Category Archives: Politics

UPDATED: State of Disunion (The Barf Rule)

America, Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, History, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans

Not that the Xbox nation would notice, but there are a lot more flashing images on Barack Obama’s website, at WhiteHouse.gov, than there are written words. As such, not much information is available on the president’s annual State of the Union message.

But like everything in the Constitution, a modest thing has morphed into a monstrosity. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution required that the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the state of Union.”

A “Stalinesque extravaganza” that ought to offend “anyone of a republican (small ‘r’ …) sensibility,” is how National Review’s John Derbyshire has described the State of the Union speech. “American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech,” writes Derb in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” a book I discussed in “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed'”

John goes on to furnish the quotidian details of how “the great man” is announced, how he makes an entrance; the way “the legislators jostle to catch his eye” and receive his favor. “On the podium at last, the president offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators” (p. 45).

Then there is the display of “Lenny Skutniks” in the audience, “model citizens chosen in order to represent some quality the president will call on us to admire and emulate” (last year it was the family of the little girl who was murdered by the Tucson shooter).

Derb analyzes this monarchical, contrived tradition against the backdrop of the steady inflation of the presidential office, and a trend “away from ‘prose’ to ‘poetry’; away from substantive argument to “hot air.”

The president of the USA is now “pontiff, in touch with Divinity, to be addressed like the Almighty.”

Prepare to puke.

UPDATE (Jan. 24): THE BARF RULE. The “Lenny Skutnik” for 2012 is …Warren Buffett’s secretary.

Debbie Bosanek “will be sitting with the first lady in her gallery box Tuesday night as President Obama announces his plans for tax reform at the State of the Union address. Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett for nearly two decades, has become as symbol of Obama’s tax reform plan. The ‘Buffett rule,’ named after her billionaire boss, aims to insure that wealthy taxpayers do not pay an effective tax rate lower than their secretaries.” (Via FoxNews)

Prepare to barf.

UPDATE II: Talked Ron Paul On RT (Russia Today) & MyRon Pauli Distills GOP Debate

Constitution, Foreign Policy, Ilana On Radio & TV, libertarianism, Media, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, Russia, The State

I was on Russia Today (RT), my favorite broadcaster, to discuss the Ron Paul surge. I am sorry I was unable to give you notice of the segment, but I’ve been tied up. I am sure it will pop up later. Send the embed if you find it; I’m no good at locating such things.

UPDATE I: To MyRon’s comment: If I watched myself do these things I’d never do them. I’m a writer, first and foremost. A shy one, at that. I thought RT’s Liz said “anti-war,” which is a variant on the “isolationism” libel against libertarian foreign policy,” but I could be wrong.

UPDATE II: MyRon Pauli Distills Tonight’s GOP Debate, in Sioux City, Iowa:

“I subjected myself to something almost as bad as waterboarding – watching the FOX NEWS DEBATE!

Rick and Michelle are out there trying to out do each other on protecting us from Partial Birth Abortions.

Perry was a bit better and almost funny as the Aw Shucks Redneck invoking Tim Tebow.

Huntsman, while no ideologue, actually tries to act like an adult instead of an idiotic panderer.

Mitt, the businessman, can lecture the Bloated Socialistic Newtonian on capitalism – but the voters looking for red meat cheap shots probably can’t understand a lick of economics.

Newt – that right wing socialistic egomaniac – oi vey – the true inheritor of and poster boy for Hoover Progressivism, Nixonian Price Controlling, and Dubya’s Compassionate Conservatism.

And then there is Ron Paul getting clobbered over how to deal with America’s number 1 threat – the IRANIAN NAVY (heck – what happened to the Nepalese Air Force, the Liectenstein Army, and the Maldive Islands Special Forces)? Strange because of my job that some of this hits home as well.

Well, I dozed off a few times waiting for Ahmadinejad’s Battleship to come sailing up the Potomac!”

**

This is MyRon Pauli signing off for BAB.

MyRon’s previous campaign dispatch for BAB was filed from his couch too. Read it.

UPDATE II: Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2? (‘Nut Gingrich’)

Elections, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, Socialism, The State, War, Welfare

The excerpt is from “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” now on WND.COM:

“What are the odds that a Democratic commander-in-chief and his chief Republican rival declare their philosophical fidelity to the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt on the same day?

