The Greenroom

Daily Kos: Romney sure is kinda-sorta-really racist, huh?

Dustin Siggins — Wed, 30 May 2012 22:07:47 +0000

This morning, Daily Kos staff writer Jed Lewison posted a collage of photos from Mitt Romney’s new ad “The Promise of America.” Lewison’s headline? “Mitt Romney’s ‘better America’ sure is white, isn’t it?”

Back in 2010, of course, Lewison was pointing out that Romney was the moderate candidate in the GOP, and that this moderate political philosophy (especially with regards to health care) would defeat his chances of being the GOP nominee. Now that he’s the nominee, Lewison and Daily Kos in general have gone from bashing the GOP for not accepting a candidate they used to say was the best of the bunch (though he was briefly pushed to second-best when Jon Huntsman was a candidate) to bashing Romney as a racist. And in case you think Lewison isn’t accusing Romney of being racist, this liberal blogger came right out and said it: “I’ve always believed that visuals provide some of the most powerful tools available for dog whistling. And when you combine these images with the content of the ad, this one is literally screaming.”

A couple of years ago I wrote a response to a Lewison post on federal spending, and the post led to a cordial series of e-mails between the author and myself. I left the post, and the virtual conversations, with a great deal of respect for Lewison both as a person and as a political writer even despite our political disagreements. Unfortunately, posts like this really stretch his credibility as a political analyst, especially since it takes some effort and planning to notice that all but maybe one (I watched the ad very carefully after reading Lewison’s post) of the people in the video are white. Unless I’m missing something, and it’s both more obvious and more insidious than I thought? Either way, if this is the worst “racism” the left can find in Romney, I have to wonder why the effort is being made. The left is wrong on most policy issues, but that doesn’t make them bad strategists, and accusing Romney of racism when the vast majority of Americans won’t see it is not a good use of time, effort and other resources.

Warren: first nursing mother to take NJ bar exam

Libby Sternberg — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:17:55 +0000

Drudge and Real Clear Politics had this on their sites, Elizabeth Warren claiming yet another bit of “specialness.” What is this claim based on, one wonders? Did she have to ask the proctors of the exam for time to deal with baby? The clip is apparently from 2011, says Real Clear Politics.

Will Obama be able to sell his ‘warrior-in-chief’ credentials?

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:32:57 +0000

It seems a safe bet that 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama never envisioned himself running for a second term on the strength of his record as a hunter and killer of terrorists. But with little else to run on five months out from the 2012 election, the White House has invited two major campaign support groups—The New York Timesand Newsweek—into the “trophy room” (aka the Oval Office) where they can admire, and report back to their readers, on the collection of terrorists’ heads, 15 in all, that grace the walls.

If this seems like a curious turn, it is made all the more curious by the fact that a lengthy Times piece on the subject, which ran yesterday, reads in part like an exposé—as though the content was leaked rather than cheerfully handed to reporters. Consider this frank admission:

Just days after taking office, the president got word that the first strike under his administration had killed a number of innocent Pakistanis. ‘The president was very sharp on the thing, and said, ‘I want to know how this happened,’ a top White House adviser recounted.

Other criticisms sure to be leveled against Obama’s counterterrorism efforts is his “secret kill list” (as theTimes oddly refers to a hand-selected list of prospective assassination targets that has been public knowledge since July of 2010). The list has come under fire from the ACLU because some of the names on it belong(ed) to American citizens, such as cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a drone strike last September.

There is also criticism from military strategists over the administration’s over-reliance on drones and the fact that killing—rather than capturing—enemies of the state is depleting access to actionable intelligence.

Finally, there is the troubling hypocrisy of Obama’s words on the subject of fighting terrorism then and now. Then, in 2008, candidate Obama raised fierce objections to the Bush administration’s policies of rendition (where prisoners are shipped off to undisclosed locations to undergo harsh, often brutal interrogation), military commissions, and indefinite detention. As president, he has embraced all three and reneged on his first act in office, signing an executive order to close the military stockade at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

His own Press Secretary, Jay Carney, said yesterday in response to criticisms of the president’s seeming two-facedness on these policies that Obama was merely fulfilling the promise he made at the beginning of his presidency, to “take whatever steps are necessary to prevent American people from harm.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think Carney was reading from the notes of one of his predecessors under Bush 43, Ari Fleischer, on the subject of enhanced interrogation.

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2012: Mobilization vs Persuasion

Karl — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:25:01 +0000

Team Obama and Team Romney will both try to mobilize their base vote and persuade swing voters. However, Obama is forced to focus on mobiliztion, as the issues most important to Americans — chiefly the economy — do not favor him. In contrast, Romney’s main task is persuading swing voters (and disappointed, moderate Obama voters) he is an acceptable replacement for Obama. This basic dynamic informs the strategies, tactics and content of both campaigns.

I have previously noted that mobilization is the subtext of Obama’s serial pandering to various client groups of his coalition, already somewhat withered from his 2008 win. However, it is also the subtext of Team Obama’s already impressive network of field offices in swing states, as Nate Silver recently noted:

Field offices serve as a base for the most effective get-out-the-vote tactics, like door-to-door canvassing. In fact, in 2008, the Obama campaign’s wide web of field offices, and the advantages those offices gave Mr. Obama over Mr. McCain, helped flip three states to Democratic from Republican, according to a study by Seth E. Masket, an assistant professor with the Department of Political Science at the University of Denver.

Additionally, Team Obama is rolling out “Dashboard,” a next-generation get-out-the-vote tool to integrate voter contact from field volunteers with social networking.

