Tag: Politics

The Absurdity of Republican Governors in Blue States

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The linked article describes how Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to resign following his twin scandals of killing off all of New York State’s old people with COVID and groping all the women who work for him has opened up an opportunity for a Republican to be elected as Governor next year.  Oh, joy.

I lived for decades in a state that typically goes through a cycle of one or two terms of a Democrat governor followed by four or five terms of Republican governors.  How it works is that a Democrat governor does so much fiscal and public safety harm during just a few years in office that even the ideologues in the blue state population realize that their livelihoods and lives are at risk.  So, they allow a Republican to come in and right the ship.

But the Republican governor is so grateful to be allowed to fix their mess that he bends over backward to be indistinguishable from a Democrat on social issues.  The state I refer to is Massachusetts and they brought in William Weld and his two subordinates and then Mitt Romney to clean up the Mike Dukakis mess.  Then after they let the Barack Obama Mini-Me (Deval Patrick) crash the Massachusetts Miracle for eight years they had to bring in Charlie Baker to stop the hemorrhaging and allow the state to revive.

Why exactly Blue State Republicans are willing to fulfill this role for their progressive constituencies is a mystery to me.  I suppose they are attached to their homes and always hope that a permanent equilibrium is possible.  But this is a fool’s hope.  Just looking at Massachusetts, or even more vivid, New York City’s mayoral history will demonstrate that the fiscal and public safety sanity that a Republican leader provides will eventually convince the progressive population that they have nothing to fear by installing a lunatic like Deval Patrick or Bill de Blasio.  And once the inevitable happens they still only grudgingly accept the prescription that a Republican reformer brings to them and chafe at its requirements to hold people accountable regardless of favored racial and sexual status.

So, you get this predictable oscillation, up and down, for crime and poverty and chaos.  The question remains why the Republicans bother.  It will never get better and they will never get credit for keeping their constituencies from destroying themselves.  Places like California, New York and New England should be allowed to destroy themselves without interference from the people they so obviously despise.  This is the accelerationist argument and over time I’ve come to adopt it wholeheartedly.  It will only be after one of these places crashes completely that the people who are left might learn enough to know that the things they believe in are irrational and unsustainable in the real world.

So, I wholeheartedly agree with ridiculing the people who run these states and highlighting for everyone to see how awful the outcomes of their policy choices are.  But I object to the Right, such as it still exists in these places, pulling their chestnuts out of the fire.  Things need to get so bad that even the elites that formulate these nonsensical polices are made to suffer the consequences.  Probably, from my point of view, the perfect outcome would be for the inhabitants to revert to cannibalism and eat Bill Gates and Nancy Pelosi off of a spit.  In that way they could see the racial justice they strive for brought to fruition and also do their part for sustainability.  After all, in California there is an almost inexhaustible supply of white progressives and I can think of no higher use to put them to than as entrees on a community barbecue menu.

No Predictions for 2020, Just Some Thoughts

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2019 was a momentous year.  We saw the Mueller investigation fizzle out hilariously.  All the progs were so mournful and confused.  Where was their Russian collusion?  Where was the smoking gun?  Ah, so sad.

We saw a new Attorney General state on the record that the Trump campaign was spied on.  And we saw him assign a special prosecutor to find out whether criminality was involved.  And now that prosecutor, John Durham, has answered that question, a criminal investigation is in process.  The Coup is upset that Durham hasn’t toed the line that Inspector General Horowitz followed when he said mistakes were made but he couldn’t prove criminality.  Durham has followed a bunch of threads back to the guilty and their bosses and it looks like we’ll see some indictments soon.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that Kevin Clinesmith will either turn state’s evidence or be indicted very soon.  If he turns, then we should hear about an indictment of some of the bigger fish within a month or two.  So, either way at least one indictment by March 1st.

We’ve had a chance to get to know the Democrat Presidential Candidates both the minor players and the bigger names.  It is truly a remarkable collection.  And it’s not clear whether the most notable fact is the mediocrity of their intellects or the lunacy of their platforms.  Can you imagine Joe Biden or Kamala Harris on the same stage with Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon?  Can you imagine Dwight Eisenhower debating foreign and domestic policy with Fauxcahantas and Butt Pete?  Even FDR, the man who introduced social security would laugh Bernie Sanders off the stage.

