Ass On As Love
Over at Powerline, Assrocket Junior Mach II aka Scott Johnson argues that obscure hedge fund cobag Clifford Asness is in fact a national figure who will top the Republican ticket in 2012:
The man who talked back revisited
Amity Shlaes recalls that Wendell Wilkie was “the man who talked back” to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Barack Obama is replaying some New Deal themes and expanding government power in a Rooseveltian style. Obama’s strong-arming of Chrysler’s secured creditors on behalf of the United Auto Workers union seems to me to go beyond the New Deal in its lawlessness and corruption. But where is our Wilkie? …
… Shlaes concludes her column on Wilkie with a point that seems applicable to Asness:
When Willkie finally ran for President in 1940, he did not win, but he did aggregate enough support to deal a blow to Democratic radicalism. Roosevelt was not over, but the New Deal was. The point is not that those who talk back are perfect. The canny Dimon probably isn’t. Willkie sure wasn’t. The takeaway is that daring to talk back is worthwhile — especially when you do it early.
A lot of Amity Shlaes’ points are ‘applicable to Asness’ … that sort of goes without saying. But Johnson, while admirably committed to finding Asness in the oddest of places, probably overplays his hand here — Shlaes is already comparing JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to Wendell Wilkie in this passage. What’s he, chopped liver?
Republicans for Assness!
I thought that Santelli was the new savior. Eh, I should keep up.
Wendell Wilkie being the Republican candidate in 1940 who only got into politics because he was offended that the TVA scandalously provided better service than his own private utility; also, Wendell Wilkie, the man who lost 449-82 to FDR. Sounds like a winning plan to me.
Assness! How great is that? ROFL!!
I just missed y’all and thought I’d stop by.
XOXOXOXOX
Lex
Moron. The Second New Deal was opposed as early as 1937 by the “Conservative [Shitbag] Coalition” which dominated U.S. legislative policy for the next 50 years or so. That was a coalition of Southern segregationist (and therefore ultra rightwing) Democrats and Northern Republicans to block the most labor-friendly and progressive of Roosevelt’s policies. It wasn’t some Churchillian gambit by Wendell Wilkie. The last major act of the New Deal was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Which, according to some calendricking, came before 1940.
Wilkie switched parties (southern Democrat to Republican) after FDR kicked his ass in battles over the TVA. Southern politicians luuuuuved them some federal dollars for development, but, by God, don’t you try to go around the private enterprises getting in the way.
After losing the election, though, Wilkie further departed from Republican anti-internationalism to support FDR’s policies regarding the European war before the U.S. entered after the Pearl Harbour attacks.
I thought republicans already HAD plenty of assness.
Ah yes, thanks to Wilkie, FDR was widely hated and left virtually powerless for the next 5 years.
I ask this question in all seriousness… these guys think Churchill was president from 1941-1945, right?
Oh yeah, Wendell Wilkie. There’s a role model for success.
Keep the good ideas coming, Republicans.
asness. On a bumpersticker.
Assness/Vitter 2012
So Amity Shlaes is saying, let’s set up our own era’s Wendell Wilkie – Jamie Dimon – to deliver a resounding defeat at the hands of Roosevelt/Obama! And Powerline replies, surely we can come up someone even more obscure … and with a mildly pornographic name to boot!
Wow, that is some historical ignorance there. Do they imagine that every setback FDR had before that was meaningless? Did they ever hear of the Court packing scheme? Not only did Wendell get his ass handed to him in 1940, but he ended up as FDR’s personal representative to the Middle East and later to China and the Soviet Union. Now that is a conservative to be proud of.
I really don’t understand Republicans sometimes.
I know one drug-taking trashtalker and occasional pilodinal cyst cultivar who would agree with this:
daring to talk back is worthwhile
Boehner/ Asness 2012
Steele/Asness ’12
or better yet:
Palin/Asness ’12
I thought Rush was the leader of their party. Johnson better watch his mouth.
“You were expecting maybe Wendell Willkie?” [/Bugs Bunny’s gremlin nemesis]
I thought Rush was the leader of their potty
Fzed.
Give Shlaes a little credit: she managed to spell “Willkie” correctly.
Other than that, the relationship between her “history” and reality is as loose as it usually is.
