Chris Mathews, like many on the Left, went insane during the Bush years and never recovered. Instead of getting proper medical care, he was given a TV show on cable. Despite living in the only whites only town in the Baltimore – Washington area, he has spent the last six years lecturing us about race. His central claim is that all mention of Obama outside the Cult is motivated by race. Now, Mathews is calling Obama a shuffling, well, he’s calling him lazy. I’ll leave it at that.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let’s get tough here. Is this the problem of a second term that presidents get lazy, intellectually lazy, and cut off from the country and they start picking deputies for jobs instead of looking for the best people? The lazy thing to do is somebody leaves, you promote their deputy. This is, I think, part of the endemic problem of second terms. They don’t go out and mix with people, find new people, new hotshots to fill these jobs. They just keep promoting the person whose turn it is and they’re not as good as the person they picked the first time…

MATTHEWS: And before you get me accusing this president of being physically lazy. I think there is a social kind of laziness. Refusing to reach out and meet a lot new people and check a lot of possibilities. Don’t just go with the next person in line. And I really think this second term cabinet is not up to the first term cabinet because they never are. And you know that, Roger. They just never are.

Kennedy went out and met people like [Robert] McNamara and [Dean] Rusk and he went looking for them and he put them into the best slots he could. And he talked them into it, he recruited people he didn’t even know [and] he recruited them. Presidents should go out and look for people. They should be practicing affirmative action all the time in leading or else they get atrophied into that little world of people like Valerie [Jarrett] and Mrs. Obama and you’re just listening to the same voices all the time.

I know it is a rigorous demand but it’s a real one. Or else you’re going to get smaller as your presidency goes on and therefore more vulnerable to surprises.

The hilarious thing about the Cult’s elevation of Obama to the top spot is how little they know about the man. In his two autobiographies, he went on at length about being lazy. He has said this in interviews. He has gone into detail about how he gets bored with all sorts of things like showing up for work and listening to advisors. Yet, the Left is always surprised that Obama is what he says he is. it’s almost as if they really don;’t care about Obama the man and just see the black guy. Like they can’t get past his skin color…

I have no reason to know anything about Lena Dunham. She is or was the star of a TV show 99% of America never bothered to watch. As best I can tell, the target audience for her act is neurotic single young women who obsess over their vagina. Given the way the political class carries on about single young women who obsess over their vagina, it must be a growing demographic, but it could just another weird obsession of the Cult of Modern Liberalism.

The only reason I know anything about Ms. Dunham is I looked her up and that was prompted by this hilarious column by Kevin Williamson. It appears Ms. Dunham has decided that the next phase of her career will be as a public nuisance. I’m probably being unfair to Ms. Dunham when I infer that her transition is deliberate. Reading the piece Kevin links to in his column, I suspect Ms. Dunham is too stupid to plan something like this.

I would have flushed the whole thing from my memory, but this morning this story showed up in a search I was doing on Ebola. No, Ms. Dunham does not have Ebola. We should be so lucky.

“Girls” creator Lena Dunham writes in her new memoir that she was raped as a 19-year-old college student. Over the course of two chapters, she explains that it took her years to come to terms with what happened and to be able to talk about the complexities of her experience in a way that felt truthful to her.

In the chapter “Girls & Jerks,” Dunham recalls an “ill-fated evening of lovemaking” with an infamous on-campus Republican. Describing the lead-up to the incident, she writes: “All I knew when I stumbled home from a party behind him was that he was sullen, thuggish, and a poor loser at poker. How that led to intercourse was a study in the way revulsion can quickly become desire when mixed with the right muscle relaxants.”

Dunham goes on to set the scene that unfolds between them in her apartment, during which she thought the man was wearing a condom but later realized he wasn’t. The condom, Dunham noticed, was actually hanging from a nearby potted plant.

Ms. Dunhm was never raped, of course. I’d put the odds of any of this happening pretty low. Ms. Dunham is a professional fabulist and making stuff up is what she does well, relative to her other talents. The give away is when she says, “come to terms with what happened and to be able to talk about the complexities of her experience in a way that felt truthful to her.” The reporter and Ms. Dunham may not realize it, in fact I bet they don’t, but this is just another way of saying it took her two years to dream up this tale so that it sounded believable.

The current fad in the war on men is a recycling of an old favorite of second wave feminism. That’s “all sex is rape.” The irony is that this type of tantrum is the sort of thing June Cleaver would have done when she was vexed with Ward. She would deny him her affection. Today, the modern gals demand the boys get written permission before having sex.  The gals over at womyn’s studies did everything they were told, but biology will not yield to their demands. It’s just not fair!

Anyway, that’s one angle. The angle for Ms. Dunham is transitive Mercerism. Dragging some sad sack on stage so everyone can feel bad for him – and feel good about feeling bad for him in public – is nothing new. Second tier entertainers have found an audience by going on stage and pretending to empathize with the sad sack. That way the audience gets to feel good about feeling joy over their hero relating to the sad sack in a “very personal way.”

