Tag: frum

Storm und Frum

A tweetstorm’s tweetstorm from David Frum:

Slicing away one’s memory lobes an excellent basis for decision-making, so sure (he said with heavy sarcasm). [A Fresh Start for Trump!]

Let’s have a fresh start and forget that the president-elect owes his victory in large part to aid by a hostile foreign intelligence agency

Let’s have a fresh start and pretend that the president-elect didn’t alert allies and enemies that America may ignore its NATO pledges

Let’s have a fresh start and forget that the president-elect remains committed to a religious test for the rights of citizenship

Let’s have a fresh start and never mind that the president elect is a confessed serial sexual assailant

Let’s have a fresh start and who cares that the new administration is already developing fraternal ties to fascist parties in Europe

Let’s have a fresh start and believe that it doesn’t matter that the president-elect owes hundreds of millions to the Bank of China

Let’s have a fresh start, because who is bothered that black, brown, & Muslim fellow citizens have been demeaned and feel terrified?

Let’s have a fresh start, and hope that pro-Trump trolls will cease bullying women into silencing themselves on social media

Let’s have a fresh start, because it will take time to learn how the president-elect has prostituted his office for personal gain

Let’s have a fresh start, because 70 year old men afflicted by narcissistic personality disorder often suddenly become better people

Lets have a fresh start, because it’s only fair play to give would-be kleptocrats a 6-month head start before we act to stop them

Let’s have a fresh start, because Trump’s contemptuous assumption of media gullibility is fully justified.

Perry’s Millions

Rick Perry has quite a nose for land speculation:

Discharged from the Air Force in 1977 aged 27, he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives seven years later, in 1984. At that time, the Perry family reported income of $45,000, largely from Mrs. Perry’s work as a nurse.

[…]

in 1993, there was a piece of ground that computer billionaire Michael Dell needed to connect his new house near Austin to city water mains. Dell neglected to appreciate the land’s importance. But Perry did discern it. He bought the land for less than $120,000 – then sold it to Dell two years later for a $343,000 profit. Uncanny.

[in the 2000s] A Texas real estate developer sells land to a Texas state senator – the senator who happened to represent the development’s district. The state senator sold the land to Gov. Perry. Gov. Perry then sold then land – back to the real estate developer’s business partner. Perry scored a profit of $823,000.

These are his real GOP bona fides: living the concept that political power is only to be used for enrichment of self and then, where possible, your richest and therefore most generous supporters, be they actual biological persons or the frequently GOP-personified corporate interests. The policy outcomes of this stance, whatever they may be, are entirely beside the point beyond their utility in enriching self or key supporters.
After all, the GOP goes out of its way to prepare the populace for the repeated failure of government, it delights every time a corruption scandal comes to light, and it uses said failures and scandals to further weaken the operation of government, sand the legislative gears, and generally hamstring government oversight, all to better enable their preferred uses of political power: enrichment of self and key supporters. There is no third thing. Anybody not already in on the deal can kindly go die in the streets.

Perry’s Millions

Confessions of a Climate Convert

Forget all the road to Damascus stuff in the piece, this is what I find important:

I’d argue that conservatives and libertarians should strongly support regulation to reduce carbon pollution, since pollution by one entity invariably infringes upon the rights of others (including property rights), and no entity has a constitutional right to pollute. It does not put America on the road to serfdom to suggest that the federal government has a compelling interest in protecting the country from ecological damage. If anything, it puts America on the road to common sense.

Exactly right. This is how Democrats should be messaging on this issue. It removes the ever-present and undeniable impulse in the MSM to punch the dirty fucking hippies whenever possible, the nigh irresistible impulse to note that it “snowed today,” and the much beloved “well, Al Gore sure is fat” gambit and frames the debate in terms even libertarians can understand.

Part Two of said strategy needs to incorporate the notion that even if we’re 100% wrong these measures will be good for the country and likely even of existential importance relative to our industrial and economic standing in the world. Getting off our oil addiction is, plain and simple, a good idea, no matter what you think the output carbon of our oil economy is doing. We’re going to be getting off of oil sooner or later, may as well start now and be the arbiter or at least one of the arbiters of the post-oil economy. Furthermore, if you want America “making things” again, the most likely and highest value target for said industry is in the post-oil transition. Not only can you sell such technology to the developed world, the whole of the developing world will be knocking at your door as well.
There is not enough reserve oil in American hands to measurably move the global market, even if we could extract it all tonight. There just isn’t. We wouldn’t even make an appreciable impact on our own rate of import were we to employ all of our oil; even that small but measurable impact would only last for a year or two. We may hold 1-2% of proven world reserves. Period. We cannot and will not ever produce our way off of foreign oil. It is simply not possible given current or projected usage. And, oh by the way, there isn’t enough global capacity either, though only the US military seems willing to admit it publicly.
The time to start dealing with both the implicit misconception (Drill baby drill!) and the overriding and much more important harsh reality is right now, not 20 years from now when our oil addiction and its impacts is both (still) utterly undeniable and but it is also too late to do anything about it.

Confessions of a Climate Convert

The main criticisms of the piece have come from Republicans, and their argument (for example, David Frum’s—still doing the hard work of keeping both sides honest) is that what looks to the left like obstruction is really only the minority party reflecting the public’s reservations about Obama’s agenda, and, beyond that, fulfilling the Senate’s constitutional mandate. (Mitch McConnell offered a rebuttal in this Post article today.) I would answer that, on health care, for example, where the public was truly divided and, by some polls, increasingly skeptical, the Senate Republicans should have tried to negotiate a less sweeping bill. Instead (as Frum himself famously pointed out), they shut down negotiations altogether, leaving Olympia Snowe as the lone party holdout, and not for long. They weren’t trying to legislate better; they were trying to prevent any legislation at all. The same with the stimulus bill and financial reform.
…
And the daily toll of legislative blockage is also staggering. The filibuster has become the everyday norm in this Senate—which has nothing to do with the constitution, moderation, the saucer that cools the coffee, or anything else written and said two hundred twenty years ago.

George Packer, defending against criticisms for his article here (via jonathan-cunningham)

This is exactly right. And, not just on health insurance reform. There is no example available in which the Democratic majority pushed legislation for which the GOP presented “Our Conservative Plan” for comparison and/or consideration. At most, they’ve run out what amount to platform planks: broad, non-actionable concepts and mission statements as opposed to actual legislation for debate.
The notable exception here is Paul Ryan. I think it speaks volumes that the rest of the GOP summarily runs and hides (or blathers about not needing to “pay” for tax cuts) whenever his three trillion dollars (or more) in painful (but specific) cuts are trotted out. If we, as a country, can ever get to actually discussing issues and engaging the general public in such a “The Ryan proposal is (A): these are the cuts and changes in it, the Obama proposal (B) saves such and so programs, but cuts this and does this other thing with tax rates” debate we will have made substantial and potentially Republic-saving progress. I am not optimistic. The GOP and the media at large will continue yelling about non-issues until the whole thing collapses around us. And then blame the Democrats as the last inch of railing disappears below the surf.