Quotulatiousness

March 18, 2021

What’s the German phrase for “waiting for the other shoe to drop”?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Sarah Hoyt on the current situation in American politics:

As we sit here, waiting for the other shoe to drop, almost weekly, if not daily, I field the question “Why isn’t anyone doing anything yet?” This is usually followed by wails that we’ll do nothing that we’ll just sit here and take it.

There are two things to take into account. The first is that most people aren’t us. Most people aren’t political junkies who know every stupid, unjust and just plain suicidal executive order coming from on high, from the office of the vice-roi of the middle kingdom installed over us.

The second is the shock part of shocked disbelief. Which tends to delay reactions quite a bit.

On the first one “but how can they not know?” Well, because most of our media is and has been devoted to lying to the people. They are the propaganda arm of international socialism, drumming madly for their billionaire owners, who somehow have failed to read a single word of history and think they’ll end up on top.

No, forgive me. It’s not that. It’s that they don’t think at all. They want to be accepted with the “best” people, who at their level are the old aristocratic families of Europe, who of course are all on the spectrum of socialism/communism.

What our idiot nouveau riche have failed to absorb is that these more inbred and pedigreed mental midgets might not know why they support the bullshit anymore, but it all started in the early 20th century with their being convinced communism was inevitable and putting on wolf suits before they were eaten by the wolves.

So we get back to the idiot millionaires and billionaires (hi Bernie!) are stupid and have never read history. After all they made lots of money in various ways that have nothing to do with learning history, so why should they bother.

And below them are the scrambling multitudes of the upper middle class who ape what they view as the beliefs of their betters and — when they attended college — the “smart people” who in turn were taught by the fossils of the 20th century that communism was inevitable and that all smart people are communist.

All of which amounts to: most of the people have not yet found out what Zhou Bai den has been signing at warp speed, or what it saddles us with. Fear not. These people are very very stupid, bordering on mentally slow, and they will make sure everyone knows, soon enough. Why, they’re proud of it.

People are already finding out retail, anyway. Very retail. As in, they are finding out every price is going up, and what was their very nice lifestyle is now evaporating before their eyes, as is any hope of getting better.

March 1, 2021

In the 2020 US federal election, “Each side felt that the stakes were existential”

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Anton discusses what he calls the “Continuing Crisis” in the Claremont Review of Books:

“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A full understanding of what happened that Wednesday would begin with the ruling class’s decades-long betrayal and despoliation of what would eventually come to be called Red or Deplorable or Flyover America. But the more proximate cause was the 2020 election — easily the highest intensity such contest of my lifetime. Each side felt that the stakes were existential. The accuracy of those feelings doesn’t matter; their existence was enough to drive events.

As an incumbent seeking a second term, President Trump — even after the COVID lockdowns had tanked America’s previously supercharged economy — seemed to have a lot of things going for him: near-unanimous support from the base, high primary turnout even though he faced no opposition, a seemingly unified party, approval ratings not far from Barack Obama’s in 2012. According to Gallup, in September 2020 56% of Americans reported doing better than they had four years prior — a level that, in ordinary times, would all but guarantee an incumbent’s re-election.

But these were not ordinary times. It was also easy to see — and many friends and supporters of the president did see, and warned about — shoals ahead. The Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse to accelerate and intensify their decades-long effort to loosen and change American election practices in ways that favor their party. In the spring, they began openly talking about staging a coup: literally using the military to yank Trump from power. It’s one thing to hold a “war game” and plot in secret about a president’s ouster, but why leak the result? Only if you want the public prepared for what otherwise would look like outrageous interference in “our democracy.” Democrats and their media allies also, and for the same reason, assiduously pushed the so-called “Red Mirage” narrative: the story that, while you are likely to see Trump way ahead on election night, he will certainly lose as all the votes are counted. This was less a prediction than preemptive explanation: what you see might look funny, but let us assure you in advance that it’s all on the up-and-up.