The self-absorbed like Ms. Dunham take it a step further and make claims about being a victim. Rape fantasies are popular with the gals for some reason. I suspect that’s because it’s hard to disprove and you sound like a jerk if you call them a liar, like I’m doing here. It’s solipsism, of course, but it is an effective way of becoming a public irritant, which seems to be Ms. Dunham’s goal.

Her parents, according to her biography were attention whores who made a nice living off modest talents. Ms. Dunham seems to have inherited those gifts. I suppose if your desire is to be the sand in the nation’s vagina, conjuring up PG-13 rape fantasies is oddly relevant.

I was updating my fantasy football roster and saw this from Yahoo News. Not having read the article, but knowing Yahoo is run by liberal lunatics, I thought it would be worth some laughs. The author is someone I’ve never hear of not did I recognize his face. I entered his name into the nearest google machine, which I keep handy for such occasions. It turns out that Matt Bai is a leading voice in American politics. How about that?

Anyway, here is what the leading voice in American politics has to say about what republican voters want.

So I’ve been catching up on all the latest accumulation of Washington wisdom — or, at least, all the wisdom that I can accumulate in a Twitter feed — and now I totally get why no one other than Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or the reincarnated Pat Buchanan can possibly win the Republican nomination in 2016. (Actually, Pat’s alive and well — it’s just that he’s on the McLaughlin Group. My bad.)

You see, the party’s base voters — the ones who turn out to vote in primaries and caucuses — are too completely off the rails to nominate a mushball like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie! Get real — those guys can’t make it through the primaries talking about immigration reform and bipartisanship and blah-blah-blabbedy-blah. They’d get dismantled in the early states, just like that “maverick” John McCain and that liberal Mitt Romney!

Oh. Hang on.

Here’s what some commentators and conservative bloggers seem to be forgetting: Old-line, establishment Republicans have managed to wrest the nomination in every election since Ronald Reagan left office, and there’s really no reason to think it’s any less plausible in 2016. In fact, if a Bush or a Christie decides to go all in, the smart move probably isn’t to be more doctrinaire, but actually less so.

Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Clinton is a candidate for president and her party’s presumed nominee in 2016. (And just so we’re clear, I’m not saying the granddaughter with whom she left the hospital, beaming, this week is actually a robot baby secretly manufactured in China to address certain deficiencies in “warmth” reflected in her internal polling numbers. That’s crazy. I’m not saying that.)

If that’s the case, most conservatives, fiscal or social, are going to be thinking about one thing as the primaries draw near, and it isn’t Common Core; it’s how to keep another Clinton out of the White House. Chances are activist favorites like Paul and Cruz will have to spend more time then trying to persuade voters that they’re electable than Christie will have to spend trying to convince them he’s merciless toward immigrants.

I got tired of the leading voice in American politics at this point. The only reason to post this is to point out that hive minded people like the leading voice in American politics have no idea what’s going on outside the hive. They also have a binary view of the world. There’s inside the hive (liberal democrats) and outside the hive (not liberal democrats). When they peak outside at the world through their telescope, they see a world of bad people (Tubby, Jebby) and really bad people (Cruz, Paul, Buchanan). The fact that there are vast differences between Tubby and Jebby, not to mention the gulf between Buchanan and Paul and Cruz, is lost on the leading voice in American politics.

There’s no fixing this. People who join cults, political or otherwise, don’t do so because they are searching for truth. They seek belonging and self-obliteration. Blurring the lines between themselves and the group, like zebra on the plains of Africa, is what brings them peace of mind. You can’t talk them out of their comfortable hiding place. Republicans and conservative who keep going on liberal TV shows and welcoming liberal advocates to cover their campaigns are delusional. The hive will never give them a fair hearing. They can’t. It’s not how a cult works.

I’m fond of calling the Republicans “GOP Inc.” and I like to throw around the term “Conservative Inc.” a lot too. The latter is easy to see. Michelle Malkin, a nice women I’m sure, has made a tidy living repeating mindless platitudes on TV. She’s just a spokesmodel for Conservative Inc. Her job is to move product. She does that through TV appearances, blogging, radio, twitter and so forth. Ann Coulter also churns out turgid books and columns aimed at selling Ann Coulter who also sells TV shows, radio spots, etc. The whole thing is a racket and a very lucrative one.

Another less obvious one is the consultancy rackets. Karl Rove has made himself millions dispensing bad advise to GOP candidates. The big money though is in selling hope so his army of fellow consultants can get paid by campaigns. Getting your buddies to tell National Review readers that Ed Gillespie has a prayer in his Senate race, means more money for Ed Gillespie to spend on consultants, ad buyers, pollsters, etc. It’s a lot like how the stock market used to work. They called it the churn.

This is an egregious example.

