Category Archives: The State

UPDATE II: Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half-Wit (The Vicarious Pleasure Principle)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Democrats, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Liberty, Republicans, The State

The current column, now on WND, is “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit.” An excerpt:

“It was hard not to feel sorry for President Barack Obama during what was the first of three presidential debates. The dejected demeanor and the perpetually lowered gaze conjured an unprepared student peppered by a pedantic teacher with questions he could not possibly answer.

The president’s pose spoke to the beating he was receiving at the hands of his opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney.

Obama campaigner Chris Matthews—a proxy for this president, who cloaks himself in the raiment of a newsman—demanded to know: Why was Obama staring down at his “notes” and scribbling? What was he waiting for?

To describe what Gov. Romney had done in the course of the 90-minute debate, Matthews, who possesses a nimble intelligence his candidate is without, reached for wild man Charlie Sheen’s zinger: ‘What was Romney doing? Winning!’

Moderator Jim Lehrer is an old-school newsman who has never in the course of a long and distinguished career revealed his own political bias. Now the pack men of the media were piling on the PBS anchor for not controlling the debate’s outcome, and for allowing a free to-and-fro between the men.

And since Mitt won hands down; the moderator must have been bad. Or so goes the loser’s lackluster logic. Never mind that reasoning backward is an error in logic. So how does post hoc ergo propter hoc work? Had Obama won the debate under the same emcee’s minimal intervention, Lehrer would have been lauded. …

… Also at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow provided the ultimate rationalization which her co-hosts on the network and elsewhere quickly embraced. ‘The presidency spoils your ability to be a good debater.’

‘In psychology and logic, rationalization (also known as making excuses) is an unconscious defense mechanism,’ writes Wikipedia. It is intended to shield the fragile ego from reality.

Like Maddow, presidential hagiographer Douglas Brinkley took cover from real life on Fox News’ ‘Cavuto.’ The yang to Lincoln idolator Doris Kearns Goodwin’s yin, Brinkley diminished Romney’s intellectual victory by applying that most stringent historical test to the governor’s performance: It was without a Reaganesque zinger. Obama, however, had not damaged his brand, claimed Brinkley. He was still a gifted ‘retail politician.’ (Read community organizer.) …

… Make no mistake; should he succeed in vanquishing Obama, come Nov. 6, Romney’s brand of “repeal-and-replace statism”—not to mention maniacal militarism and Sinophobia—will be no victory for liberty. …

Read the complete column, “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit,” on WND.

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UPDATED I: The Vicarious Pleasure Principle. Even if you dislike the philosophy of both men (which exists on the same illiberal continuum), there is some vicarious pleasure in watching the one who has caused you such unhappiness whipped good and proper.

UPDATE II: IN HIS excellent column about Romney’s creaming of Obama, Pat Buchanan also draws on the boxing and school teacher metaphors.

Pat calls Obama’s “performance one of the worst in debate history,” and Romney’s “the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.”

‘Floating Like A Butterfly, Stinging Like A Bee’

Barack Obama, Elections, Intelligence, Media, Republicans, The State

Irrespective of what you think about Mitt Romney and his positions (and I disavow Mitt’s “repeal-and-replace statism“), what he is in the process of demonstrating in this first of 3 debates, at the time of writing, is his superior intelligence, his ability to store immense amounts of information and apply it to bolster his arguments.

Abilities his rival, Barack Obama, manifestly does not possess. Romney has just demolished Barack Obama.

Ann Romney knows of what she speaks when she said, “One Thing I Know About Mitt. He Doesn’t Fail.”

This picture (of Obama, in particular) says it all:

The media, however, will prove blind to the effects of Mitt Romney’s superior intelligence in this demolition of a debate because they are rooting for the one candidate.

We Are ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ As The Beltway’s Bitches

Debt, Government, Politics, Taxation, The State, Welfare

Better late than never. The Beltway press discovers and reveals that wealth in the D.C. hood comes from, as I put it in 2010, the graft flowing into Rome from the ‘provinces.’ FoxNews.com quotes Tim Carney, columnist for the Washington Examiner, explaining why D.C. prospers as the rest of the country buckles under its weight.

“Sometimes I think that D.C. is the vortex and there’s a giant sucking sound of American wealth and jobs coming in here. It’s not free trade, it’s not commerce … it’s government. The taxpayers are the ones who are paying to build up this region.”

The American Community Survey released last Thursday found seven of the nations top 10 wealthiest counties now surround Washington, D.C. They include Loudoun County, Va., ranked No. 1, with a median household income over $119,000 dollars a year. Fairfax County, Va., was second with $105,000 and Arlington County, Va., third with just over $100,000 a year in median household income.

