Greatest Speaker Evah!

Is it just me, or does Obama without a teleprompter sounds like .. uh uh ummm uh uh ...the world's most boring porn soundtrack?

Libertarians need to ... get a life

I've been beating on Republicans a bit lately, and so, having been inspired by a Girl in Short Shorts, I'll take a break and beat up on Libertarians. Your party sucks, please get over it. Don't get me wrong - most of the ideas are pretty good, and at least you vote your beliefs (unlike the Coke / Pepsi partisans), but given a choice between discussing political philosophy with a bunch of Big-L Libertarians and converting to Marxism - well, it'd be a tough call.

My biggest problem with Libertarians is that if they can't have it 100% their way, they want to take their ideas and go home. It's taken over 80 years to create the Keynesian mess we're in today, and it's going to take at least several decades to get out of it. Personally, I think the best road to take is to gently (or cattle-) prod your friends into more (small-l) libertarian ideas and inject those into the Coke and Pepsi parties.

It's pretty easy. For example, Republicans generally understand that the media hates them and their only hope is to be so ridiculously effective that even Obama's lackeys can't cover it up. This means not spending the country into the ground and promoting / going along with ridiculous economic policies (hello, Bush era!) that plunge the world into recession. You can't keep activist judges off the Supreme Court if the unemployment rate is going up faster than Obama's illegal campaign contributions.

Another example: Republicans pretty much get that prohibition doesn't work with guns. It's not a huge leap to get them to understand that it doesn't work with drugs either, and that side effects of the drug war include funding corruption in Mexico, the Taliban, a huge chunk of the organized crime in the US, and stuffing nonviolent offenders into our already overcrowded prisons. If a police state like the Soviet Union couldn't keep the drugs out, how is an open democracy going to do it?

Some other notes, while we're at it:

We're not going back to the gold standard, so get over it.

Ron Paul is a crank who is tight with people who wear sheets on their heads. You don't want to ever associate yourselves with someone like that. Dump him like smelly leftovers.

Ron Jeremy has a better chance of being elected President than Bob Barr. Seriously.

And, finally, highlighting the backwards "love" in R-evol-ution makes you look like a bunch of retarded hippies. Even if it didn't, it's not that clever. Knock it off.

Republicans aren't ready to Move On and embrace Change.

Note: Believe it or not, I don't hate Republicans. Most of my friends vote that way. I'd generally rather have them in control than the Democrats, although over the last four years I'd call it a wash. If you're a Republican and reading this, think of it as tough love.

The Great Republican Blame Machine continues its witch hunt... now it's the Libertarian's fault their party is now less relevant than the winner of America's Next Top Model. I'm picking on Robert Stacy McCain in the link, but he's hardly alone in this foolishness and I'll give him points for showing my reply shredding his less-than-erudite commentary. Never mind that the so-called "Liberaltarianism" he harps on doesn't exist outside of the speculations of a few columnists. The Socialism (excuse me) Progressivism embodied by the Democratic Party is pretty much the antithesis of Libertarianism. A few of the most ardent potheads and cokeheads may have voted for Obama on fight-for-your-right-to-party grounds had they actually been able stagger through the bong smoke or pull their noses away from the bathroom counters long enough to go find a ballot box (not likely), but believing this had any meaningful impact is about two orders of magnitude more asinine than believing the youth vote got Obama elected.

The theories have been piling up since November, each more hysterical (in both the humorous and insane senses) than the next: Obama used the Internet better. Republicans are underrepresented on Twitter. Obama had a better MySpace page. Google is run by Democrats. OK, well, these things may have cost some immesurably small number of votes ("You know, I was thinking about voting for McCain, but Obama Twitters! That is change I can believe in!"), but it's nothing like the number of votes they lost by nominating an indecisive old crank who - despite his crankiness - couldn't stomach a Jeramiah Wright commercial. Republicans would, in general, rather worry about Twitter than worry about the fact that 15% of their base is comprised of small-minded bigots who weren't going to nominate a Mormon who might have actually stood a chance at winning. Because that would be like voting for the Devil or something (there's an excellent documentary on people like this).

The real problem is that Republicans are too comfortable with the status quo to get off their fat butts and do anything - and I do mean anything - about the situation. It's not just that they're completely and totally unwilling to police their own, take a short-term hit and let a wobbly member of their party lose a seat (which might actually keep the rest of them in line). They won't even do the little things. Take, for example, NBC. Their MS-NBC channel was pretty much an Obama infomercial during the entire Presidential Campaign. Their parent company, General Electric, is one of the great purpotrators and beneficiaries of the global warming scam. So you'd think that Republicans, as a matter of principle, would avoid funding their political opposition by watching NBC programming. Wrong. The SuperBowl comes around, and they're suckling at the Socialist teat that gives them their precious NFL. I mentioned the possibility of missing a sporting event that they'll barely remember three weeks later to several Republicans. Here are the excuses I got:

"But dude, it's football."

"I'm not a Nielsen rater, so nobody will know."