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one who’s well-regarded by those who do know of him) is taking on a pro-Obama incumbent who’s barely above 50 percent in an anti-Obama, anti-incumbent year. (Obama’s approval in New Jersey is hovering around 41 percent.)

But take a further look at the poll results. Booker leads Bell, 51-40. Seventy-six percent of Booker supporters and 84 percent of Bell supporters say their mind is made up. Do the math. Among those whose mind is made up, Booker leads Bell 39 to 34 percent.

So Booker’s hard lead over Bell is a mere 5 points. He’ll outspend Bell over the next month. But money can’t buy you love. Sometimes, it can’t even buy you votes. If New Jersey flips in November, we’ll remember this Quinnipiac poll as Jeff Bell’s fire bell in the night.

First off, it is obvious click bait. I saw it on Drudge so it means a few million hits on The Weekly Standard site. Pitching an unwinnable race in New Jersey is not going to help Jeff Bell, but no one cares about him anyway. The real pitch is for the “wave” theory. “If Bell has a shot, imagine what your local GOP candidate could do with just a few dollars more from you!”

It’s all about moving product. Books, magazines, TV shows and the massive consultancy racket that finances the mandarin class.

I have never had a foreign policy or a world view on foreign policy. I’m very interested in the world and all of its weirdness, but I’ve never been all that interested in how our rulers interact with it. They are going to do whatever they want to do, regardless of what I have say about it. I try to keep up and read some trusted sources on the issues of the day, but I find most of it boring. The history of the Khorasani Arabs seems interesting, but I have no interest in why we may or may not be bombing them. My default assumption is our rulers are upset with them.

This column by Kevin Williamson brought that home to me as I read the comments section. I have opinions about our foreign adventures. I have some assumptions about what we should and should not do. I have some opinions on the people and nations of the world. But, I have no philosophy of foreign policy. I’m not even sure if I fall into any of the convenient buckets. Some of the comments in that NRO column strike me as insane. Others seem sort of reasonable. The last bit of his post is what strikes me as the most sensible starting place for my post.

If I thought that the United States could be Switzerland, I’d be tempted to import that foreign policy: Trade with everybody, get rich, and be armed to the teeth in case you have to keep the global riff-raff at bay. But the United States is not a tiny, landlocked, Alpine country noted for its excellence in banking and watch-making. But I am in the market for some creative thinking about how to use our economic weapons — from trade to our newly abundant energy supply to the fact that the elites of every country, including our bitterest rivals, want to send their children to college here — to supplement what we’re all calling “boots on the ground” now. I would not object to dispatching some serious green-eyeshade types to the Pentagon to figure out how it has come to pass that we’re still spending far too much money on defense while seemingly cutting all the wrong spending.

And while I sympathize with Jonah Goldberg’s view that “National Honor Matters,” I am very open to the prospect of simply buying off those who can be bought. While the prospect may rankle, if doing so means lower expenditures in treasure and blood both, consider Sun Tzu’s advice to those in his time who resisted the use of spies, considering the proposition either too expensive or dishonorable: Failing to make use of available advantages, “simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.”

What I am most in the market for is a foreign policy that marries a humane and prudent vision of our national interest to the operational competence necessary to ensure that we do not spend decade after decade scrambling to react to the mistakes of the immediate past. So far, I’m not buying what anybody’s selling.

It seems to me that before you can start shopping for a foreign policy, you might want to start thinking about the reality of the world, that foreign world for which we need a policy. “Humane and prudent vision of our national interest” sounds great, but you have to figure out what it means to have a humane policy while you’re figuring out the national interest. I think I could sum up my criticism of the ruling class approach to the world as ignorant, naïve and devoid of a sense of self. In other words, the reason the rulers have failed is their understanding of the world is wrong and their understanding of themselves is delusional.

So, where to start?

Celebrate Diversity: For a very long time now the Left has been chirping about the glories of diversity. It seems to be waning now, but that’s not because the world has suddenly become homogenous. The world is a big diverse place with all sorts of local weirdness. Most people are not like us. They don’t live like us and they don’t think like us. As much as it hurts modern America feelings, big chunks of the world don’t like us. Their reasons may be justified or just plain crazy, but there’s not much we can do about it. In all probability, trying to do something about is why they hate us.

Recognizing it is half the battle. The other half is the why. Despite what the Left has been preaching, science and observation tells us the people of the world are not all the same after all. Africa is as it is because it is full of Africans. It’s full of Africans because the humans there evolved in that place for 50,000 years. As crazy as this may sound, Africans are built for Africa, not Iceland. That means they are good at being Africans, but not very good at being an Icelander or a Texan. The same is true of China, Japan, Turkey, Iran, etc.

What we consider weird, these people consider normal. It is what they know. A thousand generations of Bantus have been nothing but Bantus. Thinking they will suddenly become Minnesotans just because we showed up is a good way to make enemies. Respecting people for what they are is not “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s the reality of the world. It is also the foundation for a “humane and prudent” understanding of the world.

