Category Archives: Elections

UPDATE III: A Paltry Pledge To America

Constitution, Elections, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans

It was interesting to hear Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, two oft-closeted establishment Republicans, use the pronoun “we” in discussing the Republicans and their “Pledge to America.” The Repbulicans are the team to which the two belong. Team Republican has issued a paltry pledge that did not displease La Coulter or Hannity.

The Preamble to The Pledge is quite nice, except that it seems sacrilegious for dirty dogs such as the Republicans to suddenly speak up about first principles they’ve seldom respected—original intent, the Tenth Amendment, etc.

“America is more than a country” states the pledge. Indeed. But it is also a community of souls once linked by a common history, heroes and traditions—a community rapidly being dissolved by central planners.

While the Republicans pay homage to the propositional nation (America as an idea), a cursory read tells me that their commitment to the flesh-and-blood American community remains pretty pitiful.

UPDATE I (Sept. 24): Have the Pledge makers promised to repeal “the new Paycheck Fairness Act passed by the House 256 to 162”? “The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society,” writes Pat Buchanan in a brilliant column, “Equality or Freedom,” on pay parity being pursued by the Obama administration.

As I wrote when Obama signed a pay equity act:

If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.

UPDATE II: The Pledge is festooned with huge, “patriotic” images. To me that’s very reassuring—as reassuring as the promise by these power-hungry creeps to “roll back government spending to prestimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone.” Wow, $100 billion in a debt of $110 trillion! Now that’s bold. Basically the Republicans, who still don’t get it, are promising to return to 2008-level spending.

Notice all the legally safe, adjectival ejaculate used by these cobra heads to qualify their promises: “common-sense limits on the growth of government.” You know that to the Coulter and Hannity Republican, limiting any accretion in the military-media-congressional-industrial complex is tantamount to treason. “National security” (minus borders) is a big stick with which they like to beat their Democratic opponents. It’s the only stick they have, given their statist record.

Indeed, the Republikeynesians will “impose a net hiring freeze on non-security federal employees and ensure that the public sector no longer grows at the expense of the private sector.”

Allow the military and the TSA bullies at the airports to grow their fiefdoms as they please.

Republicans are tinkering on the margins, as Ron Paul has suggested, with no commitment to say which departments will be eliminated; or to tackle the philosophy of government, etc.

UPDATE III: “Republicans are the drag queens of politics. Peel away the pules for family, faith and fetuses and one discovers either ‘neoconservative welfare-warfare statists or global social democrats,’ or national socialists of sorts, who fuse economic protectionism, populism and a support for the very welfare infrastructure that is at the root of the social rot they decry.”—ILANA MERCER

Except for one republican (for he is not a Republican). Run Ron, run.

UPDATED: Tea Party Totals GOP Candidate

Elections, Foreign Policy, Iran, Media, Politics, Republicans

I know little about Christine O’Donnell (other than that she admires The Hildebeest), but she sure seems a sweetheart. She has just “defeated veteran politician Mike Castle for the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware.” The GOP has responded to the whipping of one of its crooked politicians with this throw down:

“Republican aides told Fox News Tuesday that the National Republican Senatorial Committee will not be funding O’Donnell’s general election campaign, leaving it up to Palin and the Tea Party Express to do the heavy lifting.”

Given GOP good will, why is O’Donnell already talking about cooperating with establishment Republicans “for the common good”?

Reaching across the aisle to get things done is a euphemism for relinquishing principles in favor of political expediency. As one hardcore tea partier said to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “the only time I want my representative to reach across the isle is to grab a Democrat by the throat.”

Read more about what mainstream media are calling “an upset.”

* Unrelated: I am traveling to a WND event. I will be back at my desk in a few days. My WND column will resume next week.

UPDATE: (Sept. 20): Lew Rockwell wonders whether Christine O’Donnell can be all bad since she is “hated by Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, John Cornyn, the Club for Growth, and Dick Armey’s KochWorks.”

Alas, “she calls for murdering the unborn and everyone else in Iran, and is, in general, a foreign policy neocon.”

UPDATE III: Oz Is Alright, Economically (Electorally? Now That's Another Matter)

Debt, Elections, Inflation, Political Economy

PBS reporter Stuart Cohen “thinks” that what has kept Australia’s “unemployment rate just over 5 percent,” and that country’s economy still humming,” is, in part, “government spending”—that has “helped keep Australia out of recession.”

“PETER HARTCHER, political editor, of he Sydney Morning Herald,” believes the same: “The big and searing experience out of this was that, when there was a global financial crisis, and suddenly countries everywhere were in trouble, the Australian government had enough money in the kitty that it was easily able to enact a massive stimulus massive at least in proportion to our economy.

The consequence is one of the only countries in the world that didn’t have a recession. And this experience has now been burnt into the national consciousness, and it’s put a real premium on getting back to surpluses as quickly as possible.”

