Category: folly

Capitol Hill Chaos

Washington Post, Dana Milbank, Washington, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Washington Post scribe Dana Milbank is panicked about the “chaos on Capitol Hill.”

He hyperventilated, in a recent column, concerning the difficulty Republicans are having in choosing a new Speaker of the House, after the announced resignation of current Speaker John Boehner (R‑Ohio), then the sudden withdrawal from the race by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.), and now the reluctance of Rep. Paul Ryan (R‑Wisc.) to seek the post.

We’re informed of the speaker’s importance — “second in line to the presidency” and “key to national security and domestic tranquility” — as if Milbank, alone, has access to a Constitution.

Yet, is it really “chaos” or continued gridlock that’s bothering our company-town columnist?

If it were, Milbank wouldn’t focus his attacks solely on conservative Republicans for their unwillingness to “compromise” (read: surrender). Both Democrats and so-called establishment Republicans seem equally adamantine.

According to Milbank, these conservative “hardliners” and “zealots” constitute “a rough crowd” who employ “thuggish tactics.” Why, they have “hijacked the chamber”!

How so?

They had the audacity to not always vote lockstep with Speaker Boehner; they balked at supporting the Speakership for Rep. McCarthy; and (heavens!), they even dared communicate their viewpoint to voters in McCarthy’s home district.

Could free political speech still be allowed by law?

Milbank reviles the “efforts by conservative groups to depose [McCarthy] before he ever took the throne.”

Depose? Throne?

Milbank even laments that Eric Cantor “would have been speaker today” had only voters in his district not voted for somebody else. Pesky voters!

Methinks Mr. Milbank has been lounging around the halls of power a tad too long.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Capitol Hill, compromise, Dana Milbank, gridlock, John Boehner, Speaker of the House, Washington Post

folly national politics & policies

A Tunnel with No Light

Obama, quagmire, foreign policy, Afghanistan, Syria, war, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

President Barack Obama pledged we’d be out of Afghanistan by 2016, but yesterday announced a “modest but meaningful extension of our presence” — keeping the 10,000 troops currently stationed there for all of 2016, and then, in perpetuity, maintaining a force five times larger than previously planned.

Why? Because, after 14 years of conflict and nation-building, Afghanistan is still neck-deep in violence. Last month, the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz, a city of over 250,000 people. Going forward, Obama admitted, “There will continue to be contested areas.”

The Afghan government is not self-sustainable and nobody seems to know how many years or decades or centuries that might take to achieve.

Meanwhile, over in Syria, the U.S. cannot train more than four or five moderate soldiers after much bluster and promise — and splurging a cool $500 million.

The U.S. invaded and “regime-changed” Iraq, helping shape a new government and national army. With all that effort — a cost of thousands of lives — once our soldiers weren’t doing the daily fighting to tamp down the bloody sectarian chasm, ISIS formed, the Iraqi army ran away and the country soon collapsed into civil war.

The Iraq Conquest put southern Iraq into Iranian orbit. How many lives was that worth?

The problem? Not military incompetence. The mission is the problem. Has any politician or military leader plausibly put forth a plan whereby our country’s intervention actually creates an improved and sustainable political order in any of these nations?

If so, let’s see it.

If not, why are our soldiers still in harm’s way?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iraq, Obama, quagmire, Syria, war

folly ideological culture meme nannyism national politics & policies political challengers too much government

All Those Egos, One Basket

Post author By CS Admin
Post date October 15, 2015
3 Comments on All Those Egos, One Basket

progressivism, meme, progressives, magic, Paul Jacob

In Tuesday night’s debate, Democrats put all their egos in one ideological basket: progressivism. Even Jim Webb managed to sound progressive … until he identified his prime personal enemy — the man he shot in wartime.

Bernie Sanders once again insisted on lecturing Americans on what it means to be a “democratic socialist.” Martin O’Malley relentlessly pursued an impossible dream, 100 percent carbon-free electric production by 2050 — far enough off to avoid any possible accountability. And Hillary Clinton said that, sure, she’s a progressive, “a progressive who likes to get things done!”

But what has she “got done,” ever?

