Brickmuppet Blog 2.0

May 04, 2016

Ruminations Upon The Kobayashi Maru and Such

While there is a considerable amount of elation in certain quarters today....

....rest assured that the inevitable disappointment of these bird brains is unlikely to provide sufficient schadenfreude to compensate for the woe their efforts will bring upon us all.

more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:02 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 Honestly, at this point it's fair to say that the Republican establishment isn't interested in the principles of the Republican electorate. In those circumstances, a Republican victory is almost meaningless anyway; sure, they might pass one or two pieces of symbolic legislation about the moral issues I don't care about in the first place, and the particular recipients of government boodle might be different, but it won't arrest the degeneration, or even meaningfully slow it at this point.

Cruz might have been more effective than Trump at carefully cutting away the fat and loose skin while preserving more of the healthy tissue. But he was always a long shot, simply because of that - the Republican elite feared the prospect of a Cruz administration more than they did of a Clinton one and acted accordingly. And at this point, things have progressed to the point that a scalpel is less appropriate than a chainsaw.

Trump has one tremendous virtue - he simply isn't afraid of the media. He's not worried about coming out with an unpopular opinion or saying something that will be twisted into an attack ad (or more like, he spits out so many of them that it's practically like chaff at this point - attacking him on policy is difficult because so much of it is obviously blather and media-bait that it's hard to hit anything solid.) And that defuses the Democrats' most powerful weapon. We've gone through years of overspending precisely because the Republicans are too afraid of media perceptions to exercise their power where they have it; against that, Trump is essentially immune.

He's got the potential for vast damage to the Republican party. A lot of that damage is necessary.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu May 5 14:31:05 2016 (v29Tn)

2 In the primaries you try to get the candidate you want. In the general you try to keep out the candidate you don't.

I am no Trump fan, but at this point, the only objective is to make sure that Hillary does not get into the White House.

As a plus, his policy position is completely random and subject to change a a whim, I am finding this preferable. Hillary, OTOH, Has A Plan, and we're not going to like it.

Posted by: Mauser at Thu May 5 20:18:41 2016 (5Ktpu)

3 You forgot a couple of other misdeeds:

- Trump sent a rabidly gay man to judge a beauty pageant (which naturally resulted in a national scandal). There is of course nothing wrong with being gay, just look at Milo. But his fitness to judge beauty pageants was obviously absent. His only qualification was that he belonged into the Trump empire. Ergo, Trump is motivated by tribalism rather than capabilities in personnel choices. Well, most people are like that. But there are limits.

- Before the JFK assasination thing, Trump's campaign tried to smear Cruz with having 5 mistresses.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri May 6 10:54:24 2016 (XOPVE)

4 The one argument in all of this that I do not understand is the "but Hillary is worse" argument. I have yet to be able to convince myself of that. The only statement that leaves room for favor in this regard is "we don't know what Trump will do, but we do know what Hillary will do, and it will be bad." As Brickmuppet pointed out, he reflexively responds as a despot, first thinking of his intention to apply absolute power. NOT ONCE during the campaign has expressed the intent to allow the Congress to do what it's supposed to do, at which point he will either veto or sign and enforce. His expressed intent is to MAKE the congress do what he wants it to do...IF he has to go through Congress.

I have believed that Hillary at her worst would be no worse than Barack Obama. In fact, I have believed that her cowardice and sense an self-preservation would lead her to hide behind Congress as much as possible, while Obama has acted in his own interest and then blamed Congress when people pointed out that his actions did not follow the law. In that regard, I predict that Trump will be *worse* than Obama.

Purely on the grounds of "pick your dictator", I feel that Trump is the worst of the lot, and Hillary will be marginally better than what we've had. I do not debate that she will be miserable; *practically* as bad as Obama, if you will. But then I further consider not only my own conscience, but where any possible gathering of opposition will be situated in four years. Everyone on the right to any degree will carry the stigma of Trump for decades. If doesn't even matter if he miraculously became a great President...he will never become a great man. His soul, if you believe in such things; his legacy, demeanor or aura if you prefer those concepts, is already black. He would have to accomplish something truly great to overcome this extreme handicap. He has shown himself to possess no trait, neither intelligence, nor decorum, nor bravery, nor character, nor wisdom, nor cunning (he has demonstrated that he purchases it in a consultant's bottle; he himself repudiates it and prefers blunder and deceit) that demonstrates any capability for greatness. He must blunder into it or have it handed to him.

Failing that, he will be the death sentence.

