.
I disagree with you Mark for one good reason: Bill Clinton has a trackrecord of not having good coattails to hang on. You appear to not take this factor into consideration at all and it is a significant one.
You give Carvel too much credit. Dick Morris was the brainchild behind the Clintons and their election/governing "triangulation" strategy.
[Y]es, Morris kept in in power; but Carvel got him elected.
In a three party election where the third party seriously took from the incumbent. That was FAR more significant than anything Carvel did...
He is on our side now Mark
Is he? :-) I'm not so sure about Morris. The man is the devil, even if he's really on our side.
Sometimes you have to play the hands you are dealt in politics Mark...
and does not like Hillary at all.
Is that real? I don't know.
From all appearances yes. Morris appears to have liked Bill personally but not Hillary. Furthermore, Morris appears to have had a paradigm shift after 9/11 much as ex-marxist Christopher Hitchens did.
At the very least, Morris will cancel out Carvel if the Republicans listen to him.
Well, that's the thing; the Republicans don't listen to him. Maybe that's a wise decision; I don't know. Also, Morris' "Hillary vs. Condie" idea seems really wacky to me. Condie could probably win; but it almost seems like Morris is trying to set the Republicans up.
Condi would be best as VP on the ticket.
And hopefully Mary Matalin can successfully run blocker against Carvel on the homefront...she is married to him last time I checked.
Thus proving the the world is weirder than one can possibly imagine. :-) Actually, my friend Mike and I have a theory about that. Matalin never moves her face, and Carvel is overly-animated to the point of cartoon-like elasticity . We think that Matalin was attracted to him on some deep, genetic level, in the hope that her offspring will be normal, by cancelling each other's genes out. Hee hee.
Perhaps...a strange theory but no stranger than some I have heard ;-)
I personally think that democracy is fundamentally flawed and alien to Christian civilization (the very thing that we and our Evangelical friends really want); and as long as our present Constitution is in place, the liberals will eventually win the game due to their realistic take on human nature.
We have discussed this before. I remind you again my friend that this is a respresentative Republic and differs significantly from a democracy in many key respects.
Semantics. Call it what you like. The point is that people in this nation decide their own political destiny, and thus determine the culture. That is a mistake. A mob cannot be trusted to discern and determine truth. This is what a king is for. This is what the Divine right of kings preached; and its doctrine was very Catholic.
Actually, you are wrong about this Mark. However, you are right about the mob part of it which is why this nation was constructed as it was. More on this to follow...
To be Continued...
(Dialogue With Mark Bonocore --Part I of IV)
Mark's words will be in shale font in this four part dialogual sequence. Any citing of statements of mine prior to this material will be in blue font. Previous citations of Mark's words will be in fire coloured font. Any sources I use will be in darkblue font any exceptions to the pattern just outlined will be explicitly noted. And while admittedly I wax and wain a bit on the whole Hillary election thing, in general my views are what was expressed when Mark and I conducted this dialogue on a discussion list last year.
Mark (and company):
I have moved this discussion to a different thread because it was simply getting difficult for me to follow after a while. For the sake of easier reading, I have divided this response into four parts and (along with the previous threads) may blog it if time or circumstances permit it. But without further ado...
On 10/22/05, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
In a message dated 10/20/2005 5:08:44 PM Pacific Standard Time, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX writes:
I am aware of what they are trying to do Mark. It is just that they have not adapted yet to the alternative media formats. Their sort only dominates when they can handcuff disputations and set it up so that it is several libs against one token conservative. But in the alternative media (which is the future of media), they not only cannot do this but they are at the mercy of people being able to select what they want and do not want to listen to or watch.
True. But, you don't think Hillary's going to let Sean Hannidy or Fox News moderate her debates, do you? :-)
She will have to engage the alternative media to some extent Mark...this is not 1992 where it could be avoided (or even 1996 when it was still an upstart). The alternative media has been the deciding factor in the past three elections (2000, 2002, and 2004) and Hillary is smart enough to know that they cannot be avoided completely if she wants to move beyond her base of supporters.
As a result, newspaper circulation has declined significantly, the major news programs are losing ratings, and FoxNews is beating CNN, MSNBC, and CBS combined!!!