We have a past: Anytime I participate in a debate over foreign policy, I get the sense that my fellow citizens have amnesia. I mentioned in that thread on NRO that we have been bombing the Fertile Crescent for two decades and people seem surprised by it. Desert Storm was launched in 1991. We actually started flying combat missions in 1990. That’s a long time to have been dropping ordinance on people. We try hard to only kill the bad people, but we have killed a lot of people who did not think they were all that bad. Maybe they were, maybe not.

It really does not matter if we think they got what they deserved. The people of the world have judged us on out deeds, good and bad. Our system of government means we get a change in leadership every eight years and that means we have reneged on a lot of deals, in addition to killing a lot of people. The Kurds know we are an unreliable partner, just as we know the French are duplicitous backstabbers. The point is we have a history and we have a reputation. Our national interest is served best when we can see ourselves through the eyes of the people on whom we doing the foreign policy.

Most of us just want to have normal lives: Back in the Bush years, the neoconservatives used to go on at length about national greatness and the new nationalism. The stripped down version is that a nation must act like we expect a good citizen to act in his community. It is a mix of moral obligation and self-regard. Tromping around the world doing good works will invigorate the populace to do even greater things at home and abroad. Foreign policy is not just another public policy. It is the basis for a moral philosophy that will define the nation and the citizens.

The trouble with this, in addition to be completely wrong, is that almost all people just want to live their lives. They don’t look to their rulers for a sense of identity. Americans, still mostly Anglo-Saxon, prefer it if their rulers leave them alone. Even the more hive minded around the world tend not to care very much for greatness, unless it puts money in their pocket. Since the national interest of any nation is those things that benefit the people of that nation, going around the world inviting trouble can never be part of a prudent and humane foreign policy.

I don’t know how you build a unified foreign policy off these three pillars, but I think it is a good place to start. Maybe there are other or better principles. I don’t know. The point is you can’t shop for a foreign policy unless you have some idea why one is better than the other. You have to have a starting point in order to make the necessary comparisons.

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I saw this on NRO this morning. The other day, I went around and around with some sheeple that I suspected were campaign volunteers for Ed Gillespie, the Liberal Republican running for Senate in Virginia. If you look in the comment section of that last linked post you’ll see me in there all over the place. My argument is a simple one. If you don’t see a choice on the ballot that represents your interests, not voting is always a choice and often the right one. If you’re choice is a child molester and a rapist, no one would fault you for refusing to endorse either option with your vote. In fact, everyone would applaud you for staying home and doing the right thing.

That’s the thing hod carriers like Jim Geraghty either don’t understand or would like you to ignore. The latter is a strong possibility as this has been explained to him dozens of times. A self-governing people not only selects amongst the options available, they decide on the options. One block offers up their preferred choice. Another block offers up their choice. The people unsure of which block is right ultimately decide the winners. Some will reject all of the options and seek out an alternative. They can’t do that if they always select from the offered choices.

The sheeple of the GOP insist the dissenters are being unreasonable. After all, staying home means the other side wins. They always claim the dissenters are looking for perfection and that’s the dissenters are being childish. That’s obnoxiously stupid, which reinforces the sense amongst the dissenters that the hod carriers simply don’t respect the opinions of the dissenters. Frankly, it is the only reasonable conclusion. If every time you raise an objection you’re told to shut up and sit down, what other conclusion can you draw?

What’s irritating about the “perfection” claims is they are easily disproved by recent elections. Conservatives of all stripes, even paleos, came out in force for the GOP is 1994, 2000, 2004 and 2010. The latter election was fueled by the populist uprising called the Tea Party. Their aim was to reform the GOP, not embrace it. Ever since, the GOP has made war on these people, driving out of the Tea Party wherever possible. Telling these people that perfection is the enemy of the good enough, when they have been living that life and got nothing but abuse for it, is a kick in the teeth.

The problem for the GOP is that no one believes them. The Bush years were a disaster for the Right and the GOP. I suspect a lot of Tea Party types would run back to them if the GOP leadership was at least willing to admit they bungled things in the Bush years. Guys like Jim Geraghty, no one’s idea of a deep thinker, would do the most good popularizing these confessions, not defending the privileges of an increasingly alien party establishment. But, offering up profiteers like Ed Gillespie in a winnable Senate race, however, says the GOP is more concerned with purging their party of voters than fighting the Liberal Democrats.

This can’t last. It is why UKIP is about to drive a beer truck through the Tories. The large number of Euro-skeptic in England need a party. The large number of diversity and immigration skeptics need a party. If the main parties refuse to speak to the issues important to the people, the people will inevitably find someone who will. In the fullness of time, the GOP’s decision to make war on the Tea Party will be seen as the turning point similar to what the Compromise of 1850 was to the Whig Party.