I can not vote for Trump, or Hillary. I see no benefit in one over the other, and I refuse to support either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party in this fiasco.

Posted by: Ben at Fri May 6 12:23:03 2016 (DRaH+)

5 From the RKBA perspective, Trump is incomparably better than Hillary. It is a simple tie-breaker for me. Remember that a President is there to introduce legislation (such as Obamacare) and to appoint SCOTUS justices. I'm not looking forward to Hillary packing the court with libs like "the wise latina" (in her own words), who are sure to replay Keller. We have the ruinous taxes on ammo coming up that we sure to end before the court. So yeah... The two may be alike on most issues, but very different on few critical issues.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri May 6 16:08:23 2016 (XOPVE)

6 Pete, I'll grant that Trump has been consistent, if somewhat simplistic in a "not sure he knows what he's talking about" way. But I find it concerning that all of his properties ban concealed carry, even when it's not mandated or encouraged by local law. And then, of course, he named several anti-second amendment justices as good Supreme Court nominees, before claiming he was joking when this was pointed out, and switching his opinion to a Justice "just like Scalia." I don't trust him. He's lied about everything else; I don't see a reason to support him just because he gets some of the words right on one issue.

Posted by: Ben at Sun May 8 09:41:39 2016 (oRNYh)

7

Ben's comment #4 is close to where I am, though I disagree that Clinton would be better. She is as much a narcisist as Trump, she is extraordinarily corrupt, hates the military men and women, and is a totalitarian through and through and doesn't much care about the nation. As Pete correctly points out she is worse, possibly far worse on 2A.
There is hope however.

Not a sane rational hope mind you, but the completely improbable notion that all of this madness means that Takumi Yanai is indeed a time traveller so we might get elf chicks out of the deal, in exchange for the death of the republic.

http://brickmuppet.mee.nu/images/DTWMAR.jpg

So...aside from America possibly electing Trump, is there any evidence to support this crazy idea? Well...at the intersection of desperation and special pleading there is this story about how the Russians appear to have been doing seminar calls and Tweetsorms for Trump.

Now, a Debbie Downer skeptic might ask, "What the hell does the involvement of Russia have to do with...that?"

Well, doomsayers...there's the little matter of Natalia Poklonskaya.
to wit...

Yeah...but it's all I've got in the way of cheer-uppery.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun May 8 20:49:23 2016 (/4jFR)

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May 03, 2016

The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire

And one of those will be our leader

For the state of our civics is dire.

"[expletives deleted]"

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:45 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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1 I've been called ******* nuts these evening when I patiently explained (for the 100th time) that I wasn't opposed to Donald Trump because I didn't like his toupee. It is not clear to me at all that Donald Trump is a superior choice, regardless of the letter he's choosing to represent himself as. And of course, if I don't believe Trump in the oval office is relatively superior to Clinton, or at least not to any compelling degree, then I just accept the long view and choose not to compromise my ethics. I can make a long-view argument that Hillary will be better for the country in the end, but I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with it.

Posted by: Ben at Wed May 4 01:25:31 2016 (DRaH+)

2 I've been a Cruz supporter since shortly before Walker got out (and boy was Walker a disappointment), and I've come to the conclusion he'd have been among our best Presidents. Unfortunately, Cruz always had the deck stacked against him. The Elites on both sides of the isle politically and in the MSM have been routinely changing their shorts about the idea of him winning since Rubio bailed. They think they can control Trump better and that a loss by Trump (more likely to happen in their opinion) would discredit the other Republican factions and give them back the reigns of power. I think they are wrong on both counts, Trump won't be controllable in the way they think and he will do better in the general then people are currently willing to credit him, especially against Hillary or Bernie.

Unfortunately I think Trump managed to make opposing Ted personal to a significant segment of the rebellious voter population that Ted needs to build into a coalition. The 'Lying Ted' and 'Canadian' smears are going to stick, damaging Ted going forward and be difficult to shake. Ted also did himself no favors in the end by going for broke on this election by stacking his entire chance on rules lawyering the delegates and appearing to try to make truce with the establishment against Trump. It give him an unfortunate, and I believe inaccurate, air of being just another greedy politician.

Unfortunately I think Ted's, and the country's, best option at this point would be to get him on the Supreme Court as he won't be granted the advantages of being 'next in line' that other Repub candidates have had.

