Category Archives: Elections

The American Electorate As Seen By The Left

Celebrity, Democrats, Elections, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Politics, Pseudo-intellectualism, Sarah Palin, The Zeitgeist

“How D.C. Became Hollywood for Semi-Attractive People” is the title of an Esquire blog post by Tom Junod. It is not particularly well-written, or especially thoughtful—this guy is not Christopher Hitchens—but the post got its author on cable today. “Hardball” I think it was. Here is what Junod thinks of you yobbos and your politics:

“The Democrats didn’t think they had to worry about any of this. They weren’t looking for stars because they had the biggest star in the world as their president. He didn’t have a populist bone in his body, but he was a deeply thoughtful man and a galvanic speaker both, and he promised to transcend the bone-grind of American politics. With his promise of one-man racial reconciliation, he was transfixing, but the independents who were transfixed by him needed to keep being transfixed, and on this, he couldn’t deliver. The American public turned against Obama not when it found out he was radical, or wish-washy, or power-mad, or timid, or what have you; it turned against him when he stopped being entertaining. It turned against him when it found out his real secret — that under his professorial mien he was, well, a professor. Outside the enforced electricity of a national electoral referendum, he was dutiful, and he was dull.”

“It is something of an unfair fight now: a party led by a man who clearly thinks too much before he speaks against a party led by a semi-sexy woman who will say anything — hell, whose idea of a debating strategy in 2008 was a table dance. And the Democrats don’t have an answer, because they’ve so deeply misjudged what the American electorate wants and is capable of. They thought that after the trauma of the Bush years, we would want a no-drama president; a regal First Lady; endless pages of necessary legislation, achieved at a political cost that proves the party’s commitment and courage; and a few more women on the Supreme Court who prove the party’s emphasis on excellence and ethnicity over eros. They didn’t realize that what we want is drama and nothing but, and so the Democrats became the CNN to the Repubican [sic] Fox, clueless in their competence, bewildered by their own best intentions.”

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/female-candidates-2010#ixzz12Do5TbPi

Dog Fight

Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Regulation, Republicans

Can you get worked up about the latest fight between the Democratic and Republican bloodhounds and their hangers-on?

“Honing a campaign message,” the WSJ reports, “President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officials have in recent days strongly suggested the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups, including two run by Republican strategist Karl Rove, are illegally using money from foreign nationals or companies to fund U.S. political advertising. The groups have repeatedly denied the charges.”

And if not for this small matter, the elections—this “advance auction sale of stolen goods,” in H. L. Mencken’s words—would be just dandy.

Chris Matthews Lies: The Best Minds Are Not Keynesians

Economy, Elections, Journalism, Media, Political Economy

Chris Matthews has been repeating this lie almost every week in this ramp-up to the mid-term elections:

“This president came into office facing the worst economic outlook since the 1930s. He took action, bold action, the action prescribed by the best economic minds – following the best thinking there is in economics ‘since’ the 1930s.

First, even before taking office, he backed up his predecessor in preventing a major collapse of the financial industry. Everyone involved said it ‘had’ to be done to avoid catastrophe – the destruction of our country’s financial spine.

Second, he took the action – again boldly – to powerfully offset the white-knuckle drop in consumer spending and business investment. If he hadn’t, no one – including his worst critics – would have any idea what would have befallen us. We can argue about the name it was given – the stimulus bill – but the creation of this great boost in economic demand for goods and services as critical break on what was widely seen as an economic free-fall.”

Nonsense on stilts. And what a propagandist Chris is.

I’ll quote this blog, from 2009, on the so-call Keynesian consensus: “The Royal ‘We’ is unwarranted; and it’s not only me.

The following statement was signed by more than 200 academic economists, and posted by the Cato Institute. The Wall Street Journal buried the statement among a list of economists touting the stimulus package–and the “principle” of printing and borrowing the country out of a depression:

“Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan’s ‘lost decade’ in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.”

PATTY MURRAY: Abject Moron

Ann Coulter, Democrats, Elections, Politics

When Ann Coulter’s right, she’s right: PATTY MURRAY is “a remarkably unimpressive woman [that] has tried to turn being a flat-footed dork into an advantage by selling herself as a tribune of regular folks.” It’s good to see the Coulter guns turned on a maggot from my neck of the woods:

“Murray, whose college major was ‘recreation,’ got her start in politics fighting to save her own useless government job.

The laughably apocryphal story she tells is that she was told by some crusty old male politician — still unnamed decades later: ‘You’re just a mom in tennis shoes — you can’t make a difference!’ (You know how politicians love gratuitously insulting their constituents.)

This stuck in Murray’s craw and so, filled with righteous anger, she ran for state office and won as a ‘mom in tennis shoes.’

The real story is that Murray was teaching a ‘parenting’ class at a community college, which no one was taking, so the state decided to cut it. Murray’s reaction was, ‘Wait — I’m a public employee! You have no right to fire me!’

She wasn’t a parent upset that her child’s school was dropping an art history class. She was a deadbeat public employee who didn’t want her job cut. No one was taking her course, but she thought taxpayers should be required to pay her salary anyway.'”

MORE.