[SNIP]

HARTCHER’s right about not overspending. Most people outside Washington DC would think of this as stating the obvious. But it is despite the pursuit of porkulus policies that Oz is not looking as bad as the US. The relative prudent financial management of the country’s affairs has meant that the economy can shoulder some Keynesian mischief without buckling under.

UPDATE I (Aug. 21): For those of you who are interested in events outside the USA (not a common occurrence among Americans, in my experience), here is a dispatch from the frontlines of the Australian election. I’ll provide the name of our lively correspondent, whose style you probably recognize, pending his say-so. UPDATE III (Aug. 22): He is no other than R. J. Stove (read his comment and corrections hereunder):

I woke up this morning to the news that yesterday’s election seems to have resulted in a hung parliament (the first at national level since 1940-1943).

The obnoxious Gillard – “Sickening Excuse For A Woman” (SEFAW for short), as Paul Gottfried calls her – has been given a kick in the teeth, but Tony Abbott’s Liberals (despite gains in Queensland and New South Wales) appear unable to form a majority.

It’s the Green party which is cock-a-hoop, with, I believe, nine senators now (as opposed to five previously) and with gains in the House of Reps (where it had lacked any members at all since the
1990s, if memory serves me).

Last night on TV we had the diverting spectacle of Gillard’s vile Environment Minister Penny Wong, who owes her political clout entirely to being a Chinese lesbian, being upbraided by a Greens candidate for “homophobia.” Frankly, to me the Greens are such cartoonish villains that I can’t work up all that much indignation against them.

If we absolutely must have pro-abort, pro-Third-World-immigration and pro-homosexual-“marriage” politicians at all, I prefer them to be outside rather than inside the Catholic Church or “movement conservatism.”

This is some of the latest media coverage of the poll (complete with a recording of Gillard’s cement-mixer speaking
voice).

[SNIP]

UPDATE II: By comparison, “the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 12,000 to 500,000 last week, taking economists and the White House by surprise. President Obama, on his way to a 10-day vacation with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, said the report underscores the need for”… yes, more government deficit spending.”

UPDATE III: Oz Is Alright, Economically (Electorally? Now That’s Another Matter)

Debt, Economy, Elections, Inflation, Political Economy

PBS reporter Stuart Cohen “thinks” that what has kept Australia’s “unemployment rate just over 5 percent,” and that country’s economy still humming,” is, in part, “government spending”—that has “helped keep Australia out of recession.”

“PETER HARTCHER, political editor, of he Sydney Morning Herald,” believes the same: “The big and searing experience out of this was that, when there was a global financial crisis, and suddenly countries everywhere were in trouble, the Australian government had enough money in the kitty that it was easily able to enact a massive stimulus massive at least in proportion to our economy.

The consequence is one of the only countries in the world that didn’t have a recession. And this experience has now been burnt into the national consciousness, and it’s put a real premium on getting back to surpluses as quickly as possible.”

[SNIP]

HARTCHER’s right about not overspending. Most people outside Washington DC would think of this as stating the obvious. But it is despite the pursuit of porkulus policies that Oz is not looking as bad as the US. The relative prudent financial management of the country’s affairs has meant that the economy can shoulder some Keynesian mischief without buckling under.

UPDATE I (Aug. 21): For those of you who are interested in events outside the USA (not a common occurrence among Americans, in my experience), here is a dispatch from the frontlines of the Australian election. I’ll provide the name of our lively correspondent, whose style you probably recognize, pending his say-so. UPDATE III (Aug. 22): He is no other than R. J. Stove (read his comment and corrections hereunder):

I woke up this morning to the news that yesterday’s election seems to have resulted in a hung parliament (the first at national level since 1940-1943).

The obnoxious Gillard – “Sickening Excuse For A Woman” (SEFAW for short), as Paul Gottfried calls her – has been given a kick in the teeth, but Tony Abbott’s Liberals (despite gains in Queensland and New South Wales) appear unable to form a majority.

It’s the Green party which is cock-a-hoop, with, I believe, nine senators now (as opposed to five previously) and with gains in the House of Reps (where it had lacked any members at all since the
1990s, if memory serves me).

Last night on TV we had the diverting spectacle of Gillard’s vile Environment Minister Penny Wong, who owes her political clout entirely to being a Chinese lesbian, being upbraided by a Greens candidate for “homophobia.” Frankly, to me the Greens are such cartoonish villains that I can’t work up all that much indignation against them.

If we absolutely must have pro-abort, pro-Third-World-immigration and pro-homosexual-“marriage” politicians at all, I prefer them to be outside rather than inside the Catholic Church or “movement conservatism.”

This is some of the latest media coverage of the poll (complete with a recording of Gillard’s cement-mixer speaking
voice).

[SNIP]

UPDATE II: By comparison, “the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 12,000 to 500,000 last week, taking economists and the White House by surprise. President Obama, on his way to a 10-day vacation with his family on Martha’s Vineyard, said the report underscores the need for”… yes, more government deficit spending.”