Archive for the ‘party politics’ Category

How left is Obama?

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Obama was surrounded by the lunatic death-to-Americans left, his friends and social circle all come from those crazies, which led to widespread suspicion he was and is one of them – that he is a crazed commie nazi muslim who seeks to destroy America and reduce Americans to poverty and slavery.  Birds of a feather flock together.  On the other hand, a lot of people believe he is a moderate centrist.

He is now surrounded by the pillars of the Harvard Goldman Wall Street establishment, leavened with a fair few death-to-Americans crazies whom he helicoptered into top positions, but invariably positions where their actual ability to bring death to Americans is rather limited, which positions have been resentfully described by their demented denizens as “policy Siberia”, a disappointed complaint that implies they see Obama as really the moderate centrist, rather than really the crazed commie nazi muslim.

Those who think that Obama is lunatic left think that Bush was a left winger, and those who think that Obama is centrist think that Bush was far right, so there is evidently broad agreement that Obama policies are not all that different from Bush’s policies.

Bush’s big spending becomes much bigger spending, Bush’s heavy handed regulation becomes regulation considerably more heavy handed and much more hostile to business.  Bush’s disastrous affirmative action has not much changed, foreign war becomes foreign war with somewhat more cringing before our enemies – the bowing is uniquely Obama, but the Hasan debacle was unchanged Bush policy. Politically correct warfare in Afghanistan has become even more politically correct warfare in Afghanistan.

Politicians always tend towards compromise, and politically correct warfare is a compromise between making war and making peace, but of course, such a compromise is unviable – it was unviable for Bush, and even less viable for Obama.  You either have to annihilate the enemy with ruthless disregard for the women and children, or else cut and run.  There is no middle road.  The Bush disease has infected west point, which now upholds the politically correct position that slaying our enemies is so last century, a transformation that represents a victory for the State Department over the Pentagon.

If one considers these Bush policies to be left wing, as I do, then Obama’s policies are lunatic left, his crazy pals hanging out in “policy Siberia” are looming threat of cataclysm, and the fact that he is surrounded by pillars of the Harvard Goldman Wall Street establishment just shows how corrupt, decadent, incompetent, and out of touch with reality our establishment has become.

To synthesize these conflicting views of Obama, it is necessary to realize he is just not very bright.  People overestimate Obama’s intelligence, because he presents as one of the Harvard elite, which he culturally belongs to.  Therefore, he sincerely believes progressivism is moderate, humane, centrist, and good for America, and the swift implementation of these policies will make himself and democrats popular, while his brighter fellow believers (seething bitterly in policy Siberia) believe that Americans are evil sinners, and deserve to suffer progressivism every bit.

Obama delusively believes himself fairly moderate, but fears that if he was entirely frank, others would not see him so.

Obama lashes out at the innocent to protect the guilty

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Immediately after losing a senate seat to a Republican populist, Obama the next day proceeded to go populist.  He, is, he tells us, going to punish those unregulated wall street fat cats who caused the crisis.

He is going to tax the banks, and restrict proprietary trading by banks.  But proprietary trading had little to do with the crisis.

All the things that caused the crisis are still going:  the continuing misbehavior of Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA, the continuing regulatory pressure on banks to lower credit standards for non Asian minorities, and the continuing government created opportunity for banks to unload dud mortgages on the taxpayer.

Past private misbehavior was facilitated by the hedge fund activities of  too-big-to-fail AIG selling naked CDSs, and too-big-to-be-defaulted-on Goldman and Sach, purchasing naked CDSs.  These activities enabled banks to unload the dud politically correct loans that they made.

The misbehavior of AIG and Goldman was downstream of the center of the problem ? banks made dud loans, and then unloaded them thanks to the hedge fund activities of too-big-to-fail businesses, primarily AIG.  The problem was that the government wanted, and still wants, banks to make dud loans, and will do whatever it takes to get them to make dud loans.  When too-big-to-fail hedge funds ceased to facilitate dud loans, this was a crisis, which crisis the government has swiftly acted to remedy.

