I've been a Republican for more than 30 years. I dutifully supported Bob Dole and John McCain. My car sports a Fred Thompson bumper sticker, hence the moniker, the FredMobile.
I'm on the verge of leaving the party because of Mitt Romney.
It's not just that I find the fellow to be loathsome in the extreme and wonder what he's up to with his presidential obsession, it's that the entire Republican establishment has told me I need to support him. Why? If he was the second coming of Barry Goldwater, I'd understand it. He's not. He's a hyper-wealthy weasel with no core values who simultaneously puts on a cloak of piety and runs a vicious and dirty campaign.
The grand poobahs in the Republican Party could have stayed neutral. There was nothing forcing them to support a candidate. They knew Mitt was disliked by many and yet they all decided to rally around him. Again, he's not a principled conservative like Goldwater, he's just a standard-issue politician. What's behind all of this?
I don't know and it creeps me out. There's a better than even chance that I'll be writing a "Why I Left The Republican Party" post in the near future.
I hope he was worth it for them.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Mitt Romney Is Driving Me Out Of The Republican Party
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Next Generation Of Police Helicopter
Give this guy some decent sensors and you can forget about escaping the crime scene on foot unless you can get into a building. Give it a spray paint gun, it could tag you like an exploding dye pack in a bag of bank cash.
I Don't Even Have A Bubble
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Why Gridlock Is Not The Answer
It's often said that people like gridlock in Washington because it prevents the government from doing anything dangerously big. I'd like to suggest that over time, gridlock leads to decline.
Why can't we build interstate highways any more? Why does high speed rail cost so much? Why have there been no nuclear power plants built in decades? Government regulations.
Regulations accrete upon the nation like barnacles on a ship's hull. Every year new laws are passed that govern every aspect of our lives from the food we eat to the contracts we sign to the way in which the government is allowed to spend money. Each regulation is tiny in and of itself, but taken as a whole, they act to make it harder and harder to accomplish anything. Each year you get less output for the same money.
While gridlock will slow down the creation of new monstrosities like Obamacare or Dodd-Frank, it will do nothing to eliminate the growing mountain of regulations.
Image source.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
"She Might Sleep More Than Usual"
Our Maximum Leader is getting up there in years and she recently developed arthritis in her right front elbow. From time to time it gives her problems and she'll limp. I took her to the vet and they gave her some joint medicine and some painkillers. They said the painkillers might make her sleep a little more than usual.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Origin And Nature Of The Tea Party
... is well-captured at The Temple of Mut. It's worth a read.
Because They're Fascists
... is the only answer I can come up with when I wonder what in the world Obama and his crew were thinking when they decided they would force everyone to cover contraception, sterilization, etc. on their employee health plans regardless of their moral positions on the topic.
Seriously, are these things that big of a financial burden? Is there some sob story out there about a young family who lost their home and now lives in a cardboard box because they couldn't afford a diaphragm? Did I miss that one on 60 Minutes or PBS?
Our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings and B-Daddy over at The Liberator Today have covered the freedom aspect of this quite well. Let's turn that on its head and try to figure out the rationale behind the new law.
Like I said above, there's no financial reason for it. There's no access reason for it, either. It's not like contraception isn't available down to the point where you can buy it in vending machines in the bathrooms at bars. It's not that there's insufficient education about the topic - they no longer read Charles Dickens, but our kids know all about condoms and the pill.
So what is it?
Jonah Goldberg, in his book, Liberal Fascism, suggests that fascism is a worship of the state, a secular religion with all the attendant moral architecture that suggests. That's the only explanation I can come up with for what Obama and Katherine Sibelius have done. They believe that contraception should be free and instantly available to everyone at all times.
What did you expect from someone who is fine with allowing babies who survive abortions to die of exposure?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Is This Common?
How often does the head of the International Monetary Fund warn of a global depression?
The global economy faces a depression-era collapse in demand if Europe doesn't quickly act to dramatically boost the size of its debt-crisis firewall, implement pro-growth policies and further integrate the euro zone, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned Monday.Christine, unfortunately, still doesn't quite get it. There's no money out there to hand to the IMF. We'd have to print it. She's not calling for immediate and drastic privatization of government entities, either. She's still clinging to the statist model.
"It is about avoiding a 1930s moment, in which inaction, insularity, and rigid ideology combine to cause a collapse in global demand," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in prepared remarks before the German Council of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. "A moment, ultimately, leading to a downward spiral that could engulf the entire world," she said.
Oh well. Give her time.
If Italy Is In Trouble Then England Is Totally Hosed
Eternal sunny optimist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard points out some depressing facts about England's debt situation. Here's a tiny bit of what he has to say with the rest at that link quite worth a short read.
Over the last couple of years, while America's private institutions have been deleveraging (while the state has completely lost its mind), British entities, both public and private, have continue to borrow like mad until they are now in the same fiscal position as utterly doomed Japan.
Luckily, the English have all that lovely civilized culture to fall back on when the money finally runs out and the socialist paradise the Labor Party tried to create inevitably crashes into smoking ruin.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
It's Over When Chuck Norris Says It's Over
For my wife, Gena, and I, we sincerely believe former Speaker Newt Gingrich is the answer to most of those questions and deserves our endorsement and vote.
We agree with our friend and governor of the great state of Texas, Rick Perry, when he suspended his campaign and endorsed Gingrich, that Newt “has the heart of a conservative reformer.” We believe Newt’s experience, leadership, knowledge, wisdom, faith and even humility to learn from his failures (personal and public) can return America to her glory days. And he is the best man left on the battlefield who is able to outwit, outplay and outlast Obama and his campaign machine.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Link Of The Day
Charles Murray, a longtime favorite of mine, penned a piece in the WSJ discussing the cultural divide in America. It's a wonderful essay, bull of great stuff. Part of it deals with how America's elite are becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the country.
And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.Read the whole thing. It's worth every minute.
Update: Our Monastery of Miscellaneous Musings has a perfect post to go along with Charles Murray's essay.