Comments Posted By TMLutas
Displaying 21 To 30 Of 38 Comments
'V' FOR VILLIFICATION: LIBERAL PARADISE, OBAMA NIGHTMARE?
If V is an attack on Obama it is obviously not intentional, more a case of aiming at fascism and having Obama step into the line of fire. This is hardly ABC's fault nor should the tea party folk look a gift horse in the mouth. By all means ride this one for all it's worth. We should understand what's going on and not overreach.
Obama has given off several secondary markers of fascism. Obama's cult of personality, the enemies list, picking out a commercial enemy class, the attempt at delegitimizing Fox News, none of this is fascism per se. You can find non-fascist american sources for all of it (respectively, JFK, Nixon, FDR, and Nixon again). But there is a certain rhyme to it that one can be excused for being nervous about.
US culture has reduced naziism to such a caricature that a serious discussion of whether a modern american politician is fascist or a nazi is almost impossible to conduct. This is one of the many things we need to fix because naziism is not just a historical party but a political instinct, one that will periodically reemerge and the defenses against it must be based on real information instead of caricature. Otherwise we end up no better than the UK where the literally fascist BNP might well gather an explosively large vote and have a sizeable delegation in the next parliament.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 5.11.2009 @ 13:30
TOO DELICIOUS TO BE TERMED 'IRONY'
Reagan launched a primary challenge against a sitting GOP president in 1976. William F Buckly strongly supported the destruction of Lowell Weicker's congressional career. Were they wrong to do so? Why or why not were they extreme and what's different about today's angry right threatening the same?
I think that most conservatives objectively examining the situation would be happy with bucpac and its torpedoing of Lowell Weicker in favor of Joe Lieberman all those years ago. Like Scozzafava, Weicker abandoned the GOP. He later served as governor as an independent.
Rick, either you think that William F Buckley was wrong to support the Dem in that one isolated case (and Weicker was about as bad as liberal RINOs get) or you concede that sometimes, sharpening the long knives for incumbents is a legitimate strategy.
Once you concede the legitimacy of the strategy, it's only a tactical question of when it is appropriate to deploy it. I strongly suspect that the consensus answer is almost never. That this strategy of primary and general election challenges from the right is much better deployed as a threat, something like nuclear deterrence than ever actually launching an internecine war.
Once you stop calling the mau mau brigade on the right morons and other unhelpful names, legitimize the tactic as something appropriate in extremis, you can get down to the brass tacks of examining GOP incumbents and finding out that, hey, their behavior by and large doesn't merit going to the extreme solution you concede in theory is valid.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 4.11.2009 @ 09:00
Sam - I was going to comment on the larger point but your trash talk knocked me right off my intention to give Obama credit where it's due (and an examination of how far that credit should go). The idea that one must serve first prior to ordering others into combat is quite simply foreign to the american tradition of civilian control over the military. In a very real sense, it is unamerican. I do not find Obama or Clinton's lack of service disqualifying. The GOP figures you cite are no less worthy of respect.
The idea that Donald Rumsfeld's honorable service as somehow unmanly or not courageous is despicable. You might want to get a hold of Dan Rather, he's still looking for evidence of your libel against President Bush. Unless you have some sort of documentary evidence to add to the record, your attack on President Bush is also despicable.
Whether or not you're a disabled vet, you're a pathetic troll. Shame on you.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 29.10.2009 @ 18:53
YES TO HOFFMAN, BUT NO LITMUS TEST PLEASE
Found an interesting inter-state political ratings system that puts Scozzafava in perspective. The GOP pick needlessly pulls the district to the left versus the departing incumbent.
This sort of needless concession to the liberals is not a one time event and the pattern has been repeated often enough that a large number of people, myself included are hot under the collar about the whole phenomenon. I think that it's this pattern of the GOP insiders persistently pulling the party left that is the real genesis of unkind remarks on the part of conservatives.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 27.10.2009 @ 13:07
OBAMA'S RENEWABLE ENERGY POLICY IS THE RIGHT APPROACH
The President's approach to renewable energy policy is, in great part, to artificially increase the cost of conventional energy so that alternative sources become "competitive" sooner. This is the wrong approach.
Energy ceases to be "alternative" when its cost reliably sinks below the cost from current incumbent sources. We're there for solar starting this spring. Under the right physical conditions, you can get a solar power plant watt for cheaper than a coal power plant watt.
At the same time, we have the issue of how long we should hold onto our existing plant versus chucking it early and rebuilding our capacity using this new economically viable solar. This is a question that the government is infamously bad at and the free market does better. Obama wants to nudge us to retire the old capacity faster. That's a mistake that is going to cost us money.
