Xmas at the Party of Government

You gotta love Hillary’s Xmas Card. I refuse to watch it (ok, I did watch it when I went to get the link) but Jonah Goldberg says it’s about Hillary Clinton getting all her Xmas gifts together, the ones she is going to give to you, the voter.

One is labeled "Universal Health Care," another is "Alternative Energy," another is "Middle Class Tax Breaks." And then the supposedly hilarious kicker. Wringing her hands and furrowing her brow with maternal angst, she exclaims, "Where did I put universal pre-K?"

Very droll, especially for a Democrat. After all, if you are a Democrat these things are either for you for for you to manage or to get a paycheck out of.

But Republicans have a different take. Hillary didn’t pay for those presents. We, the taxpayers, are going to pay for them. The facts are up on Rush Limbaugh’s website, forever.

Ninety-six percent of income taxes are paid by the top 50 percent of taxpayers. And that is probably before counting in the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Why be surprised? It all makes sense, given the political system in this country.

The way Hugh Hewitt tells it, the United States has a Six Party System.

The Republican Party is a coalition of the Faith Party, the Wealth Party, and the National Security Party.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of the Race Party, the Government Party, and the License Party.

Hillary Clinton is running for the leadership of the Government Party. And she is wrapping all the lovely gifts she is going to give her party rank-and-file with Other Peoples’ Money.

What’s not to like?

Don’t agree? Drop me a line.

As Hillary Clinton puts it: Let’s talk!

Reconciliation In Iraq?

Obviously something has changed in Iraq in the last year.  The question is what, and what will happen next.

Will the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq lead to a reconciliation between Sunni and Shia, or will the civil war resume once the US starts to reduce its forces in the year ahead?

Conservative commentators like Michael Ledeen are optimistic.

Meanwhile, the country’s leading religious leaders seem on the verge of issuing an historic document: a fatwa condemning violence. The signatories would be two towering figures, one Sunni, one Shiite.

Lefty blog posters have a different point of view. Here is talisman.

Ah, but the so-called "turnaround" in Iraq is merely one of slightly decreased violence - and only a temporary one, from most established on-the-ground accounts, which means Bush can declare "victory" while still keeping our kids over there as cannon fodder.

Actually, he might be right.  We simply do not know how the various factions in Iraq will act in the aftermath of the “surge.”

We can understand this divide.  Both conservatives and liberals want to be proven right.  Conservatives want to believe that the US was right to go into Iraq.  Liberals want to believe that it was wrong to go into Iraq.

But whatever happens in Iraq, there is still the question of Iran.

Why Is It So Cold? Maybe the Sun?

Everyone knows that the polar bears are in trouble and Greenland is about to melt because of all the global warming.

In fact, though, the world is in the middle of a cold snap, according to geophysicist (and, presumably climate change denier) David Deming.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918...


Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever... In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

What could be going on? Well, scientists say that it could be the Sun. Right now it’s at the end of a 22 year sunspot cycle, Cycle 23, and scientists are wondering when the next cycle, Cycle 24, is going to start.

That’s important because in previous centuries the earth’s climate has been cold when the sunspot count was low and warm when the sunspot count was high. The most famous period of low sunspot incidence was the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1710. That period has another name: The Little Ice Age. If you look at the link, you will see a nice little graph which labels our current period since 1950 the “Modern Maximum.”

Could that explain the increase in global temperatures.

Right now, this minute, on December 19, 2007, there are no sunspots on the sun. That’s because the one visible sunspot group has just rotated out of sight. You can check up on the sun here.

There is some indication that the next sunspot cycle has begun. The first two weeks of December showed an increase in sunspots.

What we don’t know is how active the new cycle will be. Some people think that sunspot intensity is driven by the position of the major planets like Jupiter and Saturn in the same way that tides on the Earth are driven by the Moon.

But it might be prudent to plan on a cold winter this year. Just to be on the safe side.

Ripping the Republican Big Tent Apart

Fifty years ago the US conservative movement began in a fusion between Burkean conservatives and libertarian conservatives. In the late Sixties they were joined by the “mugged by reality” neoconservatives.

Then in the 1970s the Supreme Court created the Christian Right with Roe v. Wade and added social conservatives to the movement.

These different factions in the conservative movement have not always got along, but they have learned to live with each other and to respect each other’s agenda. The poster boy for this is Rush Limbaugh. Divorced several times, he is a success-oriented conservative; yet he is respectful towards social conservatives and he is pro-life.

Having learned to live with each over the years many of us were shocked when John McCain ran for president against the social conservatives in 2000. Why would anyone want to do that, we wondered? It’s become clear, in the years since, that McCain is a national security conservative only, and just doesn’t understand, and doesn’t want to understand the other factions of the movement.

The initial first tier candidates for 2008—Giuliani, Romney, Thompson—are all fusion candidates. They may target their appeal to one faction or another, but they do not try to split the conservative movement.

