Here's a long, mildly amusing article about Kurt Bardella, a staffer for GOP congressman Darrell Issa. Bardella is representative of the kind of heavyweights who extrude the Republican conventional wisdom.
Nothing new and I've watched some of this close up with my congressmen. The aides come through the College Republicans usually. They work a few campaigns then head back to DC if their guy wins. They're good at spouting all the talking points they know the folks back home want to hear. But yeah it's just a game and they're in for the excitement and networking.
What's bad is when the rep's chief of staff succeeds him in office. Don't let it happen. At least try to get someone who really gives a crap if only at first.
This gets to a point Steve has made in the past about how the sharpest Republicans are in the private sector. I'm reading Steve Coll's book about ExxonMobil now, and despite the tendentiousness you'd expect, it's hard not to be struck by the competence, prudence, and intelligence of Exxon's management, particularly in comparison to the Bush administration.
Read The Prize, Daniel Yergin's history of the oil industry. These guys mostly know what they are doing. Somebody like Everette de Golyer (sp?), the scientific petroleum geologist who discovered oil in Mexico in 1910 and led the crucial secret mission to Saudi Arabia in 1943 that determined postwar grand strategy (America knew the value of the Saudi oil reserves) years before anybody else) is an American hero.
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement. I mean going off chutzpah I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one.
I'm embarassed it took me so long to say what really could have been said in a sentence. John Derbyshire is an intellectual guru to paleocons. Yea the genius who wrote the talk.
Here's what the Republican party does in Congress: They go around to corporate bosses and ask, "Are the Democrats treating you mean? We can fix it for you, for a price."
The corporate bosses like the bidding war aspect of the two-party system. Give money to both parties and make your best deal!
Both parties are whores to big-money interests. They get into bidding wars to decide which party can transfer more wealth from the people to the rulers of the corporatist state.
People who make their living that way (as the GOP does) cannot be expected to become inspirational leaders.
Steve, the best way to think about government, government allies (Sierra Club, Emily's List, NAACP, Urban League, SPLC, NARAL, NOW etc.) is a relatively young (around 80 years or so) aristocracy. These people are all related mostly to one another (there are at least three prominent newsreaders and producers for network news with relatives/spouses in the Obama Administration). They all went per Murray to the same few schools. They all live in the same few zip codes. They all spout the same Post-Christian religion of form but not substance of Christianity -- moving from a sinful past to a utopian shining future of salvation.
Republican political elites are stupid, because they have to spout things like tradition, values, America, patriotism, the historic American nation, and so on that as a member of the aristocracy they do not believe and in fact find loathesome, to the degree that an aristocrat would find peasants quite literally revolting in all senses of the word.
Moreover to succeed in the dominant aristocracy, which holds all the power (see BP, ExxonMobil, etc.) Republicans must toe the line of aristocratic sentiment and religion. Anti-White stuff, anti-historic nation, multiculti extended stay America, etc.
Sandra Fluke, has more social power, and gets more attention from the President, than the head of ExxonMobil, which is utterly dependent on the US government and its NGO allies to moderate anti-carbon "green" idiocy and the like. See coal companies, mining industry, agribusiness, etc.
Real power is easy to see. It is shown by arrows, point to who cannot be criticized, who always gets their way, who lives with platoons of armed guards and flunkies, who gets to avoid legal penalties, who gets to break the law with impunity. That power is concentrated among the thirty percent or so of Whites (with a few Blacks and Hispanics and Asians) who form the government, semi-government, media, entertainment, and legal aristocracy class.
hell, why didn't the US sieze Saudi arabia in 1946 anyway? Would have been easy to hold, largely depopulated. Would have saved us from countless stress over oil shortage
The wrong guy is running House Oversight. It should be Trey Gowdy. When your objective is to nail the opposition party's executive branch, you should have an ex-prosecutor in Gowdy doing it, not a businessman like Issa. That became clear to me after the Lois Lerner-taking the fifth controversy. Gowdy spoke up, Issa was oblivious.
