The Razor

The unemployment rate is down to 7.6%, it’s lowest in 4 years. Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, writes “today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are helping to build an economy that creates jobs and works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007.”

So, happy days are here again? Only if you are drinking the kool-aid at the White House. Every month roughly 150,000 more people join the workforce as they come of age or arrive on our shores as immigrants. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that payrolls expanded by 88,000 people last month. So why did the unemployment rate drop to 7.6%?

A record 663,000 people gave up trying to find a job and left the workforce. These people are not counted in the BLS employment statistics; only those that are working or actively seeking employment within 2 years of having a job are counted. Anyone beyond that 2 year mark is simply dropped from the statistics, as is anyone who applied for and received disability, or moved back to live with their parents while attending school.

So is this statistic really indicative of a healthy economy?

Consider the following thought experiment:

In 2017 a Republican moves into the White House. Within a few months of taking office, her policies begin to have an effect on the economy and it starts to boom. Businesses start hiring, the economy picks up, and wages rise. At the same time social programs are cut back by the Republican administration and its allies forcing those on the dole to return to the work force.

What happens as these people reenter the workforce?

The BLS begins to include them back into their statistics because they are actively looking for work. If the number of jobs is growing but the number of job seekers is growing faster because they are being forced to get a job or encouraged by the success of friends and family to get one, what happens to the unemployment rate? It rises as the number of people outside the workforce shrinks, the exact opposite of the situation today. Do you think the mainstream media will trumpet the expanding economy sucking people off their couches and back into the workforce?

Happy days aren’t here again, and won’t be while leftist ideology trumps job creation, and crony capitalism allows the wealthy to benefit from the Left’s War on Poverty.

Americans have been conditioned to believe that a low unemployment figure is good while a higher unemployment figure is bad. Such simple notions used to be true until economists and their political patrons realized it provided them with a tool to support their favored policies. They then began manipulating the figures, including this while excluding that in order to support their favored legislative agenda. A century and a half ago Mark Twain recognized the danger of statistics who wrote “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” But today our political leaders have gone beyond lies with their manipulation of statistics, whether damned or not, into the realm of pure propaganda.

In 2008-9 our country experienced an unprecedented meltdown of its financial system brought on by the cosy relationships between government regulators, politicians and bureaucrats. In response the Federal Reserve embarked on a program whereby the it stole money from the bank accounts of 98% of the country and shifted it to the wealthiest of American society through depressing interest rates paid to savers on their accounts below the rate of inflation, meaning that for every $1,000 in your bank account you lose $30 every year to inflation. This subsidized those with money by providing them with low borrowing costs, allowing them to leverage their wealth for even greater gains in the stock market. It’s not good enough that a billionaire invests $100 million in the market; no, he must use that $100m as leverage to control a billion dollars worth of stock. The stock market has become a casino where small investors are left to chase nickels in front of steam rollers while the government funds the wealthiest segment of society. Worse, the Cyprus Model has put paid to the idea that bank savings are property and protected by the law. Instead savers have become “speculators” and their savings “investments” to be wiped out whenever banks need a bailout. It must not be forgotten that the initial bank bailout, the first put forward by the European Union, looked to steal 6.7% of guaranteed savings below 100,000 Euro. The European Union isn’t exactly communist China or Soviet Russia yet it completely ignored its own law of guaranteed deposits (the EU FDIC) and took the money. Is such an event possible in the United States? Yes. Unlikely perhaps at this point, but still possible.

To support this stock market bubble the federal reserve has flooded the markets with currency yet denied such actions, euphemistically called “quantitative easing”, are inflationary. Government bureaucracies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) manipulate employment statistics to make it appear as if good times are here to stay by excluding the long-term unemployed and those who have given up on finding a job, meaning that if your wife is working and you’re looking for a job, our economy will improve by you staying at home and watching daytime TV since your household will go from 50% unemployment to 0% unemployment. Similarly the BLS manipulates inflation rates by discounting the volatility of food and fuel, the largest categories all but the very wealthiest people spend their money on besides taxes and housing, and making “qualitative adjustments” that hide inflation. In addition companies are passing on higher production costs to consumer through stealth inflation, providing less product for the same money. The profusion of dollar stores are proof of the success of this strategy since shoppers at these stores believing they are getting a bargain while in reality they are paying more per unit of good than at other stores. 4 loads of Tide for a $1 might seem a deal until one goes to a supermarket and finds a 40 load box of the detergent for $7.

Not one person from the banking crisis has been indicted or prosecuted by the Obama administration or Congress, a fact that spawned a PBS Frontline show “The Untouchables.” Could this be because the federal government would be prosecuting it’s own? Former SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro resigned and has taken a position at Promontory Financial Group, a bank consulting group, but promises not to lobby the government she once worked for. That has led to Forbes wondering what other of her qualifications Promontory is willing to bill $1,000 – $10,000 an hour for. She’s among numerous ex-federal employees at her new digs. Check out the nifty graphic at ZeroHedge listing Promontory employees and their former positions in the government. Yet we are supposed to believe this revolving door between regulators and those they regulate is free from moral hazard. In the comments at ZeroHedge someone calls the place a “high end whorehouse.” It it were taxpayers wouldn’t be the ones being screwed.

Banks like JP Morgan-Chase and investment firms like Goldman Sachs are considered too big to fail, taking their “skin” out of the game and replacing it with the American taxpayer’s. If JPMC or Goldman’s risky investments turn out well, it’s “capitalism” and their corporate managers and shareholders are rewarded; if they bomb it’s no big deal. The shareholders or managers are still rewarded as they were in January 2010 when banker bonuses were “bigger than ever” according to the New York Times even after the economic collapse of 2008-9. The American worker will simply work a few hours to provide the taxes the firms need to be bailed out, that is if she has a job. It’s a great system if you are Lloyd Blankfein GS’s CEO who earns upwards of $100 million a year at Goldman Sachs. It benefits Democratic politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama too since Blankfein is a large donor to the Democratic party.

Then there’s the debt. To call it a “mountain of debt” is to betray a shallow awareness of the world’s topography. Here are some neat visualizations of our debt in $100 bills, and an impressive sounding statistic that’s hard to visual: a line of $1 bills would stretch from the Earth to Uranus. We’ve reached a point where analogies lose their meaning, although the current debt being greater than the country’s entire output in 2011 must be at least a bit sobering to even the drunkest Keynesian economist. The best way to consider the debt is by making it personal. Since 2008 the debt has expanded by $26,000 per person. Multiply that number by those in your household and ask yourself if you feel that amount richer over the past 4 years. That would mean an extra $78k for my household, enough to drop the Wife’s med school debt by 40% or replace our aging cars, each with over 150k miles on them, as well as buy a new car for the Kid. If you don’t see that money, where did it go? Ask yourself: are you better off today than you were 4 years ago? Then ask Lloyd whether he is.

The system is corrupt yet we do nothing about it. We are told happy days are here again, that the stockmarket is at record highs, yet those of us who dabbled in the market prior to 2009 have still not recovered from the losses suffered then, leaving us on the sidelines of this rally. Small investors piled into the market and out of the market late back then, proving they were the “greater fools” and some are doing so today as the market skyrockets and smart money looks for the exits. Sure our 401K’s are expanding, but the numbers are meaningless for anyone other than those planning to retire in the coming months before this bubble bursts. Self employed people and contractors like myself don’t have 401K’s, we just have our wits and an ever sharpening skill set that we use to stay employed, but both are slowly being eroded by time as we age and the younger cohorts below us grow hungrier and more competitive. Time will unravel us, and when it does we will be poor and destitute, remembering the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes paid that could have gone, should have gone, into our retirement funds but didn’t. At that point we’ll be on the side of the 47% who don’t pay taxes, but by then the government will be completely broke. We shouldn’t expect any sympathy from the generations coming up in our shadows, since both Left and Right are in agreement that theirs will be the first generations to have lower living standards than preceding generations. It doesn’t help that we’ve sent them to substandard schools whose sole purpose seems to be to employ Masters of Education degree holders instead of actually teaching our children the skills they need to succeed in life.

