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Electability; respectability; realism

It’s a twofer Tuesday:  First, John Boehner, who spends far more time working to fend off conservatism and adding his own establishment paving stones along the road to our serfdom than he does working on behalf of the party base, wants to make it known — to Democrats — that he isn’t one of those kind of Republicans.  Because those kind of Republicans are assholes, according to the august Speaker — a sentiment Boehner shares, along with many policy desires, with progressive Democrats.

And what is it, pray tell, that makes those kind of Republicans “assholes”, in the Speaker’s estimation? Well, it’s simple, really: they reject the whole romantic idea of noble savagery, or the silly conceit that the Other is somehow intrinsically better than everyone else — that but for poverty, illegal immigrants would be the best among us.  At least, that’s the public sentiment one is supposed to adopt.  What they really are is a source of cheap labor for the corporatists who now own the GOP, and a source of Democratic votes that will continue the growth of big government.

Second, more Big Trouble in Little Jersey for Huge Christie:  “Christie’s bodyguard busted in Pennsylvania theft”:

A state police bodyguard to Chris Christie is facing criminal charges in Pennsylvania — despite his attempt to use his ties with the New Jersey governor to avoid arrest.

Trooper William A. Carvounis, 35, is accused of stealing $267 in gun supplies and other goods from a Cabela’s store near Hamburg, Pa. His arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 10 in Berks County Court of Common Pleas.

“Carvounis said he was on the governor’s security detail,” Tilden Township Police Chief William J. McEllroy told New Jersey Watchdog. “He said he makes $140,000 a year, and he’s afraid of losing his job.”

The trooper pleaded with local police and the retailer to drop the matter out of “professional courtesy” and tried to use his connection to Christie as leverage, sources added.

“We don’t give preferential treatment when someone breaks the law,” McEllroy said.

The chief would not comment further on the case.

We can only hope Christie does. Those news conferences where he throws people under the bus have really been working out well for him.

Besides, an anti-gun “conservative” like Christie shouldn’t need a security detail.  He should know that the only people who pose a threat when they have firearms are law-abiding citizens who insist upon a natural right that the Governor simply doesn’t much care for.  And law abiding citizens, it seems more and more clear, aren’t very much in vogue around the Christie inner circle.

 

 

38 Replies to “Electability; respectability; realism”

  1. Squid says:

    That bodyguard would only be pulling down $90,000 a year if he didn’t have so much body to guard.

    Get it? Cuz Chris Christie’s a fat fat fattie! Har har har!

  2. leigh says:

    “Gun supplies”? What did he steal? A cleaning kit, a rifle case, ammo (unlikely)?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    Anyway, the dumbass should have used his state provided credit card and just purchased the items. Sheesh.

  3. Ernst Schreiber says:

    So according to Boehner, he wouldn’t have to keep losing to the Democrats if only those damn conservatives would just let him sell out?

    That’s a hell of a message to take into the midterms.

  4. bgbear says:

    Cheif McEllroy : Trooper, why did you shoplift from Cabelas?

    Trooper Carvounis: because the Bass Pro didn’t have what I was looking for

  5. newrouter says:

    fat boy sure surrounds hisblimp with quality folks

  6. George Orwell says:

    Are we sure instead of a Cabela’s, the fat man’s bodyguard wasn’t looking to rob a Dunkin’ Donuts?

  7. George Orwell says:

    I wonder if Christie supports any lane closures on the fast track to immigration reform.

  8. Darleen says:

    Actually, I think Rep. King was understating the case.

    Speaker Cryin Orange should come talk to my gang unit sometime …

  9. George Orwell says:

    House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the most powerful Republican in Congress, called his GOP colleague Rep. Steve King of Iowa an “a–hole” while speaking with two Democratic members on the House floor

    Is anyone else pleased that apart from being a sellout to DC cronyism, Chambers of Commerce and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House has a potty mouth like a ten-year old on a schoolyard?

    I was hoping for more creativity. I mean, he could have called King a Bible-humping periwigged dingleberry high on visions of Edmund Burke in a vinyl peekaboo singlet, or something.

  10. George Orwell says:

    I mean, try as Boehner might, he ain’t no Amanda Marcotte.

  11. George Orwell says:

    I can’t wait to hear Weepy John’s opinion of civility in politics.

  12. McGehee says:

    You’d be an asshole for asking, George.

  13. eCurmudgeon says:

    A heads-up from Justice Scalia?

    Justice Antonin Scalia predicts that the Supreme Court will eventually authorize another a wartime abuse of civil rights such as the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

    “You are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again,” Scalia told the University of Hawaii law school while discussing Korematsu v. United States, the ruling in which the court gave its imprimatur to the internment camps.

  14. dicentra says:

    Hey, what’s Levin talking about? WHO got nominated for what?

  15. George Orwell says:

    John Boehner just PM’d me that Scalia is an asshole. He forgot to use the asterisks.

  16. George Orwell says:

    dicentra

    http://bit.ly/1e1P2gx

  17. dicentra says:

    Thanks, Mr. Orwell.

    Obama chooses his nominees first for their piss-off-my-enemies value, second for their radical bona fides.

  18. Blake says:

    I shouldn’t be surprised, yet, again, this administration manages with this nomination.