But insurgents like Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee are splitters. Ron Paul is trying to create a divide between libertarians and the rest of the conservative movement and Mike Huckabee is trying to create a divide between evangelical conservatives and the rest of the conservative movement. And then there is John McCain, who still wants to split off national security conservatives from the rest of the movement.

I’m rooting for one of the uniters to win. And I hope that all of the dividers fail. Our conservative movement needs to grow. It needs to be ready and welcoming when the next troop of Americans is cast out into the political wilderness by the liberal establishment.

The various wings of the movement have broadly similar goals and the particular concerns of each faction informs and inspires the others.

We don’t want no stinkin’ dividers.

Huckabee Sucks Up to Liberals

They say that presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, despite his aw-shucks manner is a true product of Arkansas politics—like Bill Clinton.

So it’s not surprising that in his upcoming article for Foreign Affairs magazine he says just what the liberal Council on Foreign Relations would want to hear.

The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.

You could say that.  Or you could say that the Bush administration’s steadfastness and willingness to adapt when its policy had failed is the reason that we now see light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq.  In the last year the Sunni rejectionists seem to be abandoning revolutionary politics for politics-as-usual.  They have abandoned their alliance with Al Qaeda in Iraq and are working with the US and the Iraqi government.

Frankly, I have no time at all for second-guessers.  Any attempt to do something in this world—as opposed to sitting on the fence—is necessarily a catalog of mistakes.  Every business plan is invalidated the moment it is finished.  Every political campaign is a roller-coaster of “gaffes” and mistakes.  Every war is a parade of folly.

The question for every leader always is: shall we continue on the path we have begun, or is it time to change course?

If you were right to continue on course then the fence-sitters like Mike Huckabee say you are tenacious and courageous.  If you are wrong, then you have an “arrogant bunker mentality.”

But, in fact, the Bush administration has learned from its mistakes, and has changed course when it became clear that its policy wasn’t working.

So what do you call that?

Hewitt Peels a Brokaw

Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt is a master of the interview. His particular skill is painting a picture of a subject’s political views when the subject refuses to be categorized.

No, they say, in answer to the question about voting for Reagan or Bush. I don’t tell who I voted for. So Hewitt spends the next 30 minutes—or 60 minutes—painting an exact picture of the subject’s world view. Just so his listeners will know.

Last week Hugh Hewitt interviewed Tom Brokaw on his book Boom! Voices of the Sixties. For Hewitt, the book was predominantly about the Left Sixties, and it left out the story of the Un-sixties Sixties. But Tom Brokaw wan’t about to admit that.

No, the fact that the subjects in the book were 55-12 left of center to right of center didn’t mean anything. Anyway, Hewitt was stereotyping people.

Eventually, Hewitt asked about Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago.

HH: Right. One of the best portraits in here, because I think it’s so jarring given who he is and what he believes, is Richard Daley, current mayor of Chicago. He’s a Boomer, his son’s in the military, his dad was at ’68, and he’s frustrated with environmentalists, because they won’t let him update his airport.



TB: Right.



HH: It’s a fascinating portrait…



TB: And does he come down on the left of center?



HH: He’s left of center. Sure he is. He’s a Democrat activist…



TB: He’s a centrist. He’s a centrist. The way he runs Chicago is as a centrist.



HH: Well, of course the way he runs Chicago. But the way he’ll get Hillary the votes that she needs to win Illinois is nothing got to do with the center, is it?

You can’t do it any better than that. Sure, Dick Daley in Chicago governs as far to the right as he can. Why wouldn’t he? He wants Chicago to prosper. But when it comes to practical politics he’s a Democrat and that means electing whatever the Democrats nominate.

When you carry water for the left that means you belong on the left. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just nice to get it out in the open and not pretend.

What is the Meaning of Change?

When the Democrats talk about "Change," what do they mean? Mark Steyn wondered about that for the benefit of his readers. It’s puzzling, because, as he writes:

The Democrats are the party of stasis: on affirmative action, there can be no change; on abortion absolutism, there can be no change; even on a less cobwebbed shibboleth such as the Iraq war, there can be no change

The other day Barack Obama broke with the program and proposed on Social Security

just the teensy-weensiest little tweakette of a change to keep the wheels from coming off the entitlement bus, and immediately he got clobbered by Paul Krugman and Democrat activists as a pathetic stooge for the heartless right’s plans to get rid of the whole racket.

After all, if you are talking about Real Change, you must be talking about making a real course correction in the nation’s politics. At least that’s what I would think it would mean.

Obama’s current slogan is “Change You Can Believe In.” What exactly does that mean? Or what is it intended to mean to Democratic primary voters?

Obviously, it can mean only one thing to the Democratic rank-and-file. To them, “Change” means another government program. It means the whole progressive ball of wax, finally delivering on affordable everything. Or, as Steyn says, better than I:

more entitlements, more regulation, more incremental government annexation of health care

Not to mention more “choice” and wonders of healing from embryonic stem cells.

There’s just one problem with all this, according to Star Parker. “Life is not a defined benefit.”