People on the Right are the most likely to accept half a loaf. It is their greatest flaw, one that the Left has expertly exploited since the birth of the American Left. The reasonableness and politeness of the Right is its broken window, through which all of the Rousseau-ist rats have entered. The party that pretends to represent the Right can no longer demand their voters reach into the bowl and select a turd for their turd sandwich.  Half a loaf is one thing. Half a turd is beyond the pale.

I’m sympathetic to much of what libertarians have to say on economic matters. I think, for the most part, they have it right on regulation and taxes. Both are most likely to be used as levers so that one group can gain an advantage over the other. Like everything else about the state, they are necessary evils that should be kept to a minimum. On the other hand, libertarians have everything about human nature exactly backwards. Humans are not rational actors and we should never want to be. A land run by robots will be a bloodbath.

The thing about libertarians is they suffer from many of the same defects as liberals. Chief among them is their moral preening. There’s no better (worse?) example than Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine. The ridiculous outfit is excusable as you have to have a gimmick on TV. The smug self-regard is another. I read this and think he must be an awful person to be around or have as a neighbor.

As one of the folks (along with Matt Welch, natch), who started the whole “Libertarian Moment” meme way back in 2008, it’s been interesting to see all the ways in which folks on the right and left get into such a lather at the very notion of expanding freedom and choice in many (though sadly not all) aspects of human activity.

Indeed, the brain freeze can get so intense that it turns occasionally smart people into mental defectives.

No one gets into a lather of expanding freedom and choice. That’s just signaling so the reader knows he is in the presence of the anointed. The fact is, hardly anyone pays much attention to libertarians. The reason is life is not a math problem nor is it an economic problem. Public debate is about what kind of society we wish to have and that means culture.

To wit, Damon Linker’s recent essay in The Week (a great magazine, by the way), which argues that the outcomes of U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Libya disprove libertarianism, in particular, the Hayekian principle of “spontaneous order.”

No shit. Linker is being super-cereal here, kids.

Nick is a 50-year old man. There’s simply no reason to write like a teenager. Putting that aside, the observable reality of the Middle East is, in fact, a perfect case against libertarianism. Remove a central authority with the willingness and ability to enforce the rules and you get Lord of the Flies with camels and swarthy guys firing Kalashnikovs. The same is true of Africa and South America. Big chunks of Eurasia too. It turns out that the only people capable of pulling off anything close to libertarianism are Anglo-Saxons.

But, that’s noticing and that leads to the great bogeyman that haunts the dreams of the libertarian weirdo – culture. Africans prefer a form of government that is based on neopatrimonialism. South Americans have always preferred autocratic rule, often by military men. Russians love their czars. Economic systems spring from culture. Culture and genetics dance the dance within the bounds of their geography to make the people we around the world. No words on a sheet of paper will change that natural realty. Libertarians have to reject that and embrace the same universalism of the Rousseau-ist cults. Otherwise, they may as well rejoin the Old Right.

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Amongst gun nuts, New Jersey has a shabby reputation. The gun laws there would make Hitler blush. It’s why Tubby has zero chance of winning the GOP nomination is 2016. Here’s a good example of the nutty gun laws in the state.

 A New Jersey man was arrested after police say he shot down a neighbor’s remote control drone.

According to investigators, officers with the Lower Township Police Department were called to a home in the 1000 block of Seashore Road on September 26th to investigate the report by a resident that his remote control helicopter (drone) was shot down. Investigators say the resident was taking aerial photographs of his friend’s home, which is under construction.

While doing so, the resident told police he heard several gunshots as he simultaneously lost control of the drone. After retrieving the drone, the resident observed multiple holes in it that were consistent with a shotgun blast. The resident called the Lower Township Police Department and when officers arrived, he directed them to the area where he heard the shots coming from.

After an investigation, police say they determined 32-year-old Russell J. Percenti allegedly fired the shots that brought down the drone. Percenti was arrested and charged with Possession of a Weapon for an Unlawful Purpose and Criminal Mischief. The shotgun used to shoot down the drone was seized by police. Percenti was released after posting bail.

First off, we will see more of this. Cheap flying gizmos with cameras means every dickhead in the neighborhood will have one. In the not too distant future some jerk-off will have a drone spying on the woman next door and her husband will throttle the guy. The reason the general IQ has fallen is modern technology has allowed the stupid to escape the natural consequences of their genetics. At the tail end of the technological revolution, assholes get to easily reach out and share their asshole-ishness with the rest of the world.

What gets gun nuts going is the homeowner who shot down the drone gets charged with “Possession of a Weapon for an Unlawful Purpose.” What in the hell is that? Unless they can prove the guy bought the gun so he could shoot down that idiots drone, they are making stuff up. This is why the cops are out of control. We have mountains of vague laws like this. Every day in the precinct, the chief says, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.

As a gun owner and a normal person, I’m fine with local ordinances about discharging firearms in residential areas. I’m also fine with the man pulling the trigger being held responsible for the deeds of the bullet. If the idiot flying the remote control copter wanted to sue, fine. Giving the shooter a fine for discharging a firearm is fine too. This is not a criminal matter. This is guy getting pissed off at his neighbor who is a raging dickhead. But, this is New Jersey.