Again, all true ... But most people who can vote don't watch the news. Many get their politics from John Stewart's Daily Show on Comedy Central! How scary is that?
My sister just ordered a "John Stewart in '08" sweatshirt Mark...I am not unaware of this. However, most [with my sister's outlook] know that The Today Show is a fake news program.
On the radio, it is not even close..are you aware that Air-America is on the verge of collapse because they cannot turn a profit??? No one is listening to them except the "bush-is-hitler" crowd and they are a very small minority at best. In cyperspace, the libs are also losing the war of persuasion. All they have is scaremongering propaganda and prevarication and guess what: those cards are not playing well anymore.
Yes. But, might I suggest that you are an intellectual with intellectual tunnel vision here.
I have been called a lot worse than that before so go ahead ;-)
Again, the vast majority of Americans (who have the same right to vote as informed and sensible people) don't follow politics or the news. It is this "mob" that the dems will try to appeal to.
And a good percentage of those people do not even vote to begin with...a key factor you are not taking into account. By contrast, people who view things as we do generally speaking are a growing number and we do vote.
They just need a good reason ( e.g. a dip in the economy; some disaster in Iraq, etc.) to do it. This is why Bush is commonly blamed for everything bad that happens, and that mentality trickles down to the common man, who is willing to believe it. Katrina = Bush's fauly; the riot in Cleveland = Bush's fault; Sadam's trial is postponed = Bush's fault. :-) The technique is to establish a psychological "manta" of sorts for the idiots in our society. And we have no shortage of idiots.
But need I remind you that this tactic failed in 2000, it failed in 2002, and it failed in 2004??? As long as the Democrats do not give people a reason to vote for them, human nature is not to change course; ergo apathy in this case plays into our favour.
And do the people who can vote really care anything about this??? I refer to the soccer moms and the other disciples of Oprah. :-) It's not about ability, it's about popularity. Scary!
[Snipping heap big historical documentation on my part pace Mark's earlier comments]
That is an excellent historical analysis, Shawn; but I think you're missing two elements --the two elements that the modern Democrats rely on: 1) the power of the media, which is a far more useful tool than it was in the days of Roosevelt; and I'm not talking about news programs and the like, but the ability of the entertainment industry ( e.g. TV, music, movies, etc.), which has a air of "royality" about it for most Americans, to indoctrinate people on a cultural level and weaken the resolve of their nominally Christian/conservative convictions (there was nothing like this in the days of Roosevelt or JFK ...I refer to a united liberal control of the entertainment industry),
The same media who has pulled out all the stops the past six years and failed to carry the day in a single election??? Mark, I think what you are not recognizing is that this approach has run its course aka what Arianism did by the late 300's. Will it still be a factor in the next election and into the future??? Sure the same way the Arians were after 381 or so. The MSM's heyday was 1964-1994...starting with the Johnson political smear of Goldwater and ending with the Republicans sweeping into the Congress. Since that time, they have been losing ground on all fronts and have been throwing more and more public temper tantrums. And the past six years, things have solidified and we are seeing a paradigmatic tilt in the direction of the MSM having significantly less influence and diminishing by the year.
and 2) the growing stupidity on the part of average Americans.
Actually, I think the stupidity factor also peaked sometime in the 1990's. That is not to say that there is a shortage of stupidity out there today...God knows there is not...but I am not so sure anymore that this is a growing factor anymore.
If some TV news show did a man-on-the-street interview in c. 1960, the man-on-the-street would be reasonably well informed ( e.g. knowing who the Vice President was, etc.); the interviewer would get intellegent answers to their questions, and the person would respond in full sentences. If one does a man-on-the-street interview today, unless it's someone like yourself (a rarity), they will get blabbering nonsense and a lot of blank states and embarrassed laughter. This is the fruit of a liberal-run NEA and intentionally declining standards in our school systems. In short, people have been "dumbed-up"; and "dumbed up" people are easily led ...to vote Democrat. :-)
I would have agreed with your analysis ten years ago Mark. However, the structures were different then...the MSM had a monopoly on public discourse and there were no substantial alternative voices. Again, voter turnout in 2000 and 2004 was high (particularly 2004) and we know what happened in those elections. 2002 was not high but midterms generally are not anyway. 2006 will be a midterm election and low voter turnout favours incumbants as a rule. You still seem to be seeing things through the lens of a monopolistic MSM apparatus I am afraid...