Today banks get to unload their dud loans directly on the government. The taxpayer is “stabilizing” the market for unwanted mortgages, which is a huge off the books housing subsidy to minorities, irresponsible borrowers, irresponsible lenders, and bums with no credit rating.

Precisely because AIG and Goldman have stopped their bad conduct, bad conduct that the government needed and wanted, government stepped in, and is now doing exactly the stuff that AIG and Goldman were doing.

The lesser hedge funds did the right thing throughout, and the smaller they were, the more right they were – naturally so, because if a smaller hedge fund screws up, no one bails them out.

The one populist intervention against fat cats that would be both effectual and popular is a special tax or special restrictions on businesses that are too big to fail, and this one populist and popular intervention is not proposed, and is highly unlikely.

The lesson of NY 23 election

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

The election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District was a straight up and down test of Tea Party conservatism and Palin Republicanism against “moderate” Republicanism.

It proved, decisively, that Palin Republicanism wins votes and that “moderate” Republicanism loses votes.

It proved, decisively, that “moderate” Republicans wish the party harm.

Dede Scozzafava

Dede Scozzafava

The Republican party machine (the NRCC and the RNC) gave near a million dollars to a candidate who in the end endorsed the Democratic party candidate, thus exposing “moderate” Republicanism as treason against the party. A purge will ensue, or else a third party run. Possibly both, an incomplete and ineffectual purge, leading to a third party run. The swift unification of the party around Hoffman suggests an effectual purge may be happening.

Those who supported Scozzafava are revealed as dupes or traitors. If the purge fails to remove from power everyone who supported giving a million dollars to the candidate who endorsed the Democrat, a third party run is likely. If those who run the party are not loyal to it, who will be?

Palin Republicanism may not necessarily be able to save the Republican party, but it certainly has lot better chance than “moderate” Republicanism. It might be able to postpone the apocalypse for a decade or so, though eventually elections will be fought between the likes of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution.

Democracy has an inherent drift towards self destruction. The masses are seduced by demagogues who promise them they can vote themselves rich, leading to bankruptcy and social war. But when the drift gets out of hand, when the end approaches too rapidly, there is a reaction as final collapse comes in sight, leading to a retreat from the abyss. The 1948 Congress that rejected Truman’s Fair Deal and proceeded to disband war socialism, and the Reagan revolution were such reactions to the alarmingly rapid approach of self destruction, and Palin may well be the next one – probably the last one.

Since 1994 I have been predicting collapse around 2020—2025 or so. If Palin succeeds, my prediction will need to be substantially rescheduled. I hope for the best, but expect the worst.

Fighting to lose in Afghanistan.

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Hillary has just announced that it is fine by her for Karzai to steal the election.

“that bestowed legitimacy from that moment forward”

Details, x

Democrats of the Vietnam generation long for a re-run of Vietnam. Karzai is militarily incompetent, an enemy of western civilization, and is fighting to lose, thus to allow him to steal the election is defeatism, guaranteeing the Vietnam quagmire that Democrats long for.  Next stop, conscription, compulsory voluntary community service.

The correct response, as I have long argued, to this and to each of Karzai’s previous grave provocations, is to put him in a sack, and drop the sack on Pakistan’s presidential palace from ten thousand feet as a message to the president of Pakistan.

This Afghan government is clearly a disadvantage in our efforts to slay our enemies.  If Afghanistan can only be governed by enemy tyrants, why should we permit it to be governed?  Propping up governments is hard, costly, and bloody.  Propping up illegitimate enemy tyrannies is stupid.

In Afghanistan we are already defeated. From now on, it is just a theatrical display of American weakness and impotence, to the great rejoicing of our enemies within and without.

Sarah Palin in charge

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

In my previous post, I observed that when the Republican party machine says one thing, and Sarah Palin says a different thing, Republican party activists do what Sarah Palin says, and not what the party machine says.  But, of course, we next have to ask do Republican voters do what Republican party activists say, or do they do what the party machine says?