The collapse of our education system is proof of our sick society, one that raids the education budgets for the young to pay for the guaranteed pensions of the old, one in which the only people who treasure marriage these days are gay and everyone else hooks up like a shed-full of feral cats in heat, with an increasing percetage of the products of these unions are on ADHD medication. I’d need to be medicated too if I was forced to sit still with a body full of hormones and brimming with youthful energy, taught by teachers who, like the children of Lake Wobegon, are all above average, all 98% of them. Conversely, Walter Russell Mead points out ”only 78.2 percent of American students graduated high school in 2010. Sixty-seven percent of all fourth graders could not read at grade level in 2009. And only 32 percent of eighth graders and 38 percent of twelfth graders were reading at or above grade level that same year.” Of course if we measured education aptitude by the number of body piercings and tattoos we’d lead the world.

David Stockman, former Reagan budget director, is getting beaten up in the press for his book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. Journalists, products of the Masters of Education employment entities described above, look at the highs of the Dow and discount Stockman’s thesis that the system we have today is more akin to the monopolies and crony capitalists that spawned the progressive movement over a century ago rather than some Randist free market anarchic paradise that they instinctively fear. The treatment of Stockman is similar to that shoveled out to Bob Woodward for daring to criticize President Obama game of chicken with the sequester, as J-school graduates leaped in defense of their icon in the White House attacking Woodward with various ad hominems that any of the profs would have failed them for had they used them in class (or rather, a class where failure was an option – evidently a rarity these days where students can pass without actually studying.) Watching Woodward, a man whose politics I disagree with yet whom I respect for helping pull off the greatest journalistic story of the century, being attacked by the likes of Andrew “I’m here, I’m queer, blah blah blah” Sullivan was like watching a fine thoroughbred horse attacked by a swarm of flies fresh from their home in a dung pile. But such is the fate for anyone who dares call “shenanigans” in the current climate where anyone who can’t continue deceiving themselves is lampooned, debased, or in the case of Woodward, threatened.

Our problems aren’t just economic either. The Obama administration has fled the Middle East and attempts to appease Iran by refusing to support the rebellion against the Assad regime in Syria.

“I think that the United States has not taken a more active role in Syria from the beginning because they didn’t want to disturb the possibility, to give them space, to negotiate with Iran,” Javier Solana, the former European Union foreign policy chief, said Monday at a Brookings Institution discussion about this week’s talks. Solana, who was a top negotiator with Tehran in the nuclear program until 2009, added, “They probably knew that getting very engaged against Assad, engaged even militarily, could contribute to a break in the potential negotiations with Tehran.”

As Walter Russell Mead notes this could be a catastrophic mistake.

If Solana is right that this policy has been driving the White House all along, this is Obama’s initial Iran failure—remaining silent during the 2009 Green Revolution—on steroids. Weakness doesn’t win you the friendship of bullies. And if this dispatch is right, we should expect some ugly repercussions from the Sunni Arabs, the Israelis and the Turks. All these powers want to see Iran’s claws clipped and they want Assad to go; all of these powers chiefly view the value of their US ties at the moment in the light of the confrontation with Iran. If they come to feel that the United States is willing to throw the Syrian lamb to the Iranian tiger, their trust and confidence in the United States, and consequentially America’s power to get things done in the region, would go into a deep eclipse.

Things don’t look any better on the other side of Asia with North Korea promising to attack the United States. So far the US response has been mild, yet that hasn’t stopped the press from asking White House spokesman Jay Carney if that hasn’t provoked a communist dictatorship whose people are being starved to death on a steady diet of leftist propaganda and grass. But their carbon footprints are tiny, for now. How much carbon will be released by a nuclear strike on Osaka or Guam? Quite a bit I suppose. In any event we soon might find out if North Korea acts on its threats.

A whole industry is set up to use imagery and fantasy to modify our behavior so that we buy something, yet somehow a related industry employing the same techniques but for entertainment purposes ie exempt from responsibility when an admittedly sick individual dresses up as villain of the violent movie being shown to the audience he then commences to massacre. The Roman Catholic Pope is labeled as an extremist for calling abortion murder while a doctor who performs late term abortions and keeps the tiny feet of his victims in a jar as memento mori is lauded as a hero. The billionaire mayor of New York City makes it his personal mission to rid the city of large soft drinks while the city’s crime rate rises and the city becomes less friendly to all but society’s richest and poorest.

But when all is said and done, who is to blame for this mess that we find ourselves in? We are.

We didn’t demand for the bankers to be tarred and feathered (well, we did but failed to hold our elected leaders accountable for allowing the bankers off scot-free.). We continually vote in the politicians who offer us platitudes instead of common sense and plunder the public purse for the benefit of the monied elite regardless of their party affiliation. We engage in bitter fights over issues that don’t impact us directly (I’m not gay, on medicaid and I can’t get pregnant, so honestly just how worked up can I get about gay marriage, social programs and abortion?), yet ignore the issues that unite us and affect our daily lives. We vilify other Americans for their differences yet are willfully blind to the commonalities. Intellectual laziness encourages us to accept stereotypes and straw men built by those who feed on hatred the way a maggot feeds on the flesh of an open wound instead of putting ourselves in the other’s position, or to use an old cliche, “walking a mile in the other man’s moccasins.” We have Obama himself saying, “It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” accepting a stereotype and succumbing to a form of elitism and intellectual laziness by belittling his opponents instead of attempting to understand them and winning them over. We’ve accepted the low standards of education because we’ve been trained that “fighting city hall” or in this case the school board is futile. So our kids read less than we do, they can text faster and know the special combo to beat the god Zeus in the “God of War” video game. They’ll be alright. Right? We keep our heads down, do what we are told and hope that our dreams come true, the way they do on TV between the ads for drugs to help men get it up and women feel not so down.

We should be ashamed for what we’ve done, or more importantly, not done, expending the effort to fight for accountability from our elected officials and receiving their heads in baskets after they ignored us 4 years ago. Today the problems are even worse, the threats greater, yet we continue on the way we did before the 2008 financial meltdown and on September 10, 2001, fighting among ourselves without giving the other the benefit of the doubt or the dignity our opponent deserves. To paraphrase my late mother-in-law, we chose this path, and we did so because we are idiots.

I like Robert Spencer. I’ve read several of his books. Once a cat knocked my copy of The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion
on the floor and a puppy found it, gnawing it to shreds. Since it contains highlights and notes I couldn’t just throw it away, so I taped it back together and put it onto the shelf.

As Joshuapundit writes, Spencer is getting screwed at this year’s CPAC. Spencer confirms this, writing at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugged in “Why I Am Not A Conservative,”

And just last week, after my website www.jihadwatch.org overwhelmingly won a vote for CPAC’s “People’s Choice Blog Award,” John Hawkins of Right Wing News (whether on his own initiative, as he now claims, or as the errand boy of shadowy and unnamed higher-ups, as he initially told me over the phone) told me that I was not to speak about the Muslim Brotherhood ties of Norquist and Khan when I received the award. Needless to say, I could not accept this gag order, and will not be receiving the award: the truth is more important than a trophy.

But that was the end of my identification as a conservative. Grover Norquist is a conservative. Suhail Khan is a conservative. John Hawkins is a conservative. Thus I must not be one. I am not acceptable either as a speaker or an award recipient at the nation’s foremost conservative gathering. I must not be a conservative.

If Conservatism has been corrupted by Islam then there is no need for me to belong to it. I support Gay Marriage: conservatives do not. Conservatives have an inner cadre of morality police just as the Left does, and I find them just as annoying. Most conservatives like Big Government, they just want it to run for their own benefit. I’d rather be left alone, but if that’s not possible I value the small government laid out for us by the Founder in the Constitution.