Initially I was sure that Creepy Uncle Joe Biden would be the nominee.  But when he was slapped around by Harris and eclipsed by Warren in the early state polls and after the Ukraine stuff started coming out, I figured his goose was cooked.  Well months have gone by and even though he’s trailing in Iowa and New Hampshire he still leads in the Super Tuesday races and in the national poll so at this point I won’t say who will emerge from the clown car as victor.  But it truly has been a wonderful experience to see just how awful the Dem candidates truly are.  Sure, they reflect the values and priorities of the far-left vanguard of their party but even the moderates are so out of step with the mainstream that even the center left independents will be horrified at what will be their alternative to President Trump.  And forget about the Rust Belt.  That will be ours.  So, I look forward to continued comedy and optimism watching the Democrat train wreck.

And even the Pelosi Impeachment has been an encouraging sight.  The Rust Belt has shrugged it off or even used it as a justification for voting for the President.  The rest of the country basically is where it always has been.  Our voters are unimpressed with the spectacle Crazy Nancy has created and in fact it looks like the thirty House seats with Democrat incumbents in districts that voted for President Trump are in a lot of trouble.  The potential to flip the House is real.  That is something to consider.

Several big court cases are in front of the SCOTUS.  It should be instructive to see if Roberts really is an honest constitutionalist or a ringer for the left.  We’ll probably find that out pretty soon.  Also going on in the Supreme Court is the status of Justice Ginsburg.  She is presently suffering from metastatic cancer.  She has had cancerous tumors removed from her colon, lungs and twice from her pancreas.  It doesn’t mean she will succumb from this condition any time in the next few years but it is extremely debilitating for even a young person to stand up under the side effects of the treatments these conditions require.  It would not be surprising for her to step down very soon to spend her remaining time with her loved ones.  In that event, a replacement of Justice Ginsburg by President Trump would definitively put the Supreme Court beyond even Roberts’ ability to swing left.  That would be worth seeing.

We will be able to follow the Brexit process and I fully expect that Boris Johnson will cut a desirable deal with the EU that frees Britain from the irksome legislative control of Brussels and puts immigration control back in Parliament’s hands.  I fully expect Johnson and Trump will find plenty of common ground in a trade deal between their two countries.

And finally, we will have the spectacle of the Presidential General Election.  I expect that President Trump will demand a better debate landscape than his predecessors agreed to.  He should refuse to allow only the usual leftists to ask the questions?  Wouldn’t it be a hoot if some of the good guys were given a spot on the panel.  How about Tucker Carlson and Michael Anton?  Honestly, I expect the President to win with a larger electoral vote count than in 2016.  I think he’ll add Minnesota to his tally and maybe even Nevada.

So, you can see 2020 will be a chock full of drama, comedy and consequence.  Stay tuned.

04AUG2018 – Quote of the Day

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“Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking – actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. …. It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.”

H. L. Mencken

02AUG2018 – Quote of the Day

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“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

H. L. Mencken

16APR2018 – Quote of the Day

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To the Arab scholars of the Caliphate Aristotle was “The Master of Those Who Know.”  Well, they were right.  I’ve always thought Plato should be relegated to the fiction section of the library so as not to tarnish the reputation of his much wiser student.  I highly recommend you read the whole of his Politics or at least read the entirety of Book 4 – Part XI to get the whole argument of the fragment below.

Aristotle – Politics – Book 4 – Part XI

…

Thus it is manifest that the best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those states are likely to be well-administered in which the middle class is large, and stronger if possible than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme- either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them. I will explain the reason of this hereafter, when I speak of the revolutions of states. The mean condition of states is clearly best, for no other is free from faction; and where the middle class is large, there are least likely to be factions and dissensions. For a similar reason large states are less liable to faction than small ones, because in them the middle class is large; whereas in small states it is easy to divide all the citizens into two classes who are either rich or poor, and to leave nothing in the middle. And democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end. A proof of the superiority of the middle dass is that the best legislators have been of a middle condition; for example, Solon, as his own verses testify; and Lycurgus, for he was not a king; and Charondas, and almost all legislators.

…

 

Basically this is why the leftists want to destroy the middle class.  They know destroying  it will quickly destabilize the country and allow it to be destroyed and absorbed by a world state.