So, you know, what you do when nobody's watching doesn't really matter. Nice to know that deep in their hearts nearly all Republicans have the same underlying moral principle as the Obama Administration. But what about when people are watching and counting each and every individual action? For instance, with Obama's other group of die-hard supporters: Hollywood. I can understand them not being able to watch a different channel. That would require pushing a button on the remote control (and in some cases, actually leaning forward or - extreme! - standing up). But with Hollywood, they have to decide which completely arbitrary and nonessential entertainment activity they will occupy their time with, then leave their houses, drive in their cars, purchase tickets for, etc. Can they control their spoiled little selves and not support people who will use their money to fund the Reign of the Obamessiah? Umm... no. That would mean missing X-Men XVIII - Wolverine Gets A Haircut. And we can't have that, now, can we?

Republicans need Change. They need to start with their small actions, and follow-up at the ballot box. Until they change themselves, they can enjoy watching the Progressives continue to ... progress.

As for me, I'm not watching NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, XNBC, LNBC, or RGNBC (not sure if the last few exist, but I want to cover all of my bases). I don't care who does or doesn't count this.

I'm also not going to see Hollywood movies. There are plenty of good foriegn films out there.

Day late, a dollar (or trillion) short.

Ahh... the $800 bajillion dollar stimulus bill passes the house. All 177 Republicans and a dozen or so Democrats oppose it. And the crowd goes wild!

Too bad the Republicans are a few years late and just under $1,800,000,000,000 short (Republicans bail out their Wall Street pals + Democrats buy themselves a couple million more votes). Nice to know the party’s representatives in Washington found their cajones when all they could offer was a meaningless gesture that didn’t even create a speed-bump in the house. Actually, never mind - meaningless gestures don’t require any guts. They’re just sucking up to try to salvage what’s left of their power, and their base is positively swooning over it. Pathetic.

What did their sudden discovery of fiscal responsibility accomplish? Exactly, precisely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Losers who go around signing Internet petitions accomplished more than this.

But whose fault is this really? The congresscritters? Bush? Try the Republican base. They keep voting these ballot leeches back in - despite their miserable budgetary performances - year after year after year because of the abject terror of losing any ground on other issues. "Vote for us or gays will marry and babies will get aborted! Liberal judges will tell filthy hippies it's ok to smoke weed!" (Disclaimer: I'm actually for two of these four issues). Everyone just sort of forgot that when you spend the country into the ground, fail to stop the insane lending requirements that created the housing bubble, and then tell everyone you're regulating Wall Street when you're ummm... not... you create crisis that end up getting you voted out. Am I smoking crack, or did the Republicans control the House, Senate, and Presidency just a few years ago? They had full control; they could have fixed these things. Democrats may have created some of these policies, and share much of the blame, but doing nothing to solve these issues makes the Republicans their dim-witted co-conspirators. Responsibility for these problems falls on them, and now the monetary chickaaaahns.... are comin' home..... to roost! And you're still going to get gays marrying (fine with me) and drive-through partial-birth abortions for 12-year-olds without parental notification (not so cool with that). That's what sacrificing your principles and voting out of fear gets you.

Vote every single one of ‘em out and start over. Or better yet, just dump the Republican party and go somewhere else.

On Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment is one of those ideas that works better in theory than in practice. In theory, I have no problem with the state killing killers. In practice, the people doing the prosecuting achieve considerable political gain for pushing for the "we're all mad so let's kill somebody" solution instead of actual, you know, justice. Because actually killing the right person may be difficult if not impossible and we can't let that screw up our next election, now can we?

Blatant and well-publicised prosecutorial abuse doesn't even seem like much of a career detriment these days if the new Senator from the Great(ly screwed up) State of Illinois is anything to go by.

There's one exception where I think capital punishment is appropriate and necessary, prosecutorial misconduct be damned: Any legislator caught accepting bribes should be crucified (old-school) in front of their legislative building, and their body left in place to rot as a warning to the others. It gives a whole new meaning to "getting nailed." Or maybe death by impaling. Tough to decide which.

Pelosi - More abortion will help the economy

From an interview with George Sephanopolous at ABC News (via Yuval Levin at The Corner via DrewM at Ace of Spades), Nancy Pelosi delivers this little nugget of Progressive Truth:

Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

It digs down to one of the most basic, core, fundamental differences between progressives and libertarians / conservatives.

Progressives see people as a liability - mouths to feed, drains on the limited resources of our fragile planet and benevolent state, etc.

Libertarians and conservatives see people as assets that can contribute to the economy with their work and the betterment of humankind with their inventive genius.

Of course if the people in these movements make these judgements based on their peers, it's easy to see why they feel this way.

It also underscores the real reason that Progressives fight so hard for the open borders and refuse to do anything about illegal immigration. People's political beliefs are often based on those of their parents. Progressives need to build new generations of people who are dependent on their largess to support their power base, and the numbers they gain jumping the fence are roughly the numbers they lose to "family planning" (I just love the way that euphemism drips with irony).

Caroline Kennedy for Senate!

Caroline Kennedy's qualifications for the Senate are about the same as Paris Hilton's (minus the sex tape). And, come to think of it, I may owe Paris an apology for this one...