The question is now answered.

going rogue: compassionate conservatism

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Sarah Palin has announced

Our nation is at a crossroads, and this is once again a “time for choosing.”

But unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican party, “the political machine” does not want a straight up and down vote on the choice.

Suddenly Sarah Palin is the leader of the Republican party, and “the political machine” is no longer the leader,  for when “the political machine” endorsed Dede Scozzafava for New York’s 23rd Congressional district, Republican money and volunteers failed to flow to Dede Scozzafava, but when Sarah Palin endorsed Doug Hoffman for New York’s 23rd Congressional district, Republican money and volunteers did flow to Doug Hoffman.

Stick a fork in, their goose is cooked.  The electoral is heading to a straight up and down vote on Sarah Palin’s list of issues – on the crossroads as she defines it.

Republican party hacked

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Before I was an engineer, I was an entryist.  Engineering pays better, but the big advantage of engineering is that one’s coworkers are less likely to kill one.  Working with evil people is not  a good idea.

Entryism is a small team of conspirators trying to manipulate and control another organization – usually a larger organization with a bigger mailing list and more funds.  Thus for example a small group of political extremists, a team of half a dozen or so people, would naturally like to take over an big organization involved in some big money, moderately leftist, politically progressive task such as funding housing for the poor, if lots of funding for the poor flows through the housing organization.

There are commonalities between computer engineering and entryism, particularly security engineering.  A background in entryism gives important insights into security engineering.  Entryism is the same sort of job as hacking, but with entryism, one works entirely on human factors, whereas with hacking, one only partially works on human factors, and mostly focuses on such things as buffer overflows and protocol failures.  There are some similarities between taking over someone’s website through flaws in the software, and taking over someone else’s organization through flaws in their internal processes – the main commonality being to distinguish between the way things are supposed to work, and the very different way they actually work.  The frame of mind and way of looking at things is similar, like a magician’s misdirection.  To attack, one looks for ways that expectations can be violated.  Conversely, to make stuff secure, one tries to make sure that expectations cannot be violated.  The excruciatingly complicated procedure for electing a new pope reflects a thousand years of such attacks by ancient entryists aimed at rigging the election, and thousand years of security design aimed at making sure the election works the way it appears to work.  The papal election procedure is sometimes studied by computer security engineers to illuminate their art.

Entryists use fraud and lies, while hackers use some combination of fraud, lies, buffer overflows, and protocol failures.  Hackers tend to be nerdly people who eat far too much junk food, while entryists usually played in the right sports teams at the right educational institutions, and have good social skills. (Perhaps that is why I wound up in engineering instead.  It is more my line)

Now recently the GOP has nominated the extreme left candidate Scozzafava for a seat in congress –  and I do mean extreme left.  So naturally, with my background, I suspected entryism.  The Democrats might well nominate an extreme left candidate and regularly do, the Republicans might well nominate a candidate so “moderate” that he looks suspiciously like a Democrat, but extreme left?  This “Republican” lady is far to the left of the Democratic party candidate.

A bunch of republican blogs are, reasonably enough having hysterics, among them Michell Malkin and Moonbattery

Scozzafava turns out to be the candidate of the Working Families Party, whose name is typical of entryist front group names– a more or less random string of moderate sounding words that carries no real meaning.  The declared objective of the Working Families Party is to move the Democratic Party further to the left.  To influence group X is a fairly typical mission statement of an entryist team, though their real objectives usually involve a lot more than mere influence.

But the dead give away is that they share their headquarters with Acorn.  Long ago a team of entryists took over Acorn, and this team now hangs out at Acorn headquarters, Acorn being the largest and best funded of the many, many, many, many organizations that the team has taken over.  A great pile of organizations share Acorn headquarters, more than anyone can keep track of, and the theoretically separate funds, agendas, objectives and activities of these organizations are all mingled, and they are all run by the same people from the same office .  This is the usual pile of residue accumulated by a successful entryist team.  If someone has fifteen thousand credit card numbers with names, real addresses and login passwords, you know he is a hacker.  If someone has a hundred organizations, with separate mailing lists and funding, you know he is an entryist.  If someone has the backing of an organization that turns out to be a hundred organizations all with one headquarters, you know he is an entryist.

