Doubling Down on Crazy

Romney failed to condemn forcefully and sever all ties with the two quasi-pro-rape senators at a critical time when he was trying to court women. His choice of a running mate further reinforced his suspect credentials when it came to women.

He also ran a very anti-science campaign, alienating anyone who felt strongly about the possible dangers of climate change and the need for a strong space program, and lampooned Newt Gingrich, a member of his own party when he proposed a vigorous space program, violating Reagan’s dictum of speaking no ill of a Republican, while simultaneously backing away from the strategy of technology long advocated and followed by the Republican party by Jerry Pournell et al. while simultaneously and schizophrenically proposing to go back to a NASA-centric anti-small business space program. This helped alienate engineers, and non-social conservative intellectuals.

The 47% comment and his anti-illegal immigrant positions “self deportation, &etc.” further poisoned the well of public opinion among those older and retired voters receiving government assistance and among Latinos, while his anti-libertarian disrespect of Ron Paul and his supporters cost him valuable support among the libertarian and youthful wing of the Republican party.

In short he alienated every potential base of support the party needed in the future, while simultaneously embracing far right social conservatives that make others in the party and the general electorate (pro-choice, gay, or people with gay family members) uncomfortable.

I'm not even going to get into his lack of specifics on taxes, the economy and serious health care reform.

Good men do not HOPE for revolution. It is simply to be endured.

I was discussing the mess in out government, and the apparent intractability of cleaning it up with my friend Mark Smith.  I have often called for there to be few laws, rigorously enforced, and applied evenly without exception.  I think the whole of the law should be 10,000 words (or less!), double spaced 12 point font on 8 x 11 paper.  If they want to put something in, they should have to take something out.  No regulations or other fine print not specifically laid out in that law should exist.  There should be no tax code, or getting around this limitation by making an addendum, etc.


You should be able to sit down and in an afternoon learn how your country works and is regulated from a-z.


Additionally there should also be no more than 3 levels of management in any government entity except the military.  Managers should manager no fewer than 8 employees.  Professing ignorance of the doings of your subordinates should be cause for immediate dismissal.

Mr. Smith had similar views, and here I am paraphrasing "Our laws are ... not meaningless. They are INTENDED to be dense, confusing and TOTALLY dependant upon "the clerks" to enlighten we, the benighted.  They create these complex laws and regulations on purpose. It is by design.  Therefore it CANNOT be "fixed".  If you refuse to name the enemy, you cannot fight him and you surely cannot win.  Capitalism has "creative destruction" as a KNOWN mechanism that CAN be implemented to "fix" problems. There is NO SUCH MECHANISM  in EXISTANCE for "government" or a bureaucracy.  The only mechanism in existence is "revolution". It is to be avoided."

I was going to say Maximilien Robespierre had a solution, but it didn't work out well for him.

"Revolution is ugly, messy and TERRIBLY inefficient. It is to be avoided at all costs if at ALL possible.  It does NOT go easy on the weak either.  Good men do not HOPE for revolution. It is simply to be endured.  Cancer cannot be "reasoned" with though."

I agree.

Get all JNDI objects in Java

try {
listContext((Context)new InitialContext().lookup(""), "");
} catch (NamingException ex) {
      LOG.warn("JNDI failure: ", ex);
}

/**
* Recursively exhaust the JNDI tree
* @throws NamingException
*/
public static final void listContext(Context ctx, String indent) throws NamingException {
  NamingEnumeration list = ctx.listBindings("");
  while (list.hasMore()) {
      Binding item = (Binding) list.next();
      String className = item.getClassName();
      String name = item.getName();
      LOG.info(indent + className + " " + name);
      Object o = item.getObject();
      if (o instanceof javax.naming.Context) {
      listContext((Context) o, indent + " ");
      }
  }
}

Ron Paul - Should Pick General Petraeus Now.

Rick Santorum is an social conservative that wants to legislate morality.

He is not in my opinion electable. He also opposed rule by the constitution, which I guess is inconvenient for him, with it's "un-elected" supreme court. As he becomes known he can only sink in the polls, or be embraced by the extreme right only to die in the general election.

Romney is a tool of the party establishment and a the 1%. I can't see him winning a general election against Obama if the economy continues its current trajectory of a gradual recovery. His foreign policy positions are not different from Obama, and he really has no vision for a renewed purpose for America, and the bottom 80% of the public generally. He also has no vision for energy, space, science and development in general, preferring to prove that government is the problem. I just don't see a Romney candidacy catching fire with the public.

So that leaves Gingrich or Ron Paul, one of which (Gingrich) has been mortally wounded.

I think it's unlikely the fragmented field of the remaining social conservatives will leave any time soon, so it's likely Ron Paul's total of 20-25% will continue. Public selection of a strong advocate for the armed forces and a proven defense record like Gen. David Petraeus could swing many undecided voters to his cause, as well as steal headlines, but he will likely put off such bold moves until it is too late. Voters think he is a kook, and a kook he will remain unless he embrace traditional american defensive obligations and responsibilities. This is despite his strong economic policies (overly austere in my view, but likely to be tempered by a rebellious congress), and obvious constitutional credentials.

We therefore appear headed for four more years of Obama.