But I thought Conservatives accepted the existential threat Islam poses to our core values. If it has been corrupted and made peace with Islam, then I want no part of it. CPAC’s treatment of Spencer proves that it is indeed corrupted and willing to give a pass to those who are sworn to our destruction whether we are straight or gay, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.

If Robert Spencer isn’t a conservative, then I am not either and I cordially invite Grover Norquist and his merry band of fascist sympathizers to go f*** themselves.

I have never been a fan of Grover Norquist, nor will I ever be. Joshuapundit explains why:

CPAC is apparently now under the control of Norquist, and anyone not willing to bow down to (or at least ignore) The Muslim Brotherhood and it’s agenda is no longer welcome, including Robert Spencer, AFDI, gay homosexual groups or anyone else who doesn’t fit into the agenda.

Saudi money has always been a problem in American politics, and the shenanigans at CPAC shows that it’s not just a left/liberal/Democratic Party problem. Here’s more on Norquist’s ties to Hamas and Hezbollah – the latter group responsible for the deaths of 242 US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983. Norquist standing in the conservative establishment is proof that William F. Buckley jr.’s purge of anti-Semitic paleo-conservatives in the 1950’s missed a few.

The Buddha taught everything changes, and that the root of human suffering was our resistance to the acceptance of this reality. Congress could use a few Buddhists right now because the way both parties are acting one would think that we’ve achieved some sort of permanent status in Washington DC.

The Republican Party lost its mojo last election after drinking tea to victory in 2010, and is acting like it will never be in power again. Likewise the Democrats are acting as if they will be the majority party in perpetuity and Obama won with a landslide last November even though he won fewer votes in ‘12 than he did in ‘08. Both statements would be true if time stopped today and never flowed again, but that isn’t its nature. The former prince of a tiny kingdom in India 2,500 years ago understood that and did so without polls, political consultants or reading op-ed pieces in the Washington Post.

Republicans today should be proposing legislation that benefits the majority party. Why? Because things change. It will find its groove again will likely retake the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016. In order to prepare for that day, they should be agreeing to the legislation being put forth by the Democrats. End the filibuster? Absolutely. Expand Executive orders? Yes. Give the president the power to raise the debt ceiling? We’re on board. Today the President talks of using an executive order to restrict gun rights. That will set a precedent for a Republican president in four years time to use an executive order to restrict abortion rights, so the GOP should cheer and the Dems should reconsider their support of such an expansion of executive power.

Similarly the Democrats should be proposing legislation that protects the minority power because it is likely they will become that in two years time and it takes time for laws to be legislated and put into place. They also should be putting into place laws that build strengthen the legislative branch over the executive because it is likely they will return to Congress under a Republican president.

Of course neither party is willing to do this because it would appear they are giving in to the other, but back in the day party leaders like Tip O’Neil and James Baker would have had the foresight to see an election or two down the road and recognize the rhythm of American politics, the pendulum that swings from the left to the right and back again, marking the passage of time in the Republic. For Republicans today it’s hard not to despair, but to quote from another great man a few thousand miles to the west of the Buddha (although only a few hundred years before Him), King Solomon who pondered the eternal truth of the statement, “This too shall pass.” And the Democrats who are exultant and ready to remake history as Progressive ideals conquer all, a reminder: “This too shall pass.”

It would behoove both Democrats and Republicans to prepare for today’s passing because as the Buddha taught, whether or not we like it, it will.

Speaking of insanity, when will Republicans stop their fetishistic devotion to the wealthy after the party has been abandoned by them? As Victor Davis Hansen point out, 8 of the 10 wealthiest counties in America voted for Obama in November 2012, yet the party continues kowtowing to the uberrich by most recently exempting Hollywood from animal cruelty laws. Hollywood isn’t exactly supportive of the GOP, yet that hasn’t stopped the party from cosponsoring and supporting legislation such as the DMCA even going so far to fire  Derek Khanna, formerly of the Republican Study Committee for daring criticize the legislation that protects the film and music industries at the expense of artists and consumers.

It’s time to cap the tax exemption on charitable giving. Why not a cap on say, $10 million? Everything beyond that is taxable. Such a cap won’t hurt charities like Goodwill or AmVets, two charities that are largely supported by small donations from individuals, but it will put a dent in giving to large high profile charities and foundations supported by liberals that in return support liberal causes. Hansen suggests limiting the mortgage interest tax deduction to a single mortgage on the primary residence to the first $100k with no interest tax deduction on second or vacations homes. After all why should taxpayers subsidize mansions and multiple homes of the wealthy? Also, disallow the tax deduction for state and local taxes. For the average taxpayer this won’t result in much, but it would kill those who live in Blue states such as California, Illinois and Connecticut who are allowed to deduct their high state taxes from their federal taxes, in effect forcing people living in low tax Red states to subsidize the wealthy in La Jolla and the Hamptons. As Ann Coulter states, “You want high taxes, New York and California? Then pay them — with no deductions for state and local taxes on your federal returns.”

Coulter also points out that the reason why capital gains are taxed at a lower level than wage income is that most people pay taxes on their labor and then invest the money, so capital gains are a form of double taxation. But for the likes Warren Buffet who are compensated completely through capital gains, they do in effect pay a lower rate than the doctors, engineers and others who have to work to get the cash they need to invest. She writes, “Close that loophole. Almost no Republicans will be harmed in the making of this tax change. (There’s a reason Sen. Chuck Schumer fought so hard to save it.)”

Then there’s the Hollywood excise tax that Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has suggested re-instituting the excise tax on Hollywood that was repealed in the 1950’s. Hollywood has replaced the blacklist and slavish devotion to anti-communist ideology of the 1950s with their leftist equivalents today. The industry provides an outlet for a leftist interpretation of history (watch any Oliver Stone film to see what I’m referring to) while enjoying the benefits of conservative tax policy. As Reynolds notes, “Why should movie stars and studio moguls, with their yachts, swimming pools and private jets, not at least shoulder the burden they carried back in Harry Truman’s day—when, to be honest, movies were better anyway.”

Update: Victor Davis Hanson weighs in.

If the country is going to turn redistributionist, then we might as well do so whole-hog — given that eight of the wealthiest 10 counties in America voted for Obama. Why not limit mortgage interest deductions to just one loan under $100,000 — while ending tax breaks altogether for second and third vacation houses?

Under the present system, the beleaguered 99 percent are subsidizing the abodes of Hollywood and Silicon Valley “millionaires and billionaires” — many of whom themselves have been railing against the one percent. Should the government provide tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks for a blue-state one-percenter to live in tony Palo Alto or Newport Beach when there are plenty of fine homes far cheaper and sitting empty not far away in Stockton and Bakersfield?

Blue states usually have far higher state income taxes that are used as deductions to reduce what is owed on federal income tax. Why should working folks in Nevada or Texas have to pay their fair share, while Wall Streeters get huge federal write-offs from their New York or Connecticut state income taxes?

In general I believe the Senate should confirm a president’s nominees, but not in the case of Susan Rice. In my view Rice would be a disaster as Secretary of State.

The Benghazi incident where al Qaeda terrorists killed four Americans including the Libyan ambassador deeply troubles me. The incident is a combination of three failures, each of which Rice had a hand in. First the ambassador asked for better security for State Department workers in the country and was turned down by the administration. Second, when the ambassador and his security detail came under attack communications broke down and prevented an effective rescue from being mounted. Finally, ambassador Rice took to the airwaves for weeks denying the nature of the attack, blaming an Internet video instead of acknowledging it as a terrorist attack against the United States that resulted in the death of four Americans, including the loss of its first ambassador in over 30 years.