Over the past few weeks, Team Romney has been playing catch-up on the ground, particularly in key states like Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. It certainly helps that Team Romney seems intent on working more smoothly with the RNC than maverick John McCain did in 2008. But Nevada may turn out to be as big a mess for the state GOP as it was in the 2010 Senate race, thanks to the Paulian contingent. As far as the ground game goes, the right should remain concerned.

However, Romney has more flexibility to focus on persuasion as well as mobilization. Some of this is small-ball stuff. For example, Romney’s speeches on education before Hispanic and black audiences are probably as much for suburban, yuppie white women, intended to inoculate Romney against the inevitable charges of racism, extremism and plutarchy headed his way.

More significantly, it seems Team Romney intends to play as much or more in the air than on the ground. Here, Obama’s faltering fundraising is already a factor:

In truth, the unprecedented flood of dollars that is about to engulf the presidential race—and the near certainty that the majority of them will be spent by the Republicans—is what keeps [Obama campaign manager Jim] Messina and his brethren awake at night, gnawing at their fingernails like a pack of feral crystal addicts after a hellacious weeklong binge. And while the Obamans talk assuredly about how the effect of the TV ads can be counteracted by a robust turnout operation, the financial pinch is already being felt in terms of their strategy. When Messina detailed Obama’s pathways to 270, for example, the fifth option involved playing full-out in Arizona, whose large Hispanic population should make it ripe for the picking and where public polling shows Obama and Romney in a dead heat. But that possibility remains on hold, seen as a bridge too far (at least for now) for a campaign that desperately needs to husband its resources.

“The money is a huge problem,” confides a senior campaign maven. “We’ll see how long we can stand it. The money alone can’t beat us, but if we get bad jobs numbers a couple months in a row, then all of a sudden, things could get kinda hairy.”

Thus, no one should be surprised if the money squeeze begins in earnest below the radar of the summer campaign coverage:

Asked about the best use of the nominee’s time in the months before the conventions, Stacie Spector, a senior adviser to President Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, offered two words:

“Raise money.”

The second-most important thing a nominee can do? Raise money, said Spector.

The same ground-vs-air dynamic is playing out among interest groups and SuperPACs, too. The left generally has the superior ground game in most election cycles, and it hasn’t stopped the right from winning elections. But in an era where audiences are increasingly fragmented and ad-skipping technology is prevalent, the right may have to start rethinking the balance between the ground and the air.

Obama infuriates Poles with reference to ‘Polish death camp’

Howard Portnoy — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:23:18 +0000

The smartest man ever to occupy the White House has done it again. During a Medal of Freedom ceremony on Wednesday, President Obama committed the most egregious offense against the nation of Poland since another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, told its people, “I desire the Poles carnally.”

At least Carter could fall back on the excuse that he was addressing the Poles in what turned out to be badly mistranslated Polish. Obama was speaking English. In his prepared remarks honoring World War II hero Jan Karski, he referred to a Nazi prison in Poland as a “Polish death camp.” The gaffe prompted outrage from Polish leaders, including former President and Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who said the phrasing confuses the villains with their victims. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski demanded an apology for what he called an “outrageous mistake,” adding that “it’s a pity that ignorance and incompetence overshadowed such a momentous ceremony.”

Luckily, the White House has had plenty of practice neutralizing the occasional presidential misstep over the last three and a half years. An administration spokesman immediately rose to the occasion by noting “that the president had visited the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial while in Poland and that he has repeatedly discussed the bravery of Poles during World War II.” They could have added that Obama’s uncle liberated Auschwitz. Oh, wait….

OK, so maybe history isn’t Obama’s strong suit (which would also explain his references to the U.S. as the country that “built the Intercontinental Railroad” and “invented the automobile”). Everyone knows his forte is constitutional law. It’s not like you’d ever hear him accuse the U.S. Supreme Court of “judicial activism” or dismiss the high court as “an unelected group of people [who] would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

Look, maybe the president is just tired after campaigning non-stop for the last five years. That would explain his reference—twice in one week—to his “sons,” of which at last count he still has zero. He does have two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and he knows their ages (more or less), not to mention his own birthday (less).

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Carl Bernstein: “Huge difference” in opportunism between Obama and Romney

Libby Sternberg — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:02:17 +0000

The Romney team is hitting President Obama on the green energy deals his administration brokered that have gone bust, a good rebuttal to the president’s Bain Capital ads:

Quick critique: good message, so-so execution. I like that it works with the Mute button pushed, but, good grief, who thought of that flickering visual effect? That practically forces you to look away. And can we please find a substitute for the ominous music in the background? I’m convinced that kind of music probably now has a Pavlov’s dog effect on voters: Ominous Music=Another Political Ad I Don’t Want to Watch.

That said, the underlying theme is decent, as I pointed out. It’s a good counterpoint to the Bain baloney; it neutralizes it by pointing out the president has his own “public equity” track record to defend. (The Romney campaign seems to be particularly good at this kind of “neutralizing” — remember the dog stories?)

My view doesn’t appear to be shared by the crew on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, however. They could barely contain their snickers after viewing the ad (and showing it to millions–huzzah for the Romney camp!). Okay, so judging…art…is subjective.

Not so subjective is judging double standards. And one was on full display when former Washington Post writer Carl Bernstein (of Watergate coverage fame) suggested that the ad just exacerbates Romney’s problem of being perceived as an “opportunist instead of going for a record of consistency.”