In response (or lack thereof) to the other side’s assiduous preparations, the president, his staff, his campaign, and his party committed four serious errors of omission. First, they made hardly any attempt to work with Republican state officials — governors, legislatures, and secretaries of state — to oppose and amend rule changes that would disadvantage them and favor their opponents. As far back as the 2016 election, Trump had complained that Hillary Clinton’s popular vote total had been padded by several million votes by illegal immigrants. Yet he and the GOP did very little to tighten state election procedures. Second, after having failed adequately to oppose those changes, they mounted far too few legal challenges to get them overturned or modified. Third, having declined to challenge the changes, they barely even tried to ramp up their own mail-in voting operation to rival the Democrats’. Fourth, despite numerous loud predictions — both as boasts and warnings — that the election outcome would be unclear and disputed in several states, no team was assembled in advance to investigate and, if necessary, litigate the results. Florida 2000 came as a surprise to candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush. Nonetheless the Bush campaign was able to field almost immediately an army of lawyers, including experts on election law, headed by a former secretary of state, the wily James Baker. The Trump team had at least six months’ warning and, as far as I can see, did nothing to prepare.

H/T to “currencylad” at Catallaxy Files for the link.

January 29, 2021

Costs of keeping Biden’s promise to forgive student debt

Filed under: Economics, Education, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan consider the frequently issued campaign promise by Joe Biden and what it will cost to implement:

Given the results of the recent election, it should come as no surprise that we’re poised for the next big expansion: student debt forgiveness, a promise Joe Biden made frequently as he campaigned for the presidency. Like the big ideas that came before it, this idea will cost us more than we can afford from day one, and far more than its proponents will admit. Biden’s plan as currently envisioned would cost over $300 billion. But that’s just this year. The plan will set in motion unintended consequences that will doubtlessly persist for generations.

First, next year’s crop of new students will — understandably — demand that their loans be forgiven too. And so will those of the year after that, and so on. This program will quickly become a sort of college UBI, where the government just hands out $10,000 to every college student. Some argue that if this results in a better educated populace, then it’s worth the cost. But it won’t result in a better educated populace; it will result in a whole bunch of students majoring in things the market doesn’t value, and another batch simply taking a four-year vacation on the taxpayer’s dime. Heretofore, graduates knew they needed marketable skills in order to repay their college loans. But when student loans are forgiven as a matter of course, graduates bear no cost for wasting our collective resources by studying things the market doesn’t value, or by not studying at all.

Data sources: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, National Center for Education Statistics.

Second, colleges and universities will respond to this new reality by raising tuition commensurately. Tuition and fees were a pretty constant 18 to 19 percent of family income from the 1960s until 1978. In 1965, the federal government started guaranteeing student loans. In 1973, Congress established Sallie Mae and charged it with providing subsidized students loans. And by 1978, tuition and fees had started a steady march to 45 percent of family income today. When the government makes it less painful for students to borrow, whether by guaranteeing, subsidizing, or forgiving loans, it takes away some of the pain of student borrowing, which makes it easier for colleges and universities to raise tuition.

Third, expect many taxpayers to cry foul. Homeowners will quite sensibly wonder why the government is not forgiving their mortgages. After all, student loans add up to about $1.4 trillion, while American mortgages total more than $16 trillion. If relieving students from the burden of their debts is a good idea, it should be an even better idea to relieve homeowners of theirs.

What about students who worked multiple jobs or attended less prestigious schools so they could avoid going into debt? Why aren’t they being rewarded? What about students who diligently paid off their debt and are now debt free? Will they receive nothing? What about, fantastically, people in the trades? Is it reasonable to charge people — via the higher taxes loan forgiveness will bring — who did not go to college to subsidize those who do? Regardless of the answers to these questions, implementing this plan will be fraught with difficulty.

January 2, 2021

Victor Davis Hanson’s 2020 review

Filed under: Government, Health, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m not normally prone to weak puns, but I think it’s not unfair to call 2020 an Anus horribilis rather than an Annus horribilis, because the last twelve months have been utter ass:

The year 2020 is now commonly dubbed the annus horribilis — “the horrible year.” The last 10 months certainly have been awful.

But then so was 1968, when both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Tet Offensive escalated the Vietnam War and tore America apart. Race and anti-war riots rocked our major cities. Protesters fought with police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A new influenza virus, H3N2 (the “Hong Kong flu”), killed some 100,000 Americans.

But an even worse 2020 saw the COVID-19 outbreak reach global pandemic proportions by March. Chinese officials mislead the world about the origins of the disease — without apologies.

Authorities here in the U.S. were sometimes contradictory in declaring quarantines either effective or superfluous. Masks were discouraged and then mandated. Researchers initially did not know how exactly the virus spread, only that it could be lethal to those over 65 or with comorbidities.