In 1994 and 1995 I lived in a national park Tanzania. To get there I had to fly through Nairboi Kenya and spent over a week there on the way in and another on the way out. During my stays in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam Tanzania I visited the US embassy in both cities to check in and get information on the area. On my visit to the embassy in Dar I learned that the low profile building on the outskirts of the city had once held the Israeli embassy before the Israelis built another more secure compound elsewhere in the city. At the time I thought nothing of it, nor did I question the location of the US embassy in a poorly built highrise in downtown Nairobi.

Three years later both embassies would be destroyed by simultaneous truck bombs engineered by al Qaeda. The attacks killed 224 including 12 Americans and wounded over 4,000. Prior to these attacks the Kenyan ambassador had pleaded with Secretary of State Madeline Albright for better security at the facility in Nairobi but was ignored. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has raised suspicion over Susan Rice’s involvement in the failure to secure the embassy because at the time she was the Assistant Secretary of Affairs in Africa. “What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes the attacks on those embassies in 1998, when Susan Rice was head of the African region for our State Department. In both cases, the ambassadors begged for additional security,” Collins said. Administration supporters counter this, saying Rice had “no direct role” in the scandal at the African desk, with the Soros funded political action committee ThinkProgress saying Collins stance against Rice was “hypocritical.” The problem with attacking Collins is that she is not considered by members of either party as an extremist, and if anything sides with the Democrats on many issues against the will of her party. If the administration can’t count on the support of Collins, they know they can’t count on anyone with an “R” behind their name, as well as a few conservative-leaning “D”s.

The similarities between Benghazi 2012 and East Africa 1998 are eerie enough without Rice’s presence, but to those of us who take a hardline against Islamic terror both events are connected by Democratic administration that failed in their sworn duty to protect the citizens of the United States. President Clinton’s response to the attack was to launch cruise missile strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan that destroyed a powdered formula factory but did little damage. The weak response by the USA gave credence to Osama Bin Laden’s narrative that the United States was a “weak horse” whose back would break when enough pressure was applied.

Why Sudan? The attack on Sudan ties the embassy bombings and Rice to an even bigger intelligence failure, Susan Rice’s thwarting of Bin Laden’s capture in 1997 – a year before the embassy attacks and a full four years before 9-11. In the book “Losing Bin Laden,” author Richard Miniter describes the primary role Rice played in convincing President Clinton to rebuff Sudan’s offer of handing over Osama Bin Laden who lived there at the time. She argued that Sudan was bluffing and Clinton shouldn’t take it seriously. Bin Laden evidently thought otherwise, left the country and moved to Afghanistan where he plotted the attacks that led to the death of 3,000 Americans four years later.

So on one hand we have senior State Department official (do mid-levels meet with the President and offer him advice?) in two intelligence failures prior to 9-11 and one after. What is common between these incidents is a failure to appreciate the depth of hatred for the USA and the danger presented to it by Islamic terrorism, a failure that was on display in Susan Rice’s performance after Benghazi denying it was a terrorist attack.

Is this the person we should have as the head of our diplomatic corps?

The likely nominee is John Kerry. While I believe he was unfit as Commander in Chief and do not have much respect for his behavior during the Vietnam War, and while I think he might be a wealthy weasel for basing his yacht in Rhode Island to avoid taxes, I do not view him with the same level of concern as I do Susan Rice and would not actively oppose his nomination as Secretary of State. But Susan Rice? Either the woman has bad luck by being party to the greatest intelligence failures since World War 2 or she is actively causing these failures. Either way she does not belong as head of Foggy Bottom.

I’m not a fan of Steve Forbes but his essay President Obama, Clinton Prosperity Requires Clinton-Sized Government is proof that even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes. In it Forbes counters the unspoken assumption by Democrats returning to Clinton era tax rates Clinton era growth will follow, pointing out that the federal budget back then was half a trillion dollars smaller and the Fed wasn’t printing dollars like a bunch of coked up monkeys running the printing presses.

In 1998 the budget for fiscal year 1999 Clinton submitted contained $1.7 trillion in spending and $1.8 trillion in revenue for a $9 trillion economy. It was the first balanced budget in 30 years, and resulted in a $124 billion surplus.

Contrast this with Obama’s 2012 budget. $3.8 trillion in spending and $2.5 trillion in revenue resulting in a deficit of $1.3 trillion. To put it another way the 2012 deficit alone is roughly 3/4 of Clinton’s budget. The US economy has grown to $15 trillion in 2011, making it about 66% bigger today than it was in 1999, but the rate of government spending has increased 124%, almost double economic growth that period.

So where has the money gone? Defense obviously. In 1998 when the ‘99 budget was being formulated American troops were deployed on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Today the world is different and America has deployments not only in Afghanistan but covertly in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Northern Africa and wherever Islamic terrorists like to hang out, so in my opinion the expense is justified to a degree. But I am not averse to defense cuts. How long do we have to protect Europe from the Germans or Russia? Isn’t 70+ years of American boots on the ground enough there? I’ve even advocated drawing down troops in Japan and South Korea, although these nations may not be so keen to see our backs given China’s rise to superpower status.

By comparing the 1999 and 2012 budgets by budget function, what’s interesting is the lack of divergence between functions over the 13 year period. As a portion of the total budget defense’s portion grew by 2.56% between 1999 and 2012, the largest positive shift of budget resources. Considering how things have changed in the world a 2.56% allocation to defense seems modest. Other notable changes include a nearly 9% decrease in Net Interest – a fact that strikes me as some kind of budgetary gimmick or error, and a 2.53% decrease in Social Security payments (don’t we have a higher percentage of elderly in our population today than in 1999?)

Comparing the FY1999 to FY2012 US Federal Budgets

When I look at the budget figures for both years, nothing leaps out at me and says “Here’s why we’re $16 trillion in the hole.” Bush didn’t add a whole new category of spending, and neither has Obama. The reason our budget mess is not apparent in these figures is because it’s a problem of scale. To use another analogy, it’s not as if any slice of the pie has grown over the others, the entire pie has grown beyond inflation and outpacing the economy. If the government grew at the same pace as the economy in the period 1998-2011 the federal budget in 2012 would have been $2.50 trillion dollars, $1.3 trillion less than the actual 2012 budget and coincidentally, the same figure as last year’s deficit. The entire federal government expanded and I find that disturbing because that implies uncontrollable growth, and a single statistic proves it.

How much does federal spending make up the economy? Dividing the 1999 $1.7 trillion budget by $9 trillion GDP results in 18%. Using the same numbers for 2012 and we get 25%. The federal government now owns 7% more of the economy than it did in 1999. 7% of an imaginary number like $15 trillion is meaningless on the face of it, but when we realize that while we weren’t looking the federal government added to itself an economy the size of Mexico (2011 GDP $1.15 trillion) or South Korea (2011 GDP $1.11 trillion) that it didn’t possess in 1999 and things start to look a bit more serious. Perhaps those Tea Partiers weren’t as crazy as the mainstream media portrayed them as after all, unless of course you assume government control of the economy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If we add state and local spending, the situation gets worse for a Tea Partier, better if you are a socialist, adding another 14% of GDP for combined government spending of 38.9% of GDP. Ranked against other nations in the world that puts us roughly tied with Canada, a few points ahead of Japan and Australia and a few points behind Spain and Ireland, two nations that are struggling to stay afloat in the EU.

Total US Govt (federal/state/local) Spending as Percentage of GDP 1903-2011

It is ironic that the administration of President Bill Clinton, a man so detested by the GOP establishment they tried to have him forcibly removed from office would serve as the epitome of small government at the same time as his Democratic successor strives to emulate his tax policies to fund an even bigger government. But it is what it is; up is down right is wrong, good is evil and the Clinton era stands as a shining example for small government libertarians and conservatives to strive to recreate. So party like it’s 1999 and embrace the smaller government ideals that underlaid its prosperity.
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Calculations used in this article can be accessed here in their entirety.

