Thursday Biden Bash - Maybe not necessary

There are so many Biden gaffes and foibles that I could run this feature until 2020 in an attempt to point out why he would make a terrible president.  I might not need to do so.  It seems many on the left have soured on good 'ol Joe already.

Take this Huffington Post sample from last month:

But 2020 may not be Biden’s year. While he is better than many other Democrats at offering up economic populism, there are other rising movements for which he isn’t well positioned to be the face of the party.

Clinton lost. And with her defeat went many people’s hope that the nation would finally have its first female president. Afterward, women ― some of whom had supported Clinton and some who did not ― launched a resistance movement to push back on Trump’s policies and get more politically engaged. Record numbers of women are now running for office.

The movement has extended beyond politics. Men in entertainment, media, business and other areas are finally being held accountable for sexist behavior. From former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly to producer Harvey Weinstein to comedian Louis C.K., men are losing their jobs after years of having sexually harassed or assaulted women with impunity.

Biden is the wrong guy to bear the standard of any party purporting to speak for the victims of unaccountable power.

The article goes on to talk about Joe Biden's seemingly dismissive treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas SCOTUS hearings. Their point - he's not the right person to win on populism or with women. Possibly true. But if the left is pulling up stumps from camp Biden, then he might have already missed his window and the Thursday Biden Bash might not be necessary. Check back next Thursday and we'll see.

Trumps abortion Not-Gaffe

Donald Trump apparently made some abortion gaffe that is supposed to disqualify him from consideration for president.

In case you missed the tempest in a teapot, here's Chris Matthews, the 'interviewer' during the comments in question, on his take on the incident.  I say interviewer because it's clear that he was trying to set up Trump for future Democratic attacks.

What Trump said was not particularly a gaffe. He was basically saying, based on the premise proposed by Matthews, that if a woman breaks a law, she should be punished. It's just like his stance on illegal immigration. If it's illegal, someone who does it is breaking the law. For lawbreakers there is a penalty, or there should be.

Interestingly, at the liberal Huffington Post, they're saying that Trump is demanding accountability and not portraying a woman getting an abortion as an innocent victim in all of this but rather an active participant, most likely (though not always) as was the case during the conception as well. Granted, HuffPo says he gave the respect accidentally, providing the obligatory editorializing of their own pass for Trump.

Nevertheless the real reveal here was not that Trump is a law and order guy and it supercedes abortion considerations, rather the reveal is about Matthews. Clearly they view their political agendas ahead of the law of the land. It also reveals a little bit of inconsistency on the anti-abortion right - they have long held the view that the woman is not the target of the punishment but rather the provider is. When a man visits a prostitute in violation of anti-prostitution laws, both participants are in violation of the law. Why would this be any different?

This is not meant to be a full-throated, mind-numbed robot defense of Trump. As with Rush Limbaugh, I am simply pointing out what I'm seeing. I'm in line with Rush a number of other ways on Trump too. He's not my ideal candidate. I'm not endorsing him. I'm not trashing him either though - if he becomes the nominee, I would support him in a heartbeat over Clinton or Sanders.

Thursday Hillary Bash - I am not alone in this.

Every Thursday (almost), I've been posting a series called Thursday Hillary Bash, which outlines the Hillary Clinton presidential candidacy, from the perspective that she's exactly qualified to be president.  Of course that didn't stop the current White House resident, but that is all the more reason to capture and compile the reasons in one place (here) that she should not be the next POTUS.  Those reasons range from motives, to policies to political, to many others.  Happily, I have not been alone in posting about her flawed march towards the White House.

Here are some recent posts on Hillary Clinton from other bloggers that are worth reading today.

Legal Insurrection discussed the fact that Hillary Clinton is all machine, and no message.  Style over substance worked for Obama.  Have voters smartened up enough to see the same in her?

Conservative Black Chick 'lamented' the fall of both Clinton and Christie.

Conservative Blogs Central had an article about Clinton's sex scandals a couple of weeks ago.

Conservative Action Alerts raised the "gotcha" in Hillary's recent admission that her biggest regret is what happened in Benghazi.  Guess what Hillary, it's a pretty big regret for a lot of other people too.

Um...the Huffington Post discussed why Hillary might not be "IT" for the Democrats in lengthy detail.  Interesting read from the liberal perspective.  

Are We Aware Yet, recently reminded readers that Hillary Clinton is a wealth re-distributor just like Obama and electing her is simply a call for four more years.