As has been pointed out upthread: further New Deal reforms were dead long before 1940 thanks to an effective anti-New Deal coalition in Congress. And Willkie’s candidacy was an Epic Fail whose very existence suggested that the GOP had run out of ideas.
Crapo/Asness 2012?
Sigh. First they came for the hedge fund managers, etc.
Willkie’s candidacy was an Epic Fail whose very existence suggested that the GOP had run out of ideas.
Willkie = Palin?
Willkie = Palin?
Wilkie was a far better human being than Palin or any of the other current Republicans will ever be.
I think it could work with the right tagline.
Crapo/Asness 2012 – Doing their doodie for the Republican potty.
Why are we discussing this instead of discussing really important things? Like how Obama disgraced our nation with yet another etiquette gaffe by appearing at the WHCD black tie event with a long tie instead of a bow tie?
Wendell Wilkie was “the man who talked back” to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal
Hey, Amity?
Wendell who, now?
Get up, come on get down with the Asness
You mother get up, come on get down with the Asness
You fucker get up, come on get down with the Asness
Dumbness is the gift that has been given to me
Like how Obama disgraced our nation with yet another etiquette gaffe by appearing at the WHCD black tie event with a long tie instead of a bow tie?
It’s cited in the Koran that a good Islamist shall never wear a tie that looks like his shoe laces.
Or something like that. Maybe.
Like a good conservative, I looked it up on a box of Rightie-Os cereal.
Like how Obama disgraced our nation with yet another etiquette gaffe by appearing at the WHCD black tie event with a long tie instead of a bow tie?
You’d think his father (Louis Farrakahn) would have taught him how to tie a bow tie, too!
They may be on to something, I don’t know what, but something.
HAHA! I just had a visitor on my blog from Wasilla, AK. Just makes me wonder…..sheesh, I wish Palin would go to my blog. Talk about assness. Is anyone else about to OD on assness?
dbati–Wait, I thought his father was Malcolm X?
Wow, that says a lot about how deep they are in their alternate history of the US, because despite packing the books with every wingnut they could find, it’s pretty much a given that the New Deal was a good thing. Even high schoolers know that even if they know nothing else about the 30s.
I guess they assumed that because the Soviet model of history worked on Ronald Reagan, it’ll work on everything else, but it really seems to be mostly a one-shot deal. No one seems to be biting on these latest efforts and Nixon’s reputation has only improved in comparison to the latest fuck-up.
Lex,
You’re right, I’m confused.
As I recall, Malcolm could tie a bow, too, though…
I believe this is central…and so on.
“It’s the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat’s supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why’d you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?”
Wait, I thought his father was Malcolm X?
Wouldn’t that make him Malcolm XI?
Or Malcolm Y.
“Wow, that says a lot about how deep they are in their alternate history of the US, because despite packing the books with every wingnut they could find, it’s pretty much a given that the New Deal was a good thing. Even high schoolers know that even if they know nothing else about the 30s.”
That’s just a sad commentary on how dumbed down our education system has become by the leftist Teacher’s Unions and feel good politically correct history.
He’s right. Damned revisionist history making the New Deal seem like a good thing, where everyone back then realized that it was a massive failure. Electricity in Tennessee…who needs that, anyway?
Have you seen how poorly American students do on tests compared to their international counterparts?
That’s forty years of liberal education policy–from the best in the world, to the bottom of the developed world since LBJ.
One such considered above criticism, sacred as motherhood, is TVA. This program started as a flood control project; the Tennessee Valley was periodically ravaged by destructive floods. The Army Engineers set out to solve this problem. They said that it was possible that once in 500 years there could be a total capacity flood that would inundate some 600,000 acres (2,400 km2). Well, the engineers fixed that. They made a permanent lake which inundated a million acres (4,000 km²). This solved the problem of floods, but the annual interest on the TVA debt is five times as great as the annual flood damage they sought to correct. Of course, you will point out that TVA gets electric power from the impounded waters, and this is true, but today 85 percent of TVA’s electricity is generated in coal burning steam plants. Now perhaps you’ll charge that I’m overlooking the navigable waterway that was created, providing cheap barge traffic, but the bulk of the freight barged on that waterway is coal being shipped to the TVA steam plants, and the cost of maintaining that channel each year would pay for shipping all of the coal by rail, and there would be money left over.
