The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Anyone who concludes that the election of Scott Brown is a referendum on national politics is a liar or has never followed politics. No candidate is elected based upon that which he or she could-might-possibly do in the future. A voting person votes for the person with whom he or she most identifies. Candidate Brown was perceived as likable. Candidate Coakley, not so much.

Was she actually likable though? The confounding variable in the election is the Republican Machine™ which can easily transform an opposing candidate into a social outcast. Democrats get themselves elected when Republicans on the whole can be factually and demonstrably shown to be incompetent. Until an election forces the Democrats to distinguish themselves, they’re the left-wing of the Republican party.

This just in from Megan McArdle: can’t win,don’t try.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Yet, we give careers to those who wish to decry these unreasonable people, while at the same time insisting that change can happen without anyone truly wanting or working for it.

George Will writes in his Newsweek column regarding to Obama:

He says “the time for bickering is over.” Presidents of both parties disparage as mere bickering all inconvenient arguments about what government can and should do. Americans “didn’t send us here to bicker,” said George Herbert Walker Bush, in the first 15 minutes of America’s most recent one-term presidency.

These are the kinds of paragraphs when you know someone is either a hack, or is really struggling and becoming quite hack-ish.

You see, there are multiple problems with what George Will is doing here. First, George Will is stating that somehow not winning an election shows that you suck, and obviously don’t deserve to win. The problem with that argument is that I never read George Will write any such thing during this past election, where the Republican party would have then been deserving to lose.

Also, I’m sorry, but bringing up George H.W. Bush as a modicum of failure is a bit harsh. Seriously, his re-election campaign was a failure, but his presidency was relatively successful, and realistic. He was able to keep the empire going, not immediately bankrupt the country by making a proper decision to raise taxes to help pay for items, such as Operation Gulf Storm (aka “It’s about time you saw our guns again on tv).

And, ultimately, George Will’s argument falls kind of flat when he does a combination of ignoring the other two branches of government, while stating that this current president has been beaten because he probably won’t be elected again… in three years. Bravo.

I wholeheartedly agree with Radley Balko:

He said something to the effect of, “But you have to respect the office and the institution.”

I don’t see why. Members of Congress sure as hell don’t respect the office or the institution. They regularly pass laws that aren’t authorized by the Constitution. And that’s just the stuff they do proudly. Never mind the corruption, exempting themselves from the laws they pass, pork spending, and . . . the list goes on.

Before the recent elections, I tried to reason with someone that, though candidate Obama may be likable, you should be an opponent of president Obama and of every politician, likable or otherwise. They laughed like a Brit at a tit joke and informed me “Obama’s different.” Hilariously, given Obama’s record of not changing anything, the joke’s on them.

What’s the point, Crispin?

• No one’s going to burn down the capital.
• There would be no “anti-state” protests if Obama were a Republican.
• An orgy is not a movement.
• You may as well stay home and masturbate because cum on a rag has more of a chance at being productive than a million middle-age white men with anti-Obama signs.

Just so we’re not clear in the least about what is going on about anything, George Will says the president has an outrageous socialist agenda. Obviously, George Will never says so outright, instead giving us a history lesson on communist socialism, and then essentially saying, and look at what Obama’s trying to do.

Joe Galloway, on the other hand, warns us that this president is lying down on the job, and is naïve on a level never before imagined. On top of which, Galloway then exclaims all the powers that presidency entails, as if the position would lend itself to a benevolent dictator. And the president’s “power” at the “bully pulpit” is a great thing. To the point, Galloway claims the president is too deferential to the United States Congress, and to the whims of bipartisanship.

Lewis Black once made a joke – at least, I think it was a joke; I laughed before I cried – saying that there cannot be two sets of facts. There has to be some fact facts.

I think that these two very decent guys (Galloway and Will) are missing the point. Nothing has really changed. Here is your fact: We have always been and will continue to be state capitalists. In the end, money goes from me, to somewhere else, and I should be lucky that I get back what I do. It doesn’t matter where the end point is, because they all are the same.

This is another email I sent to Andrew Sullivan a month ago that I thought could be posted here. It was in regards to having relatively private/familial matters come under scrutiny when you’re running for election, or being an elected official.

You (Andrew) wrote:

It’s the price of public office.

Hardly, it’s the price of anything these days.  Sooner or later, the president may be the person with the least transparency in all the land.

If you were to score success in life as a calculation of doing what you want, or feel necessary, while not receiving much flack from anyone else’s contrary thoughts or opinion, then I would have to surmise that the George W. Bush administration kicked ass in most every way possible.

I am, in a word, impressed.  They asked President Bush about any regrets in his presidency when he left, and as I recall, he basically gave none.  And honestly, I don’t blame him.  You have to see that he is not using the same report card that you and I would.

Bush ended up getting to invade two countries outright, one of which was under our thumb for so many years.  During this time, he was allowed to exercise tax cuts.  That’s right, tax cuts; during two wars.  He also managed to enact a prescription drug act that increased the federal budget.  And the federal budget itself exploded during his two terms.  And remember, he’s a Republican.  Bush got to do what he wanted when he wanted.

And don’t forget that he also was allowed to use surveillance without warrants from a secret (FISA) court that nobody really knows about and rarely ever says “no” to surveillance.  And what about detainee treatment?  Or treatment of detainees who are actual U.S. Citizens?

One could blame us as citizens for not caring enough to do anything (the East Coast’s one week obsession with Michael Vick becoming a Philadelphia Eagle is about enough evidence one needs), but there were enough people writing about this since it began.  The administration (and the machine in general) just did a better job at marginalizing those voices.  In the end, it is a job (a crappy one) well done.

John Cole:

This is not about the terrorists, it is about us. Decent nations don’t torture, they don’t threaten to rape the children of prisoners, they don’t stage mock executions, they don’t waterboard people 200 times in one month. No matter what the stakes.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There’s no such thing as a “decent nation.” I fancy myself a “decent person” but I would kill someone if I thought that my families’ lives depended on it. If faced with the likes of a home-invasion robbery, many “decent people” would do the same. But when one is commissioned to commit violence by his or her nation, he or she cannot help but to do so in absurd and extreme ways.

What is the nation? Its people? Its GDP? Its president? You? Me? The question does not have a single answer so everything must be protected. And if the continued existence of everything depends upon what you do with the hooded man right now, this very second, you’re going to destroy him until he tells you what you want to hear.