Reince Priebus’s online profile states “In his first year as Chairman, Reince oversaw a dramatic turnaround of the RNC, building it into a strong and effective organization for electing Republicans in 2012.”

Well, as you may have noticed, the GOP got its collective ass kicked, losing the presidential election, and seats in both the House and Senate. Strong? Nope. Effective? Only if electing Democrats is your goal.

As someone who donated to the RNC I witnessed my dollars wasted. Chairman Priebus must resign or I will never donate to the RNC again.

UPDATE: I called RNC offices and was directed to a voicemailbox to leave my comment. I couldn’t because it was full – probably not with kudos and atta-boys. The number is 202-863-8500 if you want to give it a go.

I’ve been in software development for over a dozen years now. Some of the projects I’ve been on have succeeded and others have failed. One of the key components of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and one that often gets forgotten by project teams is the “lessons learned” review at the end of a project. If often is ignored because software design has become more like movie making: just as with a movie a project brings together people to work on a single goal then disperse after that goal is complete. The lessons learned on that project are usually put together as an after-thought by project managers and analysts who will never work together again, handing the results over to an organization that will file them away on a network drive never to be read. But for a sponsoring organization such documents are key to future success. All software designs face similar constraints and road blocks, and the way those constraints are handled and the road blocks overcome can help insure the next project’s success.

Over the past months I have had a very bad feeling about this election. I touched upon this feeling some in “Ending Radio Silence” but I have felt bad about Romney’s chances to win since mid-Summer. In April my instincts or gut told me that Romney would win, but by July that feeling had dissipated. I think it was ultimately due to Romney’s personality. He showed fire in the belly during the primaries when he was up against Newt Gingrich and the rest of the field, but that fire disappeared. It’s an intangible thing this fire, and I would have a very difficult time explaining it to the man if we shared a coffee together, but Romney lost it after he clinched the nomination. Instead of looking like Reagan in 1980 he began to remind me of Kerry in 2004. It wasn’t just the ability to inspire the opposition, Romney as out of touch wealthy guy and Kerry as Vietcong sympathizer that gave creative impetus to their respective oppositions, it was his failure to connect with voters in a way that Reagan could but Kerry and Romney could not. This fire I suppose is a type of charisma, and both Kerry and Romney lacked it while Reagan and Clinton had it.

So from a lesson’s learned perspective the GOP thought they had a candidate with charisma and fire but they were fooled. The lesson learned here is… well I’m not sure there is a lesson here other than what you see in the primaries is no guarantee of what you get in the fight for the general election. The red flag should have been the fact that he didn’t fire up the party base the way he should have, made clear by the effort to find “anyone but Romney” in fall 2011 through the early primaries.

This leads us to our first lesson learned: Choose the candidate that fires up the base of the party regardless of their perceived chances to win the general election. A candidate that inspires the base has shown he or she possesses charisma. The party faithful will be the first to sense that charisma but it will eventually spread to independents and even Democrats. One thing the GOP establishment has forgotten is that Reagan was liked by many Democrats not for his policies but simply because he was a charismatic leader. This charisma makes the caricatures the Democrats will paint of the GOP candidate seem hollow and less effective during the campaign.

Instead the GOP establishment has focused on electability which, in a center-right country like the US means the most “liberal” conservative around. It’s interesting to consider that both the Democrats and Republicans have failed most of the time they have tried this strategy (for the left this means choosing the most conservative Democrat). In 2004 the Democrat establishment sunk the Howard Dean candidacy in favor of the “more electable” John Kerry, throwing away the excitement and energy the Deaniacs brought to the party. After Kerry lost, the Deaniacs did the smart thing: they took over the Democratic establishment and encouraged Barack Obama’s candidacy against the “more electable” Hillary Clinton in 2008.

This leads to the next lesson learned directly related to the first: The party establishment must get behind the candidate that excites the base the most and ignore “tenure.” For some reason this is more of a problem for the GOP than the Democrats. The Republican establishment is big on backing the candidate “whose turn it is” rather than the one more popular with the base. This points out the divide between the party establishment and the party base. Since 2008 the base has been more conservative, more radical than the establishment, and the GOP has done its best to neuter that excitement to avoid being seen as extremist.

Here’s another lesson learned: The Democrats and the mainstream media that backs them will paint whomever the GOP selects as their candidate as extreme so ignore electability. Mitt Romney is a liberal Republican who was turned into a blood-thirsty paleo-conservative industrialist. The GOP could nominate Angelina Jolie as their 2016 standard-bearer and the Democrats would turn her into a racist, crony capitalist who adopts internationally to avoid paying adoption fees in the US for her unpaid personal assistants. As long as the candidate has charisma that inspires and displays a will to win, electability follows; it doesn’t work the other way around.

Fire Reince Preibus and everyone above the title of webmaster at the RNC. This election should have marked the end of the progressive era in America, instead the progressive movement has new life. Not only did the GOP fail to take the Senate it also lost seats in the House. Whatever decisions the RNC made, including calling me three or four times a day everyday for the past month and even a 6pm call on Election Night, failed. If these guys don’t fall on their swords by lunchtime Tea Partiers should storm their offices on K Street and put them to it – metaphorically of course (well…)

Surrender on illegal immigration and amnesty. Obama said it himself that it was stupid of the Republicans to throw away a few million votes. Less than that swung the election. It’s time for the GOP to give up the fight on illegal immigration even if that means accepting amnesty. Why? Because the Hispanic vote is a better fit in the GOP than it is in the Democratic party. Hispanics are culturally very conservative. They tend to be very religious and for the most part are hardworking. Who do they compete against for jobs? African-Americans and low-skilled union jobs, both which back the Democratic Party. Hispanics do not take away jobs from highly skilled white men that tend to vote Republican, so why not add them to the party? They aren’t taking away my job, and I could use a few to lay a concrete footer for a wall outside the window right now. Cut the deal as soon as possible with the Democrats, and open the border to Mexico if necessary. The only groups that will suffer are Democrats, and by the time 2016 rolls around the GOP will have a new group in its base.

As the Wife noted, too many people see the Republicans as a bunch of anti-gay Bible thumping nut jobs beholden to Wall Street and the wealthy. This indicates the success the Democrats have had defining their opposition. As Jon Markman at the Wall Street Journal notes, the stock market has done much better under Obama than it did under Bush while the gap between rich and poor has widened under this president compared to his much maligned Republican predecessor. Yet people still believe the GOP serves Wall Street interests, ignoring the reality that Wall Street loves Democratic policies of shoveling tax payer cash into the markets, and that Wall Street has enjoyed a windfall from fees charged union pensions for risky investments.

The lesson here is that the Republican Party needs an image makeover, returning to the party’s humble populist roots referred to in Nixon’s Checker’s speech when he referred to his wife Pat owning a “respectable Republican cloth coat.” The average Republican earns less than the average Democrat, yet the GOP suffers from an image of being the party of the wealthy. These facts must be publicized. Come up with a plan that stresses the core values of what it means to be a Republican. What are those values? As a Republican myself, I’m not sure what they are – and that’s the GOP’s fault. But I would guess it can be boiled down to a government that supports you when you need it but gets out of your way when you don’t. Something like that. In the past we’ve used “small government” but what does that mean to the average American? Get specific. Publicize that the GOP is not trying to poison our drinking water and air, it’s removing unnecessary regulations and helping industry work with the government to provide jobs while protecting the environment. The GOP isn’t against health insurance, it’s for making health care cheaper by encouraging competition between providers, insurers and the government. The party needs a PR campaign so that my Wife can stop writing me texts that say “I’m embarrassed to be a Republican.”