Teri O'Brien wants you to know that Hillary Clinton is an embodiment of the Peter Principle (the notion that people get promoted until they reach their position of incompetence). Well, not exactly.  Teri O'Brien's take is that with every screw up, Hillary has moved up - something worse than the Peter Principle because she wasn't copetent at any level and was rewarded with promotions anyway.

Two Word Opinions: Not surprised

I've been falling behind on posting the last few days because of a busy schedule.  But I'm still here.  In the spirit though of being rushed and having little time to post, here are some more two word opinions on some current media fodder.  Longer posts hopefully will return soon.  As for deeper thoughts - sometimes two words carry a lot of meaning, and sometimes though shallow, go as deep as you need to go.

Two Word (or less) Opinions Again

When I'm busy with my day job I'm relegated to quick posts.  Nothing is much quicker than two word opinions.  While that can be shallow, it can also distill ideas into black and white, good versus bad, yes or no simplicity.  If that's all that ever came about, two word opinions would be bad.  As a starting point for further discussions later on, they make a good headline on a position.

AOL and Huffington train wreck

Train wreck

Does this train wreck make any sense? AOL is buying The Huffington Post in an effort to do what? Rebuild it's online empire, which has faltered over the last decade?

As Business Management noted last spring,

Last year AOL finally parted company with Time Warner after one of the most disastrous mergers in business history. Since buying Time Warner for $160 billion in 2001, AOL has hemorrhaged cash and market share after a string of bad decisions stemming from faulty predictions about the direction of web growth.

So AOL is betting on The Huffington Post to overcome a decade of decline? It's not going to happen. While The Huffington Post is a heavy hitter as blogs go, it's no media empire. The business model for AOL isn't the same as HuffPo either. Despite that, Bloomberg reports;

AOL Inc.’s deal to purchase the Huffington Post is more than a bet on the website’s financial prospects. It’s a wager on the ability of co-founder Arianna Huffington to build an online media empire, analysts say.

Under the $315 million acquisition agreement, Huffington, 60, will join AOL and become president and editor-in-chief of a newly formed media group. In the position, she’ll oversee all of New York-based AOL’s content, from the TechCrunch blog to the Patch local news sites to new content initiatives.

While the goal is to help AOL become a more powerful force in online advertising, there’s a risk in putting Huffington in charge of editorial, said Rob Enderle, a San Jose, California- based technology consultant. Her political views, often critical of corporations and Republicans, may be polarizing, he said.

Brent Bozell analyzed it the following way,

"They must be in such dire straits that they’ve been blinded by the millions and think an acquisition of The Huffington Post is worth sacrificing credibility and objectivity,” Bozell said. "AOL News is fooling only itself in thinking there is no journalistic conflict in merging with a hate-filled, vicious, radically left-wing rag.”

It goes beyond Bozell's comments however. AOL has a poor track record at mergers and acquisitions. In fact ever since it lost it's near monopoly on the Internet in the early days it has done far more faltering than anything else. This will not help AOL and it is far more likely to be yet another nail in the corporate coffin.

HuffPo Hypocrisy

No one expects every liberal to agree on every issue. But when they say one thing at one time and the opposite at another, that's hypocrisy. The can't even agree with themselves from 2009.  This time the hypocrisy is about the importance of jobs.

Huffington Post contributor Isaiah J. Poole opines today that jobs should be priority #1.

Jobs should be the first order of business of the 112th Congress. But when the new, Republican-led House of Representatives goes back to work on the week of January 18 its first agenda item will be the repeal of health care reform. Notwithstanding the labeling of their action as the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," not one job will be created or saved by the House vote. (Likewise, there is no substance to the claim that the health care reform law is "job-killing.")

The focus for both parties will then quickly turn to budget-cutting and a showdown over the lifting of the debt ceiling. Absent from the discussion would be the most important action that Congress could take this year: a multibillion-dollar program of direct spending on jobs, one that would immediately put people to work on the myriad jobs that need to be done, from paving streets to staffing public libraries.

One could argue that perhaps some liberals are finally getting it. Where was this discussion when the Democrats were ramming the health care bill down America's throat? Oh yeah, liberals were too busy cheering or egging the Democrats on. They were willing to neglect 10% unemployment to get their health care reform passed.  Now that it's hopefully peaked and retreated a bit closer to 9% (again, for now), suddenly it has become what needs the focus of America's Congress.  That's just because the Congress is now controlled by Republicans.  In other words - leave the new 2300 page law alone! We passed it despite the wishes of the people, so just let it stand and look after what we neglected, would you?