I agree with Steve the article was amusing, but I also am not sure that I'd put Bardella in the "brain trust" that Steve does. He certainly has the "fast twitch" mental muscles that seemingly make our staffer overlords reactive and important to their bosses. (On twitter, I remarked he reminded me of Dan Egan, the robotically funny staffer to Selina Meyer on HBO's VEEP, which, if you're not watching, you should. Nothing describes the isolation and vapidity of our Washington's masters of the universe so candidly.) I think Bardella is squarely in that middle-class nexus of staffers and LAs that has to, ultimately, network hard for that next job. As Bardella found out the hard way, jumping out of line gets you fired (temporarily, at least).
One thing that has changed, I think, in the instant responses 21st century, is that information speed is prized over the quality of information. Bardella, while certainly not unintelligent, can sh*t out a blurb in 30 seconds that is professional and competent, but I bet a deep dive on serious topics like the national question and the Federal Reserve would send him scurrying for a timeout.
Let us not forget we are careening to the ten year anniversary of Republican senate staffer Washingtonienne (Jessica Cutler), who blogged about her meager salary, the douchebags she worked with, and the fact she took money to sleep with several high ranking Republicans during the crazy Abramoff years. Is this better or worse? You decide.
Re: the oil industry, too much success in the 50s and 60s led to them getting in bed w/ the power elite on issues such as the oil depletion allowance and funding power families and intelligence networks (namely, the Bush family). Even the best things seemingly bounce back to gray.
I know several extremely high quality people who went to DC to work in politics and left after a short while, disgusted by the predominance of the kind of folks profiled in this article.
The Democrats get the Ivy Leaguers and the Republicans get the college drop outs like Karl Rove
The late Steve Jobs and several other Silicon Valley Hall of Famers were or are college drop outs. Are you an Ivied League alumn? What or what else have you got to brag about?
What's bad is when the rep's chief of staff succeeds him in office. Don't let it happen. ...
Are you referring to last year's Repub. V. P. contender, Paul Ryan?
Anonymous said...
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement....
That's you posting there, Gubbler, aren't you? Why are you trying to hide behind the Anon. tag, Gub?
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement. I mean going off chutzpah I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one.
I'm embarassed it took me so long to say what really could have been said in a sentence. John Derbyshire is an intellectual guru to paleocons. Yea the genius who wrote the talk.
For starters Pat Buchanan and William Lind are Ivy League grads. Their knowledge of history, specially US history, is unmatched by any neocon I've seen.
But hey if you like the invade-the-world-invite-the-world-in-hock-to-the-world strategy of the neocons, then I guess there is no convincing you otherwise that the neocons, despite their educational credentials, are bad for America.
"Issa was transferred to a supply depot after receiving poor ratings. According to Issa, the Examiner reporter misunderstood an anecdote he had related.[9] A fellow soldier, Jay Bergey, said that Issa stole his Dodge Charger in 1971, and that "I confronted Issa...I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike." No charges were ever filed. Issa has denied any theft.[9]
After receiving a hardship discharge in 1972, because his father had a heart attack, Issa earned a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.[9] Twice that year, he was arrested. In the first incident he was indicted by a grand jury for an alleged theft of a Maserati, but prosecutors dropped the charge.[16] In the second incident, he was stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, and a police officer noticed a firearm in his glove compartment. Issa was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. He pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of an unregistered firearm, and was sentenced to six months' probation and a small fine."
"Shortly before his discharge in 1980, Issa was again indicted for grand theft auto. According to court documents, Darrel's brother William Issa had gone to a used car dealer and offered to sell his brother's car, a 1976Mercedes sedan, while impersonating his brother. With an Ohio driver’s license belonging to Darrell, William was given $16,000 for the car from the dealer. Shortly after the sale, Darrell reported the car stolen and told the police that he had left the title in the trunk. During the investigation Darrell gave conflicting statements about whether he had recently obtained a replacement driver’s license. This evidence resulted in police suspecting that the brothers had conspired to fraudulently sell Darrell’s car and then collect on the insurance policy and from the sale of the car.