Okay, so let’s say Romney has, in fact, exploited opportunities to craft his political career. How does that differ from Obama? Moreover, how does exploiting the negatives of the Solyndra type deals differ from the “opportunism” of Obama trying to exploit the possible negatives of Romney’s Bain deals?

Oh, Bernstein thinks there’s a “huge difference” of political opportunism between Romney and Obama.

When pressed further on this point by Romney adviser Dan Senor, Bernstein says — listen closely, it’s somewhat covered by crosstalk — it’s a matter of “scale.” Yup, he is serious. (NOTE: the relevant portion starts around the 12:05 mark. Try as I might, I could not seem to clip the video and embed only that part; you also need to sit through an ad before the reel starts rolling.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

NEA to “Reorganize” Amid Unprecedented Membership Losses, Budget Shortfalls

Mike Antonucci — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:41:42 +0000

A year after declaring “we are at war” the National Education Association appears to be setting up camp in Valley Forge, with a long, hard winter ahead.

With five weeks to go before the union’s annual representative assembly, NEA is painting a financial and membership picture that delegates could scarcely imagine just a few short years ago. Last year, NEA secretary-treasurer Becky Pringle warned the assemblage, “We have to assume we haven’t hit bottom yet.” Having constructed the union’s budget for the next two years, she will be able to repeat that warning.

According to multiple sources within the NEA leadership, the union is reporting a loss of 150,000 members over the past two years, and is projecting a further loss of more than 200,000 members over the next two years. The total reduction in revenue to the national union over the years 2010-2014 amounts to $65 million – about one-sixth of its original budget.

NEA’s dues level is set by a formula tied to the average teacher salary, so additional revenues for the general fund can only be raised through a change in the by-laws, which would require approval by the representative assembly. To EIA’s knowledge, no one has yet suggested this remedy, so NEA must cover the budgetary shortfalls with the small programmed increase in dues ($2 per member this year) and spending cuts.

The union’s regional leadership conferences will be canceled for 2012-13, and thereafter will be replaced by two annual “summits.” Additionally, the December board of directors meeting will be eliminated, reducing the number of times the board meets annually to four. Conferences for various constituency groups (retirees, ESPs, minorities, et al.) will continue in 2012-13, but will be folded into the summits thereafter.

Up until now, the union has managed to avoid staff layoffs. Fifty-six staffers accepted early retirement this year, bringing the number of national employees down to 439, a reduction of more than 100 from historic peaks. NEA froze executive pay, and eliminated its voluntary matching 401(k) plan (the primary defined benefit pension plan is unaffected).

Borrowing a page from the Oregon Education Association, NEA presented these cuts in staff and revenues in the form of a “reorganization,” complete with a new set of “strategic goals” and “core services.” The key elements of the reorganization are: 1) a greater percentage of NEA’s funds will be passed back down to its state affiliates; and 2) the creation of a Center for Organizing.

There has already been pushback to the proposed measures, with a number of attempts to restore funding to various line-items voted down by the board of directors earlier this month. But the biggest fly in the ointment may be that the budget makes assumptions about the outcome of contract negotiations with NEA’s staff union. The staff contract expires midnight Thursday and there is no telling how that will unfold.

There will be opportunity in the coming weeks to examine what these internal issues will mean for NEA’s external operations in the short term, but it would be an understatement to say that events are not trending in the union’s favor.

Perspective from the Greatest Generation

Elizabeth Santorum — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:58:08 +0000

Happy (belated!) Memorial Day!

I’ve always loved Memorial Day weekend. Of course, like most red-blooded American families, this weekend means that pools are opening, a big family bbq, and the beginnings of summertime. More importantly, it is a thankful time – where we “memorialize” all those who have given so much to serve our nation.

Most of us have friends and family that have served in the military. My granddad, my pop, my two aunts, and my one uncle all have served. My cousin is going to be deployed in the fall. Some of you reading probably served yourself or are still serving today. Thank you. You are heroic stewards of freedom.

I was with my grandparents this weekend, both a part of the “Greatest Generation.” When Tom Brokaw coined the phrase, I think he must have had my grandparents in mind. They are hearty stock. As I sat with them one morning, my grandma was reading some stories in the paper about WWII vets. Inspired by their words, she told me some of her own memories from that time. There was something that stood out to me as she recollected: she always referred to the troops as “our boys.” Compare that to now. As a culture, we tend to refer to the troops as, well, “troops” or “the military.” We’ve lost the sense of community, the personal connection with those who are serving. Not to say that there aren’t wonderful organizations that coordinate letters, care packages, or special ways of thanking our troops, but as a culture, I believe there should be a renewed, cultural recognition of the sacrifices these men and women are making to protect us. After all, like my grandma says, these are “our men and our women.”

So, as you enjoyed your beers and burgers, I hope you stopped and remembered those who have gone before us, some paying the ultimate price for freedom, and those who still protect us.

In addition, as we approach the 68^th anniversary of D-Day on June 6^th, I found an excerpt of Reagan’s speech at Pointe du Hoc on the 40^th anniversary of that important day. Reagan captured the essence of the Greatest Generation, their fierce duty and honor, as thanked them for risking everything so that we could be free.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”…

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you…

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

President Ronald Reagan – June 6, 1984

Do Simpson and Bowles Matter?