Like many in the party I’m an ex-Democrat. I’ve voted for more Democrats in my life than Republicans and performances such as this election by the GOP makes me regret my current affiliation. The Republican Party apparatus just seems clueless, naive and downright stupid when it comes to winning elections. Democrats know how to win, and they will do everything it takes to do so. The GOP needs to absorb the Progressive Playbook, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. This book has driven the progressive movement since Alinsky published it in 1971. Alinsky’s Rules are immoral. Their purpose is to not to put up a fair fight. Their purpose is to win. Here are the rules:

RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.
RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.
RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.
RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

There is nothing in these rules that Machiavelli himself, or perhaps the late GOP strategist Lee Atwater would avoid doing. Read these rules. See how they have been used against Republican candidates and causes. Absorb them. These rules and the book itself are completely non-partisan: they can be used just as effectively against Progressives as against Conservatives.

Watching liberals freak out over a possible Romney presidency would be entertaining if it weren’t sad to those of us hoping to see Washington work again for the good of the country. If one were to believe the hysteria, minutes after taking the oath of office he is going to take away everyone’s health insurance and force them to buy private plans from insurance companies his friends own, send all American jobs to China, force women to emulate the Mormon wives portrayed in Big Love, invade Syria, Iraq, Iran and any other Middle Eastern country the angel Moroni tells him, and unleash torrents of crude oil into the wilderness all the while sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office tapping his fingers together and maniacally laughing. I’m sure forcing people to drive with their dogs on top of their cars comes his second day in office.

People on the right don’t get this at all. While liberals relished the spectacle of Republican Primaries where each candidate defined him or herself as more conservative than Mitt Romney by portraying him as a liberal RINO (Republican In Name Only), they evidently failed to notice that of all the GOP candidates Mitt Romney is the most liberal on many issues important to conservatives. He is after all the grandfather of Obamacare, the issue that nearly sank him in the primaries, and worse, wasn’t the governor of Texas, the way George W. Bush was, or California (which once had a flourishing conservatism) like Reagan. No he was governor of the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts, a state that many on the right refer to as Taxachusetts due to its tax code that more resembles socialist France than small-government loving New Hampshire. Face it, a Republican in Massachusetts is like a Pomeranian. A Pom is as much a dog as a Rottweiler. It may bark like a Rottweiler but if you are going to stroll through a city park at night you’ll note the salient difference between the two dogs and want the Rotty, not the Pom, at your side.

The rise of the Democratic party is directly the result of the election of 2004. Had Kerry defeated Bush that year it is unlikely that the Democrats would have taken over Congress in 2006 which laid the groundwork for the Obama election in 2008. By the time Congress came into session in January 2007 Bush was already a lame duck, despised by the electorate with no political capital to spend in Washington. What were the great achievements of his second term? See for yourself. He pacified Iraq of course, but that’s already unraveling. Domestically the only thing that can be loosely classified as an achievement is the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, a bill sponsored by then Senator Joe Biden which I vehemently opposed. As a rule second terms always disappoint. Clinton’s was marred by scandal and the failed attempt at impeachment, so he did what presidents often due to burnish their entry in History by chasing after foreign policy illusions. Reagan had Iran Contra, and Nixon, well let’s just note that ended badly for him.

There is no reason for the pattern to break. In a second term Obama will have a Republican House and possibly a Republican Senate. The GOP rank and file will follow the Democrat’s example and purge itself of all the establishment figures that shoved Romney down the throats of the Tea Party faithful, forcing the GOP further to the Right in the same way that Kerry’s failure forced the Democrats leftward. In the long-term this will be good for Conservatives because it will be nearly impossible for the Democrats to win again in 2016, and so the GOP will choose a candidate that will make Michelle Bachmann look as liberal as Nancy Pelosi. But he or she won’t be defeated in the primary by a centrist establishment candidate, because the establishment will have been purged of RINOs in the same way that the Democrat Party purged itself of conservatives like Zoell Miller, Dick Gephardt and Jim Webb.

If Obama wins it is unlikely either the House of Senate will move back into Democratic hands. So in 2016 when America voices its desire for change it will elect a much more conservative Republican than Mitt Romney, and will hand him or her a unified Congress. If this doesn’t scare liberals today, it should, because had someone told me in 2004 that my vote for “W” would have resulted in the Democrats controlling both halls of Congress and electing the most liberal president since Carter, I would have voted for Kerry and encouraged my libertarian and conservative brethren to do the same.

Mitt Romney is many things, but he is not a conservative. He may claim Reagan’s mantle, and the GOP will pretend it’s his, but don’t fool yourself: Romney is a liberal Republican and honestly at this point that’s okay for me. I’m tired of extremists of any stripe, and would welcome a moderate in the White House. The question is whether the Democratic Party wants to remain relevant in the long-term by losing the election this November and likely retaking Congress in two years, or desires to re-elect Obama now and give up control of Congress until 2018 and risk electing a Republican extremist in 2016. Elections have consequences, Obama once said. They sure do, and Democrats should remember that before they cast their votes.

Being a registered Republican is a constant reminder that I’m a member of the party that evidently took the “short bus” to school. For all the accusations by the Democrats about how the GOP left a mess for the Democrats to clean up, the GOP simply doesn’t have the smarts to point out that the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress for much of that period, had the entire federal government and the majority of state houses the first half of the Obama administration, and that the CEO of Countrywide Angelo Mozilo, the leading subprime lender, ran a “Friends of Angelo” program that gave sweetheart deals to Democrats. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee received a deal estimated to be worth $1 million by Michael Moore – no friend of the GOP. Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND), Fannie Mae CEO and Democratic Party kingmaker Jim Johnson also received special deals from Mozillo. Countrywide also financed deals for other Democrats including Nancy Pelosi’s son, Senator Barbara Boxer and Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Clinton Donna Shalala and Congressman and current Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-SC). While Republican Alphonso Jackson made Angelo’s list, the rest of the list is skewed towards the Democratic Party not necessarily because Mozilo is a Democrat, which he may be, but that’s where the power was at the time.

Has the GOP run ads about this, carpet bombing the media to fight back against the meme that it is to blame for the financial crisis in 2008? It’s very simple. I’ve seen Barney Frank and Chris Dodd on CSPAN clips from the era protecting the subprime mortgage industry, resisting tighter regulation and denying that anything was wrong. The RNC can’t figure out how to edit the video and put these clips together? For every punch in the face by the Democrats I see the party and its leaders step back and raise their hands shouting, “See, this guy doesn’t fight fair,” and refusing to punch back. Meanwhile the Democrats mug their Republican enemies, brutalizing them with below the belt tactics like a robber kicking the crap out of an old lady on the sidewalk all the while yelling, “See? Self-defense! She started it! Ouch! She hit me! She’s just as bad and morally culpable as I am,” in the hope that the media and independent voters will buy their narrative, believing that either they are the morally superior party or at least, that the GOP is just as bad as they are. If people become jaded and don’t vote they win because Democrats will rely on union thugs to canvas cemeteries for votes on Election Day. Wait, that’s an exaggeration. They won’t use union activists to canvas cemeteries; that’s the local Democratic party’s job.

The stupidity of the GOP is endless to the point on verging on the pathological. One would think that of all industries the entertainment industry would be one of the least popular among conservatives and their libertarian allies. The former are constantly offended by negative stereotypes of white men and the military as well as the undermining of cultural values, while the latter bristles at the entertainment industry’s war against their own consumers through the DMCA and anti-piracy crusades. The DMCA was sponsored by a Republican congressman and has received strong backing by the GOP on the principal that’s what’s good for business is good for America. This thinking goes back two generations to the repeal under President Eisenhower of the 20% excise taxes on movie theater gross revenue put in place by liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Professor Glenn Reynolds argues that the GOP should stop carrying water for their political enemies and call the Democrats’ bluff on higher taxes by re-instituting FDR’s movie tax. The entertainment industry does not back the GOP and Democrat parties evenly; support is skewed heavily towards the latter. By agreeing to the tax the GOP would show the industry that actions have consequences, something that Hollywood and the music industry have forgotten. It’s easy to support calls for higher taxes when you enjoy low ones; it’s easy to call for fair trade when you already enjoy the benefits of free trade.

