Unca Darrell

AUGUST 31 / What's a "watchdog?"

FOR THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE, the term is reserved almost exclusively for liberal action groups and inspector generals of government agencies of which the newspaper approves.

"Watchdog," of course, is an inexact term. In theory, any person or organization that digs up dirt on another person or organization could win the honorific title. For the Chronicle, however, it's a connotative signal of approval, a pat on the head, a "good boy" treat, a thumbs-up to readers.

A quick search for "watchdog" through the newspaper's search site turned up these examples on page one of the results: 

AUGUST 28 / A riff by Brother Hanson on . . .

. . . civilization and the rule of law:

AUGUST 27 / Identity politics for white people?

THAT WOULD convert America, built on notions of common humanity, into Europe, argues Walter Russell Mead, preaching from an essay by Ben Domenech. Snips (reparagraphed):

Domenech is right that Trump and his immigration plan raise the specter of a GOP driven by white identity politics . . .

AUGUST 26 / Another example of how progressives . . .

. . . buy votes with your money.

AUGUST 25 / Three young American men took down . . .

. . . a jihadist on a European train. What do they have in common?

One thing is that they all attended . . .

AUGUST 24 / John Mackey on why intellectuals . . .

. . . hate the free market.

Intellectuals have always disdained commerce. That is something . . . tradesmen did: people that were in the lower class. And so you had minorities, oftentimes did it, like you had the Jews in the West. And when they became wealthy and successful and rose, then they were envied, then they were persecuted and their wealth confiscated. Same thing happened with the Chinese in the East. They were great businessmen as well.

(Interview, John Mackey (by Nick Gillespie), "Whole Foods' John Mackey: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism," reason.com, August 12, 2015---taken from rush transcript)

The thing to read about "market-dominant minorities" is Amy Chua, World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (2002). Her description of this reality, world-wide, is first class. Her judgments about what this means and her prescriptions are far less sure.

Back to Mr. Mackey:

     So the intellectuals have always sided . . . with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kind of kept down. You might way that capitalism was the first time that businesspeople . . . caught a break, because of Adam Smith and the philosophy that came along with that, and the industrial revolution began this huge upwards surge of prosperity.

"What is the root of the antagonism toward commerce?" Mr. Gillespie asks.

It's . . . where people stand in the social hierarchy. And if you live in a more business-oriented society, like the United States has been, then you have these businesspeople, who they don't judge to be very intelligent or well-educated, having lots of money. And [the businesspeople] begin to buy political power with it, and they rise in the social hierarchy, whereas the really intelligent people, the intellectuals, are less important. And I don't think they like that. And I think that's one of the main reasons . . . intellectuals have usually disdained commerce. They haven't seen it, the dynamic, creative force, because they measure themselves against these people, and they think they're superior, and yet in the social hierarchy they're not see as more important. And I think that drives them crazy.

. . . .

The impetus behind so many of these types of regulations in the workplace is, in a sense, to shackle business again, to get it back under the control of the intellectuals. [If] you study the history of business, you will see that most of the time in our history, commerce was controlled by the aristocrats. The merchants were kept under their thumb, and now they've escaped, and we had this free-market ideology that said the market should decide all these things, and now they're systematically undermining that marketplace to get business back, get the genie back in the bottle. Of course, that will stifle innovation; it will strifle the dynamic nature, the dynamic creative destruction of capitalism.

. . . . They just see business as . . . selfish -- [that] they're very concerned about the motives of business, and they see it as this selfish, greedy, and exploitative thing. Businessmen can't be trusted, markets aren't just, they're not fair, so we need to intervene. We need to control this situation. And they fear markets. They fear the dynamic nature of it, and they don't like businesspeople, so they feel perfectly justified in setting up all these regulations that restrict the freedom of business.

Read the whole interview for Mr. Mackey's elegant takedowns of:

Minimum-wage laws ("[If] they make service too expensive, so our customers aren't willing to pay for it, then the rational, logical thing to do [is] to cut back, do less service, do more self-service, make people queue up in lines longer, so we can keep our labor costs under control so we can be competitive in the marketplace.")

Obamacare ("[If] you mandate certain benefits then the cash compensation is going to be less.")

AUGUST 17 / Powerful Saudi prince praises W.J. Clinton . . .

. . . but disses Obama.

PRINCE BANDAR bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States between 1981 and 2005, has written a damning column in which . . .

AUGUST 17 / Wehner on Chief Justice Roberts and . . .

. . . intellectual dishonesty.

[In] King v. Burwell, the [Supreme] Court, in a 6-3 ruling, determined that the language in [Obamacare] limiting insurance subsidies to "an Exchange established by the State" really means "an Exchange established by the State of the Federal Government."

Justice Scalia's withering dissent shows how . . .

 

AUGUST 16 / Why Garry Wills believes in God and . . .

. . . the promise of the cross:

"Today we two shall be in Paradise." Only one man, I believe, could keep that promise, made to his fellow crook while they were being executed.

How can I tell that? As I would gauge the size of a vessel that has passed, by the huge wake and turbulence it left behind. By the man's impact on the best and purest lives I know or have heard of.