Darrell and his brother were then indicted for grand theft. Darrell claimed he had no knowledge of William’s theft and sale while William claimed that his brother had authorized him to sell the car. As the investigation continued, Darrell went to the dealership the car was sold to and repurchased his car. A few months after Darrell had repurchased his car, investigators had dropped the charges against him.[9] Then in 1981 in Cleveland, Issa crashed a truck he was driving into another motorists car and, according to court records, Issa told her that he did not have time to wait for the police and he then left the scene. The other motorist then sued Issa for twenty thousand dollars and they eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount."
"But early in the morning of September 7, 1982, the offices and factory of Quantum and Steal Stopper in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights caught fire. The fire took three hours to put out. The buildings and almost all inventory within were destroyed. An investigation of the cause of the fire noted "suspicious burn patterns" with fires starting in two places aided by an accelerant such as gasoline.[9] Adkins said that Issa appeared to prepare for a fire by increasing the fire insurance policy 462% three weeks previously, and by removing computer equipment holding accounting and customer information. St. Paul Insurance, suspicious of arson and insurance fraud, initially paid only $25,000 according to Issa.[9] Issa then sued St. Paul Insurance for $175,000 and eventually the two parties settled out of court with Issa receiving approximately $20,000."
In addition to Lind and Buchanan, here are some other people who one might consider paleocons who are ten times smarter than Jonah Goldberg and his friends
Jared Taylor (Yale) Ann Coulter (Univ. Michigan Law School) (has been VDare-ish on the national question lately) Ron Unz (Harvard) Steve Sailer (UCLA) Charles Murray (Harvard) Peter Brimelow (Stanford)
I'll leave others to look up the schools of Katherine Jean Lopez, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew McCarthy, and the rest.
I don't like the neocons much at all. I agree far more with the paleos on just about everything, but I get really tired of the alt right conceit that they are some kind of brain trust in comparison to the Stupid Party GOP. There is absolutely no evidence of that. Every criticism of the GOP's lack of brain power, such that it exists, applies double to the alt right. I don't honestly think anyone can honestly think it is consistent for Steve to constantly post about how damaging the Ivy League managerial class is to middle class interests and then turn around and whine that the GOP doesn't have enough Ivy Leaguers. I mean a big reason why the paleocons were marginalized in the GOP was because the neo-cons were able to claim that they would change the GOP's stupid party label. I guess I should take pleasure in the paleos being hoisted by their own petard except like I said I agree with the paleos.
Gee, Whiskey Issa now represents South OC as well as San Diego. The OC has more of the Republican elites with bucks but not always from the Ivy League. Usually folks that sell a lot of real estate.
Who give a dam what college you went to, the best politically on the right Tancredo or Dana Ronabacher went to average colleges. Dana and Tom were one of the few Republicans that complain about Bush. Dan went to Calif-State Long Beach.
For starters Pat Buchanan and William Lind are Ivy League grads. Their knowledge of history, specially US history, is unmatched by any neocon I've seen.
The problem with Pat is he is in the past. Most white ladies will not be able to do garment work sewing. In fact in some places it was taken over by illegal immigrants before garment work was shipped overseas. Well, in La they should have hire whites or blacks but they hired mainly illegal Mexicans or some Asians as far back as the late 1970's in garment work.
article was tl;dnr, but there's no reason to study any of these new generation neocons. they're all losers, to a man. conservatism inc lackeys to the core. but not only that, they're dull. boring. wholly uninteresting people.
this guy's ambition is to be the white house press secretary? wow. we have found the opposite of those "most interesting man in the world" commercials. kurt bardella is easily in the running for least interesting man in the world. stay thirsty (for more neocon BS), my friends.
article was tl;dnr, but there's no reason to study any of these new generation neocons. they're all losers, to a man. conservatism inc lackeys to the core. but not only that, they're dull. boring. wholly uninteresting people.
this guy's ambition is to be the white house press secretary? wow. we have found the opposite of those "most interesting man in the world" commercials. kurt bardella is easily in the running for least interesting man in the world. stay thirsty (for more neocon BS), my friends."
Well said. These people are not only loathesome, they are tiresome and uninteresting.
Re: "...I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one."