It was her secrecy regarding the initial health care reforms back in her husband’s first term that helped spark the firestorm of opposition that led to the Revolution of ’94, and to the triangulating successes of the master of manipulative compromise, Bill Clinton. His was not a “progressive era,” though Democrats still use the 1990s as proof that their (“our”) policies “work.”

With exception of Bernie on gun control and Hillary on foreign policy and spying (Snowden gave out secrets to the enemy: traitor; she gave out who-knows-what via her insecure email server: blankout), the spend-spend-spend mantra of progressivism, mixed with “fair taxes” (higher tax rates) on the top 1 percent, was not challenged on the stage.

How far would they go to close ranks? Bernie sided with her regarding “your damned e‑mails.” That’s so ideological as to eschew any consideration of character or loyalty or trust.

Quite a revolution … in the party.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016, progressives, progressivism

folly national politics & policies political challengers

Tonight’s Permitted Debate

Post author By CS Admin
Post date October 13, 2015
4 Comments on Tonight’s Permitted Debate

democratic debate, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Tonight, the Democratic Party holds its first presidential debate of this cycle. Finally! It’s one of only six total throughout the entire campaign for the party nomination.

And all the other debates will be on weekends, with much lower TV viewership.

What does it suggest when a political party wants to minimize rather than maximize the degree to which the public gets to see its candidates and hear the party’s message?

“[I]t seems infelicitous,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “for Democrats to be embroiled in a very public fight in which party leaders are increasingly being accused of limiting the exposure of the candidates to voters.”

Is Supreme Democratic Party Commander Debbie Wasserman Schultz afraid that familiarity will breed contempt?

As party chair, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally decreed that debates shall be limited to just six. She also warned that “candidates will be uninvited to any debates if they accept invitation to any debates outside the 6‑debate schedule.” (Meanwhile, Republicans are holding nine presidential debates, but likewise, dictatorially, blocking participation in additional debates.)

Wasserman Schultz, facing protests and heckling, claims her only aim is to prevent the debate schedule from getting “out of control.”

Or out of her control, perhaps?

Presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called it a “rigged process,” asking, “What national or party interest does this decree serve?”

The limited debate schedule serves as a huge advantage for frontrunner Hillary Clinton by limiting the breakout opportunities of her opponents.

But, at least tonight, all the world’s a stage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Debate, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016

folly ideological culture

Swedish “Generosity”

religion, Sweden, Bishop, tolerance, folly, progressivism, secular, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

The headline? Gaspworthy: “World’s First Lesbian Bishop Calls for Church to Remove Crosses, To Install Muslim Prayer Space.”

Are we being punked? Onion-ized?

I checked: apparently not.

The place is the Seamen’s mission church in the eastern docks of Stockholm. The Church of Sweden’s local bishop challenged the mission’s priest with a what-if: Suppose a Muslim came off the boats and wanted a place to pray?

Had the encounter been just a one-off, we could shrug it off. But this is one latitudinarian cleric, and she didn’t let it go:

Calling Muslim guests to the church “angels,” the Bishop later took to her official blog to explain that removing Christian symbols from the church and preparing the building for Muslim prayer doesn’t make a priest any less a defender of the faith. Rather, to do any less would make one “stingy towards people of other faiths.”

Generosity über alles strikes again!

I’ve long wondered about radicals who infiltrate religions. If you don’t like Catholicism, join or start something else; if you find the Baptist Conventions opprobrious, check out the Methodism, Greek Orthodoxy, or … Thelema. Why horn in on someone else’s religion?

But there is a reason it’s happening in the city that gave us “Stockholm Syndrome.” The Church of Sweden’s a state institution, while Scandinavia’s real religion is secular progressivism. You need no gift of prophecy to see where that’s bound to go.

Separation of church and state just makes sense. To each religion its own. There need be no fighting for adherents, or laying down of one’s own beliefs merely to appeal to “inclusion.”

Unless or until you get the government involved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags belief, church and state, faith, progressivism, religion, secular, Sweden, tolerance

Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

Post author By CS Admin
Post date October 7, 2015
2 Comments on Democrats’ Own Private Government

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-million-dollar no-bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding …

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government … beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.