Dustin Siggins — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:07:43 +0000

This morning, Reuters ran an article describing how Members of Congress are trying to work in a bipartisan manner to avoid “major” spending cuts (AKA modest spending cuts that are considered major in Washington) and tax increases starting in January 2013. From the article:

Former Democratic White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles said he and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, are working with a bipartisan group of 47 Senators and as many House members to frame a compromise on $7 trillion in looming fiscal decisions, Bowles said on CNN’s news program, “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

This raises two questions: First, why should Americans trust that Congress will actually work together to create positive bipartisan solutions to these Washington-created problems? Over the last dozen years each party has both held the grips of power in Washington and had to work within situations of compromise. What do we have to show for it all? Over $10 trillion in debt; several wars and conflicts; expanded powers of the federal government in education, student loans, surveillance and health care; a federal government with the apparent right to assassinate citizens; a tax code riddled with exemptions; and unconstitutional violations of political and religious free speech. Almost all of this done through bipartisanship.

Here’s a recent and prime example of how bipartisanship often doesn’t work: Last year, compromise was the watchword of both parties, and this time they were going to be serious about job creation and deficit reduction. How did that go? Let’s see:

1. First, in April 2011 House Republicans went from aiming at $100 billion in spending reductions in a single year to $61 billion to $38 billion to about $352 million. Strike one.

2. In the spring and summer of 2011 Democrats and Republicans worked in the Gang of Six (as well as in other groups, though the Gang of Six received the vast majority of the media’s attention) to cut over $4 trillion from the deficits of the next ten years. This ended as the Budget Control Act, a compromise that “cut” approximately $2.1 trillion over ten years, a pitifully inadequate plan to keep us from going over the oncoming fiscal cliff. Strike two.

3. Within months of passage of the Budget Control Act compromise Members of Congress were trying to prevent those cuts through new legislation and political maneuvering. Democrats wanted to prevent the non-military cuts, and Republicans want to prevent the military budget cuts. Strike three.

4. The official unemployment rate is over eight percent, and is probably somewhere closer to eleven or twelve percent. This despite an ineffective (but bipartisan!) series of efforts in this Congress allegedly designed to reduce unemployment, including extending the deficit-creating payroll tax holiday. Strike four.

Unfortunately, this all leads to the second question: Would a Simpson-Bowles led compromise even be worth passing through Congress? While any deficit reduction is a good thing, we don’t need $3 trillion in deficit reduction, or $4 trillion or even $6 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years. We need to balance the budget in the next year or two, and never run a deficit again outside a time of official war. After all, even if current law stands and all sorts of taxes are raised and budget cuts are implemented, to the tune of up to $7 trillion over the next decade, the country is still expected to run annual deficits of at least $300 billion in each of those years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And that’s before the demographics of Social Security and Medicare really run away with the budget and send the nation off the proverbial fiscal cliff.

Simpson and Bowles have been making the TV circuit buzz and swoon for nearly two years, yet nothing has been passed by either party or either chamber of Congress that is a truly responsible, fiscally-prudent budget. Do these gentlemen really matter? Or is this merely part of the entertainment our media and politicians feed us as we spend our way into national oblivion?

Naked man who chewed off other man’s face could be a zombie (not really)!

Mike Rathbone — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:51:54 +0000

Dude, I’m nervous.

Howard Portnoy already covered this story, but I thought I could add my two cents. First, I don’t think this guy was a zombie (he probably wasn’t), but just in case this guy was Patient Zero, there are a few things I would like to say. One, keep abreast of what’s going on in your neighborhood. One day you’re reading that some lone guy is eating another man’s face, the next day, a horde of the undead is smashing down your door. Be vigilant! However, given that you visit this site and are reading this post, I think you have that taken care of.

Second, don’t underestimate a zombie outbreak! You think you’d have plenty of time to get things together and get organized. You are wrong! It doesn’t take much for civilization to collapse and a swarm of walking dead certainly meets the criteria of a civilization ending threat. In fact, according to researchers from Carleton University and The University of Ottawa, there is support for the theory that a zombie outbreak would lead to societal collapse unless immediate and decisive action was taken to combat the zombie menace. Considering the government’s response to Katrina, what faith do you have that such decisive action would be taken and such action would be carried out properly?

Finally, just in case civilization does collapse, be ready and willing to keep going. There won’t be much to live for except your duty to carry on the species. Hot Air MIGHT still be around, I’m pretty sure AP would be lost to the zombie hordes (I’m not bullish on beta-males surviving the zombie onslaught) or to suicide (lets be honest, if one bad poll can make him nervous, how would he react to a million walking ghouls?), but Ed has a family to fight for and his living in MN might allow him to escape to cold climates where the undead can’t follow. If he can keep the site running, then their might be hope for us after all.

With tongue firmly in cheek, I do hope you enjoy the post.

New Obama 2012 slogan: ‘He’s never been in it for you’

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:13:06 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, Team Obama continues to struggle mightily to come up with a campaign slogan for 2012 that has the brevity and staying power of “hope and change.” So far they’ve tried on more taglines than Imelda Marcos has shoes and still there is nothing to show for their efforts. It just isn’t so easy to conjure up catchy text that fits on a bumper sticker when you have an at-best spotty record to defend rather than a pipe dream to sell.

So, the Obamaites are settling for the next best thing. Instead of encapsulating a reason why voters should pull the lever for Obama, they are investing their energies in coming up with a slogan that explains why voters shouldn’t pull the lever for Mitt Romney.

A New York Magazine feature titled “Hope: The Sequel” quotes a couple of Obama operatives whose identities remain undisclosed ostensibly because they carry Obama’s scatological tendencies to new heights. Here’s one of them:

Romney really, actually thinks that if you just take care of the folks at the top, it’ll trickle down to everybody else. But no one believes that stuff—no one! And once you puncture that, there’s nothing left. He’s not likable. He’s not trustworthy. He’s not on your side. You live in Pittsburgh and you’ve got dirt under your fingernails, who do you want to have a beer with? It ain’t f**king Mitt Romney. You’re like, ‘Sh*t, I’d rather have a beer with the black guy than him!’