Jobs was never issue number one when the recession was at its bleakest moments.  The ARRA was not about jobs, it was about the liberals' pet projects.  What happened to all that shovel ready talk from the President?  Oops.  And health care reform was never about jobs, despite the ravings of Nancy Pelosi.  Democrats simply missed the boat on jobs.  Obama claimed it was his number one priority (one of many), but in reality they dropped the ball. Now that they are out of power, claiming jobs is priority one is disingenuous.  Poole's argument is simply one of convenience, and I'm sure on some level he knows it.

As an aside, it's interesting how Poole casually tosses out the "there is no substance to the claim that the health care reform law is 'job-killing.'"  It isn't? You can't just say that without backing it up.  How?  Where?

McCain Trashed By Liberal. Surprised?

Sourpuss McCain?

It's odd that my first opinion post of the new year would be one in defense of John McCain. In general I think he's been a political disaster for the Republican party, with respect to everything McCain-Feingold to his left leaning Republicanism to the Gang of 14, to his abysmal showing in the 2008 presidential election, he's not my guy. He's really not.  But during the 2008 Republican primary campaign, is if he were a liberal mole, the liberal media still championed him as a reasonable Republican. That's because he caved on a lot of issues, but probably also because they knew he was beatable.

Nevertheless, that was 2008 and this is 2011.  McCain served his purpose as stooge for the left and now that he's taken a conservative stand on a few issues in order to in part win his primary and in part cash in on the Tea Party wave to bolster his conservative credentials, liberals are leaving him dangling in the wind.  His drift to the right isn't fooling anyone.  Well, it isn't fooling conservatives, but apparently certain liberals are buying into it.  In typical fashion, the perceived conservatism from the left is being met, at least in one case, with open hostility.

Cliff Schecter, "President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post" , had some very negative things to say, about McCain as recently as three days ago.  In his defense, Mr. Schecter it seems was always on this page about McCain. But this view I expect, will take hold much more strongly in liberal quarters over the next six years because it is convenient for them now;

...the driving force for McCain has been pure vitriol and spite. When I first pointed out this inconvenient truth in my book, that many Republicans, including some willing to go on the record, were sure McCain was motivated by demons and not decency...

So when others still saw McCain’s breaking from President Bush on taxes, healthcare, the environment and gun control in the early 2000s as a sign of “independence,” I tried to point out what I had learned: He was just doing it because he hated Bush for beating him in the primaries. And when others saw his loss to then-Senator Barack Obama and thought he’d work with Obama to display his maverickyness once Obama was sworn in, I warned that in all likelihood we’d see McCain once again do his best Judge Elihu Smails impression.

But even I couldn’t have expected how truly ridiculous he’s become...

Not supporting a bill to prevent military suicides? Really? It’s almost like this particular Scrooge got a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Crazy while napping after an especially large portion of Quaker Oats.

That is really the gist of it, and it’s at the heart of who McCain has been his entire time in Washington, whether most journalists have been willing to see it or not. He’s not a statesman, nor has he ever been. He’s a petulant bomb thrower. He’s Simon Cowell in a suit.

In fact, in a slightly alternative universe, it wouldn’t really be all that hard to imagine McCain standing on a Times Square street corner screaming at passersby that they all deserve to go to hell, or challenging random strangers to a fight to the death using sticks to determine who gets his clay marble collection.

But in this one, he was just elected to another 6-year Senate term. And that tells you a helluva lot about the predicament in which we currently find ourselves as a nation.

And he calls McCain a bomb-thrower? To quote Mr. Schecter himself, "Really?" It's ironic that the place I found this personal attack was in Al Jazeera. I bet Mr. Schecter views Guantanamo as a recruiting tool for Al Qaida. I bet he also feels his words in an Arabic news service that sees fit to show Bin Laden's rants unfiltered as being helpful to the U.S. cause.

In any case, as I've pointed out to conservatives and progressives alike, personal attacks DO NOTHING to advance a healthy debate on issues. John McCain is wrong on a lot issues (and right on a couple), but he does not deserve to be compared to a street corner maniac.  John McCain doesn't need my help defending himself., he's statesmen-like enough and I don't think he's ever bowed to a Saudi King or touched the Queen of England out of protocol.  I'm sure this blistering attack of vitriol hasn't kept John McCain from getting to sleep at night. Defending John McCain isn't the point here.  My point is that once again it is evident that liberals are bound to their Alinsky tactic of personal attack because they either,

(i) find it effective

(ii) have no logic-based argument to put forth

(iii) don't know any other way to debate

or 

(iv) they really enjoy insulting people.