  19. RI Red says:

    OT, but I’m in NYC overnight. Feel nekkid without my piece – I must be compensating for something. Shoot, I carry in frickin’ Boston.
    OTOH, I just saw Matt Damon in person! Eleventy!!1!

  20. geoffb says:

    That’s quite a ways to drive from Trenton just to steal a few hundred bucks worth of goods. Philly is a lot closer but

  21. newrouter says:

    >The latest happened early Sunday as two women left the Tropical Heat nightclub at 53rd and Market streets following a night of karaoke. Two men in hooded sweatshirts confronted the women about 2:35 a.m.,<

    hey that's not too far from 6221 osage ave

  22. palaeomerus says:

    I got such a good deal on some Cabelas hiking boots that it should count as a theft. Or so I thought until the soles popped off after a hard rain.

    So I gave up hiking and took up an impetuous regimen of profligate lasagna abuse.

  23. McGehee says:

    Won’t somebody please think of the lasagna?

  24. BigBangHunter says:

    – The half-red-hot chili peppers.

    – Does a spirit have 6 or 12 strings?

  25. BigBangHunter says:

    – I really don’t give a fuck if that fat ass Rino Christie gets run over by a snow plow.

    – From the book “I told you so”, and the beat goes on and on and on. Best guess is that after the first small rush of freeloaders hoping to score something gratis, and the smallish lump of extended Medicare signees, you’ve seen all the peak you’re going too with OCare.

    – So the Prgressives will have managed toadd three million or so new insurers to the Social Security roles, while 355 million end up with little or no coverage.

    – Way to go Bumblefuck.

    To hold down premiums under the healthcare law, major insurers have sharply cut the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients in the state’s new health insurance market.

  26. Ernst Schreiber says:

    OT: interesting piece on the difference betweenclassical liberals and libertarians.

    It is important to understand the differences in views between the strong libertarian and classical liberal position. Serious hard-line libertarian thinkers include Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess. Rothbard believes nonaggression is the sole requirement of a just social order. For Hess, “libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit.” There are large kernels of truth in both propositions. It is quite impossible to see how any social order could be maintained if there were no limitations against the use, or threatened use, of force to enslave or butcher other people, which Hess’s proposition of absolute self-ownership strongly counteracts.

    Yet the overarching question is how does a group of people move from the Hobbesian “war of all against all” toward a peaceful society? Hess claims that stable institutions are created by “voluntary association and cooperation.” Again, strong libertarians are on solid ground in defending (most) private contracts against government interference, which is why Lochner v. New York (1905), reviled as it is by most constitutional thinkers, was right in striking down New York’s sixty hours per week maximum labor statute. Yet the hard-line libertarian position badly misfires in assuming that any set of voluntary contracts can solve the far larger problem of social order, which, as Rothbard notes, in practice requires each and every citizen to relinquish the use force against all others. Voluntary cooperation cannot secure unanimous consent, because the one violent holdout could upset the peace and tranquility of all others.

    The sad experience of history is that high transaction costs and nonstop opportunism wreck the widespread voluntary effort to create a grand social alliance to limit the use of force. Society needs a coercive mechanism strong enough to keep defectors in line, but fair enough to command the allegiance of individuals, who must share the costs of creating that larger and mutually beneficial social order. The social contract that Locke said brought individuals out of the state of nature was one such device. The want of individual consent was displaced by a consciously designed substantive program to protect both liberty and property in ways that left all members of society better off than they were in the state of nature. Only constrained coercion can overcome the holdout problems needed to implement any principle of nonaggression.

  27. Car in says:

    I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but JD lost his brother last night after a long battle with Cancer. If you see him … I know he’s not here often much?

  28. StrangernFiction says:

    Here’s to hoping Christie rights the ship. He really is the perfect standard-bearer for these statist pigs.

  29. leigh says:

    Carin, if you speak to him please give him my condolences.

  30. Squid says:

    Bill Dunne must be positively O-Dub-esque in his impermeability to reason. Heya, Bill — when 500 people line up to tell you how wrong you are, maybe you should spend some time investigating their claims instead of doubling down on how Roberts is totally crazy like a fox.

    The whole adopted-children thing is a complete waste of time, I’ll agree. But who knows what else the NSA, FBI, IRS, and other arms of the Chicago Mob have put together on the guy?

  31. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Here’s to hoping Christie rights the ship. He really is the perfect standard-bearer for these statist pigs.

    nah. Too little melanin and only one X chromosome.

  32. Squid says:

    Dear Planning & Development Director,

    Post-Kelo anti-eminent domain laws putting a crimp in your urban renewal plans? Worry not! Our new 13-ton armored vehicles can knock down the homes you’d never get a permit to demolish!

    Just give the address of your favorite redevelopment spot to one of our trustworthy street informants, and in a matter of hours, we’ll happily pull a warrant and drive our tank right through the place! Just promise that you’ll include a donut shop in the redevelopment plan, ‘kay?

    Your fellow “servant” of the People (ha!),
    –Police Chief

  33. McGehee says:

    Re Dunne, I’m leery of cleverness touted by someone who can’t spell “skulduggery.”

Comments are closed.