The one and only thing that seriously threatens Hillary's bid (not that Bush has made the same mistakes as his dad and allowed the media the demonize him with no response or counter-move) is the war and the threat of terror.
There is also the economy. If it remains strong through 2008, she will not win. PERIOD.
Could be. But Carval et al are very clever.
True. But they have a lot more against them now than they did in the 1990's Mark. It is not the same playing field anymore and if Carvel does not realize this (and I am not so sure he does actually...based on what I have seen of him on the talking heads programs the past couple of years), he will not be as effective as he was in the past.
If the person the Republicans pick can be demonized, it will be relatively easiy to position Hillary as the one who will "preserve our present prosperty."
That is why you are not likely to see a front runner prior to the 2006 elections...
making it seem as if the Rep is an outsider who will want to take it away from us.
Again, this is from the old playbook which has failed to work the past three elections (read: since the coming-of-age of the alternative media).
If Gingich runs, I am confident that they will do something like this.
Gingrich would be a good choice to act as a distractor...he cannot win the nomination but for people like the Dems to spend their time and money demonizing him to allow someone else (i.e. a mirror opposite of Gingrich) to be the nominee: in baseball they call this a "changeup."
Hillary = a Senator whose been "keeping America strong" ....as if she was part of the Bush administration, etc. :-)
Um Mark, put the peyote down...NOW!!! ;-) ;-) ;-)
It's hilarious, but look at what people will believe these days!
You are approaching this without recognizing the change in political dynamics the past eight years...almost like Mondale in 1984 with all due respect ;-)
I should note that lest this be misunderstood that I actually do appreciate you playing "Mr. Thunderstorm" here since I am sure there are many who hold your view in at least a macro sense. My response here is one of cautious optimism based on historical precedent -both the previous hundred years of presidential history as well as the last three elections in the age of the increasingly discredited MSM.
But, the liberals are working on this too. Have you seen that new show on one of the networks starring Gena Davis, called "Commander in Chief." It's about America's first woman President, and notice the title. :-) She becomes President during the war on terror, etc. No accident.
True. However, Geena Davis is a babe and Hillary is not.
I know a lot of people who think otherwise. :-) ..sick people, to be sure; but Hillary is considered very "easy on the eyes" in some circles.
Maybe at a blind person's convention...though frankly Hillary could get a grimace out of Ronnie Milsap.
Women also tend to see her this way --i.e., her new "warm and motherly" (vs. "cold and dykey") make-over via her Senatorial run. :-)
In New York sure but winning in NY does not translate into winning nationally. You may not know this being from Philly and all but we folks out west here (with our "stagecoaches", "shootumups at noon", and "tumbleweeds") as a rule despise you eastern folks as uppity elists bums, etc. (Present company excluded of course.) We are aware that back east there is a general view that everyone west of the Hudson River (and south of Mason-Dixon) are a bunch of "inbred Jeds." Hillary has sought to identify herself as an eastern establishment type and that does not play well out here anymore. If you do not believe me, ask Howard Dean, John Edwards, John Kerry, Paul Tsongas, and Michael Dukakis.
The only times an eastern establishment type mentality has succeeded is when packaged in "good 'ol boy attire." That explains Clinton, Carter, and LBJ. I remind you that Humphrey failed in 1968, McGovern in 1972, and Mondale in 1984. They were all northern liberals -in Humphrey's case a more honourable northern liberal but the same stigma nonetheless.
Hillary would have been wiser to have run as a Senator from Arkansas (or some other southern state) to set herself up presidentially but she would not have had a prayer in Arkansas. That is why she went with New York where being liberal gives you a thirty point head start in the polls if not more.
Again, Mark, truth be told: we "rednecks" despise the eastern establishment and its self-anointed "ivory tower intellectuals." That may not be evident from out there in Philly, etc. but trust me: it is true. And if you doubt me, look at the presidential maps in 2000 and 2004 and check out all that red. (Though in truth, we should be blue since the Democrats are the true marxists and thus are properly coloured red.)