All that aside, technology is about to invite a whole new layer of trouble in our lives. Assholes like the the guy flying the spy camera is going to become a big problem and people will inevitably demand a solution from the state. Frankly, I don’t know the right answer. If I see a remote control gizmo flying over my property or even over my head, I’m taking it down if I can do it. If I find the guy controlling it, he’s having a very bad day. I’m sure I’m not alone. Banning the sale and use of these things, including for police departments, is probably a good idea.

President Obama spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally today.

Hello, CBC!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Everybody, have a seat.  It is good to be with you here tonight.  If it wasn’t black tie I would have worn my tan suit.  (Laughter.)  I thought it looked good.  (Laughter.)

Thank you, Chaka, for that introduction.  Thanks to all of you for having me here this evening. I want to acknowledge the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Chairwoman Marcia Fudge for their outstanding work.  (Applause.)  Thank you, Shuanise Washington, and the CBC Foundation for doing so much to help our young people aim high and reach their potential.

Tonight, I want to begin by paying special tribute to a man with whom all of you have worked closely with; someone who served his country for nearly 40 years as a prosecutor, as a judge, and as Attorney General of the United States:  Mr. Eric Holder.  (Applause.)  Throughout his long career in public service, Eric has built a powerful legacy of making sure that equal justice under the law actually means something; that it applies to everybody — regardless of race, or gender, or religion, or color, creed, disability, sexual orientation.  He has been a great friend of mine.  He has been a faithful servant of the American people.  We will miss him badly.  (Applause.)

This year, we’ve been marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.  We honor giants like John Lewis — (applause); unsung heroines like Evelyn Lowery.  We honor the countless Americans, some who are in this room — black, white, students, scholars, preachers, housekeepers, patriots all, who, with their bare hands, reached into the well of our nation’s founding ideals and helped to nurture a more perfect union.  We’ve reminded ourselves that progress is not just absorbing what has been done — it’s advancing what’s left undone.

Even before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, even as the debate dragged on in the Senate, he was already challenging America to do more and march further, to build a Great Society — one, Johnson said, “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.  Where no man who wants work will fail to find it.  Where no citizen will be barred from any door because of his birthplace or his color or his church.  Where peace and security is common among neighbors and possible among nations.”  “This is the world that waits for you,” he said.  “Reach out for it now.  Join the fight to finish the unfinished work.”  To finish the unfinished work.

America has made stunning progress since that time, over the past 50 years — even over the past five years.  But it is the unfinished work that drives us forward.

Some of our unfinished work lies beyond our borders.  America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine.  America is leading the fight to contain and combat Ebola in Africa.  America is building and leading the coalition that will degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.  As Americans, we are leading, and we don’t shy away from these responsibilities; we welcome them.  (Applause.)  That’s what America does.  And we are grateful to the men and women in uniform who put themselves in harm’s way in service of the country that we all love.  (Applause.)

So we’ve got unfinished work overseas, but we’ve got some unfinished work right here at home.  (Applause.)  After the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, our businesses have now created 10 million new jobs over the last 54 months.  This is the longest uninterrupted stretch of job growth in our history.  (Applause.)  In our history.  But we understand our work is not done until we get the kind of job creation that means everybody who wants work can a find job.

We’ve done some work on health care, too.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed.  Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we’ve seen a 26 percent decline in the uninsured rate in America.  (Applause.)  African Americans have seen a 30 percent decline.  And, by the way, the cost of health care isn’t going up as fast anymore either.  Everybody was predicting this was all going to be so expensive.  We’ve saved $800 billion — (applause) — in Medicare because of the work that we’ve done — slowing the cost, improving quality, and improving access.  Despite unyielding opposition, this change has happened just in the last couple years.

But we know our work is not yet done until we get into more communities, help more uninsured folks get covered, especially in those states where the governors aren’t being quite as cooperative as we’d like them to be.  (Applause.)  You know who you are.  It always puzzles me when you decide to take a stand to make sure poor folks in your state can’t get health insurance even though it doesn’t cost you a dime.  That doesn’t make much sense to me, but I won’t go on on that topic.  (Applause.)  We’ve got more work to do.

It’s easy to take a stand when you’ve got health insurance.  (Laughter and applause.)  I’m going off script now, but — (laughter) — that’s what happens at the CBC.

Our high school graduation rate is at a record high, the dropout rate is falling, more young people are earning college degrees than ever before.  Last year, the number of children living in poverty fell by 1.4 million — the largest decline since 1966.  (Applause.)  Since I took office, the overall crime rate and the overall incarceration rate has gone down by about 10 percent.  That’s the first time they’ve declined at the same time in more than 40 years.  Fewer folks in jail.  Crime still going down.  (Applause.)