Liberals argue and are purportedly striving for a greater human condition where everyone is each other's keeper and everyone looks after the greater good of humanity.  Wonderful.  It should be disconcerting for anyone who believes in that sort of calculus that many who supposedly espouse that sort of progressivist belief are some of the most hate-filled people around.  Would you trust your well-being to someone who is like that?

First thoughts on the Deficit Commission report

Not my thoughts, I haven't had a chance to read the report yet, but I will.  Rather, here's some responses that you might find interesting. First a few from the far left.  WARNING:  try not to choke while reading this.

Nancy Pelosi;

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it was “simply unacceptable.”

“Any final proposal from the commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren’s economic security as well as for our nation’s fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare,” she said in a statement.

Bernie Sanders;

“The Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan is extremely disappointing and something that should be vigorously opposed by the American people,” Sanders said in a statement. “The huge increase in the national debt in recent years was caused by two unpaid wars, tax breaks for the wealthy, a Medicare prescription drug bill written by the pharmaceutical industry, and the Wall Street bailout. Unlike Social Security, none of these proposals were paid for.”

Mike Lux at Huffington Post;

I wrote my initial post in such a hot rage over the proposal to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits that I didn't take the time to edit my blog post (sorry about those strange sentence structures), or take the time to look at the details of the proposal. So now that I have calmly taken some time to do that, I have to admit that I was wrong: this thing is even worse than I originally thought, and I way understated the problems with it. The co-chairs and staff found every conceivable way to screw the middle class in ways big (very big) and small, but barely nicked the bankers who caused the meltdown of the economy, or the wealthy whose massive tax cuts ended the big budget surpluses as far as the eye could see coming out of the Clinton years.

The upshot - liberals hate it. It involves spending cuts and for them that is anathema. After such simple wrongness, how about a palate cleanser? First off, keep in mind everywhere you hear the words bi-partisan in relation to this commission, keep the following numbers in mind - 12 Democrats, 6 Republicans.

Now, for a conservative take on it, from National Review;

We are both pleasantly surprised and modestly encouraged by the program outlined by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the president’s deficit-reduction task force. There’s no VAT in sight, nor is there unrealistic happy-talk about balancing the budget through a federal Taylorism campaign or symbolic assaults on the unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, there is a serious series of concrete proposals for constraining entitlement costs, simplifying the tax code, and putting a leash on future federal expenditures. Whereas the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate had put the country on the road toward a national debt topping 200 percent of GDP — with $1 trillion a year in interest payments alone — the Bowles-Simpson program would stabilize the debt and begin reducing it. The program would keep the debt to 40 percent of GDP in 2037 and would bring annual deficits down to a more manageable 2.2 percent of GDP by 2015, and 1 percent in the following years.

The plan has serious defects, the main one being that it establishes a historically high level of federal claims on the economy — with government revenue equal to 21 percent of GDP — as the new normal. But it is a good start, and it represents the sort of bipartisan starting point that even the most Tea Party–steeped Republican insurgents could begin with while remaining true to their core conservative values. That is not something we’d expected to write about a proposal produced by a go-along-get-along Republican retiree and Bill Clinton’s old chief of staff.

Truly bizarro world - liberals mad at the Democrat commission and conservatives not warm to it, but agreeable that it's a good starting point. Where it leads at this point is unclear but it will prove to be an interesting road to travel.

What's next for liberals?

If you need a further jolt of enthusiasm after yesterday (I know I did, glass half full type that I am of late) take a look at some liberal opinions on how things went down. Surf, troll, enjoy.  In doing so I came across on opinion piece from Michael Kieschnick at Huffington Post.  It's his 10 point plan to for liberals re-group after the loss.  THIS, is what's next for liberals. By the way, it's wonderful in it's self-reinforcing construct.

Here are the main points (partially verbatim, partially paraphrased, full version here):

1. Commit to Taking Down FOX News

2. Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session to force disclosure of corporate contributions 'brings the enemy out in the open'.

3. Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

4. Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision.

5. Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality.

6. Demand that the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service investigate the political organizations set up by Karl Rove to launder millions of dollars in secret cash to change the outcome of elections.

7. Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress.

8. Convince the Obama administration to stop appealing progressive court rulings on matters like the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the state secrets defense against torture and wiretapping.

9. Urge Democratic senators to do away with lifetime tenure for committee chairs and open up all chair positions to majority vote elections.

10. Demand that the Department of Justice enforce the provisions of the national voter registration law that require state governments to offer to register all voters at departments of public welfare and motor vehicles.