Initial forecasts of 1 million to 2 million Americans dying from the virus unduly panicked the population. But earlier assurances that the death toll wouldn’t reach 100,000 falsely reassured them.

[…]

For the first time in American history, given the lockdowns and the cold-weather viral resurgence, there was neither a traditional Thanksgiving nor Christmas for many people.

Yet amid the death, destruction and dissension, history will show that America did not fall apart.

In remarkable fashion, researchers created a viable and safe COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year — a feat earlier described as impossible by experts.

The nation went into recession but avoided the forecasted depression. This was partly because America in early 2020 was booming by historical standards, and partly because the Trump administration and Congress quickly infused some $4 trillion of liquidity into the inert economy.

For all the charges and counter-charges of voter fraud and Trump being a sore loser, President-elect Joe Biden will eventually take office. And Donald Trump will leave it.

November 6, 2020

“[T]he inability of election authorities to do something as simple as gather and count votes is undermining Americans’ faith in the constitutional system”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There have been many accusations of ballot fraud since the polls closed in the recent US federal election — not helped by Joe Biden’s Kinsley gaffe about creating the “most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics” — but that’s not the only thing holding up the process of determining who won say Jon Miltimore and Dan Sanchez:

“Polling Place Vote Here” by Scott Beale is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Elections are a nasty business, but sometimes they can be clarifying.

We don’t yet know who won the US presidential election, and we may not for days or weeks to come. This stems largely from the ineptitude Americans witnessed on Election Tuesday.

It wasn’t just the fact that pollsters once again failed disastrously, or that networks fumbled their election coverage.

The bigger issue is that America’s governing bodies look incapable of managing something as simple as a vote, something Americans have managed to do efficiently for centuries without the benefit of computers, digital communication, and mass transportation.

As an American, I find this a tad embarrassing. As the journalist Glenn Greenwald observed Wednesday, countries with far fewer resources and less advanced technology regularly manage to hold speedy, efficient elections. This is something the US failed to do on Tuesday, Greenwald noted.

[…]

The most prosperous country in the world cannot manage to do something as simple as collect and count ballots. Think about that for just a moment.

Unfortunately, this incompetence carries consequences that are quite real. Americans are beginning to lose faith in the integrity of elections. I’m not just talking about voters in the fever swamps of Twitter.

Many impressive journalists, thinkers, and students of various political stripes have expressed alarm at what they witnessed in the last 24 hours.

May 24, 2020

Zuby on why Joe Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment is one of the most racist things said by any US politician recently

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’d embed all the tweets here, but the page loading speed would be monumentally slow, so here’s the initial tweet and I’ve scraped the text from the rest and put it in blockquotes:

Every black person is aware of the power and pain of being considered an ‘outsider’ within one’s own ‘race’.

This happens everywhere, but it is a common phenomenon particularly amongst Black Americans, due to history and culture. (2/14)

—

You are probably familiar with terms like ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘coon’, ‘house n*gga’, ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty’ and ‘race traitor’.

These slurs are used to demean black people by stripping them of their ‘Blackness’. (3/14)

—

ALL black conservatives, libertarians, centrists, or even moderate liberals have been on the receiving end of at least one of these slurs.

Usually levied by another black person, but occasionally by a particularly bold ‘woke white progressive’ type. (4/14)

—

This form of ostracisation is particularly painful for Black Americans. Who are largely disconnected from their African roots due to the horrors of slavery.

As a substitute, many cling to a fuzzy concept of ‘Blackness’. For the sake of identity and community. (5/14)

—

So, to be considered ‘not black’ is like being an outcast of a community that often already feels alienated… (6/14)

—

I am not American and I do not speak on behalf of anybody but myself. These are my own thoughts.

My name is Nzubechukwu and my heritage is of the Igbo tribe in Anambra state in Nigeria 🇳🇬

So NOBODY can take my ‘Blackness’ from me! They will look foolish trying! (7/14)

—

Most Black Americans don’t have this SOLID sense of heritage.

People (of all colours) know this and weaponise it against them to prevent individuals from stepping out of the ‘groupthink’.

Anyone who is perceived to go ‘against’ ‘The Black Community’ must be punished. (8/14)

—

Left-wing politicians, activists and professional race hustlers have used this psychological warfare to keep black people ‘in check’ and voting for them for many decades.