The GOP must begin to fight back. It must realize that it will not win by holding back attacks or taking the moral high road while the electorate believes that it is just as vicious and amoral as the Democrats. A good start would be to conduct a seance and channel Lee Atwater’s ghost. Atwater was the brains behind the GOP wins of the last half of the Reagan era and is arguably responsible for getting Bush I elected in 1988. He was the brains behind the Willie Horton adds that painted Dukakis as an enabler of Massachusetts rapist/murderers, and makes the liberal archnemesis Karl Rove look as politically powerful as Mr. Rodgers. As long as people believe the GOP is fighting dirty and is ethically challenged, there is nothing to be gained by acting nobly. It won’t be reported by an antagonistic press, and it won’t be believed by a jaded electorate.

The GOP should call for the repeal of the DMCA on the grounds that it protects monopolies and discourages innovation. It should call for the 20% excise tax on Hollywood as well as an end to tax deductions on union dues as part of a general agreement with Democrats on a budget deal. It should also oppose offshoring subsidies and tax breaks that are enjoyed by high-tech firms such as Google, Apple and Microsoft, companies whose employees and CEOs favor Democrats. Finally, it should encourage educational innovations that weaken the stranglehold the teacher’s unions have on public education including the usage of vouchers, charter school, home-schooling support and long-distance learning initiatives. College professors are 90%+ Democrat, and colleges and universities have become more expensive and less relevant in the 21st Century. People need to be taught how to think, not indoctrinated, shown how to adapt and survive economic change instead of protesting against it. Such knowledge doesn’t require $50k in debt or institutions where administrators outnumber teachers.

It is time the GOP brought a gun to a knife fight. The Democrats claim they have, the media broadcasts the lie and people believe it. It must embrace the spirit of Lee Atwater It has nothing to lose by doing so except the election.

Like most conservatives and libertarians I know, the majority of my friends are liberals and leftists of one stripe or another. Since the arrival of Facebook and my begrudging acceptance of social media, this means that I am regularly presented with liberal views of one sort or another and varying degrees of offensiveness. Since I have this journal for my own political thoughts, I use it to explore political and social issues, leaving Facebook for cat and kid photos and George Takei posts. I don’t comment or block anything my liberal friends post, no matter how much I might disagree with it, I just let it pass and within a few hours it disappears. What this process does is allow me stay in touch with people who might be offended

Let’s face it: social media is a terrible place to discuss or debate ideas. Most issues can’t be condensed into a Facebook post with a ‘read more’ tag beneath it, let alone a Twitter post. Federal spending in 140 chars or less. OMG! U suk! FTW!

The process is good for a political writer. It’s good because it keeps me abreast of the liberal zeitgeist from my perch out her in Exile and provides mental fodder for posts here.

The big topic among my friends is Senator-wanna-be Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments and how they support their belief in the GOP’s War on Women™. A long time ago I remember watching the GOP get all hot and bothered over flag burning. President George HW Bush said, “Flag burning is wrong. I believe the importance of this issue compels me to call for a constitutional amendment.” It fired up the base and gave them something else to rally around instead of Bush’s record which, in 1992, wasn’t all that much to tout.

I don’t think Obama is Bush I – I think he is far, far worse – more Nixon than anything. But he and his team are employing the same tactic obfuscate his terrible economic track record with the War on Women™. Let’s look at the components of this war. There are several specific efforts cited by Democrats as exemplifying the War which can be boiled down to the following points: the GOP platform banning abortion in all circumstances including rape or incest. This is the same wording that has been in the platform since 2004. Prior to that the platform was much less restrictive on the procedure. Second, attempts in Congress to de-fund Planned Parenthood and eliminate federal funds for family planning.

I don’t pay attention to party conventions for the simple reason that I’ve always thought they were pointless. So when my liberal friends became up in arms over the GOP party platform, I had to look it up. Honestly it’s easier to find pictures of dancing cats than it is to find actual platform text. Walter Russell Mead gives a withering critique of party conventions and platforms.

...the honest truth is that no party platform means anything in American politics anymore. No president refers back to the platform in framing legislation, no congressional leader uses it to set the legislative agenda, no living soul ever reads or quotes it for any purpose whatever. No historian of American party politics goes back to study them, no journalist refers to them more than a week after the convention. They are dead letters, produced out of a sense of ritual and to the extent they have any purpose whatever, they are idle playgrounds aimed at keeping clueless party zealots busy counting coup and scoring imaginary points.Party counts for very little in America today, and their platforms count for even less. Presidential candidates don’t feel bound by them in the slightest, and they shouldn’t.

The GOP platform is completely worthless. It excites zealots – both GOP and Democrat – and that’s what it did among my liberal friends.

As for Planned Parenthood, the organization was founded during the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, particularly of the racist variety. Since the ethnic stock I derive from was at various times the target of such a movement, I’m not a fan. I’m sure the KKK does some good, but given PP’s founding steeped in eugenics and racism, and the organizations continued flirtation with racism today, and I’m happy not seeing my tax dollars going to fund the organization. If people want to fund Planned Parenthood or the Klan, that’s their business but it shouldn’t be the federal government’s.

All the other examples of the supposed War are MoveOn.org talking points such as H.R. 358 which the organization claims

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.

IN GENERAL- No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or an amendment made by this Act), including credits applied toward qualified health plans under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 or cost-sharing reductions under section 1402 of this Act, may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except—
‘(A) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or

‘(B) in the case where a pregnant female suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the female in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.

What rankles the anti-Life crusaders is the lack of language forcing a Catholic hospital or a doctor opposed to abortion to go against their moral convictions or a transfer the woman to a hospital where the procedure could take place. But that’s not the intent of the bill. The bill covers appropriation of taxpayer dollars: it has to do with payment for the procedure, and in the case where the woman’s life is endangered, the bill authorizes such payment.

And look at the details of the case: a woman dying who can only be saved by the murder of her unborn child / excision of the fetus who is receiving care by an institution or doctors who believe it is immoral for them to harm the child/fetus. How often do such cases occur, and is it appropriate for a law to exist to cover each possible exception? This is one reason why I support legal abortion even though I am morally opposed to it. A government cannot possible create laws that cover every possible contingency without hurting someone. Yet failing to create such a contingency becomes ammunition in support of the GOP’s War on Women?

Such a run to turn an extreme event into a is common the Left, from claiming the Tea Party had blood on its hands over the Gabby Giffords shooting (perpetrated by a lunatic leftist) [h/t TheRightPlanet] to Todd Akin’s statements, where the entire Republican Party broke the sound barrier distancing themselves from his comments, to no avail from the Obama administration echo chamber in the media which pounced and portrayed every Republican as a religious zealot.

Judging by the social media comments of my liberal friends I notice that some of the same people claiming the moral high ground over the Akin episode also support Julian Assange, accused of rape in Sweden. Instead of rallying around his accusers in Sweden (both women) they cheer Assange’s flight from facing justice in the bastion of socialism often trumpeted by the Left as a moral example – except when it comes to rape then suddenly Sweden is Louisiana just with better looking rednecks I suppose. What about his accusers rights to justice? Where is the moral outrage for two women who may have been actually raped versus Akin’s statements in which no woman was harmed?

I have discussed cognitive dissonance, or the holding two opposite and conflicting opinions throughout this journal, but I’m still amazed when I see it at work among people whom I would consider otherwise intelligent. The malady is insidious, and we all must regularly question our own beliefs, especially our most deeply held, to prevent falling into its trap.