Of course, only the first profanity gets charged to the operative’s. The second is merely his projection of how people from my hometown of Pittsburgh speak.

But I’m straying from the main theme, which is Obama’s new slogan. The second operative tells the New York columnist that one tagline the campaign is considering using is “He’s never been in it for you.” The catchphrase is meant as an indictment of Romney’s character, not to mention of “Bain, Massachusetts, and every Gordon Gekko–meets–Thurston Howell III gaffe he made during the primary season.” It has the advantage of being more concise than “he is a ‘self-serving plutocrat whose résumé is replete with self-enrichment but who has never cared an iota about bettering the lives of ordinary people’.”

Senior Obama campaign advisor David Plouffe is quoted in the piece as explaining the “core argument against” Romney, which “is that he’s gonna wreck the economy for the middle class. He’s gonna go back to the policies that caused the recession.”

Those would make for viable slogans as well, but the claims behind them aren’t quite the slam dunk that “Change you can believe in” was. For one thing, the Romney camp could turn around and highlight the fact that Obama’s policies haven’t exactly improved the lost of the middle class or eased the economic tensions that began to grip the country when he was first elected.

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Naked man who chewed off face of another was high on LSD

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:37:58 +0000

According to new reports, it took as many as a dozen shots to bring down 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, as he tore off most of another man’s face with his teeth, growling all the while like a wild beast. Then again Eugene, who died in the hail of bullets, was high on a lethal drug cocktail that included cocaine and a new potent form of LSD.

Both details come from a story at The Daily Mail, which also published the first photo of the crazed cannibal—a police mugshot from an earlier arrest—along with new details about the state of health of his victim. That man, whose name has yet to be released, remains hospitalized, having lost 75% of his face in the attack. His injuries are described by hospital staff as “some of the worst they have encountered.” The injured man is homeless, as was Eugene.

Answers to questions as to why both men were naked at the time of the attack and what may have triggered Eugene’s derangement are beginning to emerge as well. Larry Vega, an eyewitness to the attack, was interviewed by reporters with WSVN, a Miami station. He told them:

The guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth and I told him to get off. But the guy just kept eating the other guy away, like ripping his skin.

A police officer came over, told him several times to get off then climbed over the divider and got in front of him and said, ‘Get off!’ But the guy just stood his head up like that with a piece of flesh in his mouth and growled.

Vega describes the scene as “one of the most gruesome things I have ever seen in my life in person. You know, you see these things in the movies but when you see it in person, it’s pretty traumatic.”

Armando Aguilar of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police told WSVN, “What’s happening is whenever we see that a person has taken all of his clothes off and has become violent, it’s indicative of this excited delirium that’s caused by overdose of drugs…. [I]nside their body their organs are burning up alive.”

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Rally for Rebecca Kleefisch

Steve Eggleston — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:25:14 +0000

While it appears that Governor Scott Walker will walk away with a relatively-easy victory come Tuesday, June 5 in his recall, things are quite a bit tighter, both in polls and in money, in the recall election between Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin president Mahlon Mitchell. I have focused on this “undercard” before, but allow me to reiterate the point now as part of the day-long fundraising drive launched by Dana Loesch, Michelle Malkin, and Teri Christoph. Donate here.

In a normal election cycle, once the separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor are held, the winners of the same party run on a unified ticket, complete with shared campaign finances. However, due to the unique nature of the recall elections, the governor’s recall and lieutenant governor’s recall are entirely different elections. One of the consequences is Kleefisch’s campaign doesn’t have access to the millions of dollars raised by Walker.

Kleefisch has done yeoman’s (or should that be yeowoman’s) work being what she promised during the 2010 lieutenant governor’s primary campaign – be an saleswoman of Wisconsin to businesses. In addition to the well-publicized “cold calls” to out-of-state businesses to try to get them to relocate to Wisconsin, she launched the Small Business Roundtable to get input from small businesses across Wisconsin on how to improve the business climate.

What are the consequences of a split decision on June 5? Let’s first start out with the “minor” detail pointed out by WDJT-TV. Whenever Walker departs Wisconsin, the lieutenant governor constitutionally assumes the duties of the office, including the power to issue executive orders.

Considering that Mitchell, in his capacity as president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, signed letters demanding public opposition to what became Act 10 upon threat of public boycott to M&I Bank (then the largest Wisconsin-based bank) and Kwik Trip (the largest Wisconsin-based convenience store chain), one can only guess what kind of executive orders he would issue if given a chance.

That split decision would also put Mitchell a heartbeat, or a felony criminal conviction on a trumped-up charge, away from the governor’s office. If you are doubting that the Left using the criminal court system as their last stab from Hell’s heart is possible, I present today’s column from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice, who has served as the press organ of a very-leaky 2-year-long “John Doe” fishing expediti…er, investigation by Democrat Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s office headed by an investigator who has a Recall Walker sign in his yard (blamed on his wife) and a history of donating to pro-union Democrats. Bice’s sources are insinuating that a potential relocation of the offices of Milwaukee County’s Department on Aging to a location a longtime Walker political adviser was representing while Walker was Milwaukee County Executive could be “bid-rigging”.