Even in Washington state, the last governors race needed to be stolen from us by the corrupt King County machine...which in this election coming up there are actually lifetime Dems supporting one of the GOP candidates because of a recognized need to break the back of the city machine. There is even talk about partitioning off King County after the city limits into another county...that is how pissed off many KC residents are with the way their county is monopolized by the Seattle machine (and has been for decades now).
My point is Mark, we are seeing a seismatic shift taking place with a political realigning which started in 1980 and has been moving ever since (with very few signs of stopping). This political realigning is to our advantage; ergo I am cautiously optimistic most of the time.
I'm taking that line directly from a Saturday Night Live sketch. My hope of course is that she ages badly over the next two years. :-) Yet, there's always plastic surgery, I suppose.
She is not to be underestimated certainly. However, you overestimate her.
This is an attempt (not a very successful one, I'll grant you) by the media machine to get America ready and comfortable with Hillary by casting, not a dykey shrew, but a "Mary Tyler Moore" type actress in the role of the President --the hope being that it will help people to embrace the "icon" that Hillary will personally fill.
But Hillary does not have the physical looks of Geena Davis or 1960's-1980's Mary Tyler Moore. See my previous comments.
Sorry, I think I didn't make my point clear enough. The reason I mentioned Mary Tyler Moore was because she is an icon of "the girl next door" in American mythology. Geena Davis has this same quality, which is why they cast her as the President, rather than Glenn Close or Meryl Streep, etc.
Close would have been a good actress to try and clone Hillary for a TV show...except Close is easier on the eyes.
Now, granted, Hillary is no girl next store. But, the mentality in casting Geena Davis is to get Americans comfortable with a female war-time President who is archetypally female. For, if a "girly-girl" can be president during a war, then so can Hillary. Admittedly, it's a pretty lame attempt to win over the psych of the country. But, they're trying. ...and it could have worked. :-)
Wouldas and couldas do not escape from the fact that it has not been working.
So far, the show's ratings have been terrible. :-) But, give the liberals a chance. That's just one tactic of many for trying to influence the American electorate. You ain't seen nothing yet. :-)
Actually, we saw a lot in the 1990's with the BS over so-called "budget cuts", we say a bunch of BS in the 2000 presidential campaign, we saw even more BS in the 2004 campaign as well. There is nothing new in any of it nor will there be in what they will try for 2006 or 2008.
I agree Mark but perhaps you should consider what the bad ratings for that show signify in part. I have heard through the grapevine that it is not a bad show. They certainly have good actors ( i.e. Geena Davis, Donald Sutherland). So the show is not failing because it is a bad show but instead for another reason.
Well, I think the show is failing because of the "law of diminishing demands" ---a little facet of business that the entertainment industry never seems to learn. The target audience for the show is already occupied with "The West Wing." So, I think that's the real problem. For example, if you put on a show about a red-haired kid with his "cool" Italian buddy growing up in the 1950's while "Happy Days" was already on the air, it would not do well because "Happy Days" owns the market. The producers of "Commander in Chief" basically concluded that their show will be successful because it's "The West Wing meets Gilmore Girls" (or however they pitched it). :-) In other words, they overestimated the popularity of "The West Wing" with audiences (assuming that folks "couldn't get enough" of West Wing), and perhaps their blind spot was their desire to use the popularity of West Wing (which was created during liberal Hollywood's euphoria over Clinton) as a piece of propoganda to promote Hillary. The interesting thing, of course, will be to watch whether or not the network actually pulls the show. :-)
Your analysis is good but it points out the weakness in our adversaries. As for whether the show will or will not be pulled, here is my prediction: not before the 2008 primaries.
Hollywood has a history of permitting failing financial enterprises to continue because they support their ideologies. ...i.e., every anti-Christian movie ever made ( e.g. The Last Temptation of Christ) looses money, yet Hollywood continues to make them. Why? :-) I thought it was "show business"? Not.
Precisely.
But, these only work with thinking people. What about the millions upon millions of morons out there, all of whom have the same vote as you or me?
