The original neo-conservatives knew how wrong they had been in their youth, and re-learned their politics after forty. Unlike their forbears, today’s neo-cons never have had a self-critical moment. Today’s guardians of the sacred flame of the sacred conservative flame are to the manure born.... They are mediocre ideologues incapable of learning from past failures, clinging to their careers because they are unsuited for honest work. Trump may not know much but he is capable of learning. That can’t be said for his detractors. —David P. Goldman, writing as "Spengler" in "Trump lacks experience but his detractors lack common sense"

Goldman is one of the few members of the conservative commentariat who have not repudiated Donald Trump's grotesqueness, instead preferring to bring down his considerable wrath upon his fellow commentators.

Of all those commentators I have always found "Spengler" to be the most fun to read, not because of his perspicacity (after all, who can still contend that the Donald is capable of learning) but for his fulminating wit. Then there's the supercilious tone reminiscent of the late William Buckley, who might very well have used the word "epigonoi" as Goldman managed to do in this article.

Labels: commentators, conservatives, Donald Trump, neocons, politics, Quote of the Day, Republican politicians, Spengler

Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for California governor, has surpassed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the highest personal contribution in American campaign history.

Whitman's campaign reported another $15 million contribution late Tuesday, bringing her personal donation to $119 million.

—Juliet Williams reporting in "Meg Whitman breaks US campaign spending records"

And to think, before her run for governor Whitman seldom voted. Why bother to vote when you can just buy any office you like? She may have a point. We'll see in November.

In another story, Williams captures the irony of Whitman's campaign—

For Meg Whitman, there is at least one problem in government worth throwing money at: getting elected.

The billionaire former eBay CEO is using her personal fortune in her campaign for California governor like no other candidate in U.S. political history: $119 million so far on months of wall-to-wall advertising, private jets, dozens of six-figure consultants and other expenses to spread her message of government austerity.
...

Her open wallet is in contrast to her austerity plans for California. She is promising if elected to dramatically cut state spending, eliminate 40,000 state workers, scale back pension benefits and cut the welfare system, which she says is bloated and unaffordable.

Whitman blames her spending spree on the unions, which have spent a miserly $12 million against her $119 million. Austerity, it seems, is expensive. 

Related posts 
Hire your own judge; you'll help the system and save in the long run (6/15/2005)
Conservative Acknowledgment of the Day (7/19/2010)

Labels: campaign finance, politicians, Republican politicians

Tonight the ruling class knows. They have... they've seen it now. There's a people's revolution!

Select from below:

1. Karl Marx
2. Vladimir Lenin
3. Leon Trotsky
4. Carl Paladino
5. Noam Chomsky

If you selected Carl Paladino, the newly elected Republican candidate for Governor of New York, you are ahead of your time.

Related posts
The Second American Revolution goes nuclear (5/16/05)
Truth of the Day: On social change (2/28/08)
A note on Obama (2/15/10)
A domestic suicide attack (2/18/10)

Labels: humor, New York state, politicians, politics, Quote of the Day, quotes, Republican politicians, Tea Party

In England a Labor Party councillor, Muhammed Hussain, has just been sentenced to three years in jail for rigging votes. It was a simple scam.

His supporters went from house to house picking up uncompleted "postal vote forms"—what we would call in the U.S. "absentee ballots"—then filling them out and signing for both the voter and the witness.

According to Helen McCormack of The Independent,

The judge sentencing Muhammed Hussain, who defrauded 233 voters' postal ballot papers in a local election in Blackburn, Lancashire, said the system was "wide open to fraud".

His comments echoed those of a judge investigating allegations of electoral fraud in local elections in Birmingham, who earlier this week condemned the system as "hopelessly insecure".
....

After Hussain pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to conspiring to defraud the returning officer, the court heard that the postal voting system was flawed as there was no way of verifying the name and signatures on the ballot paper, and no way of verifying or checking the identity and signature of the alleged witness to the vote cast.

Now in the State of Florida, the Republican legislature has eliminated the latter problem, because they've eliminated the requirement for a witnessing signature on absentee ballots whatsoever.

If you want to throw an election, Florida is the place to come.
 

Labels: absentee ballots, elections, Florida, Republican politicians, vote fraud, voter fraud