A Mitchell win, even if the other 5 recalls fall short, would be an unequivocal win for the unionistas. Don’t let that happen. Donate to Kleefisch’s campaign, and if you are a Wisconsin resident, remember to vote for her (and Walker) in the recall election on June 5.

Senate Dems back plan to double TSA ‘security fee’ per flight

Howard Portnoy — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:12:37 +0000

If you enjoy the long lines and interminable waits at airport checkpoints, relish the thrill of removing your shoes, your belt, and any other article of clothing or jewelry that is likely to trip the sensors … then prepare to fall in love. The Transportation Security Administration—that paragon of governmental efficiency and competence—wants to double the security fee on each round-trip airline ticket from $5 to $10.

And what’s more is that the agency that has strip-searched wheelchair-bound grandmas and their grandchildren in diapers while never nabbing a single terrorist has the backing of Democrats in the Senate. Not since Barack Obama sought to unionize the TSA in 2011 to increase his support by Big Labor has there been a more galling move that involved an agency that should have long ago been disbanded.

A video report by CNN notes that the TSA’s budget, like many in Washington, is scheduled to be cut. Senate Republicans have proposed trimming other social programs to offset the security fee increase. Yet, it would appear from the revelation last month that the TSA was secretly shelving expensive high-tech equipment in a Texas warehouse that the budget could use a good trimming.

Meanwhile, flyers opposed to paying more to keep the TSA in hose have the support of a strange bedfellow—the airline industry. WTVR, the Richmond, Va., CBS affiliate, quotes Airlines for America spokesman Sean Kennedy as saying:

Air security is a national security function and it’s something that all of us need to be behind as Americans, and the government should be picking up the cost of that.

Thanks, Sean. Now, if you could do something about the ridiculous baggage fees imposed by major air carriers, we’d really be getting somewhere.

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Obama: “Brass-knuckled, pipe-hitting brawler”

Libby Sternberg — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:21:01 +0000

Here’s the Cliffs Notes version of John Heilemann’s 7,000-word New York Magazine article on the 2012 Obama campaign:

2008 is not 2012.
Obama’s campaign will focus on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain and in Massachusetts.
It’s going to get nasty.
Obama’s campaign managers like to use expletives…in every effing sentence, man.

The Obama team, writes Heilemann, will try to focus on certain demographic groups the president won big in ’08 – “minorities, (especially Latinos), socially liberal college-educated whites (especially women), and young voters.”

In other words, the president’s team will seek to motivate and deepen his base, rather than reaching out and expanding on it. This explains his “evolution” on the issue of gay marriage—at least two of those three demographics are with him on that issue.

It also explains his class warfare rhetoric and the attacks on Bain Capital. The team is probably trying to exploit any resentments minorities and young voters (looking, unsuccessfully, for employment) might have against “Wall Street” and large corporations in general.

Even as Democratic supporters shook their heads over the Obama team’s attacks on Romney’s experience at private equity firm Bain Capital, the public at large was saying “Bain who?”

More than 50 percent of those surveyed in a WSJ/NBC poll didn’t have any opinion at all on Bain, meaning it could very well be fertile material for the president’s team to use. “The electorate is a long way from making up its mind” about Bain and Romney’s involvement in it, says Politico writer Alexander Burns, which could be one reason the Obama team won’t necessarily drop this theme, despite criticism from allies.

The Bain ads, in fact, might just be the trailer for the campaign to come—a rock ’em/sock ’em action flick filled with negativity, negative exaggerations and…even negative flat-out falsehoods.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Here’s David Plouffe of the Obama campaign, quoted in John Heilemann’s article:

“We’re gonna say, ‘Let’s be clear what (Romney) would do as president…Potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.”

Hey, why stop there, David P.? Why not suggest that Romney will take away women’s vote, criminalize homosexuality, and not just deport illegal immigrants but execute them? I can hear the ominous campaign ad music right now.

Heilemann goes on to report that hope-and-change will be replaced by fear this time around because the Obama campaign believes the Republican/Romney agenda is a frightening prospect for America. Says Heilemann:

For anyone still starry-eyed about Obama, the months ahead will provide a bracing revelation about what he truly is: not a savior, not a saint, not a man above the fray, but a brass-knuckled, pipe-hitting, red-in-tooth-and-claw brawler determined to do what is necessary to stay in power—in other words, a politician.

Which leads to an interesting question, one several of my family members and I pondered during Memorial Day festivities: what acts of desperation will Obama’s teams perpetrate if things are close or not going well come the fall?

My first thought was a reverse-psychology blow, perhaps encouraging some unnamed billionaire to run a tasteless, unsavory attack (maybe something with a whiff of racism?)…on Obama, so that the president could play the victim and point his finger at the disgusting right-wingers who want to remove him from the Oval Office.

Think that’s crazy? In Heilemann’s article, the Obama campaign was licking its chops at the prospect of super-PAC ads featuring Jeremiah Wright.

“Our reaction was, ‘F***ing bring it on!’” said one Obama campaign veteran in the article. “It let us raise some righteous indignation in our base…and go to African-American leaders and say, ‘Hey, you need to get out there! Threaten boycott against TD Bank!’”

Other family suggested that a fall surprise might include digging up something from Romney’s past—no matter how tangential (after all, the Bain attacks feature events that took place after Romney had left Bain)—about illegal immigrant abuse and/or employment.

Whatever happens, the Romney campaign won’t be able to count on mainstream media to help voters sort fact from fiction. After all, this was the same crew that questioned Sarah Palin’s intelligence and qualifications while giving good ole boy Joe Biden a pass (he was a guy, a Democrat, and had been around a long time – so, numerous gaffes and policy blunders didn’t signify a thing, right?).

