…gives his reasons for switching his vote to Romney, based on Wednesday’s debate.
It’s caused dissension in his marriage, by the way, because his wife “considers me a traitor to the very essence of America, providing a helping hand to those in genuine need.” The writer, whose name is Buzz Bissinger, shows no comprehension whatsoever of the arguments the right mounts to explain how it is that the conservative approach will actually help those “in genuine need” more than the liberal one, and how it judges that the “help” liberals offer is self-serving and illusory.
It might be the case that fraud was unnecessary for the Chavez win. But if fraud was necessary, then fraud was committed. There is virtually no chance Chavez was going to be allowed to lose.
The lede says it all [emphasis mine]:
With 90 percent of the votes in, President Hugo Chavez was declared the winner in the Venezuela presidential election. Chavez received 54 percent of the vote to serve an unprecedented third term after he changed the country’s constitution, NBC News reported.
I’ll close with my favorite quotation from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, from The Brothers Karamazov:
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.”
He’s not a comedian, you say? He’s the author of a serious book entitled House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street,” described in press releases and reviews as a “blistering narrative account of the negligence and greed that pushed all of Wall Street into chaos and the country into a financial crisis,” and “a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals who ignored all these warnings to their own profit and the ruin of so many others”?
So Cohan should be praising Romney for making less than he might have, right? Wrong; after describing all the various ways Romney might be hiding his true, higher, wealth, Cohen concludes with this:
If [Romney] were perceived as the first real billionaire to run for president, it would only exacerbate popular doubts about how someone living so removed from the concerns of average Americans ”” or even just 47 percent of them ”” could effectively represent them.
And if he is not a billionaire, doesn’t it suggest that he was not a great private-equity investor after all, thus torpedoing his claim to understand how to create jobs and get the economy back on track?
Something to keep in mind on Nov. 6.
Yes, Goldilocks, we’ll keep it in mind. And I guess Obama’s far lower wealth and complete lack of experience in any business or knowledge of how it works, plus his demonizing of the wealthy, are things we should keep in mind as well, and signify that his claim to understanding how to create jobs and get the economy back on track is high credible?
Did you know there’s an election today in Venezuela? It’s flown under the radar, hasn’t it?
I would ordinarily assume Chavez would win—by hook or by crook. But a blogger I respect, Daniel in Venezuela, confidently predicts an opposition victory.
If that happened, I would be very pleasantly surprised. I don’t see how Chavez would allow it to happen, and if it did happen I don’t see that he would allow it to stand. Daniel in Venezuela has explained his reasons for thinking challenger Capriles has mounted a brilliant campaign:
…I remember that I was mocked about suggesting that the winner of the primary shall visit every one and each of the 300+ municipalities. That is why I complained that the primary date was too late because it would not give enough time to do it.
Today on TV you see politicians admitting that they were surprised at the success of the “casa por casa” which was nothing else but an excuse to visit all Venezuelan municipalities. That was successful because 1) Chavez was not going to do it, even had his health been better and 2) the media empire of the regime only left the option of a close and personal visit as the only way to compensate. Amen that it was taking advantage of the regime mistake in its campaign, to rely more on its media control than actual street campaign. and to contrast more the unbound energy of the challenger again the semi dead president.
Today I can write in all confidence that we would not be discussing a Capriles momentum if he had not done what he did between November and April. Which brings us to the other two things that made all the difference in the campaign.
Capriles has been a formidable campaigner. For a city kid, well educated and cosmopolitan, he morphed spectacularly into a kisser of any frog on his path. And many of these frogs became pro Capriles princes and princesses. He displayed a remarkable energy. True, he is thin, short and athletic, but still, his campaign was nearly herculean. Well, was herculean. And it showed how tired the revolution was.
In other words, Capriles has managed to vault over the obstacles presented by the Venezuelan press—sound familiar? But can he vault over the extremely distinct possibility of fraud?
In a televised interview two nights ago, the president said he would honor the will of the people””as expressed in the results announced by the National Electoral Council. However, the opposition will remain on high alert until the last minute of balloting, and if the result is suspicious, it could be called a fraud. On the other hand, Chavistas have never accepted the possibility of losing, and if they do lose, they could also make accusations of fraud.
I know on what side I think the fraud will be occurring.
[ADDENDUM: Daniel in Venezuela has some reflections on what he plans to do if Chavez wins and what he plans to do if Chavez loses. The “if Chavez wins” may strike a few harmonic chords in some of you:
I have written for ten years against the bastard, starting when hardly a few suspected his fascist nature. If after 14 years the Venezuelan people do not get it, if they prefer subsidy at the price of much degraded living conditions, so be it. I cannot waste any more time blogging, I do not have that many years before retirement and that is now my priority, becoming a bolibourgeois if needed. You want it? Have it! I cannot keep caring and fighting anymore. If what you want is to be screwed, I”˜ll try my best…The blog was started to educate intelligent folks outside the country. This has been done successfully. Others will write the downfall.