In an effort to better conjure Roosevelt, the shameless Barack Obama had flown to Osawatomie in Kansas, where, in 1910, Teddy delivered his “New Nationalism Address.” So radical was the Roosevelt political program that its author was condemned as “‘Communistic,’ ‘Socialistic,’ and ‘Anarchistic’ in various quarters.”

On the day of this staged affair—in eerie synchronicity—Newt Gingrich, whose favorability among Republican “caucus goers” is at 33 percent and rising, described himself to broadcaster Glenn Beck as “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.”

Back in the day, “the Eastern United States denounced [Roosevelt] as a ‘communist agitator.’” This was “the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President,” writes Robert S. La Forte in The Kansas Historical Quarterly:

“[Roosevelt’s] concepts of the extent to which a powerful federal government could regulate and use private property in the interest of the whole and his declarations about labor … were nothing short of revolutionary.”

As La Forte chronicles, “Roosevelt had no interest in retaining the ideals of Jeffersonian ‘state’s right’ demagogues, as he called them. He was interested in a Hamiltonian concept of power which he described as the ‘New Nationalism.’”

Roosevelt’s speech, seconded White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, “Really set the course for the 20th century.” Yet to listen to the president in Kansas, a vote for “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican” is a vote for a Mad-Max dystopia, where “everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Don’t look for a “square deal” from the characters on the other side of the aisle. “We want to avoid becoming a welfare state like the European states” is the stock phrase we get from GOP pointy heads. Truth is not their stock-in-trade. As they tell it, America has a long way to go before it turns as Rooseveltian as Europe. …”

The complete column is “Who’s It To Be? Teddy No. 1 or Teddy No. 2?” Read it now on WND.COM.

********
STAIRWAY PRESS HAS LAUNCHED A HOLIDAY GIVEAWAY AND FACEBOOK EVENT FOR MY BOOK, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Invitation have gone out from The Cannibal’s Facebook Fan page. (“Like” The Cannibal when you pop by.) On offer is Mercer merchandise galore. Every fifth buyer of Into the Cannibal’s Pot will receive a free copy of my libertarian manifesto Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash with a Corrupt Culture, together with a CD of the progressive rock guitar virtuoso and composer Sean Mercer.

Order NOW and The Publisher will endeavor to deliver in time for Christmas.

And do please “Like” Into the Cannibal’s Pot’s Fan Page.

UPDATE I (Dec. 8): Nut Gingrich is what a a LRC.COM blogger has christened You Know Who, pointing out Nut’s support for “two governments in the United States: one that follows the Bill of Rights and one that doesn’t (for our “security,” of course).” MORE.

UPDATE II: More explosive details about “Newt’s grand schemes for a small, unintrusive federal government”: “NEWT PRESENTS A FRESH NEW VIRTUAL FACE” by Ann Coulter.

Job Crushers

Business, Economy, Labor, Political Economy, Politics

Trust the public broadcaster to report the facts in detail and accompany them with transcripts. High marks for that PBS service. However, the service comes with a high price: full-on Keynesian propaganda. PBS’s jobs report begins in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), with an employer who understands that the cost of doing business is increased with every little regulatory tweak issued in DC. Says Bobby Joslin of “Joslin and Son Signs”:

“Well, two years ago, three years ago, we had to have all our tow motor people certified to operate a tow motor. … A forklift. And that cost the company $3,600. Now we’re having to dispose of all our lightbulbs. We’re in the sign business. We create a lot of volume of fluorescent tubes. So we just got through spending $8,500 on a lightbulb crusher.

Then there’s “Obamacare. When we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people and then laying them off.”

But our intrepid PBS reporter can recognize a Republican ruse when he hears one. PAUL SOLMAN thinks the small businessman he just interviewed is one dim bulb. Solman editorializes as follows: “Uncertainty of taxes and regulation crippling job creation; it’s become a Republican talking point.”

According to such Keynesians, who have always struggled with the chicken or the egg problem, business is struggling because, well, because it is struggling:

“Joslin told us business is down 35 percent over the past three years. So of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? … lack of demand is the other reason you’re not hiring, right? But if sales drive everything, how important can policy uncertainty be?”

There is always an expert on hand to expatiate about the mysterious cycle of poverty that starts with reduced demand, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Brownian motion of the DC wealth-consuming machine:

And every businessman I know says exactly that. Non-financial companies are sitting on over $3 trillion of cash, the latest IRS data shows. Companies are not investing that money because there’s no demand. It’s not because they’re concerned that tax rates may go up or regulations may change. They need to have people and businesses with money to spend in order to invest.

[More about Voodoo economics here.]