From “Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.,” December 17, 2010:

“All life in Washington today derives ultimately from the capitals’ own version of Rome’s annona — the continuous infusion not of grain and olive oil but of tax revenue and borrowed money. Instead of ships and barges there are banks, 10,000 of them designated for this purpose, which funnel the nations’ tax payments to the city. This ‘never-ending flow of revenue creates a broad level of affluence that has no real counterpart anywhere in America.” Says Murphy: “Washington simply doesn’t look like the rest of America.” But its residents “fail to view this as bizarre.”
America’s annona was facilitated by the Sixteenth Amendment. With its passage, in 1913, Murphy admits begrudgingly, “A Rubicon was crossed, giving Washington the unimpeded power to levy an income tax and therefore spend ever larger amounts of money.” As in Rome, D.C. grubbiness coexists with “rhetoric of high-mindedness about the duties and burdens of leadership.”
Thanks to the graft flowing into the Beltway, the average income in and around Washington D.C. is $85,189 compared to $49,777 for the hinterland, where unemployment rates are almost double. The rest of the country exists to serve its masters in modern Rome.

Alas, “Statism Starts With YOU!” The fatter the feds the happier Americans seem to be:

As for America’s fondness for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which combined, account for close to half of the federal government’s budget — …only 7 percent of the country will consider slashing the first two welfare programs. And a mere eleven percent of those living in the “Land of the Free” are prepared to pare down Medicaid.
Keep the government out of my Medicare! For a while — and in all seriousness — Dick Morris even promoted a similar slogan on Fox News. It was this Republican hack’s ploy to alert seniors to the dangers to Medicare from Obamacare. The sink-hole of debt into which this country has slid, because of state spending, scares its citizens. But not sufficiently to seriously motivate them to dent “defense” spending. Just a fifth will entertain trimming the estimated $1 trillion which the United States blows on defending to the death borders not its own.

Unless the people of the “provinces”—you out there—are willing to do something drastic, like repeal the American annona, we will all have to learn to live forever after as the Beltway’s bitches.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?

BAB's A List, Business, Debt, Democrats, Intellectual Property Rights, libertarianism, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare

We all live on the “plantation”; we are all “moocher-hiddeen,” says Barely A Blog contributor, Myron Pauli.

Who Will Be Our ‘Massa’? The Mormon Or The Mulatto?
By Myron Pauli

Unless you are hiding in the Unabomber’s Montana shack and consuming rabbits and berries, we all give to and take from the government. However, some give more than they take and some take more than they give.

Just how large is the sector that depends upon government?

Children and the elderly have become virtual wards of the state – so that 50% already falls into the “moocher-hiddeen” (to use an Islamic term!). That leaves the “working age population” of roughly 25 to 65 supporting the rest. Of course, if “Joe the Plumber” has kids or elderly parents, then the government acts as a conduit from him to his extended family. Even addressing just those working age people with neither children nor parents – are they the ones who pay more than they receive? Maybe.

Remove government employees and the government contractors from that. Then you have the governmental corporations such as Fannie Mae and academia who are funded via government largesse. And what to make of GM, Chrysler, the bailed-out-financial sector, etc., kept afloat by government? Public utilities are governmentally regulated monopolies. Automobile Dealers function only thanks to governmentally legislated monopoly. Pharmaceutical firms, publishers, and the entertainment industry function on patents and copyright for their financial status. Sectors in agribusiness, health care, insurance, energy, and transportation (Amtrak!) are so heavily regulated that those employees are de-facto governmental workers even if there is a semblance of profit. The less said about lawyers and lobbyists, the better!

Truly private workers such as waiters, plumbers, and preachers are quite independent of government; but in locations like metropolitan Washington DC, nearly all their customers come out of the “oink sectors.” Even worse is that when Americans invest their money, the Roth’s, IRA’s, 401k’s, 529’s, HSA’s, “cafeteria plans” are so controlled by governmental rules that one wonders who owns the money – you or the government – or is that even a distinction?

The sad and pathetic truth is that we are all living on a large plantation with a quadrennial democratically elected “Massa” and a bureaucracy of overseers. It is to the credit of racial and religious tolerance that we can have a Mormon vs. mulatto fighting for the job of “Massa”.

The fact is that government has entangled itself from cradle to grave like a metastasizing cancer. Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only government programs downsized in the last 40 years was transportation deregulation under Carter and welfare reform under Clinton (nothing eliminated under Republican presidents), and the budget was in near-balance (ignoring raids on the “Social Security Trust Fund!”) by Clinton. I mean, this not as an endorsement of the unabashed big government Obama but merely to point out that the odds of Romney downsizing the Federal Government is smaller than the odds that the Chinese politburo will make Yom Kippur a Chinese holiday!

So when “Tea Party Conservatives” start bitching about Obama endangering their Medicare, it is because the addiction to government is nearly universal. Some of us on the plantation may be more productive than others, but we all live under the rules and, regrettably, most inhabitants (or inmates) generally support the system.

A few libertarian “nutcases” like Paul or Johnson may point the other way, but even most billionaires are as happy to have the Warfare-Welfare state as the poor. Who do you think pays for the TV commercials and the spin doctors and the political “think tanks” – Christian coalminers and Hispanic gardeners, or guys named Koch, Adelson, Soros, and Spielberg?

Nothing short of a major non-violent libertarian revolution” (Constitutional restoration) is needed – but until then, we can all stick our hand out for our share of the public gruel.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.