It’s a little much, but I kind of like it. How many 63-year-olds could pull this look off? Very very few.
The comments at HuffPo are interesting. Some actually approve, despite not liking Ann herself. Some say she looks like a whore. Funny, in this day and age—and she is so covered up, how could this be?
I think it’s because she’s an inherently sexy woman, and something even a tiny bit suggestive on her looks pretty hot, whether there’s much skin showing or not. It looks like she’s revealing more than she is.
…why it would be such a great achievement for Obama to be inaugurated as president under economic conditions he himself described as nearly akin to the Great Depression, then rack up unemployment figures that are even higher than that during the entire four years of his presidency, and at the very last minute post unemployment figures that are equal to those from when he took on the job, and consider this trajectory to be a great selling point?
And that’s the case even if you accept September’s figures as correct.
I’m sincerely puzzled. Take a look at this Guardian article (I know; I know; it’s the Guardian). The lede:
The US jobless figures are out today and show American unemployment has taken a drop to 7.8% – below the 8.2% Barack Obama inherited in 2009.
Scroll down to the chart, however, and you’ll see that when Obama was inaugurated in January of 2009 the figure was 7.8. And that information is in the very same article.
This CNN article states that the rate is now the same as when Obama took office.
Bravo! Quite an achievement. The evil mojo of the nefarious Bush takes much more than four years to undo, I guess.
[ADDENDUM: Ed Morrissey delves into the media coverage in 2004 versus today. As one might expect, there’s somewhat of a difference—to say the least.]
In general, rather than resolve cognitive dissonance by changing one of the dissonant ideas (“Obama is a genius” plus “Obama looked like a stammering fool” means “Maybe Obama’s not such a genius after all”—or even worse, “Maybe Romney’s smarter than Obama), a person will try to rationalize the dissonance away.
I think the Obama administration ”” the whole boiling of them, and Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and their posses and pals ”” have become so confident that a victory in this election means they will never again have to answer to anyone about anything, that in their heads, they’re already there.
I said she gets it almost right. So what are my reservations? Winning this election will only solidify the process, but I think they already reached the point she describes quite some time ago.
In 2008 I tried to explain to a lot of friends just what I found so disturbing about Obama and about the press coverage of Obama. Most either didn’t seem to get what I meant, or they just didn’t see it my way. I’m not sure how they see it now, but from the vibes I’m getting I am almost certain that most of them will be voting for Obama again. They glean all their information from sources such as NPR and CNN and the Boston Globe and the NY Times and trust them implicitly, at the same time seeing me as slightly dotty for reading outside that narrow band of opinion and thinking those alternatives have any credence.
It’s tiresome to keep railing on the MSM and its bias, although that bias is a key part of the problem we face. So I’ll shut up now and we can listen to former Democratic pollster Pat Cadell do it:
Elizabeth Scalia adds:
Win in November and that’s the game. Between the compliant, incurious and obsequious press, a cadre of fully-established-and-in-place White House Czars, continual “flick of the wrist, law of the land” Executive Orders, a noodle-spined congress, a senate controlled by a man who feels no compunction about stopping any-and-all-legislation not completely to his liking, and a couple more Supreme Court Justices?
“Hey, transmit to Vladimir (and Chavez, and Ahmadinejad and who-all else) that if they can just wait until after the election ”” then I can do as I damn please. I’ve got the precedents. I’ve got the tools, I’ve got the talent; I’ve got the drones, foreign and domestic.
And I’ll never have to answer to the press, the congress or the American people, again.”
Basically, all they have to do is grit their teeth, hold on and ”” with the help of their mainstream pals ”” plow through any pesky, irritating Benghazi resistance. If they emerge victorious in November? The world is their oyster, with an R in every month.
And by the way, if that happens, there will be plenty of blame to go around, but the major culprit will not be Obama ”” it will be a mainstream media that has been completely, happily, determinedly derelict in its duty to the public trust for at least the past decade, but certainly since Obama emerged as a serious candidate in 2007. A republic cannot withstand the loss of an unencumbered press, and our press wasn’t even pressured into its encumbrances; it took them on willfully, carried Obama into the White House on its shoulders and then bowed out of the Oval chamber, ass-first and with besotted trembling.
Ironic, isn’t it? Freedom of the press is one of the liberties for which Americans have fought and died, and yet the free press freely entered into this arrangement, of its own free will—in order to get “access,” a place at the very best cocktail parties, and to further their self-appointed mission of “telling a conflicted people a higher truth.”