Given that people of a certain, ahem, culture, are being admitted to the Ivies for reasons other than intellectual achievement (see, Ron Unz), the whole "I've an Ivy League Degree" doesn't impress as much as it might. Similarly, given these Ivy League geniuses have presided over such towering achievements as Iraq, Afghanistan and China's eclipsing of the US, could I see some evidence of their smarts, please?
I'd bet Gottfried would at least tie Mansfield in an IQ test (jobs in academia are, in fact, in part determined by politics and Gottfried holds the wrong ones).
Derbyshire, meantime, is a columnist, not an academic, and I'll bet his IQ is at least two SD above yours. Thanks for showing up.
The Democrats get the Ivy Leaguers and the Republicans get the college drop outs like Karl Rove and the grifters like Mr. Bardella.
ReplyDeleteIs there any wonder that the Republicans fail at almost everything they attempt.
"guest007 said...
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats get the Ivy Leaguers and the Republicans get the college drop outs like Karl Rove and the grifters like Mr. Bardella."
Yet they all have one thing in common. They are all loathsome parasites.
Nothing new and I've watched some of this close up with my congressmen. The aides come through the College Republicans usually. They work a few campaigns then head back to DC if their guy wins. They're good at spouting all the talking points they know the folks back home want to hear. But yeah it's just a game and they're in for the excitement and networking.
ReplyDeleteWhat's bad is when the rep's chief of staff succeeds him in office. Don't let it happen. At least try to get someone who really gives a crap if only at first.
This gets to a point Steve has made in the past about how the sharpest Republicans are in the private sector. I'm reading Steve Coll's book about ExxonMobil now, and despite the tendentiousness you'd expect, it's hard not to be struck by the competence, prudence, and intelligence of Exxon's management, particularly in comparison to the Bush administration.
ReplyDeleteRead The Prize, Daniel Yergin's history of the oil industry. These guys mostly know what they are doing. Somebody like Everette de Golyer (sp?), the scientific petroleum geologist who discovered oil in Mexico in 1910 and led the crucial secret mission to Saudi Arabia in 1943 that determined postwar grand strategy (America knew the value of the Saudi oil reserves) years before anybody else) is an American hero.
ReplyDeleteBrain Rust.
ReplyDeleteOf course, most think tanks don't hire people who can think but those who obediently repeat what they've been told to think.
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement. I mean going off chutzpah I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one.
ReplyDeleteI'm embarassed it took me so long to say what really could have been said in a sentence. John Derbyshire is an intellectual guru to paleocons. Yea the genius who wrote the talk.
Here's what the Republican party does in Congress: They go around to corporate bosses and ask, "Are the Democrats treating you mean? We can fix it for you, for a price."
ReplyDeleteThe corporate bosses like the bidding war aspect of the two-party system. Give money to both parties and make your best deal!
Both parties are whores to big-money interests. They get into bidding wars to decide which party can transfer more wealth from the people to the rulers of the corporatist state.
People who make their living that way (as the GOP does) cannot be expected to become inspirational leaders.
Steve, the best way to think about government, government allies (Sierra Club, Emily's List, NAACP, Urban League, SPLC, NARAL, NOW etc.) is a relatively young (around 80 years or so) aristocracy. These people are all related mostly to one another (there are at least three prominent newsreaders and producers for network news with relatives/spouses in the Obama Administration). They all went per Murray to the same few schools. They all live in the same few zip codes. They all spout the same Post-Christian religion of form but not substance of Christianity -- moving from a sinful past to a utopian shining future of salvation.
ReplyDeleteRepublican political elites are stupid, because they have to spout things like tradition, values, America, patriotism, the historic American nation, and so on that as a member of the aristocracy they do not believe and in fact find loathesome, to the degree that an aristocrat would find peasants quite literally revolting in all senses of the word.
Moreover to succeed in the dominant aristocracy, which holds all the power (see BP, ExxonMobil, etc.) Republicans must toe the line of aristocratic sentiment and religion. Anti-White stuff, anti-historic nation, multiculti extended stay America, etc.