“The takeaway is that daring to talk back is worthwhile …”
Unless the President is a Republican, in which case STFU that’s why you hate America so much.
Everyone knows that the real reason the GOP is in the crapper is that voters are poorly educated by government schools. Thus, the only course of action we have to fight against this is to buy my book, now on sale via Amazon or your local wingnut welfare think tank.
Exactly. Which is why the Republicans have had such enormous success launching their home-schooling based scientific research institute, and why our modern pharmaceutical research takes place at Regent and Liberty University and various home schooling academies.
Gee. Imagine that.
The only worthwhile goal of government is to start wars, and you libs just don’t see that.
Where’s my Social Security check?
Roads are stupid.
The goal of government is to maintain the protection of life and property, establish courts to settle disputes peacefully, and provide for our national defense.
“Wendell Wilkie was “the man who talked back” to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal”
And is (barely) remembered today as the guy who got trounced by FDR and then sort of got with the home team. You guys have the getting trounced-at-the-polls bit down pretty well.
Whats happening now is just what happened in 1976-1980. Democrats come to power by default with an inexperienced leader propelled by a sympathetic media, overreach, and get trounced.
It’s been over 20 years since I was president, yet the current crop of wingnuts invoke me and me alone as the source of all good for American politics. At the same time, the GOP has been completely unable to reach out to young voters, black voters, and urban voters. These two facts certainly have nothing to do with each other.
Additionally, I was for talking to our enemies and deficit spending. I’m sure current wingnuts would love me if I was still around.
Keep ignoring me, silly.
I’ve been dead for 60 + years, but liberals still invoke me.
By the way, during the time of the New Deal itself, none were more cheering for FDR than the Southern white working classes. His pictures were on the wall, because unlike today’s idiot pseudo-populists, they themselves saw that for the first time, the federal government was actually doing things to help them. Roads, public health, minimum wages — this at a time when mill workers were paid so little that even given their debt accounts at the company store, they couldn’t afford to feed both their children and themselves fully.
They had seen quite directly what the hands-off and no-government approach had produced — hookworm, mud ‘roads’, starvation, and eternal sharecropper entrapment.
My approval rating was high the first year of my Presidency, too!
Ronald Reagan isn’t fit to wipe my ass.
I mean, up here, in Heaven. They let Reagan in because we needed a Master of the Stool in my Heavenly mansion; someone to wipe my ass, so I thought “what the hey, it’s not like I’m letting Nixon out of Hell,” and brought Ronnie up to the big leagues. He’s worthless, never wiping my ass properly, all day long going on about his Hollywood days, comparing the sexual talents of Jane Wyman and Nancy (shudder). I talked to J.C. the other day, and he says it’s impossible for someone to have Alzheimer’s in Heaven. “He’s just stupid,” Jesus says. We both laughed. What can you do?
I love the notion that the idiot right quotes Ronald Reagan as some political philosopher.
I wish wingnut trolls would stop overusing me.
I love the notion that the left thinks “YES WE CAN” is some deep political statement.
[allowing for toofy’s crappy syntax]
That’s just a sad commentary on how dumbed down our education system has become by
the leftist Teacher’s Unions and feel good politically correct historywhite flight, fundamentalist revisionism, Republican budget-slashing and, uhh…,TV,video games, Twitter.“Democrats come to power by default …”
AKA winning an election in a landslide because the preceding Republican was criminal, or criminally negligent.
What about my high job approval ratings MY first year?
All I did was 1) Help win the greatest conflict in the world’s history; 2) Get America out of the greatest economic disaster in its history; and 3) Completely alter the electoral map.
Additionally, wingnuts invoke me more than liberals do. Durrr, this spending package won’t work cuz the New Deal was a failure! Durrr.
STOP OVERUSING ME! You’re tiring me out, Troofy.
OMFG We’re all gonna die! Shoot some brown people for Jesus and America!
I thought Troofie was going away, never to darken our doorstep again, take THAT lie-bruls.
Like Darth Cheney, how can we miss him if he won’t go away?
I only put ketchup on my poo. I don’t eat mustard.
Have you seen how poorly American students do on tests compared to their international counterparts?
Yea.
Funny how that wasn’t the case before Ronald Reagan.
The decline began in the 1960s, when big government liberals in Washington started introducing silly “self esteem” doctrines and other B.S., combined with politically correct history and “new” math.