As Charles Krauthammer noted, “If you vote for Romney he will kill your mother with cancer, throw your dad out of work, prevent your sister from getting contraceptives and kick your son out of college.” There are plenty of reasons not to vote for the GOP candidate this year, but the War on Women shouldn’t be one of them.

Much talk is being made about the Republican War on Women. But there is a war on that people sense but don’t really talk much about. It’s a war with real casualties and suffering. It will devastate lives of the innocent and guilty without differentiating between the two. It is the war on children being waged by the Left that dominates the Democratic party.

The war starts before birth with the elevation of abortion to sacramenthood including gruesome battles such as the legalization of partial birth abortion and the killing of infants who survive (both laws supported by the High Priest in Chief, Barack Obama.) These battles are supported by Malthusian fears manifested in the religion of environmentalism that views bearing children as sinful, except for the high priests such as Al Gore and “Population Bomb” author Paul Ehrlich who are free to procreate as they see fit. In light of this view the Left has supported one-child policies and forced sterilization that has led to sex-selective abortion and infanticide of females in India and China. It’s ironic that the enlightened feminists of the Left who continue to support these policies do so to the benefit of the patriarchy and detriment of women in these countries, leading to the births of 120 boys for every 100 girls in China. The New York Times attributes the “imbalance almost entirely to couples’ decisions to abort female fetuses,” yet China’s One Child Policy continues to be lauded by scions of the Left such as Tom Friedman. Yes, for connoisseurs of Irony the Left provides an endless buffet.

The war wages after birth, as the interests of children are ignored by the Left’s disparagement of traditional marriage even though children fare better with two parents in a stable relationship rather than in single parent or divorced parent households. Since the 1960’s the Left’s clarion call has been freedom without attendant responsibility, and that has resulted in broken homes or in many cases, no homes. Children in single parent homes are poorer than those in mixed parent (divorced) homes who are then trumped by children living with their birth parents together under one roof. The traditional family has always been uncool to the American Left, and as a result children have suffered.

The Left’s stranglehold on education has damaged children for life. Public schools are geared more towards providing teachers and administrators work than they are towards teaching children. Teacher’s unions have fought reform efforts such as vouchers and charter schools every step of the way. Curricula across the country have been dumbed down in an effort to indoctrinate the next generation with Leftist ideology. Since every culture is equal, precious time is frittered away discussing the contributions of minorities while downplaying the role of “dead white men” in American history. The rigor of mathematics is ignored because boys do better at the subject than girls so neither is taught. Boys are taught the same way as girls even though boys need more physical activity and learn better while active than girls, who do well seated and in a calm environment. Leftist dogma refuses to recognize sex differences so instead boys are sent home with notes insisting that they be medicated to make them as placid as girls, with the added benefit that they thus become easier to control.

Children in-debt themselves to attend colleges and universities filled with non-teaching administrators and staff in environments that would make Stalin proud. Hate speech codes limit free expression thereby ill-preparing children for the day when they enter the world and are forced to deal with people who do not think like them and perhaps even hold opposite opinions. Codes of conduct control interaction between the sexes, protecting young women from the responsibility of their actions while burdening young men with the knowledge that a man can be accused of any crime on campus without the constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial. Courses are geared towards the interest of faculty or the short-term attention spans of students instead of providing the skills necessary for successful careers and intellectual achievement after college.

It’s not the matter of teaching college kids how to program in C#, it’s teaching them how to evaluate and argue a position, something the Greeks do well but being dead white men are politically incorrect to teach. So kids exit college knowing how to spout slogans without how to evaluate the ideas behind them or to argue their points because they lack the intellectual tools to dissect an idea or persuade. The result is an entire generation that believes winning a debate is forcing your opponent into not responding to your sound-bites, and as a result talk past each other incapable of understanding others as well as their own opinions.

Finally, the war on Children reaches its Waterloo with the mountain of debt. $1 trillion of student loan debt. $16 trillion in federal debt. $1.2 Trillion in state debt. $355 Billion in underfunded private pension debt. $673 Billion in underfunded federal pension debt. $2.2 trillion in underfunded public state and municipal pension debt.

Add up the numbers and assume that the US population size and age ratio don’t change (the former won’t, the latter will, requiring even more young people to send checks to doddering old farts who yell at them to get off their lawns) and I get $21.5 trillion to be paid for by 120 million workers. That’s roughly $180,000 waiting for each child to enter the workforce. Estimates for average lifetime earnings are around $1.6 million, so that $180k represents  11%, so we can expect that American children are going to have roughly a 10% lower standard of living thanks to these debts than their parents or grandparents.

This is real money that won’t disappear. It must be paid either through the current generation living within its means, working longer, accepting higher taxes, benefits cuts, reduced services and ultimately a lower standard of living. Somebody is going to be eating cat food, and maybe even a few cats, but $21.5 trillion will be paid by someone. It won’t be inflated away. The government can’t borrow that much to pay off that debt. Instead children, even those lucky enough to escape the “choice” of abortion, are expected to be enslaved to bear this burden. Vice President talks about Republican’s wanting to put black people in chains, ignoring his own personal responsibility as a congressman and senator for nearly 40 years during which time he helped drive the country into debt and its future children into economic slavery.

Well how about the rich? Isn’t it time they paid their “fair share?” In this case, fair share means everybody’s debt not just theirs, but let’s assume that we hold guns to their heads and give them a good mugging just like the Soviets did in the early 1920’s. We could use the most recent issue of Forbes’ Top 400 richest Americans as our economic hit list and confiscate the wealth of everyone on it, from Bill Gates (net worth: $59 billion), through Warren Buffet ($39 billion), who can finally lose his guilt for paying a lower tax rate than his secretary, George Judenrat Soros ($22 billion) who can perhaps finally atone for his war crimes, all the way down to Peter Lewes ($1.05 billion), the progressive chairman of Progressive insurance. Wiping all 400 out, leaving them with nothing except the promises of the Socialist State, medicare and social security, will net us a whopping $1.5 trillion – leaving us $20 trillion short. We would need 14 Bill Gates’s, Warren Buffets, Peter Lewes’s and 14 times the rest of the 400 list to pay for it all. Instead the Democrats intend our children and grandchildren to pay for it.

And that’s not even covering  Social Security. Remember that lockbox talked about 12 years ago? Well we never went to the store and bought one so Congress raided it. At a time when we should have been socking away surpluses to pay for the retirement of Baby Boomers, we blew the money on what? Blow and hookers? Beats me, but the money’s not there. Disability will be underfunded starting in 2016. Social Security itself won’t last for more than a decade beyond that and requires an investment of $200-300 billion per year to remain solvent – and relevant – for when today’s children need it.

Someday America’s children will grow up and understand what the Democrats have done to them, but by that time the only memory of Joe Biden will be a street named after him in Scranton and Obama will replace Jimmy Carter as the doddering old fool of the Left who the Democrats cart out at conventions to remind America how psychotic the party leadership has become after purging sane members like Dick Gephardt and Zoell Miller. I hope he lives long enough to see America’s children realize they have been the other side in a decades long civil war, and they fight back.

What, you honestly didn’t think it would be this easy did you? Just because a partisan measure passed without 0 Republicans in either the House or Senate, then rammed through the latter using a procedural maneuver, one that has become increasingly unpopular as the details are discovered since its passing, you didn’t seriously believe a divided court’s ruling would determine the President’s fate in November?

Obama has passed a huge, unpopular tax on the American people. Taxes are powerful incentives for change. Don’t forget that it was a tax that started us on the path of independence nearly 240 years ago. If the GOP isn’t scripting ads promising to repeal this unfair tax (unfair because it penalizes young people who don’t consume much in the way of health care in favor of older people who do), then it doesn’t deserve to win back the White House.

Nothing worth having comes easy. Let the president have his victory lap and his bump in the polls, but begin the attacks. Ann Althouse already has.