Sandra Fluke, has more social power, and gets more attention from the President, than the head of ExxonMobil, which is utterly dependent on the US government and its NGO allies to moderate anti-carbon "green" idiocy and the like. See coal companies, mining industry, agribusiness, etc.
Real power is easy to see. It is shown by arrows, point to who cannot be criticized, who always gets their way, who lives with platoons of armed guards and flunkies, who gets to avoid legal penalties, who gets to break the law with impunity. That power is concentrated among the thirty percent or so of Whites (with a few Blacks and Hispanics and Asians) who form the government, semi-government, media, entertainment, and legal aristocracy class.
hell, why didn't the US sieze Saudi arabia in 1946 anyway? Would have been easy to hold, largely depopulated. Would have saved us from countless stress over oil shortage
ReplyDeleteRe Issa:
ReplyDeleteThe wrong guy is running House Oversight. It should be Trey Gowdy. When your objective is to nail the opposition party's executive branch, you should have an ex-prosecutor in Gowdy doing it, not a businessman like Issa. That became clear to me after the Lois Lerner-taking the fifth controversy. Gowdy spoke up, Issa was oblivious.
I agree with Steve the article was amusing, but I also am not sure that I'd put Bardella in the "brain trust" that Steve does. He certainly has the "fast twitch" mental muscles that seemingly make our staffer overlords reactive and important to their bosses. (On twitter, I remarked he reminded me of Dan Egan, the robotically funny staffer to Selina Meyer on HBO's VEEP, which, if you're not watching, you should. Nothing describes the isolation and vapidity of our Washington's masters of the universe so candidly.) I think Bardella is squarely in that middle-class nexus of staffers and LAs that has to, ultimately, network hard for that next job. As Bardella found out the hard way, jumping out of line gets you fired (temporarily, at least).
ReplyDeleteOne thing that has changed, I think, in the instant responses 21st century, is that information speed is prized over the quality of information. Bardella, while certainly not unintelligent, can sh*t out a blurb in 30 seconds that is professional and competent, but I bet a deep dive on serious topics like the national question and the Federal Reserve would send him scurrying for a timeout.
Let us not forget we are careening to the ten year anniversary of Republican senate staffer Washingtonienne (Jessica Cutler), who blogged about her meager salary, the douchebags she worked with, and the fact she took money to sleep with several high ranking Republicans during the crazy Abramoff years. Is this better or worse? You decide.
Re: the oil industry, too much success in the 50s and 60s led to them getting in bed w/ the power elite on issues such as the oil depletion allowance and funding power families and intelligence networks (namely, the Bush family). Even the best things seemingly bounce back to gray.
I know several extremely high quality people who went to DC to work in politics and left after a short while, disgusted by the predominance of the kind of folks profiled in this article.
ReplyDeleteLet us not forget we are careening to the ten year anniversary....
ReplyDeleteUgh. "Year" is already included in "anniversary".
So, who's the guy who embodies the guy who catches what's "extruded," before it hits the bowl?
ReplyDeleteThe Bardella story was exactly like Shculberg's "What Makes Sammy Run?" except Bardella hasn't been promoted yet.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats get the Ivy Leaguers and the Republicans get the college drop outs like Karl Rove
ReplyDeleteThe late Steve Jobs and several other Silicon Valley Hall of Famers were or are college drop outs. Are you an Ivied League alumn? What or what else have you got to brag about?
What's bad is when the rep's chief of staff succeeds him in office. Don't let it happen. ...
Are you referring to last year's Repub. V. P. contender, Paul Ryan?
Anonymous said...
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement....
That's you posting there, Gubbler, aren't you? Why are you trying to hide behind the Anon. tag, Gub?
And the palecons get the guys jacking off to Russian teen porn in their mom's basement. I mean going off chutzpah I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one.
ReplyDeleteI'm embarassed it took me so long to say what really could have been said in a sentence. John Derbyshire is an intellectual guru to paleocons. Yea the genius who wrote the talk.
For starters Pat Buchanan and William Lind are Ivy League grads. Their knowledge of history, specially US history, is unmatched by any neocon I've seen.
