Category Archives: Republicans

Reality Check For America’s Armchair Warriors

China, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Liberty, Military, Republicans, Russia

Said Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. … we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.”

And that was then.

Nevertheless, Mitt Romney (“I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it”), and Rick Santorum (“I will not cut one penny out of military spending”) both decry the “gutting” of the military by Obama. They are following a not-so proud tradition. A “former president George W. Bush told his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner, ‘The best way to revitalize the economy is war, and the US has grown stronger with war.'”

“In 2009 alone,” reports RT, “the United States was responsible for almost half of the world’s total military spending – 46 per cent, or 712 billion US dollars. Since then, the figures have only grown, to the point that American military spending now exceeds that of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. The US has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world.”

Wikipedia confirms that assessment.

UPDATE II: CPUKE 2012 (FREEDOM WATCH: Teaching Tool, But Not the People’s Libertarianism)

Elections, Ethics, Founding Fathers, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Neoconservatism, Private Property, Republicans, Ron Paul

OMIGOD: Look at the speaker lineup at CPAC 2012, currently underway. There is nary a place in this GOP for our ideas—also, those of the Founding Fathers. They’ve even called on little, retarded RINO Lolita SE Cupp to perform. Cupp can barely conceal her vacuity in this MSNBC clip, where she showcases her grasp of American liberties and her debating skills with the trademark wild grimaces and gestures. Desperately, she latches onto a catchy phrase the host has floated, so that a paraphrasing of the host replaces serious argument.

And where’s Ron Paul at CPUKE?

I call her The Helmet. Callista Gingrich speaks, or shall I say issues forth?

What would a Republican Party gathering be without the Synopohobic vulgarist, Donald Tramp

This looks interesting:

The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity
– Wilson C
Sponsored by: ProEnglish
Speakers: Robert Vandervoort, Executive Director, ProEnglish; John Derbyshire, contributing
editor at National Review and author of We Are Doomed; Peter Brimelow, author of The Patriot
Game: National Dreams and Political Realities and founder of VDARE.com; Dr. Serge
Trifkovic, foreign affairs editor for Chronicles magazine; & Dr. Rosalie Porter, author of
American Immigrant: My Life In Three Languages, chairwoman of the board, ProEnglish
Open to all CPAC attendees

The agenda item below is plain ridiculous, given that Baby Bush was every bit as bad for civil liberties as his “non-identical, evil ideological twin, Barack Obama.”

Obama’s Agents Are Reading Your Emails: Privacy Concerns of the Digital Age – Taylor
Sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute

A lot of awards conservatives give themselves. And lots of book peddling and signings by the pols, which, as you know, I believe to be a symptom of America’s rotten politics. And that includes the Ron Paul signings.

“Politicians—all public servants—should be put on a very tight leash and prohibited from exploiting their already exploitative positions for yet more profit. (Then again, you know that I believe government workers should be disqualified from voting. For one thing, they don’t pay taxes, but are paid out of taxes. Taxpayers pay taxes twice: on their own income and on the income of members of the bureaucracy. For another, they are in the position to vote themselves higher and higher wages. Which they do.)”

Sure, I like that Paul gets our message out with his books, but I think that all US politicians should be barred from using their powerful positions to peddle products, however laudable. And freedom of speech has nothing to do with this. Freedom of speech is not immutable, but tethered to property. So long as they live on our dime; the oink sector should be prohibited from profiting on our dime.

The Founders would have been appalled by the celebrity and high profiles politicians pursue on the public purse.

Myron, or anyone else: Time permitting, do regale BAB readers with a precis of one of the speeches.

UPDATE I: FREEDOM WATCH NEWS. Sorry for your loss, John. I tuned in yesterday, then switched off when “good friends of the show” warrior Bob Barr (hardly a libertarian) and Kirstin Powers (banal brain) hogged the screen and were fawned upon. Again, I’m sorry for the fans, although I seldom watched an entire episode because of the typical, mainstream, buddy-buddy, close to power, Beltway think-tank bias that came to pervade and dominate it.

RELATED: “More Reasons to Secede From The Pundit Pantheons of Fox, MSNBC and CNN.” I guess I’m uncompromising.

UPDATE II (Feb. 13): MORE FREEDOM WATCH NEWS. We agree, John, but even if we didn’t: “respek,” as Ali G. would preach. As a general educational tool, The Judge did good. Still, I often had to switch off even mid-soliloquy, due to the endless annoying “What ifs”: “what if the government this, what if the government that”X 100. The style of the show—that includes the pompous music and the screaming—did damage to the contents. It bled into the content and damaged it. Ironically, I switched to RT on the day of the sad announcement, because I could not stomach the Powers and Barr combo. The show was full of these characters which turn off good, gun-touting, property minded Americans. It also crapped all over cops—continuously—often for rounding up illegal immigrants. Americans hate that. And it offered the hideous contradiction vis-a-vis immigration: when you like what the federal Frankenstein does (help illegals remain in the states), you stick up for Federal overreach, rather than for the right of the people of the states to evict trespassers. Sorry, John: This was not the libertarianism of The People.

