The Democrats are just as incompetent as the Republicans. - 2-May-07 - Generational Dynamics

This year's Democratic-controlled Congress has spent four months looking exactly like last year's Republic-controlled Congress -- like a bunch of idiot clowns.

This year, the Democrats took control of Congress, and it's been nothing but a circus. It started out that the new Congress was so incompetent that they couldn't even vote themselves a pay raise.

House leader Nancy Pelosi bragged that the Democrats would get more done in the first 100 hours than the Republicans had gotten done in all of 2006. They rushed six popular bills through the House in what party leaders calculated was 42 hours, 13 minutes and 28 seconds.

Those included a federal minimum wage increase, a cut in student loan interest rates, repeal of oil industry tax breaks, and lower Medicare drug prices.

But it's a waste of time since those bills never had a real chance of getting through the Senate, and indeed they haven't.

Instead, the Democrats spent over three months, arguing and screaming about one moronic "antiwar" provision after another.

Finally, on Tuesday, Congress did pass a bill -- one that they knew that the President would veto immediately.

It's worthwhile reminding everyone again just how paralyzed this country is -- as are most of the countries that fought in World War II.

The survivors of World War II did great things -- they created the United Nations, World Bank, Green Revolution, World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, and so forth. They created these organizations and managed them for decades with one purpose in mind: That their children and grandchildren would never have to go through anything so horrible as World War II.

Now all those survivors are gone, and the people who are left behind -- mostly the Boomer generation -- don't know how to run those organizations. That's true at the international level, as well as at the national level.

Boomers are almost completely incompetent at governing. Generation-Xers are even worse; they can't govern either, but they know that Boomers are incompetent, they hate Boomers and they make decisions by doing everything possible to make Boomers miserable.

So this lethal combination is what's paralyzing the government. The Boomer Democrats and Republicans might theoretically be able to get something done cooperatively, but if you take a look around and see who are the most vocal people pushing Democrats to the loony left side, they all seem to be Xers. There aren't very many of them, but they've been pushing the Democrats to waste all this time on the "antiwar" bill, so the result is that nothing has gotten done.

And now, the liberal, pro-Democratic opinion magazine, The New Republic, has published an article by senior editor Lawrence F. Kaplan with the title "Congressional leaders are illiterate on Iraq."

The article lists many of the things I've frequently mentioned, such as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid not knowing that al-Qaeda is operating in Iraq, and many, many more examples.

But "you don't need to cherry-pick quotes to prove the point: Nearly every time a senator's mouth opens, something wrong comes out."

But Kaplan goes a lot farther than I do. I merely say that they're stupid, with the implication that they don't have the time or ability to learn what's going on in the world.

But Kaplan says that they say stupid things to get more votes, like Woody Woodpecker might say stupid things to get laughs.

"More than that, congressional leaders often seem loath even to hear about events on the ground. During General Petraeus's visit to Washington last week, for example, House Democrats at first denied the Iraq commander an opportunity to brief them, citing "scheduling conflicts." And, when he finally did brief Congress, the evidence of progress that Petraeus was expected to present was dismissed before he even offered it. ...

But, then, expertise may be beside the point. Obliviousness, after all, has its uses. It comforts the sensibilities of politicians whose varying levels of awareness allow them to favor certain facts and not others. Obliviousness testifies to the virtue and good intentions of members of Congress who, in truth, couldn't care less what comes next in Iraq. It invites Americans to indulge in the conceit that what happens in Washington obviates the need to think seriously about what happens in Baghdad.

Most of all, illiteracy makes for good politics. There is the conviction, to paraphrase McCain, that winning a war takes precedence over winning an election. But it isn't so clear that this conviction guides a partisan brawl in which the Senate majority leader can gush, "We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war." In such an environment, the subordination of facts to politics inform matters small and large, from the relatively trivial question of whether U.S. troops still operate in Tal Afar to enormous questions regarding the future of the U.S. enterprise in Iraq. ...

Where all this leads is clear. Piece together a string of demonstrably false "facts on the ground" from a suitably safe remove, and you're left with a scenario where we can walk away from Iraq without condition and regardless of consequence. You don't need to watch terrified Iraqis pleading for American forces to stay put in their neighborhoods. You don't need to read the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which anticipates that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal will end in catastrophe. Why, in the serene conviction that things are the other way around, you don't even need to read at all. Chances are, your congressman doesn't either."

Wow! And people criticize me for calling these politicians morons! Kaplan goes much farther.

When I wrote about what Senator Joe Biden said Sunday on Meet the Press, what was remarkable was how Biden got everything wrong. I mean, everything. Everything he said was incredibly stupid. But now, thanks to Kaplan, we know that he's lying on purpose, because all he cares about is getting votes.

But Kaplan's article is very self-serving, because he doesn't address the question about why journalists are so stupid.

When Biden was saying one incredibly dumb thing after another in answer to Tim Russert's questions on Meet the Press, Russert never challenged him. Is that because Russert wants to help Democrats get votes? Are Russert and other journalists as purposely stupid as the politicians are? Do they avoid learning anything, so they can make up "facts" as they go along? Do they just want to get votes for Democrats?

An even more glaring example occurred the previous Sunday, when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman showed himself to be just as stupid as Biden, and even implied that Biden was his soul-mate. Is Friedman purposely stupid too, so that he can make up "facts" as he goes along?

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-May-07
The Democrats are just as incompetent as the Republicans.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-May-07 The Democrats are just as incompetent as the Republicans.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 2-May-07
The Democrats are just as incompetent as the Republicans.