It’s demeaning, discriminatory, and it strips black people of our agency. (9/14)

—

So, when Biden suggested that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you consider voting for Trump instead of him, he exposed a much deeper form of racism.

The sense of ‘ownership’ of Black people. Unearned allegiance and entitlement.

It was a vile statement… (10/14)

—

But it was also honest. Because that’s how a lot of these politicians and ‘progressives’ really feel about black people.

Like they own us. (11/14)

—

If you were born black, then you will die black. There is no such thing as being ‘politically black’. This is nonsense designed to CONTROL you and keep you needy.

NOBODY can take away your ‘Blackness’. Your ‘Black Card’ is your birthright. Regardless of who you vote for. (12/14)

—

I would never dream of telling anyone who they must vote for, based on their skin colour nor genitalia.

That would be extremely arrogant, condescending and discriminatory.

Be VERY suspicious of anybody who talks like that. They want to control your mind. (13/14)

—

That is all. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.

Much love. 👊🏾

Zuby
#ImStillBlack

H/T to Darleen for posting the link to David Thompson’s blog.

September 4, 2015

QotD: Joe Biden’s memoirs

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I must admit, I have read neither Biden’s memoir nor Dole’s preamble to full erectile function. But I think that the vice president may have a great book in him — not Grant’s memoirs great, but pretty great. I dream of Joe Biden’s writing a postmodern surrealist political manifesto titled Literally Delaware: This Book Has No Subtitle, which I suspect would be colorful reading inasmuch as in his role as under-cretin to the World’s Most Powerful Man™ he has access to the 152-color “Ultimate” Crayola set, though presumably he is allowed to use the included sharpener only under adult supervision. The book would be available only at stores in Amtrak stations and should be read only on the train, a piece of locative literature.

Kevin D. Williamson, “A Plague of Memoirs: A courageously awesome American story of awesomely American courage”, National Review, 2014-10-06.

October 12, 2012

McArdle: Biden won debate, but constantly risked going “full frontal jackass”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:57

I didn’t watch either the Presidential or Vice-Presidential debates, but Megan McArdle seems to have the most even-handed analysis of the Veep sock-fest:

Biden launched into the eye rolling and the smirking, the head shaking and the laughing, and of course, the constant interrupting, nearly as soon as Ryan started talking. I assume that means it was part of their debate coaching. I mean, I don’t think that he intended to come off as an obnoxious eighth grader heckling a classmate, or to actually shout himself hoarse with his constant interruptions. I’d guess they told him to come across as genially disappointed, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, and he kind of went off the rails.

Both candidates looked far overcoached for this debate; you could hear the hesitations as they desperately tried to overstuff their responses with canned lines. And that overcoaching showed up in their demeanor. Paul Ryan was speaking so slowly that it sometimes sounded as if he was reading off a teleprompter set at half speed; this made him seem uncertain of his memorized answers, not deliberate. And Biden — well, we seemed to be watching him going through a second puberty, complete with voice changes.

Yet I suspect that MSNBC was right: this was what the Democratic base wanted to see. Yes, they also wanted to hear him defend their issues. But they already agree with him on the issues. Their biggest desire was just for someone to express their disdain for the Republican Party, and particularly its rising young star — to display their collective contempt in a public venue. I’m not sure exactly why this is so important, but I seem to recall that the same dynamic from Republicans in 2004. There’s a lesson there about where American politics is headed, and it’s a pretty grim one.

[. . .]

But unfortunately I thought Biden threw that away that lead with his behavior. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about a candidate who apparently might go full frontal jackass at any moment. I’ve seen a bunch of progressives dismiss this as conservative carping, but watching CNN’s ticker of undecided voter sentiment, it seemed to me that every time Joe Biden started talking over Paul Ryan, Ryan’s ratings went up. And it was the first thing that the CNN hosts, most of whom I guarantee are not Romney/Ryan voters, commented on. The panels of undecided voters also brought it up — and none of them said, “It made Vice President Biden seem really authoritative and in control”. Some of the commentary this morning seemed so suggest that if progressives just insist sufficiently loudly that it was awesome, everyone else will have to agree. I think this rather overestimates both the ability to “work the refs” in the media, and also, the power of doing so.

« Newer Posts

Powered by WordPress