UPDATED: Hopeless Politics (Alarming Poll)

Democracy, Elections, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

I scanned a few headlines for coverage of Ron Paul’s showing in yesterday’s Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri presidential contests, but could find no mention of the man who placed second in Minnesota. Skim this New York Times page. The Congressman from Texas is absent from the report. (And some have argued with me over the utter corruption and cretinism of the American media, although, given that the lead doesn’t even contain the contested states, I suspect that idicoracy more than ideology is at play here). Finally, while Rick Santorum swept these states, they “were essentially nonbinding straw polls.”

Buried on the PBS News Hour’s page is one line to the effect that “Texas Congressman Ron Paul finished second in Minnesota, third in Missouri and last in Colorado.” No more.

The matter of low turnout interests me more. “One of the big losers was GOP turnout, which was down in every state, compared to four years ago,” observes The Guardian. “The ratio of turnout from 2012 to 2008 in both counties were in the bottom quarter of all counties in Iowa. Had turnout in either county been at the same level relative to 2008 as the average county, Romney’s less-than-100 vote loss would have been turned into a win.”

Perhaps voters who poured their heart and soul into Tea-Party politics have prefigured that the nature of American politics is such that even if their candidate wins, nothing will change in their lives or in the politics. It is amazing that in the face of hopelessness—growing economic misery commensurate with the assurances of trillions more in debt—the only shot across the bow comes from the confused and revolting Occupy Wall Street Movement. Or “Freak Street.”

Promises by the presidential contender to repeal all the unconstitutional legislation the incumbent has passed are just that: promises that can never be fulfilled. The fact that presidents come and go and leave in their wake such devastation—essentially trashing the office and the country—demonstrates the reality of power without limitation. Since the Constitution is a dead letter, the political process consists in each faction passing its unconstitutional infractions into law, as the other gang guarantees repeal.

“The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”—ILANA (January 15, 2010)

“No sooner do the Republicans come to power, than they move to the left. When they get their turn, Democrats shuffle to the right. At some point, McCain reaches across the aisle and the creeps converge.”—ILANA (January 15, 2010)

UPDATE: (Feb. 9): “Obama would defeat all of the four Republicans if the election were held today, but Ron Paul fares the best against the incumbent. Obama leads Paul 44 percent to 40 percent, with 16 percent undecided,” says a “WND/WENZEL POLL.”

TELL ME the generic Republican isn’t stupid:

“In every case except the match-up against Ron Paul, more than 20 percent of Republican voters said they are more likely to support Obama than the Republican challenger. And Ron Paul is close, as 19 percent of Republicans said they are more likely to support Obama than Paul.”

A hopeless polity.

UPDATED: Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy Bellicosity (Sununu Stumping for Romney)

Debt, Elections, Foreign Policy, Military, Republicans

In his Florida victory speech, Mitt Romney promised: “I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it. President Obama has adopted a policy of appeasement and apology. I will speak out for those seeking freedom and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends around the world.”

Romney offered a permutation of the promise in the Nevada victory speech, Saturday, February 4, where he took 49.4% of the vote (14,535 votes).

President Obama is shrinking our military and hollowing out our national defense. I will insist on a military so powerful that no one would ever think of challenging it. President Obama believes America’s role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe the 21st century will be and must be an American century.

Romney understands business, not economics. One needs an understanding of the natural laws of economics to comprehend the extent of the economic malaise that afflicts the US. “The defining characteristic of the Unites States is debt—public and private. America is a debtor nation,” I wrote in “Republicans, Repent!” Course correction is unlikely for a country, America, that is now the biggest debtor nation in the world.

His foreign policy bellicosity aside, Romney is sincere when he says that “the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not our destiny.” Sincere, pleasant, presidential, but hopelessly delusional about the feasibility of course-correction. (Consider: The Tea Party Congress has done precious little to correct course, except to get comfortable on the Hill.)

UPDATE: John Sununu was on FoxBussiess today promising that Mitt Romney would add 100,000 men and women to the Navy to beef it up. That is the definition of insanity. To accuse OBama of gutting the American military qualifies too.

Sununu, who is stumping for Romney, does have a good idea, though, of who New Gingrich is:

“When Newt Gingrich talks about big ideas, I take ‘big’ as being a synonym for cockamamie because half the stuff he comes up with is unrealistic and undoable at a time when we’re dealing with huge budget deficits, when we are expressing concerns about $15 trillion, $16 trillion debt. He is talking about a trillion dollar program to go to the moon. There are appropriate times to have ideas that are new and different. This is not a time to spend a billion dollars going to the moon. Most of the ideas he has are designed to be self-aggrandizing.”