I tried to stick a banana up my ass but it just got smushed. So I ate it instead.
I’m taught, like, nowhere.
Authoritarians are just so damn cute when they try to go all Jimmy Dean – it’s like a vanilla-dyke trying to be butch … but what the fucking fuck: Wendell Wilkie?!? Eep!
Historical illiteracy – it’s not just for breakfast anymore!
FOR him, sure – it nets him millions per annum (a karmic felony that the MSM will pay dearly for) … but TO him, not so much.
Rush “I Am Horst Wessel’s Love-Child” Limbaugh defies anything resembling real dialogue due to his tragic life-long allergy to semantic content – you may as well argue with a Slinky.
Damn straight – & those goody-goody PC freaks are censoring the real truth: before the Satanic Liberal Elite took school-prayer away in the 1960s, starvation used to cause people to have spontaneous orgasms! Those New Deal work-camps & soup-kitchens were actually libido-destroying torture-factories! FDR was a Muslim-Leninist!
WAEK UP LIBERAL SHEEPLEZ!!one!!!!eleventy-one!1!
Goddamn New Math-pushing lie-bruls. If kids today still had slide rules, Erector Sets and dog-eared copies of Boy’s Life, we might even have vacuum tube-based walkie-talkie telephones by now.
The decline began in the 1960s
Um. No. World reading scores were never even kept until 1971.
Fail.
I was actually in grade school when “New Math” was the rage.
New Math basically introduced Set Theory, Algebra and Pre-Calculus at the grade school level. The complaint at the time was kids didn’t learn arithmetic, but I still remember memorizing those wretched multiplication tables at the same time.
The funny thing is, that was in the days before pocket calculators. Remember the scene from the “Apollo 13” film where the gaggle of eggheads had to work out the re-entry formulae with paper and pencil? That was what the fuss was about – kids wouldn’t be able to do the crucial things with arithmetic on paper that were needed in high-tech jobs.
In today’s world, who the hell does long division on paper anymore? Does anyone still use printed trig tables? New pocket calculators are five bucks at the local drug store, or two bucks used at Goodwill. Slide rules (the pocket calculators of the era) are nothing but nostalgic collector’s items now.
Reverse Polish Notation, anyone?
Newt Gingrich actually called Reagan (Yes, Saint Reagan himself!) an “appeaser” back in the 1980s for talking to Gorbachev.
He even trotted out the tired old Neville Chamberlain comparison (that one never seems to get old).
DI, I love RPN, and I’m not even a enjaneer.
I was actually in grade school when “New Math” was the rage.
Ditto. I recall one time, when I had a column of – say 6 or seven three digit – numbers to sum whiule shopping or something and my mother was at my side. I did it the fastest way for me. basically did it in my head, columnwise from left to right. Basically two stepping it, generating a second table of three addends, jotting down each column total. My mother went nutz. “You’re doing it wrong! You can’t get the right number that way?!?! What are you doing!?!?!!”
I have a B.S. in mathematics. I still do arithmetic that way.
“It’s the truth that you should never trust anybody who wears a bow tie. Cravat’s supposed to point down to accentuate the genitals. Why’d you wanna trust somebody whose tie points out to accentuate his ears?”
A State and Main reference. Very funny movie
“Where is our Wilkie?”
Finally the GOP has found the powerful rallying cry that will win them back the White House.
“Where is our Wilkie?”
I’m sure Rush, DP, EE, and the lot ask this question on a regular basis.
Strangely enough, in today’s world the ideas of teaching New Math make more sense. We don’t need pencil-pushing “human calculators” anymore, certainly not in crucial scientific jobs (like NASA.) So the prime argument against de-emphasizing grade school arithmetic in favor of introductory geometry, set theory and algebra no longer applies.
Even back then, it wasn’t like there were massive changes in grade school math curricula. They just introduced advanced concepts sooner. There were teachers who complained about being required to teach something they were basically unfamiliar with (since very few grade school teachers studied much math beyond bonehead algerba 101 in teacher’s colleges.) That, and the wingnuts of the era screeching about not teaching enough “readin’ and ritin’ and ‘rithmetic!” laughingly known as the “Three Rs”.