As for Trump, I do think he will be better then Hillary, though that is a low bar indeed. There is at least a chance he could surprise us and be honestly good or great, but no such chance for a known commodity like Hillary. Also, I have little doubt that with Trump we'll at least finally get our wall built. Whether it is a physical Great Wall of China or a virtual surveillance wall remains to be seen, but I have no doubt something will be built which will at least be an improvement over the last 30 years.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Wed May 4 07:47:55 2016 (5YSpE)

3 I'm not particularly thrilled by Trump, but it's pretty obvious that he's not interested in fundamentally transforming the country like Obama and Hillary are.
And while I've flirted with the "burn it down" school of thought, in the end I remember that history is replete with examples that what comes later is more likely to be worse.

Posted by: Rick C at Wed May 4 17:57:45 2016 (FvJAK)

4 All that matters is keeping Hillary out of the White House. If that means suffering through one term of a Trump Presidency, so be it, and with the resulting embarrassment for the Republican Party, maybe they will learn their lesson and things will be better after that.

Posted by: Mauser at Wed May 4 22:01:46 2016 (5Ktpu)

5 I'll probably end up voting for some joke candidate like Gary Johnson or whomever the Libertarians put up as a clay pigeon, assuming they don't run an actual Satanist or the like, but between Clinton and Trump, I think I'd give the edge to Clinton. I've more confidence that she won't provoke a shooting war with the Chinese, and I have no such confidence in Trump. On the off chance that Clinton turns out to be even more frothingly incompetent at campaigning than she already has shown herself to be, and that orange clown ends up in the White House, he'll have such a collection of re-treads, adventurers, and sly-eyed con-men working for him that you might as well have a magic 8-ball running his policy desks.

Posted by: Mitch H. at Thu May 5 08:56:58 2016 (jwKxK)

6 That's about where I am, Mitch H. Johnson won't win; I honestly don't think Trump has a change in heck, either. But, Hillary is a very easy target. And while I generally don't support the idea that standing in opposition is better than compromising to win, that's the way I'm leaning this year.

Posted by: Ben at Thu May 5 10:12:26 2016 (DRaH+)

7 I don't want to get into a fight in the comments here so this is the last I'll mention it, but you are advocating for malice over incompetence. The latter seems better from where I'm sitting.

Posted by: Rick C at Thu May 5 10:17:34 2016 (ECH2/)

8 Oh...While I typed, the conversation was down here.
Yeah, this is a mess.
I've gotta say that I'm generally inclined to lean towards incompetence than malice. Where it gets complicated is when one throws a malevolent incompetent into the mix as that messes up the equation...and I'm not sure where the greater value of either characteristic lies in this set.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu May 5 11:04:50 2016 (/4jFR)

9 I mean, we've got one person who says "I like veteranss, I just don't want street vendors in front of my classy, snobby building" (which somehow gets turned into "I hate veterans"), again, compared to someone who went out of her way to be rude and demeaning to her Secret Service detail. I can feel that Trump will be less bad for the country while still not actually liking him.

Posted by: Rick C at Thu May 5 14:32:23 2016 (ECH2/)

10 My rule since the Eighties has been "I only vote for Republicans because Democrats destroy the country faster". I have yet to see evidence that undermines this theory.

Now, if Trump could actually take California in the general election, it would be worth voting for him to watch the head explosions. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter who I vote for.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Thu May 5 15:15:28 2016 (CLiR9)

11 Clinton and Trump... it's like they split Nixon and LBJ each down the middle and set all the dials to 11. Clinton got the Machiavellian evil, Trump took the sour populist hatred of the establishment, both of them took a fair helping of petty self-dealing corruption, while Trump ran away with LBJ's incandescent crassness and, I fear, foreign-policy pugnacious recklessness.

After eight years of Obama, either one of them will cement our status as an elective dictatorship. Domestically I suspect it'll be a kleptocratic congealed drift towards the entitlements/debt cliff - whether the congressional Republicans lose their majority or not, the only real difference will be whether Congress joins in on the petty cultural war harassment, or continues to leave it to an increasingly lawless executive. And anyone who thinks Donald Trump has the bureaucratic ability or inclination to keep any of that from happening hasn't been paying attention. Either he keeps within the letter of the regulatory apparatus (I hesitate to refer to it as "law" anymore) and gets rolled by the bulletproof, amorphous eternal bureaucracy, or he tries to play despot and lays about with the firing stick, whereupon he's going to find out just how little traction rule by temper tantrum really has in the face of a skilled and self-interested apparat.

Posted by: Mitch H. at Thu May 5 15:52:04 2016 (jwKxK)

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