By the experience that the gospel mysteries are the only language in which I can talk to the minds I most want communion with, from Saint Augustine to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

By a consonance of mysteries, each incomplete in itself but the correlate of others -- myself one of those mysteries; and you another; and he another (the darkest).

By a sense that everything has a meaning, reaching toward him. By a desperate process of guessing and hope. By prayer. By listening for a promise from my fellow crook.

(Garry Wills, Untitled Contribution, "Commentary: Christians, Why Do You Still Believe in God, in the Promise of the Cross?" Harper's, April 1975 (reparagraphed)). 

AUGUST 14 / Handicapping Trump

Handicapping is what degenerate horseplayers do.

Pride runs well in the backstretch, but Heartbreaks has the rail. My Tears might run today, but the jockey has a reputation for holding back. My Heart is out of the running. That kind of brainy stuff. I should know. I'm good at it. (Story for another day.)

Politics, of course, is also a horse race and we're whelmed with handicappers and track touts. One of the best is Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He handicapped Donald Trump the other day: "What to Make of Trump's Candidacy," realclearpolitics.com, August 11, 2015. Read the article for his argument about "four things . . . analysts should avoid until we get closer to the actual voting."  

Meanwhile, here are some entertaining snips (my emphasis):

[The] Republican electorate is in a foul mood, vis-à-vis its leadership. Part of this owes to the fact that these leaders grossly overpromised what they could accomplish, even with Obama as president, in order to win the House and the Senate. Another part of this owes to the fact that when Republicans did hold all three branches of government, they probably moved the domestic policy needle leftward, leaving rank-and-file members to doubt their leaders' commitments to conservatism.

Right on! Conservatives see, correctly, how the Washington, D.C., policy ratchet works -- one click right, two clicks left; one click right, two clicks left; ad infinitum. Reagan was the last, and may well be the last ever, to push policy rightward. And even he left government larger than he found it.

Trump is a deeply flawed human being and even more deeply flawed political leader, certainly no conservative, but his combative language resonates with frustrated conservatives. They want someone to fight back, and Mr. Trump talks like a WWF wrestler before the big match. I'm gonna murderize that loser, then I'm gonna marry his wife, spend his money, and make his kids call me daddy

More from Mr. Trende:

Trump may lead in the polls, but it is a mistake, for now, to treat him as a true frontrunner.

Mr. Trende's main argument here is that frontrunners in years past yielded no President Lieberman, President Hillary (so far, at least, thank God), or President Perry. But he's quarrelling with language. Frontrunner means the runner who is front, and that's Mr. Trump.

His larger point is correct: that early frontrunners rarely win the race. Fair enough. 

But I would argue that the reason Mr. Trump is unlikely to win the race is that as the other sixteen candidates fall out of the race -- with the possible exception of Mr. Cruz and, perhaps, Mr. Paul -- their supporters are unlikely to go to Mr. Trump. Most Republicans stranded by a conventional candidate will go to other conventional candidates. The true leader in the race today is Anybody But Trump with about 75 percent. It will take months to identify that Anybody, but he (or far less likely, she) is the likely winner.  

Back to Mr. Trende:

If anything, the presence of Trump has brought millions of viewers to the Republican debates, giving a ton of free media to all the candidates, while making those candidates look moderate in temperament by comparison.

If Trump starts winning primaries, and looks to be the nominee, [other candidates well may shift their stances to pick off his voters]. But for the time being, the actual evidence that he is hurting Republicans simply isn't there.

Finally, this (which sounds right to me):

Let's say Republicans approach the convention with no candidate near a majority of delegates, and with Trump holding, say, 20 percent . . . .

At that point, the Republican nomination will be [a] matter of negotiation. Whatever else you want to say about Trump, he's an effective negotiator. That, I suspect, is why he hasn't ruled out a third party bid. Why would he? It's his trump card, so to speak, in these . . . discussions.

Mr. Trende is right, but again, it will be easy to construct a majority out of Anybody's combined 80 percent, without turning to Mr. Trump. The dangers, of course, are the possible third-party bid or, more likely, a very angry 20 percent of GOP delegates who, feeling disrespected, go home and sit out the election.

I don't believe the conspiracy theory that Mr. Trump is a Democrat operative, trying to blow up the GOP. But if he were, what would he do any differently?    

* * *

Regardless of whether you love Mr. Trump or, like me, despise him, or -- better for your mental health -- fall somewhere in the middle, you need to read Karl Rove's brilliant takedown. It's a list of Mr. Trump's flip-flops: Liberal or conservative? Democrat or Republican? Single-payer or market-based alternative? Pro-choice or pro-life? Ban on "assault weapons" or Second Amendment? Hit the wealthy or a flat tax? Big political giver or campaign-finance hawk? Comprehensive immigration reform or fence against killers and rapists? (Karl Rove, "Which Donald Trump Will Debate? wsj.com, August 5, 2015.

The guy's a blowhard, an empty vessel, a self-reverential big mouth, immune to shame when shame is called for. I understand why some folks like him, but we've already had one Barack Hussein Obama. We don't need another one.