Here's 3 classics from The Other McCain.
On the stupid "purity test."
I've got your purity test
The 10 principles on the GOP Purity test are OK, at least superficially. Now let me draw a line for you:
(0) Modulo its own employees, and federal criminals*, the Federal Government should not interact with private citizens.
Having set down that marker, let's see if and how we can apply this concept to the 10 items:
(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s "stimulus" bill.
How about:
We support fiscal responsibility--no national debt, and no chronic deficits.(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care.
Divorcing the Federal government from individual citizens would kill ObamaCare, entitlements, and the 16th Amendment, if carried through to its logical conclusion.
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat.
This needs to be strengthened. If the country is not supporting an actual Declaration of War, then we shouldn't go debasing our Constitution any more by further military adventurism.
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Hmm. Principle 0 should keep the Federal hand off of everyone's naughty bits.
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion.
Again, Federal involvement with individuals, their marriages, their reproduction, their wallets, their retirements, etc. is at the heart of the problems besetting the country. Bureaucrats feel this passionate need to sculpt society, to boss other people around, to define "the right thing" and set about doing it. Amputate that notion!
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.
This is the Second Amendment. Where is the emphasis on the 10th?
*Where the two are differentiable.
We have real things to worry about.
Whom You Hire Matters, but How Much?
I think Obama's Parade of Rookies a red herring. If you're driving toward a brick wall, it really doesn't matter whether you're coasting in, or all ahead full-tilt boogie.
Consider:
* The national debt.
* The cancerous growth of entitlements.
* Budget deficits that are encouraged by Congress.
* The calls for more idiocy in the form of Obamacare and Cap & Trade.Wildly inappropriate for Thanksgiving, yet still a fine summary: If you listen to fools, the mob rules.
As with malignant cancer, there is no middle ground with this socialism. Anyone calling themself a "Progressive", Democrat or Republican, intentionally or idiotically, supports the destruction of the country. The coward-driven Cloward-Piven Strategy is just such a chaser to FDR's free-basing of the Constitution.
The lack of a medium like the netty-tubes in 1944 meant that there was much less chance for people to say: "Hey, FDR: 'We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights' is a steaming loaf of crap. Article V, mike foxtrot--have you heard of it?" Krugman echos this anti-Constitutional idiocy: "the stars are aligned for a major change in America's direction".
The stars are aligned for a restoration. It's either the original, Federalist direction, and let the States succeed or fail on their own merits, or unknown economic chaos. There is scant room for compromise with Cloward-Piven. States should follow that road to hell at their discretion, but the country as a whole must reject it.
We come full circle to the inexperienced cabinet question. If the remedies under discussion fail to address the strategic issues, then, tactically, you may as well put Conor Friedersdorf in there.
Fraud. Corruption. Conspiracy. Government lies.
'Cap and Trade Is Dead'
Well, duh! This is kind of obvious, isn't it? Once the fraudulent "science" behind the global warming scare was exposed, Al Gore became the Piltdown Man of American politics and that whole Kyoto-style agenda was as obsolete as the mullet and parachute pants. Delicious commentary from Eric Raymond:
For those of you who have been stigmatizing AGW skeptics as "deniers" and dismissing their charges that the whole enterprise is fraudulent? Hope you like the taste of crow, because I do believe there’s a buttload of it coming at you. Piping hot.
Unlike crow, schadenfreude is a dish best served cold. And I remind you what I said in June:
The simplest way to define conservatism is this: The belief that liberalism is wrong.
All along, the strongest evidence that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) was a hoax was a simple fact: Liberals believed in it.
Read more at The Other McCain.