I was actually shocked that my daughter, who is starting high school next year, hasn’t had any real geometry yet. I got that in 7th grade. Her school doesn’t introduce it until 9th grade now. Which is a shame, since geometry is what finally got me turned on to math, after all the horrid arithmetic I went through. (Luckily, that’s not my kid’s problem, she loves math anyway.)
Not that I believe we shouldn’t be teaching kids how long division, prime number sieves, et al. works (along with columned addition, abacus, and other quick arithmetics.) That way they understand what the calculator (which they will end up using for the rest of their lives to do arithmetic) is doing.
[/Bugs Bunny’s gremlin nemesis]
Heh, that’s how I first heard of him! The gremlin actually says “it ain’t Vendell Vilkie.” Gremlins is the craziest peoples!
It’s cute how the right attacks the New Deal. Before that, there was not a “middle class” worth mentioning, and the right’s dreamworld of libertarian economics was the rule, and it sucked royally.
So it’s not as if we’ve never tried it their way, without social programs and ultra low unprogressive taxes. If you want to argue the new deal “failed” – as compared to what exactly? 18 hour work days and children falling into machines? The triangle shirtwaist fire? Standard Oil’s monopoly? 11% illiteracy?
I just love how the Conservatives are convinced that sympathy pleas for Randian Supermen will convince us mere mortals to flock to the Republican party.
dbati–ahhh yes, the tie is the central point. Thank you for clearing this up. Bow Tie Politics aren’t to be taken lightly, dammit.
The proper role of government is to do nothing except occasionally send troopers to open fire on poor people when goons hired by big business are no longer enough.
<The gremlin actually says “it ain’t Vendell Vilkie.”
I too am doomed to mentally hearing the man’s name that way for all time.
(From Falling Hare. I’m disappointed in myself for having to have looked it up…in, of course, Wendell Wilkie’s Wikipedia Page)
My neighbour’s house is on fire.
Huh, and you know what he’s doing? Calling the government’s fire brigade like a big lib baby.
He should put that fire out with his willpower and his personal firearm like a manly man.
I have a “daddy”. He slaps my bare buttocks and tells me what a bad boy I’ve been, and then he tells me in detail what my “punishment” will be if I keep it up…
I believe in a small government that restricts its duties to the basics like:
1) Locking up marujiana users
2) Federally proscribing testing regimes that hurt education on all schools
3) Stopping gay people from getting married
4) Subsidising agri-business, big oil, big coal, and the hi-tech sector
5) Executing people
6) Jailing 2 million other people
7) Occupying Iraq
8) Creating military bases in every continent to project our massive government everywhere
9) Jailing abortionists
10) Building real Star Wars with real lasers that really work
11) Protecting me from teh blacks and Mohamedans
12) Preventing girls getting vaccines for cervical cancer
13) Spying on their domestic political enemies
14) Imposing the Draft on people less well of than myself
Whoop it up for Liberty!
I too am doomed to mentally hearing the man’s name that way for all time.
I get that and “Well, you know how it is with these ‘A’ cards” whenever something breaks down.
I’m only 26! My generation hasn’t even seen an ‘A’ card!
From Falling Hare
Nyahh, we ran out of gas!
I’m only 26! My generation hasn’t even seen an ‘A’ card!
I’m about twice your age and I didn’t get it until the oil crunch of the 70s.
Reverse Polish Notation, anyone?
The Hewlett-Packard 45 — it’s not just a calibre!
My 24-year-old HP 28S has so rewired my brain that I can’t even think any other way any more. Damn you, Hewlett-Packard, Damn you to hell!
(And if three, THREE, mind you, “N” batteries isn’t some kind of capitalist plot, I don’t know what is!)
Get this: Sam Harris and others are creating The Reason Project with a nice gang of advisors you’d be honored to have over for tea. Note the first name:
The Reason Project Advisory Board: Clifford S. Asness, Peter Atkins, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Brent Forrester, Rebecca Goldstein, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Harold Kroto, Bill Maher, Ian McEwan, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie, Ryan Scott, Lee M. Silver, J. Craig Venter, Ibn Warraq, and Steven Weinberg.
Wow. It’s like every conceited douchebag I’ve ever heard of.
How come Marcus Chown didn’t make the list?
Nice to see so many Muslims and Jews sitting on the same panel.
…wait, what?
And just think, if they run asness, in twenty years they can say, “Where’s our asness?” and the Democrats can say, “Right between your ears, where it’s always been!”.