But our work is not done when too many children live in crumbling neighborhoods, cycling through substandard schools, traumatized by daily violence.  Our work is not done when working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar; when African-American unemployment is still twice as high as white unemployment; when income inequality, on the rise for decades, continues to hold back hardworking communities, especially communities of color.  We’ve got unfinished work.  And we know what to do.  That’s the worst part — we know what to do. 

We know we’ve got to invest in infrastructure, and manufacturing, and research and development that creates new jobs.  We’ve got to keep rebuilding a middle class economy with ladders of opportunity, so that hard work pays off and you see higher wages and higher incomes, and fair pay for women doing the same work as men, and workplace flexibility for parents in case a child gets sick or a parent needs some help.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to build more Promise Zones partnerships to support local revitalization of hard-hit communities.  We’ve got to keep investing in early education.  We want to bring preschool to every four-year-old in this country.  (Applause.)  And we want every child to have an excellent teacher.  And we want to invest in our community colleges and expand Pell Grants for more students.  And I’m going to keep working with you to make college more affordable.  Because every child in America, no matter who she is, no matter where she’s born, no matter how much money her parents have, ought to be able to fulfill her God-given potential.  That’s what we believe.  (Applause.)

So I just want everybody to understand — we have made enormous progress.  There’s almost no economic measure by which we are not better off than when I took office.  (Applause.)  Unemployment down.  Deficits down.  Uninsured down.  Poverty down.  Energy production up.  Manufacturing back.  Auto industry back.  But — and I just list these things just so if you have a discussion with one of your friends — (laughter) — and they’re confused.  Stock market up.  Corporate balance sheet strong.  In fact, the folks who are doing the best, they’re the ones who complain the most.  (Laughter and applause.)  So you can just point these things out.

But we still have to close these opportunity gaps.  And we have to close the justice gap — how justice is applied, but also how it is perceived, how it is experienced.  (Applause.)  Eric Holder understands this.  (Applause.)  That’s what we saw in Ferguson this summer, when Michael Brown was killed and a community was divided.  We know that the unrest continues.   And Eric spent some time with the residents and police of Ferguson, and the Department of Justice has indicated that its civil rights investigation is ongoing.

Now, I won’t comment on the investigation.  I know that Michael’s family is here tonight.  (Applause.)  I know that nothing any of us can say can ease the grief of losing a child so soon.  But the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement.

Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.  We know that, statistically, in everything from enforcing drug policy to applying the death penalty to pulling people over, there are significant racial disparities.  That’s just the statistics.  One recent poll showed that the majority of Americans think the criminal justice system doesn’t treat people of all races equally.  Think about that.  That’s not just blacks, not just Latinos or Asians or Native Americans saying things may not be unfair.  That’s most Americans.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.

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By now, regular readers know I’m more a man of the Old Right than any other grouping. I’m not inclined to think the neoconservatives are part of a global conspiracy, but I think Leo Strauss was full of baloney, at least when it comes to politics. His “distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching” was just an excuse to project his own opinions onto the classics. Jacques Derrida went down the same road, except he was carrying a copy of Reveries of a Solitary Walker instead of the Torah.

That said, I think the neoconservatives want to reach the right answer. At least, I’ve always assumed that to be the case. The primary difference between the Rousseau-ist cults and classical liberalism is means and ends. The former is unconcerned with the means as long as they reach their desired end. The latter is willing to accept imperfect ends as long as the means comports with ordered liberty. Neoconservatives try to fuse two antithetical world views by using liberal means to reach conservative ends.

They argued that the ends could be achieved through politics. Low taxes, limited government regulation and a defense of traditional values could be made by winning control of the state. They also bolted on hawkish foreign policy attempting to create a three-legged coalition. One leg is social conservatives primarily concerned with the culture. One leg is the low taxes and regulation and the other is the hawkish foreign policy. George Bush the Younger won the White House on that coalition. The 2000 election made clear the neoconservatives had routed the Old Right in the fight for the GOP. Karl Rove was triumphantly talking about the big tent and a permanent majority.

Here we are in 2014 and it is clear it was a disaster. Bush gave the social conservative nothing. In fact, he screwed them with his expansion of the state into charitable institutions. In 2000, the idea of two men getting married was an absurdity. Today, homosexuals are allowed to force normal people to work for them. Small government types were screwed over so bad they no longer exist. The small government wing of the GOP was raped to death by the Bush people. When he took office Federal spending was roughly $1.7 Trillion. When he left is was just under $3 Trillion. Foreign policy speaks for itself. Everything they predicted turned out to be wrong. The world Bush left was much worse than the one he inherited.

There’s no shortage of who struck John debates about how all this came to pass. I’m not sure it really matters. What’s important is recognizing that it was a big fat failure. People fall for all sorts of dumb ideas. The smart ones figure it out and learn from the experience. That’s not what has happened to the neocons. They can’t seem to accept what seems blazingly obvious to most of us. For instance, guys like Ramesh Ponnuru keep insisting that a new round of social engineering through the tax code is the golden ticket. The guy is obsessed with child tax credits, like they are special magic.