I am one who favours making voters not of equal weight.
Amen! :-) White, educated, male, landowners. :-) ...Okay, at least educated landowners. Hee hee.
I favour everyone who is of age being able to vote. However, votes should be weighted by various factors. We need to recognize that the current voting criteria has been outstripped and adjust it accordingly.
And I have serious problems with women voting too.
And people wonder why Mark is a bachelor ;-) ;-)
They consistently prove (as a demographic) that they don't know what they're doing ---that they do not make reasonable, but emotional, choices ( e.g. "Oh, he's so handsome, so I'm voting for him.").
But now you are engaging in your own kind of activism Mark. It is the height of inconsistency to rail against self-serving activism from the so-called "left" and then do it yourself. This is a major reason why the Miers nomination is in trouble...people like me who do not want to see activism on any side.
It is no accident that Black men were given the vote in this country before women were. An all-male (head of the household) electorate produces unity in families, which in turn are the building-blocks of society. Giving women the vote has pitted wives against husbands and done much to undermine the structure of the family. No one is willing to address this right now, but history will see it very clearly.
We shall see...
I have not worked out a system for it yet but it would start with a civics test. Those who cannot pass it either lose half a vote or those who pass it gain a half a vote.
Actually, I think one has to be careful there, given who will design the test. :-) If it's some state bureaucracy, you can bet that liberals will have their hand in it to tilt things "leftie" and disqualify those who think differently than they do. I think the better test would be being a "mench" (the Yiddish word) in the local society. If you are a known doctor, or other professional, who has attained a certain ("patrician") standard in our fluid society (in which a poor person can advance himself through opportunity in education and the economy), then your vote counts more than that of an unemployed crack addict. I think this is justice.
That is part of it yes. However, then there is the issue of anyone using the federal government for their own self-interests. The role of the federal government is supposed to be a small one for many reasons. Claude Frederic Bastiat noted them as succinctly as anyone when he explained that the role of law is justice plain and simple. And using the federal leviathan to rob one class of people to enrich another is no more just than if you were to rob your neighbour to enrich yourself.
Another way to deal with it would be to base it on income tax returns. If they must tax our income, then it should benefit out right to vote. So, if you're "flipping more of the bill," you should get more say in how the government spends your money.
See my previous comments.
Then there is private property ownership. Since those who own property should have a greater stake in controlling the federal leviathan, a half a vote more for property owners. Then there is marriage...it is a stable bedrock of society and contributes to both just public order as well as society's common good. For that reason, half of a vote more for married people than unmarried people.
Good ideas.
By this scale, a married property owning person who can pass a civics test would have three times the voting influence over someone who does not own property, is not married, and cannot pass a basic civics test. Oh and btw, those who get divorced are stripped of the half a vote they gained when they were married.
:-) Very nice. They should also be taxed more (the woman as well as the man), since they are damaging society. It's too easy to get out of a marriage today. The personal "pursuit of happiness" does not give people the right to mess up society for everyone else.
(Shawn M circa 10/19/05) This is where I have sought to address things through the matrix of Bastiat's three fundamental rights of man Mark. My contribution to that classical theory is to bring out in greater explicitness the implied "common good" aspect in Bastiat's work and add to the equation the principle of "public order" as defined by [Dignitatis Humanae]. The long and short of it is this: I have sought to codify an explicit template for addressing ALL societal issues that is completely consistent and not at all arbitrary. And in doing that, inexorably one must seek the needs of the many over the wants of the few. (Mr. Spock was right in essence.)
These people are not influenced by intellectual argument, but by the content of media entertainment and their "feelings." The liberals know this; we haven't learned to do it yet ...nor do we seem driven too. It's all about the packaging, my friend. The media can sell people feces if it's packaged correctly and has a catchy jingle. :-)
I know Mark. However, there is a growing percentage of people who have learned the way the media distorts things...have you read Bernie Goldberg's best seller Bias by chance???
I have not. But, I would submit that that "growing percentage" is among educated, thinking people (who are also commonly led by the media), not among the majority of Americans.
But again, most Americans who are uneducated do not vote. And all the media attempts to get them to do so have as a rule not been successful. It is one of the few benefits we get from the general apathy actually...