The Obama team had it relatively easy in 2008. John McCain didn’t excite Republicans. People were tired of the Bush years and everything they associated with him—from the wars to economic policies—and Obama represented a blank canvas upon which voters could paint their own particular hope and faith in this country. This year will be harder since the canvas is now filled with other pictures—a still-foundering economy, global unrest and partisan politics in all its glory (I don’t write that sarcastically).

Speculation abounds about how smart the Obama campaign really is. But it sounds as if they intend to substitute nasty for smarts, if their smarts aren’t up to the job. I hope the Romney team is prepared.

____

Libby Sternberg is a novelist.

On Memorial Day, MSNBC talking head ‘uncomfortable’ calling fallen military ‘heroes’

Howard Portnoy — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:28:42 +0000

Today is Memorial Day, a day when Americans everywhere take at least a moment out to remember the men and women in uniform who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. Perhaps I should say “everywhere but MSNBC.”

Yesterday one of the network’s hosts, Chris Hayes, paused to reflect on this solemn day of remembrance. Unfortunately, he introduced the segment with a puzzling admission of personal ambivalence over whether the word hero should apply to those whose graves we decorate the last Monday in May every year. Hayes elaborated on his concern that doing so is ”rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.”

You can watch the man wrestle with his inner demons here, although you may find it difficult to keep your lunch down. Hayes’s crisis of conscience over the use of a term that any patriotic American would apply with alacrity is a splendid example of the misguided liberal tendency to over-analyze everything. It offers a window onto why liberals think of themselves as intellectually superior to conservatives. It is also a key to why those on the right so often consider those on the left unpatriotic.

NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein is correct in noting that “in fairness, Hayes and the other panel members distinguished between their respect for the valor of the individual military members who had given their lives with the worthiness of the various causes in which they fought.” But even that conversation should have been reserved for another day.

In case you’re wondering who Chris Hayes does consider a hero, the NewsBusters piece has an update that reveals that Hayes, during an episode of his show earlier in the month, saluted his parents as “totally amazing, heroic figures” [emphasis added]. What did they do to earn praise that their son might withhold from a fallen member of the military? His father was a community organizer in the manner of Saul Alinksy.

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President Forrest Gump

J.E. Dyer — Sun, 27 May 2012 23:32:40 +0000

I don’t know how I failed to run across this before, as it’s almost two weeks old now and has been reported by several sites, including Commentary and USA Today. It appears that the White House is editing the biography pages for previous presidents on the whitehouse.gov website, to include references to President Obama (h/t: Hankering for History). Here’s an example from the White House biography of Calvin Coolidge:

On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.

The Obama references are inserted at the end of each bio, in special blocks entitled “Did you know?” Check out the bios since Coolidge. Interestingly, there is an Obama blurb with the Nixon bio, but not with the Ford entry. Here are the two Obama-related comments at the Reagan page:

President Reagan designated Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday; today the Obama Administration honors this tradition, with the First and Second Families participating in service projects on this day.

In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.

The White House confers honor on President George H.W. Bush as follows:

President Barack Obama awarded George H.W. Bush the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, for his commitment to service and ability to inspire volunteerism throughout the country, encouraging citizens to be “a thousand points of light.” The administration continues to promote service and civic engagement, honoring heroes of local communities as “Champions of Change” and fostering civic participation.

RNC depiction of a Moment of Eventhood

The Republican National Committee, perhaps a tad unfairly, has created a series of photoshops depicting Obama in events from history. The one making the rounds is Obama landing on the moon, but I prefer the one with Elvis meeting Nixon, for its Gump-ish quality.

Of course, Obama’s staff is not inserting him into history. Let’s just make that clear. But in claiming that the Buffett Rule is like something Reagan would have promoted, it is certainly attempting to rewrite history. I’m sure we can count on President Romney to end this strange practice, to let the presidential bios stand on their own, and to stick to hailing the sitting president’s policies over on the policy pages.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

America: Her finest hour is yet to come

J.E. Dyer — Sun, 27 May 2012 21:43:30 +0000

Did they die in vain?

As America remembers her honored dead this Memorial Day weekend – those who died in uniform defending our great cause of liberty – many hearts are troubled about what we have come to. The idea of liberty on which our nation was founded seems to hang in tatters. The genius of our forefathers in giving us a government that was to be limited, constitutional, and federal appears all but extinguished. The indispensable ingredient of liberty, an independent people of good character, seems at times to be disappearing into a sorrowful sunset.

But I would like to suggest a few things about these discouraging fears. First, I think the fear about the American people is overblown, because it is overhyped. All we ever hear is bad news about the people. Interestingly, however, in spite of our worsening economic situation and sense of political misdirection, America is still rumbling along: her people still working and producing, still bearing children and raising them in families, still buying homes, still worshipping God as we see fit, and still paying taxes. In spite of our mind-boggling, unparsable federal debt, there are thousands of safe, peaceful communities across America, in which the people live in diligence and hope.

The answer to why the nation continues to function lies with the people. Government regulation does impose an increasingly onerous burden on us, of course. Besides shutting down productivity entirely, in some cases, regulation makes everything cost more than it would otherwise, from our labor to real estate, and from automobiles to the price of milk, bread, and gasoline. For several decades, debt was a relief valve for the rising cost of regulation, which eats away at the value of what we earn with productive work. Now the regime of debt has largely shut down.