But entryists are like termites.  If one entryist is in an organization with assets and name worth having, there are usually others.  Termites do not mean the house is fallen yet, but if drastic measures are not taken, the house will soon fall.  It is time for a hard disk reformat and restoration from backup.

Betraeus, the candidate to smash the GOP

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Hot air tells us that:

Petraeus is the only candidate who can unite the GOP

What gives him this magic power to unite the GOP?

Well, it seems that this terrible GOP is foolishly and obstinately in favor of terrible and foolish GOP principles:

Over the past couple of decades, the American people have grown more pro-environment, more culturally tolerant, and more suspicious of the unregulated free market, and yet the Republican Party has responded with a series of litmus tests for its presidential candidates that represent the political equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “la la la, I can’t hear you.

Fortunately, for the GOP, the good General Petraeus opposes every single principle that matters for the GOP base, with the sole exception that he wants to conduct an unpopular war against Afghans to force on them a moderate version of Islam, a animatronic version of Islam, a version of Islam that actually is the religion of peace, that treats women with dignity, refrains from executing apostates, and so on and so forth.

Creating a fake version of Islam that fits nicely into the pretty multicutural rainbow and getting Afghans to swallow it is not a realistic military objective.  In fact it is not even a military objective.  Soldiers kill people and break things.  Military objectives are the kind of objectives you can achieve by killing people and breaking things.

So a general who has been conducting a losing war will unite the GOP behind everything it hates, plus a policy of continuing to lose the war for the next four years.

Obama hates Americans

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

Brutally honest points to an interesting statement by President Barack Hussein Obama:

We are putting the full force of the White House and the State Department to make sure that not only is this is a successful games but that visitors from all around the world feel welcome, and I think that, you know,  over the last several years sometimes sometimes, uh, that … that fundamental truth about the United States has been lost, one of the legacies I think of … of this Olympic Games in Chicago would be a restoration of that understanding of … of what the United States is all about, and the United States’ recognition of how we are linked to the world.

Observe the presupposition that foreigners fear that America is full of racists who might attack them, were it not for the vigorous force of the US government protecting people from evil and violent American citizens.

The brilliance of Sarah Palin’s “common sense conservatism”

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

When the nation is in trouble, “common sense conservativism” sure sounds mighty attractive, even if you do not know, or much care, what precisely it means.  Sarah Palin is a politician who has her finger right on the pulse of the ordinary American.

If you are a “common sense conservative” then that implies that other conservatives, such as perhaps “compassionate conservatives”, are naive utopians who brought disaster on the nation, which makes them very like the “hope and changies” of the nutty left.

And Sarah Palin, after explaining she is “common sense conservative” then proceeds to stick it to the Bush/Obama regime for pissing away trillions of dollars, nearly a year’s income for every American:Sarah Palin, Hong Kong, CLSA Asia Pacific Markets Conference, Sept. 23, 2009

We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that led to the collapse of the financial market, it was rooted in a good-natured, but wrongheaded, desire to increase home ownership among those who couldn’t yet afford to own a home. In so many cases, politicians on the right and the left, they wanted to take credit for an increase in home ownership among those with lower incomes. But the rules of the marketplace are not adaptable to the mere whims of politicians.

“Good natured but wrong headed” Can you say “compassionate conservative” and “hope and change”?

Observe the reaction: The speech was supposedly boring. It was also supposedly so outrageous that people walked out in disgust. Furthermore, she supposedly did not say anything. She said nothing, nothing, nothing, NOTHING – a reaction that sounds like people sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming “I can’t hear you”, a sure sign that a politician has struck gold, for it is clear that she said something, and that that something was very far from boring.