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Monday, December 5, 2011

Odds and Ends

Newt is the next not-Romney, but his experience and the seeming belief that all his dirty laundry has already aired might mean he has staying power. Not an endorsement, just an observation. Two things I like about the new Newt, and we'll see how long it lasts, are his frequent comments that any of the GOP candidates would make a better President than Obama and his intelligence over the illegal immigration question. I was starting to resign myself to Romney, not liking Newt's checkered past, but who knows, Americans are forgiving if somebody looks repentant enough and the sin was long ago enough.

Speaking of which I am waiting for any conservative to rebut my comments from an earlier post:
Do conservatives really want a government powerful enough to round up 11 million people for deportation? Do we really want the federal government getting practice at interning that many people?
Or rebut my contention that Gonzales vs Raich was wrongly decided and helps the constitutional case for Obamacare.

Even Vladimir Putin can't stuff enough ballot boxes to totally control an election. Gives me hope for beating Obama in 2012.

The slow motion collapse of the euro continues. The situation is pretty simple, despite claims of complexity to the contrary. The standard way out for governments that have spent and promised too much is to debase their currency through inflation. Since all of the offending countries are in the euro, only two solutions remain. Italy, Portugal and Greece and others leave the euro, or the European Central Bank prints euros, which screws the Germans, and to a lesser extent the French. Count on the Germans to elect a government that leaves the euro if they start to suffer inflation. Either way, the euro is toast, no matter what European politicians say. Count on fools at the fed and in the administration to think they can help with a bailout through the IMF. (Treasury spokesman denies this, so we know it must be true.) To coin a phrase, "There's not enough swag in China to bail out all the fools."

Covert action against Iran's nuclear program suggests CIA or Israeli involvement. I should hope so. Do we really want a war? People who rail against covert action always act like its evil. But is a nuclear-armed Iran preferable, especially given the crazy Mahdists that run the place? As an aside, it seems obvious that the Stuxnet virus was an example of state-sponsored cyber-warfare against Iran. But we better get our game up, the mere fact that Stuxnet showed it was possible to infect stand alone industrial control systems means that others will try.

Overall, I am pretty up beat. I think that the eventual Republican nominee can beat Obama. He or she doesn't have to be perfect, just tested in the fire of the campaign.

7 comments:

  1. I'm crossing my fingers for a Newt Nomination. I'm not one of those liberals who took perverse joy in a Bachmann win, but because I don't think Newt would be substantively different from Mittens, I feel comfortable with him driving the clown-car. Just think of it- tom coburn once said Newt'd be the last man he'd vote for president. The $500,000 tiffany line, the $300,000 fine levied by his own House of Representatives, the intra-party coups, the back of the plane episode, the working for Fannie May. If this is the shape of things to come, then the next election is going to be hilarious!

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  2. Love the new Ron Paul ad on Newt!

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  3. On another bright side Paul's numbers in some of the poles have him second ahead of Mitt!

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  4. On your question about deportation:

    No, we don't want a government that powerful. Just enforce the law, implement e-Verify, and cut off access to the welfare system, and they'll self-deport.

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  5. Calivancouver, I believe that Obama has so destroyed his reservoir of good will, that he will definitely be beaten. The eventual Republican nominee will have been sharpened by the campaign and will emerge prepared to defeat Obama. In 1980, I made the mistake of voting for George Bush in the California primary over Reagan, because I didn't think that Reagan could beat Carter. Turns out that both Bush and Reagan probably could have won that election. I see 2012 in much the same way.

    Kelly, I love Ron Paul, except when I really hate him.

    WC, I disagree about the self-deporting. e-Verify is not a panacea, and it will only encourage more aggressive identity theft. Love to discuss this more at a Beer Summit. I think we are pretty close to agreeing on this issue. What do you think of flinging open the immigration door for skilled migrants from India?

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  6. He did? I mean I know his personal approval ratings are in the 70% range (well, maybe not in FoxNewsland) There is considerable good will in the nation for Barack Obama, just not with partisan Republicans, who have done everything possible to prevent good will from forming (http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/06/opinion/avlon-obama-economic-measures/index.html)

    That being said, Newt versus Romney is not Bush versus Reagan. Reagan and bush were practically and philosophically different- Reagan being the movement conservative and Bush being the Rockefellerite, where as Romney and Gingrich's policy records are not all that dissimilar. Newt is just better at burying his old self and telling us what we want to hear. Reagan didn't have the baggage that Newt has, either.

    for your enjoyment, http://newtjudgesyou.tumblr.com/.

    I got that one from Erick Erickson

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  7. I love skilled labor. I'd vastly expand the H-1B program.

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