In the end, batteries may not matter and money spent on improving them may be money thrown down a rat hole. A battery competitor, ultracapacitors, has gotten a major boost due to the addition of carbon nanotubes in their construction and we may end up not using batteries in a decade's time. Is the government going to play fair between these two technologies? I'm dubious that campaign cash won't have a bad influence.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 24.10.2009 @ 13:08
One of the costs of not treating religion seriously is that you lose any chance of reaching the believers. There is a biblical injunction against EOTW porn, stating no one shall know the day. One can argue quite effectively against EOTW porn from within a christian context. Some committed atheists would rather let EOTW porn flourish rather than understand one of their major rivals in any real way. It's that sort of refusal to make alliances against silliness that make many suspicious of atheists.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 21.10.2009 @ 09:30
THE DIFFERENT REALITY INHABITED BY THE CONSERVATIVE BASE
There is no need to make any sort of accommodation with the welfare state to improve and adjust conservatism to current conditions. The vast majority of the people, including significant portions of the hardcore left will gladly admit that there are portions of our government taxing and spending in counterproductive and unjust ways.
Proposing an ethic of rating the government, hammering out a consensus of what's on bottom and committing to cutting the bottom 5% every year would be a new way of approaching the Washington, DC beast. Programs would have to be well run and improve or they would be cut out. Replacement legislation to solve the same problem in a different way would be welcome but with a new crew, a new approach, a new mandate to solve the problem that the Congress had just reaffirmed really needed solving.
It would create a trend towards smaller government that would be moderate, measured, and survive both Democrat and Republican administrations. Ideological small government types would be convinced that the entire modern welfare state would hit the 5% shredder. Pragmatists wouldn't be so sure but would be largely ok with a 'survival of the fittest' ethic in government. Liberals, especially public employee unions would be upset but would be hard pressed to publicly admit that they didn't believe in ridding the government of incompetence, corruption, poorly performing programs, and special interest perks.
Eventually, like all political currents, this too is likely to exhaust itself. It is likely to take a few generations before we get to the point where our government is so efficient, so effective, that this methodology wouldn't win large majorities to its banner.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 18.10.2009 @ 22:34
'WHY DON'T YOU PASS THE TIME BY WRITING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?'
One of the things that utterly chills me about the global warming evidence gathered is the amount of funny science that seems to be attached to it.
Experiments need to be checked and replicated far more often than they are. Such acts are to be supported, not resisted and the AGW community has a clear record of resisting checking efforts and supporting resisters.
This resistance, this unwillingness to share code and share data is not consistent with the scientific method and not consistent with responsible use of the public's money (most science of this type has at least some public money funding it). The cure is to politically force public science money to adhere to normal scientific practice and let the chips fall where they may.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 18.10.2009 @ 12:02
John Galt - Go with the flow, friend. The vast majority of people consider the NSDAP a right wing party and the introspection/inspection/political hygiene they prompted occurred on the right, not the left. Even if your proposed categorization makes sense from an ideological point of view (which I disagree with btw), it makes no sense from a historical point of view. Mine explains the cleanup on the right post-WWII.
Either you're nitpicking while agreeing with the larger point, in which case you can just go now, or you disagree with the larger point and are just using this example to discredit it, in which case you are historically challenged at best. What are you up to?
Rick Moran - I notice you're responding to comments, but not responding to mine. Let me remake the comment a little clearer. You aren't getting it right.
The charge from the left is all smoke and no fire because non-patriotic righties get drummed out of the right in a defense mechanism that the left simply has never developed. This political hygiene is good for the country and the left is currently encouraging the right to drop it because if you're going to be hung for a goat, you might as well get a sheep too.
This dynamic is bad for the country and the right, so far, is resisting it. But it should be remarked on and condemned. You passed up an opportunity to do so. I hope that was by accident.
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 15.10.2009 @ 06:13
The introspection and 'calling out' of figures on the right who go too far is a great deal more than I ever saw happening on the left. The fear of the nazi right led to a culture of inspection and introspection regarding certain types of friends on the right that simply does not exist on the left because denazification has never had its equivalent decommunification applied to the left.
I recall legitimate lefties going to antiwar rallies sponsored by International ANSWER (modern wobblies) because they were the only ones to get the permits. I can't imagine anybody on the right going to an american nazi party event on that basis. People unselfconsciously wear Mao and Che t-shirts in a way that Goebbels and Himmler shirts could never be worn.
The charge of unamericanism is largely one of supporting foreign born models of governance and society over homegrown ones. Foreign laws being cited in american jurisprudence, euro-socialist ideas being imported onto our shores, and an admiration of the moral superiority of this or that foreign system is a big feeder of the opinion that the Left has been unpatriotic.
What are the foreign models that the right is supporting?
Comment Posted By TMLutas On 14.10.2009 @ 14:10