You know what, forget what I said before.  That.plan.is. BRILLIANT!!!!

If that's how the left wants to focus their energies, I say go for it.  That will surely defeat the GOP in 2012 and beyond and it will definitely ensure President Obama outperforms his 2008 campaign.

Andy Ostroy's liberal anger

Stupidity is contagious. So is liberal anger.

And they told you the Tea Party people were angry.  The President himself, while campaigning, said people clung to guns and religion.  They're just so full of hatred and vitriol on the left.  Not everyone, but there is a tangible hatred on the left for anyone who has different values.  It's not always violent but it's always bad to be so full of hatred.  And many on the left, really are full of anger, and it isn't that much of a stretch from there to full on hatred.  Don't believe me?

Want proof?  Try checking out Andy Ostroy's liberal anger on his recent Huffington Post post.

Don't Worry - They Still Hate You

I just finished posting about how the Democrats are going to hold their collective noses and embrace the Tea Parties as much as they can for the next few months.  Obviously the internal polls look abysmal.  It doesn't mean they've found religion, liberty, fiscal sanity or anything of the sort.  Though they'll gladly play that role on TV.  They need your vote.  Now they don't necessarily hate you, but they do more closely align with the likes of Huffington Post types who can not so slickly hide their hatred.

Obama is the left's Yesterday's News

The difference between 2008 and 2010 is stunning.  The idealized Obama for many people on the left never materialized.  By running as an image, rather than being honest about his agenda, people fit him to their own ideal version of the President.  that's clearly a great strategy for getting elected.  The flip side of that coin, is that it's not so good for keeping people happy.  If everyone was expecting their own version of a perfect President, 99.9% of people would eventually end up disappointed in at least some regard.  With sliding poll numbers the President is witnessing the effects of that right now.  Now for many liberals, the President has become, as a result of that disappointment, yesterday's news.

Alec Baldwin's Politics of Personal Destruction, Extreme Edition

I have to admit, I've enjoyed a number of Alec Baldwin movies. His politics however, are another matter. They are often so skewed as to be a form of entertainment in and of themselves. When I'm not busy ignoring his political pontifications, I'm probably reading or watching with a snicker or two. The problem with the rants of Mr. Baldwin, is that he sometimes seems to be locked into a fictional world, reminiscent of his movies. That type of environment makes for good movie drama, bud bad politics.

Yesterday in the Huffington Post, Alec Baldwin actually called on progressives, and presumably all Americans from his choice of words, to get behind the effort to put an American oil company OUT OF BUSINESS. For real. Were it not so palatable to the green wing of the progressive movement (not to mention the socialists) it would be more laughable entertainment.

The goal of this country's energy policy, long-term, should be to trigger a series of events that would lead to one clear measurement of our progress. That is the collapse of a major oil company. If a major oil company went out of business, we would be on the right track.

He states it as a goal. He thinks of it as being on the right track. Why would he think that? Because it's an American industry that he dislikes. He may dislike it because it's profitable, or because it's not an environmentally friendly industry. He may not even dislike it. Maybe he's being honest about just wanting to kill America's dependence on foreign oil. In any case his solution, typical of progressive thinking, is progress through destruction.

He sees the unemployment of potentially tens of thousands of Americans as good. He sees the resulting shortage of oil in America, however temporary as a short term pain for a long term gain. It doesn't matter to him that the oil tankers won't sink, or that the demand will be filled by the remaining competitors who are less constrained by competitive forces than before. It doesn't matter if those competitors are domestic or foreign. He probably would prefer that they are foreign.

It doesn't matter to Mr. Baldwin that shareholders will lose wealth, or that by reducing supply, you DO NOT affect demand, only price, and that demand for oil in the industrialized world is relatively inelastic, meaning more money will be spent by average Americans, not less. It has not occured to him that by taking out an oil company, does nothing to promote the rainbows and gumdrops and magically materialize cheap, efficient and abundant solar power.

What he's interested in is the politics of personal destruction. If it were one person, a non-criminal average American, people would be appalled at his sentiment. Except the 'personal' isn't one individual, it's a faceless corporation. But behind it employees, shareholders, consumers and America exist, and all of them will be hurt if his wishes were to come true. That's extreme. But its okay, because his heart's in the right place, right? Butterflies and unicorns are the future, and damn anyone who would dare get in the way of that peaceful future.

If it weren't so ridiculous, he'd be a danger. But the Huffington Post seems to be more than happy to propogate that sort of garbage, without anyone thinking of the consequences. So maybe it is a danger after all.