The Good Presidents

The two Presidents Bush earlier tonight at the World Series:



The good guys have their moment. Brings back memories -- good ones.

Wretchard's Prediction

Wretchard [Richard Fernandez] expanding on observations by Charles Krauthammer, has an interesting take on the aftermath of the upcoming election. If, as many expect, the Republicans gain control of at least one house of Congress, the only way Obama can continue to put his reforms in place is through the federal bureaucracy. This sets up an interesting situation:

Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency.”  That will be the main card for 2011 and what a humdinger it will be. If a conservative Congress attempts to cut back on the agencies, the giant bureaucracy will be fighting for its life. In that capacity it will be formidable. In zero-sum game against the President and the agencies, Congress may be the political underdog without allies.

Where will it find them? The only plausible allies that Congress can line up behind it are the States. The States are the other separate power in the Federal structure. Their stake in the outcome is as great as anyone else’s.  At some point in an all-in political conflict, especially when money and authority is concerned,  the several states are likely to play a part in proceedings.  It is unlikely they will watch completely passively from the sidelines. With Washington in a meltdown and a divided capital struggling in unparalleled acrimony, there’s a possibility the states will be drawn in, perhaps through Interstate Compacts, or simply through political persuasion. What will they do about Obamacare, financial reform and carbon emissions?

What may occur after the Tea Party breaks over the capital is not that the wave will dissipate, but that the impetus will return to to the States and spread downwards from there. 

Read it here.

Some degree of conflict between federal mandates, largely unfunded, and State governments is inevitable. State governments simply cannot afford to comply with many federal dictates. And the response by Democrats and the MSM to State insubordination is equally inevitable. They will invoke the mid-twentieth century struggle for civil rights and howl "RAAAAACISM". But that tactic has lost much of its sting and is unlikely to be very persuasive. For half a century and more we have seen a continual trend toward concentration of power in the federal government and in the non-elective elements of that government [the bureaucracy and the courts]. Perhaps in the coming struggle that tendency can be halted, or even reversed, and that, to quote a famous criminal mastermind [Martha Stewart], would be "a good thing".

Bob Hope Nails It

Exactly!

Sarah Nails It Again

"Corrupt bastards" -- that's what Sarah called the creeps at Alaska CBS affiliate, KTVA, who were conspiring to embarrass Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller. She suggested that the lack of journalistic integrity and outrageous bias displayed in the incident were generalized throughout the MSM. I think she's right.

Read about it here. Breitbart has a transcript here.

For Your Halloween Viewing Pleasure

Chainsaw Maid:



And the sequel:



HT: Laughing Squid

A Little Perspective

A Relatively Sane Look At the Tea Parties

John Judis, writing in the New Republic, identifies four "myths" being promulgated in the MSM about the Tea Parties.

1. The Tea Party is not, as many MSM commentators would argue, a coherent movement. To call it such is to impose [and this is an important insight into elite thinking] "continental European" categories onto what is a quintessentially American phenomenon.

2. The Tea Party is not, as the Left claims, "fascist" in any way. Fascists seek to deny civil liberties, the Tea Party promotes them. Fascists are violent, the Tea Party is not. Etc. Again Judis makes the important observation that elite comment reveals a continental European mindset that is inappropriately applied to America. Moreover, he makes another pertinent point -- to the extent that it looks toward the past it is an American past, which was relatively respectful of individual freedom, rather than toward a European past which was repressive. I don't agree with his view that the Tea Party is reactionary -- progressives always identify their critics as being reactionary -- but his point about the American past is spot on.

3. The Tea Party is not, as Leftists charge, racist. It stands for solid middle-class values and resents those who ostentatiously spurn them. That includes many non-whites, but also  Wall Street moneymen, academics, Hollywood celebrities, etc. The resentments are class-based, not racist.

4, The Tea Party is not, as some Democrat hacks have claimed, a creation of the Republican Party or of Big Business. The Republicans and business interests are likely to benefit from the Tea Party's emergence, but they certainly did not create it nor do they control it.

A provocative and interesting take -- one of the best I have seen from a progressive writer. Check it out here.

Screenshots

The other day after the rains I took some pictures of the fall foliage through rain-spattered window screens. The result was an interesting effect.

1848 Daguerrotype of the Cincinnati Waterfront

A fascinating look at a long-bygone era. Check it out here.

Murray on the "New Elite"

The idea of a "new elite" [I prefer the term "new class"] has been much commented on lately. Scholars have been discussing it's emergence and development for several decades now, but recently the idea has oozed out of academia into the general culture and become a political issue. Charles Murray writes:

That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial. That its members differ from former elites is not controversial. What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans. 

Let me propose that those allegations have merit. 

 That of course is the essence of the Tea Party movement's challenge to technocratic authority, but the problems are far broader and of much longer duration than he appreciates. This is a subject that interests me greatly and I will be returning to it time and again in future posts as I work out my understanding of the phenomenon. Link to Murray's article.

Pennsylvania Pictures -- Miscellany

If you are in the mood for a break from the relentlessly political chatter of the season, check out these pictures of the paradise that is Pennsylvania in the Fall.

A kettle of vultures over Port Clinton.

Farm in Lancaster County with the full moon rising.

The distant ridge in the middle of this picture is "Pinnacle", the highest point in Berks County.

Black vultures roosting at the South Lookout on Hawk Mountain.