But hey if you like the invade-the-world-invite-the-world-in-hock-to-the-world strategy of the neocons, then I guess there is no convincing you otherwise that the neocons, despite their educational credentials, are bad for America.
ha, that was sort of depressing. A very non-Asian personality.
ReplyDeleteAnd I didn't know Issa had all those patents. Pretty fascinating guy: smart, vain, corrupt, and ideological.
And I didn't know Issa had all those patents. Pretty fascinating guy: smart, vain, corrupt, and ideological.
ReplyDeleteHe also apparently dabbled in crime when he was younger:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa#Early_life.2C_education.2C_and_military_service
"Issa was transferred to a supply depot after receiving poor ratings. According to Issa, the Examiner reporter misunderstood an anecdote he had related.[9] A fellow soldier, Jay Bergey, said that Issa stole his Dodge Charger in 1971, and that "I confronted Issa...I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike." No charges were ever filed. Issa has denied any theft.[9]
After receiving a hardship discharge in 1972, because his father had a heart attack, Issa earned a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.[9] Twice that year, he was arrested. In the first incident he was indicted by a grand jury for an alleged theft of a Maserati, but prosecutors dropped the charge.[16] In the second incident, he was stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, and a police officer noticed a firearm in his glove compartment. Issa was charged with carrying a concealed weapon. He pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of an unregistered firearm, and was sentenced to six months' probation and a small fine."
"Shortly before his discharge in 1980, Issa was again indicted for grand theft auto. According to court documents, Darrel's brother William Issa had gone to a used car dealer and offered to sell his brother's car, a 1976Mercedes sedan, while impersonating his brother. With an Ohio driver’s license belonging to Darrell, William was given $16,000 for the car from the dealer. Shortly after the sale, Darrell reported the car stolen and told the police that he had left the title in the trunk. During the investigation Darrell gave conflicting statements about whether he had recently obtained a replacement driver’s license. This evidence resulted in police suspecting that the brothers had conspired to fraudulently sell Darrell’s car and then collect on the insurance policy and from the sale of the car.
Darrell and his brother were then indicted for grand theft. Darrell claimed he had no knowledge of William’s theft and sale while William claimed that his brother had authorized him to sell the car. As the investigation continued, Darrell went to the dealership the car was sold to and repurchased his car. A few months after Darrell had repurchased his car, investigators had dropped the charges against him.[9] Then in 1981 in Cleveland, Issa crashed a truck he was driving into another motorists car and, according to court records, Issa told her that he did not have time to wait for the police and he then left the scene. The other motorist then sued Issa for twenty thousand dollars and they eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed amount."
Also, Issa may have engaged in insurance fraud while starting out in business:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa#Quantum.2FSteal_Stopper
"But early in the morning of September 7, 1982, the offices and factory of Quantum and Steal Stopper in the Cleveland suburb of Maple Heights caught fire. The fire took three hours to put out. The buildings and almost all inventory within were destroyed. An investigation of the cause of the fire noted "suspicious burn patterns" with fires starting in two places aided by an accelerant such as gasoline.[9] Adkins said that Issa appeared to prepare for a fire by increasing the fire insurance policy 462% three weeks previously, and by removing computer equipment holding accounting and customer information. St. Paul Insurance, suspicious of arson and insurance fraud, initially paid only $25,000 according to Issa.[9] Issa then sued St. Paul Insurance for $175,000 and eventually the two parties settled out of court with Issa receiving approximately $20,000."
In addition to Lind and Buchanan, here are some other people who one might consider paleocons who are ten times smarter than Jonah Goldberg and his friends
ReplyDeleteJared Taylor (Yale)
Ann Coulter (Univ. Michigan Law School) (has been VDare-ish on the national question lately)
Ron Unz (Harvard)
Steve Sailer (UCLA)
Charles Murray (Harvard)
Peter Brimelow (Stanford)
I'll leave others to look up the schools of Katherine Jean Lopez, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew McCarthy, and the rest.
