Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Mike Pence is the talk of the CPAC crowd

Posted: January 28, 2011 by datechguy in politics, primaries 2012
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…yesterday with the reports that he will not run for president this year:

Three sources close to Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana tell CNN they are told he will announce he is not running for president in 2012 and will instead begin exploring a run for governor.

These sources say he has been flattered by the efforts to nudge him into the GOP presidential race but, as one of the sources put it, “he is a realist and kept coming back to questions about the fund-raising.” The second source said some around Pence also have reminded him of the difficulty of mounting a presidential campaign from the House, and noted that, at age 51, he would have a better platform to explore a presidential run if he first was elected governor.

There is a fair amount of disappointment in the CPAC community over this today but I think this is a great development. The easiest way for a non-conservative to win the Republican primary is for too many strong conservatives splitting the vote. I suspect that some good conservatives who have no prayer of winning are going to find themselves well-financed early by people who want that vote divided to allow an establishment candidate some space. That’s how you win a nomination with only 35-40% of the vote.

I think this is good news for us. Of course we haven’t heard the actual announcement so this could all be smoke.

Penny wise Pound Foolish

Posted: January 27, 2011 by datechguy in politics
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A lot of people on the left are upset that the filibuster rules in the senate:

They could have recently used the “Constitutional Option” at the start of this new Congress to rewrite the Senate rules to either eliminate the filibuster outright or at least make staging a filibuster more difficult. Yet, due to a combination of a greedy refusal to give up any individual power, and a pitiful cowardice about a potential future in which the voters reject them, Senate Democrats collectively chose to throw away this opportunity. By doing nothing, they effectively voted to give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell total veto power over everything.

Byron York explains that’s its just not future minorities that are the issue

Why did Democrats give in? Two reasons. One, they know they might soon need the filibuster themselves — not in a few years, but in a few months. Republicans now have 47 votes in the Senate. If they can peel away four Democrats on any given piece of legislation — say, the repeal of a portion of Obamacare — they could be stopped only by a Democratic filibuster. The Democrats who are now denouncing the filibuster when it’s used by Republicans might soon be employing it themselves to fend off GOP challenges to Obamacare and other Obama initiatives.

I’ve already pointed out that Harry Reid needs to give democrats the ability to vote against Obamacare, is there is no filibuster then he can only give that ability to three of them. (With Biden breaking a tie)

If the Filibuster exists then he can give this to as many as 12. But lets not also forget that the Senate was designed to slow things down as this story states:

“Why,” said Washington, “did you just now pour that coffee into your saucer before drinking it?”

“To cool it,” said Jefferson; “my throat is not made of brass.”

“Even so,” said Washington, “we pour our legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it.”

I think the filibuster is a good thing, I think it should stay right where it is no matter who is in charge of the senate.

Pay no attention to those complaining masses…

Posted: January 26, 2011 by datechguy in media, opinion/news, politics
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Libertarian Leanings notes this message from the NYT

…one thing seems clear to Ms. Stolberg. The public is deeply confused and should be ignored as this debate goes forward. Americans hardly ever know what’s good for them, so often voting against their own best interests. Didn’t they just do it again when they put a Republican majority in the House of Representatives last fall? It would hardly do to consider anything so unreliable as American public opinion when government programs may be at stake. If there are any besides Medicare and Social Security.

Yeah who needs the people in a representative republic.

This actually is part of a theme where every liberal outlet is calling for republicans to announce their cuts in Medicare and social security. This has been constant since the election. The line is basically “if they don’t cut social security or medicare then they are not serious”.

This way they can minimize any cuts they have already announced. Of course if any such cuts come then it will be all about the mean republicans hurting seniors. The moment any such cut comes watch the media turn on a dime. For Example:

GOP leaders may talk tough about deficits and federal spending, but their proposed cuts assiduously avoid any mention of Pentagon programs, Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Since those programs, along with interest payments, consume most of the federal budget, that means Washington politicians will keep fiddling while Rome burns.

Let’s be clear, entitlement cuts ARE necessary and I have no problem moving the retirement age up two years for anyone born after 1960 (that includes me btw) but expect this to be the MSM meme right up until it happens.

A good night sleep beat out the SOTU…UPDATE: so bad even MSNBC not trying to spin it

Posted: January 26, 2011 by datechguy in media, opinion/news, politics
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…so to see if my thoughts on the spin, propaganda, template mainstream media reporting is correct I’m going to avoid the write ups about the speech until I see what Morning Joe does with it today.

My base prediction has already been made so lets see if it is correct.

I will make only this comment from part of last night’s twitter stream that I saw. There was a telling comment:

Barbara McMahon (Aka @Southsalem) tweeted this and I saw it before I wrote what I did above

RT @RussertXM_NBC: Allen West: “When he talked abt American exceptionalism & American dream Gr8 2finally hear him say those type of things.”

That sounds like a complement, but consider. Barack Obama ran for president starting in 2007/2008 he has been president for over two years and he is only NOW talking about American exceptionalism?

Does anybody seriously believe he would talk this way if his party wasn’t seriously rejected at the polls in November? When a pol only starts talking about American exceptionalism when he needs to recover from a political defeat, that means he doesn’t believe in it and never has.

UPDATE: Holy Moley! The reaction from Morning Joe except for Howard Dean is “flat”.

When you hear them talk “substance” vs the “optics” on MSNBC that tell you that this is an epic fail.

I can’t remember the sitcom it was from (I think it was Herman’s Head), but I remember seeing a show where there was this exchange:

Guy 1: “What did you think of the movie?”

Guy 2: “I really liked the cinematography…”

Guy 1: “That bad eh.”

Boy it must have been really bad if these guys are saying this kind of thing. It will be interesting to see what they say about the republican response.

Andrea Mitchell says: ” He didn’t mention gun control”, Dean answers: “He didn’t mention Abortion either”

REWRITE!

Update 2 Even worse they showed a clip of Michelle Bachmann’s speech and not a single word of snark from the panel. If they can’t snark Bachmann on MSNBC this is panic time for Democrats.

Update 3: They complement Paul Ryan, the White House is calling Comacst to ask them to get Olbermann back on the air STAT!

Update 4: Not a another word about Michelle Bachmann’s response. I suspect they will continue to avoid it, after reading her speech I see why. If her delivery was as good as the speech then they HAVE to keep it off the air. When you spend months trying to spin her as some kind of violent nut you don’t dare show video that proves you wrong.

Update 5: I leave to drop one kid at school and give a ride to the other whose car was dropped off at T & R Custom Automotive (check out their DaTechGuy deal on labor) and here comes the instalanche. Thanks Glenn.

Now they are talking Backmann and their big critique is the tea party feed (although Mika to her credit says we’ve all looked at the wrong camera…after saying its all about her) If this is the best MSNBC can do for the White House then they are in real trouble.

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