Look at at how Arius converted 80% of the Empire --not with sound theological argument, but with catchy hymns ( e.g. "There was a time when He was not."). It's this easily-led moron factor that Hillary and the Clintons will use against us. If Kerry had tapped into it successfully in 04, he'd be the President right now. The Clintons are far more skilled at it.
You overestimate the jingle factor.
Do I? :-) And how many Catholics blindly follow both the jingles (and so the advertised "morality") of the singer who calls herself "Madonna"? ...or plung in your more modern example. What you have to appreciate is that Bill and Hillary are not political figures. They're "movie stars." ...ergo, they are "media royalty."
See what I noted previously about the media and their actual influence on these matters. Might I suggest that as a man of the media you are overestimating things a bit in the current milieu???
Futhermore, neither John Kerry nor Hillary Clinton has the kind of "pied piper" charm that Bill Clinton did.
Bill wasn't running with Kerry. :-) ...nor was the media machine really behind Kerry. ...nor could it be, since Kerry didn't have any "media magic" ---that's what pretty-boy Edwards was for, and they didn't use him properly.
It is true that he was a master manipulator but he was also naturally charismatic and personable. Kerry was not and Hillary is not. And this is a more important factor than the "packaging"
Shawn, did you ever hear anyone describe how Fred Astair made Ginger Rodgers "look good" when they danced?? :-) Astair was the real dancer; she just followed his lead. Bill and Hillary have the same media dynamic. If he gets up there and looks at her with "love" in his eyes, etc., it will "read" for people. This is the act. :-) It's a stupid one, and we see it (because we know better); but most Americans do not.
I disagree with you Mark for one good reason: Bill Clinton has a trackrecord of not having good coattails to hang on. You appear to not take this factor into consideration at all and it is a significant one.
You give Carvel too much credit. Dick Morris was the brainchild behind the Clintons and their election/governing "triangulation" strategy.
[Y]es, Morris kept in in power; but Carvel got him elected.
In a three party election where the third party seriously took from the incumbent. That was FAR more significant than anything Carvel did...
He is on our side now Mark
Is he? :-) I'm not so sure about Morris. The man is the devil, even if he's really on our side.
Sometimes you have to play the hands you are dealt in politics Mark...
and does not like Hillary at all.
Is that real? I don't know.
From all appearances yes. Morris appears to have liked Bill personally but not Hillary. Furthermore, Morris appears to have had a paradigm shift after 9/11 much as ex-marxist Christopher Hitchens did.
At the very least, Morris will cancel out Carvel if the Republicans listen to him.
Well, that's the thing; the Republicans don't listen to him. Maybe that's a wise decision; I don't know. Also, Morris' "Hillary vs. Condie" idea seems really wacky to me. Condie could probably win; but it almost seems like Morris is trying to set the Republicans up.
Condi would be best as VP on the ticket.
And hopefully Mary Matalin can successfully run blocker against Carvel on the homefront...she is married to him last time I checked.
Thus proving the the world is weirder than one can possibly imagine. :-) Actually, my friend Mike and I have a theory about that. Matalin never moves her face, and Carvel is overly-animated to the point of cartoon-like elasticity . We think that Matalin was attracted to him on some deep, genetic level, in the hope that her offspring will be normal, by cancelling each other's genes out. Hee hee.
Perhaps...a strange theory but no stranger than some I have heard ;-)
I personally think that democracy is fundamentally flawed and alien to Christian civilization (the very thing that we and our Evangelical friends really want); and as long as our present Constitution is in place, the liberals will eventually win the game due to their realistic take on human nature.
We have discussed this before. I remind you again my friend that this is a respresentative Republic and differs significantly from a democracy in many key respects.
Semantics. Call it what you like. The point is that people in this nation decide their own political destiny, and thus determine the culture. That is a mistake. A mob cannot be trusted to discern and determine truth. This is what a king is for. This is what the Divine right of kings preached; and its doctrine was very Catholic.
Actually, you are wrong about this Mark. However, you are right about the mob part of it which is why this nation was constructed as it was. More on this to follow...
To be Continued...
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