The Haters

P. J. O'Rourke writes regarding Democrats:

They don’t just hate our Republican, conservative, libertarian, strict constructionist, family values guts. They hate everybody’s guts. And they hate everybody who has any. Democrats hate men, women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, gays, straights, the rich, the poor, and the middle class.

Democrats hate Democrats most of all. Witness the policies that Democrats have inflicted on their core constituencies, resulting in vile schools, lawless slums, economic stagnation, and social immobility. Democrats will do anything to make sure that Democratic voters stay helpless and hopeless enough to vote for Democrats.

I think he might be onto something. Read the whole thing here.

Invasion of the Giant Bedbugs

From Taiwan's Next Media Animation:

Everything You Want to Know About the Juan Williams Firing

Elizabeth Scalia has links to all the relevant commentary here.

My opinion for what it's worth -- the NPR position is despicable, the Soros contribution is suspicious, but none of it is important enough to merit the attention it is getting. The whole imbroglio is a distraction and a trap. The obvious purpose of the NPR action was to goad the punditry into issuing calls for de-funding [thanks, Sarah], which can be used to gin up support among the NPR listening base and get them to open their wallets.

If conservatives are to triumph they have to keep their eyes on the ball.

Check Out Three Minute Philosophy

A nice little introduction to basic philosophical concepts.



Here's the home-page. I plan to keep coming back to it every once in a while, just to see what they have come up with.

The Good President [continued] -- Bush Speaks

A sold-out crowd of 2,000 saw former president George W. Bush speak at the University of Texas yesterday. During his talk he received three standing ovations along with occasional chants of "Bring Back Bush". Clearly not everyone agrees with the MSM's assessment of the Bush presidency as a failure.

Read about it here.

The Great President

Calvin Coolidge, in the first presidential speech ever filmed with sound, explains why government is a burden on the people. Listen to what he has to say and compare it with the mouthings today's politicians. We have come a very long way.

Volkerwandurung Returns

I recently read Peter Heather's "Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe" and recommend it highly. In it Prof. Heather argues that militarized mass migration [what he calls "predatory migration"] was an important component of the transformation of barbarian populations from primitive, semi-nomadic subsistence farmers into militarily formidable and politically coherent groups that were capable of challenging Roman and other imperial authorities during the first millennium AD. Toward the end of the book he suggests that the concept of predatory migration might usefully be applied to other cultural transformations in early prehistory.

It's an interesting thought, especially as the German press is reporting on new interpretations of sites associated with the emergence of neolithic LBK [linear band keramic] culture in northern Europe. It has long been recognized that this new culture which becomes apparent around 7,000 BC originated in the Danubian basin and perhaps even earlier in Anatolia, but its spread northwestward into northern Europe was a matter of some controversy. Prior to WWII there was general agreement that the change in material culture found in the archaeological record represented a mass migration of a new people, bringing with them neolithic technologies like agriculture, stock raising, etc. and, because of the advantage these technologies conferred upon them, displacing the earlier hunter/gatherer population of the region. 

Since the 1960's, though, mass migration as a mechanism of change has pretty much been written out of the historical record, largely because many scholars were uncomfortable with the implications of the concept [which included ethnic cleansing and tracing nationality groups back to ancient origins -- which had been a feature of pre-war German historiography] and instead a scholarly consensus has emerged around the concept of peaceful change -- either through cultural diffusion in which indigenous populations remain in in place but pick up new habits from their neighbors, or a process of demic diffusion in which small groups of migrants moved slowly into a region peacefully coexisting with or merging with previous inhabitants.

The scholarly consensus, however recently taken a second major hit that reinforces Heather's conclusions. Der Spiegel reports on findings by German archaeologists showing that there was a mass migration of neolithic farmers into northern Europe from the Middle East starting around 7,000 BC. Rather than peacefully absorbing or interbreeding with the indigenous inhabitants the evidence suggests that the migrants displaced them. The advantage these migrants possessed over the indigenous populations seems to have been less technological than genetic [they were lactose intolerant]. Finally, there is extensive evidence for violent confrontation accompanying the migration. [read it here].

Of course the old paradigm is not going to crumble without a fight and hostile commentary on both Heather's book and the Der Spiegel article is pouring out. For a fair and reasonable discussion of what the new findings do and do not suggest check out John Hawks blog here. For an overview of the controversy by Razib Khan go here.

I love the sound of paradigms crashing -- especially those like the diffusion synthesis that have obvious political and ideological underpinnings.

Five Myths About Sarah

By Matthew Continetti, who notes that much of what people think they know about Gov. Palin is based on the SNL parody of her. In his piece he argues that Sarah did not cost McCain the election, that her resignation was not a rash move, that she and the Tea Parties are not destroying the GOP, that she is not an extremist, and that she, despite the vitriol poured on her, is highly electible.

Interesting read. Check it out here.

A Sign Of the Times

Even PBS is turning on Obama. The mendacity of the current administration has gotten so bad that even its liberal acolytes can't stomach them. Items:

David Brooks tells Jim Lehrer that Obama told him [off the record] that there were no "shovel-ready jobs". [here]

Mark Shields, also on PBS accused the White House of fabricating the whole Chamber of Commerce story [here].

The thing about these charges is that they were made on PBS, by former Obama fans. That is significant because it means that Obie is losing his base.