I don't like the neocons much at all. I agree far more with the paleos on just about everything, but I get really tired of the alt right conceit that they are some kind of brain trust in comparison to the Stupid Party GOP. There is absolutely no evidence of that. Every criticism of the GOP's lack of brain power, such that it exists, applies double to the alt right. I don't honestly think anyone can honestly think it is consistent for Steve to constantly post about how damaging the Ivy League managerial class is to middle class interests and then turn around and whine that the GOP doesn't have enough Ivy Leaguers. I mean a big reason why the paleocons were marginalized in the GOP was because the neo-cons were able to claim that they would change the GOP's stupid party label. I guess I should take pleasure in the paleos being hoisted by their own petard except like I said I agree with the paleos.
ReplyDelete"...(America knew the value of the Saudi oil reserves) years before anybody else) is an American hero."
ReplyDeleteSee the weird - if admirable - thing about that is why they didn't con the Arabs out of it.
(I assume the reasons were admirable but in world historical terms it's a really weird thing not to do.)
Gee, Whiskey Issa now represents South OC as well as San Diego. The OC has more of the Republican elites with bucks but not always from the Ivy League. Usually folks that sell a lot of real estate.
ReplyDeleteWho give a dam what college you went to, the best politically on the right Tancredo or Dana Ronabacher went to average colleges. Dana and Tom were one of the few Republicans that complain about Bush. Dan went to Calif-State Long Beach.
ReplyDeleteFor starters Pat Buchanan and William Lind are Ivy League grads. Their knowledge of history, specially US history, is unmatched by any neocon I've seen.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Pat is he is in the past. Most white ladies will not be able to do garment work sewing. In fact in some places it was taken over by illegal immigrants before garment work was shipped overseas. Well, in La they should have hire whites or blacks but they hired mainly illegal Mexicans or some Asians as far back as the late 1970's in garment work.
I'll have to check out Eyes on The Prize.
ReplyDelete"See the weird - if admirable - thing about that is why they didn't con the Arabs out of it."
Closer to the opposite happened. The Saudis nationalized the American oil consortium operating there in the 1970s.
article was tl;dnr, but there's no reason to study any of these new generation neocons. they're all losers, to a man. conservatism inc lackeys to the core. but not only that, they're dull. boring. wholly uninteresting people.
ReplyDeletethis guy's ambition is to be the white house press secretary? wow. we have found the opposite of those "most interesting man in the world" commercials. kurt bardella is easily in the running for least interesting man in the world. stay thirsty (for more neocon BS), my friends.
"Anonymous said..
ReplyDeleteHe also apparently dabbled in crime when he was younger:"
If all true, that's a lot of smoke - it would be hard to believe that there was no fire. Interesting.
"jody said...
ReplyDeletearticle was tl;dnr, but there's no reason to study any of these new generation neocons. they're all losers, to a man. conservatism inc lackeys to the core. but not only that, they're dull. boring. wholly uninteresting people.
this guy's ambition is to be the white house press secretary? wow. we have found the opposite of those "most interesting man in the world" commercials. kurt bardella is easily in the running for least interesting man in the world. stay thirsty (for more neocon BS), my friends."
Well said. These people are not only loathesome, they are tiresome and uninteresting.
Re: "...I'd say palecons must be conversos because how does an intellectual movement whose "brightest" jewel is Paul Gottfried talk smack about any other movements level of intelligence. I mean honestly the neo cons are pretty much Ivy grads and you whine about them too. How many SDs greater IQ do you think Harvey Mansfield had on ol' Gottfried? At least one."
ReplyDeleteGiven that people of a certain, ahem, culture, are being admitted to the Ivies for reasons other than intellectual achievement (see, Ron Unz), the whole "I've an Ivy League Degree" doesn't impress as much as it might. Similarly, given these Ivy League geniuses have presided over such towering achievements as Iraq, Afghanistan and China's eclipsing of the US, could I see some evidence of their smarts, please?
I'd bet Gottfried would at least tie Mansfield in an IQ test (jobs in academia are, in fact, in part determined by politics and Gottfried holds the wrong ones).
Derbyshire, meantime, is a columnist, not an academic, and I'll bet his IQ is at least two SD above yours. Thanks for showing up.