On the foreign policy side, guys like John Bolton want to carpet bomb the world until they stop acting like the rest of the world. We have been bombing  and saber rattling for two decades now. The world is not safer or more peaceful. In fact, it is going to shit and that’s mostly due to our policy of busting up the existing arrangements. You would think that two decades of failure would humble a man, but these guys keep screaming for more blood.

I could understand it if the public was falling for it or even giving them the benefit of the doubt. The Left is just plain crazy at this point anyway. Less crazy could be a decent strategy, maybe, but that’s not the case. The upcoming election could very well be the most favorable to Republicans in a generation. Everything is in their favor and they still can’t get the public interested in yet another round of neoconservative policy making.

This column in the Spectator nails it, I think.

Rove says the Republican “wave” everyone expects this fall isn’t materializing as yet because Democrats are outraising and outspending Republicans across the board. As evidence, he cites that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had outraised the National Republican Senatorial Committee by $1.6 million in August and, as of August 31, was sitting on a $5 million larger war chest. Rove also noted a study by American Crossroads which concluded that so far Democrat political entities had run or placed some $109 million in campaign TV ads, while their Republican counterparts had only run or placed $85 million.

Rove asserts, “The midterm environment is terrible for Democrats,” and reminds the reader of all the conditions we already know about this cycle.

In his assessment of the atmosphere surrounding the midterms, if not much else, Rove is correct. This is an environment in which there ought to be an electoral decimation of Barack Obama’s political fellows, and with a Senate that is embarrassingly dysfunctional — there are more than 300 bills passed by the House of Representatives sitting on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s desk awaiting a vote — an expectation of a Republican wave is anything but wishful thinking. Needing to gain six Senate seats to retake the majority and consign Reid to irrelevance, it’s virtually assured the GOP will pick up half that number from Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. There are eight other seats — from Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan — that Republicans in a real wave election ought to be able to steal away from Reid and Obama.

And yet, as of now, such a wave is elusive. Even in states like Arkansas, Alaska, and Louisiana, where Democrats as a party are clearly on the way out, polls don’t show GOP blowouts. And in races in Kansas, Kentucky, and Georgia, deep red states all, Republican victory is hardly assured.

Rove’s alarm about fundraising might be more self-serving than instructive. The money shortage is but a symptom of a larger disease. The Republican Party, in part thanks to Rove’s actions, lacks credibility and trust with voters and activists — both of which it must have.

After all, how does the GOP sell itself as the party of reform when it’s asking voters to replace Harry Reid with Mitch McConnell? How does it sell itself as responsive to voters when John Boehner inexplicably touts amnesty for illegal immigrants as “good for the economy”? How can it stitch together a broad coalition of voters or present fresh ideas when senatorial fossils Pat Roberts and Thad Cochran can’t even get a majority of Republicans in their states to vote for them?

Moreover, Rove’s hands are not clean in the party establishment’s all-out war against the Tea Party earlier this year. A major effort was made to decry the practices of Tea Party groups using populist messaging as a fundraising tool for selfish profit rather than to move the electoral needle, and that criticism is valid. It’s true that many of the D.C.-based Tea Party outfits are running a racket on conservative activists and donors. But while the argument holds water, Rove and other Beltway GOP gurus like him are the wrong people to point fingers, because that’s precisely what they’ve been doing to their own donors.

In 2012, Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS raised some $325 million to purportedly help Mitt Romney and the GOP’s Senate candidates win elections. The results were catastrophic. But the media buyers who work for those organizations banked their 15 percent agency commissions anyway. Fifteen percent of $325 million in TV ads sure is a handsome sum, especially when those ads fail to sell.

What we are seeing is an old fashioned bust out. In the 1980’s, a natural coalition of normal people rebelled against the Liberals. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, a lot of people got rich selling books and TV shows to people on the Right. Much of it was sincere, but a lot of it was cynical. Now, it is just a bust out. Guys like Rove are stealing every nickel they can get. That old conflict between means and end is no longer operative, as Ron Ziegler used to say. Instead it is all about raking in the cash from voters desperate to counter the liberal onslaught.

This column from Quinn Hillyer is a good example. Hillyer is a decent guy and he means well, but his column is nothing but a thinly veiled fundraising plea. Ed Gillespie is a perfect example of the cynical grasping of GOP Inc. Gillespie is an open borders fanatic. He has also spent the last decade working with Jack Quinn, a liberal democratic operative, pitching big government on Capitol Hill. His list of clients is a laundry list of barnacles sucking the life out of the American public. His candidacy is a joke and now the establishment is trying to get conservative voters to pay off his campaign debt – all owed to carbuncles like Karl Rove – a man getting rich from the great Republican Bust Out.

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