But Americans aren’t rioting in the streets over this. We are tightening our belts, in order to get ourselves right with the future. Don’t overlook the significance of this. For every kid in the Occupy movement, there are hundreds his age finding whatever jobs are available and working hard, learning to be reliable employees and team players – and paying bills, saving money, and looking to what they can do about their own futures. These young people, alongside their elders, are holding society together, with discipline and quiet, unheralded daily courage.

Don’t give up on Americans. And don’t give up on liberty. Regarding liberty, here is a lesson to commit to heart: heavy-handed, dictatorial government never comes to take away the bad in people and their lives. It comes to take away the good.

It is a fallacy of modern ignorance to think that no one had the idea, before about 1850, to make his fellows better by regulating and taxing them. If that could be done, we would have been perfected long ago. Governments have made that their rallying cry from the beginning of recorded history; overregulation and onerous taxation are always about “improving” the people and their conditions. But what they actually do is sap the people’s initiative, productive instinct, and desire to live well, and do well by their fellow men, through knowing God. No overweening government has ever ended up governing a hopeful, honest, productive people.

The good news is that America is the world’s example of what can be achieved by people who are not beholden to a god-like government. America is not paralyzed today by the character of our people, the scarceness of our resources, or the terrors of our future. America is paralyzed because our once-small government has grown on principles that are unworthy of us: invidious principles of despair, anger, resentment, and fear. Because we are law-abiding and peaceable, our governments – too often vengeful and narrow-minded – hold us back.

Ronald Reagan said it repeatedly, and said it best: Government is the problem. I am not afraid of what the American people will do if we regain the liberties that are rightly ours. I eagerly await the explosion of creativity and prosperity that will ensue. We can produce, pay down, and manage our way out of the $100-trillion “entitlements bomb,” without penalizing the vulnerable. And we do not have to be poor for generations in order to deal with it; in fact, we can’t be. It won’t work. We will deal with it only by regaining the prosperity and wealth that lie beyond the obstacles of the overregulatory state. We can’t do this by staying on our current course, but if we change course, we will prove that history is not a death sentence for liberty.

Is Mitt Romney the person to lead us toward a different future? I think he would give us a hiatus from the perils with which we are now on a collision course. A president who would allow government to retain its current size and scope is not the reformer we will ultimately need; but the breathing space Romney could give us is indispensable.

I believe more and more Americans are seeing what those with wise foresight predicted as much as a century ago: that when we give government greater power, someone will come along and use it in ways we did not intend. Perhaps our slide into overweening statism has been necessary to teach a lesson to those who haven’t bothered to learn from history. But there’s more good news in this regard: we can learn the lesson and move forward. Nothing compels us to spend time on backward-looking self-flagellation. Lessons, yes. Regret, no.

The beauty of restoring the unique American idea in our politics and common beliefs is that it inherently means moving forward. In the last 80 years, America has been moving in fits and starts into the world’s past. Over-governance and an institutionalized lack of confidence in the people are the past, as old as the pyramids but not nearly as interesting. Any fool can proclaim – and often has – that the folks around him need more governing; history is largely an account of what happens next. There is no impulse more common or banal than seeking to regulate and tax our fellows for “their own good.”

But the American idea is unique in setting explicit boundaries on that impulse. Moving toward the American idea is always moving away from men’s overgoverned past and toward a better future.

A minority of American colonists was committed to the fight for independence – but they prevailed. I don’t believe that the segment of today’s committed Americans is any smaller. The only thing that can stop America from beating the odds now, as she has always done, is a loss of will by those who believe in her.

If history were a death sentence, America would never have been born. If the past dictated the future, the light of liberty would have been shrouded in darkness some time ago; we who walk the land today would not even remember what it used to look like.

But we do. Our nation did come into being; we not only ended slavery but we healed and thrived after our civil war; and as we survey the feckless wreckage of overgovernment strewn around us today, we can see that it is not the product of liberty, but of its opposite. We can see the truth, and we have the great privilege of still being able to act on it.

Do not fear that Americans can’t do well with less government. Something military officers learn early, if they are wise, is that you don’t control men: you believe in them. And when you do, there is no limit to what they can accomplish. The heroes who lie in our cemeteries, with the small flags waving bravely over them on Memorial Day, knew that.

I believe they did not die in vain. Their spirit is with us now, carried in the hearts of those who knew and loved them, and the generations that have followed. I believe we will honor them in the best way possible. We will beat the odds – again; we will give history something new to think about – again; and we will not sink in the mire but right ourselves, and trundle on toward firm ground and a bright future.

No nation has ever done this – but then, no other nation has been the United States of America. When we do it, in peace, and for the world to see, it will indeed be our finest hour – and all the war dead whom we honor and thank today will be standing at our shoulders.

Let freedom ring.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Pizza chain delivers pies deliberately late to raise money to fight world hunger

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 20:16:36 +0000

The M.O. goes something like this (actually it goes exactly like this): As proprietor of a pizza restaurant, you take a phone order for, say, a pepperoni pie. But instead of following the standard business practice of offering the pizza at no charge if it doesn’t arrive pronto, you go out of your way to deliver the food hours late. And then, when it finally reaches its destination limp and soggy of crust, the cheese having returned to its original congealed state, you attempt to extract extra money from your customer.

If it sounds bizarre, that’s because it is. The “marketing strategy” was dreamed up by Paraguayan ad agency ONIRIA/TBWA for two pizza emporia in the city of Asunción. The goal is to raise awareness of and cash donations for global hunger.

The campaign is being carried out in partnership with the Food Bank Foundation. Springwise.com explains that the cold, unappetizing food is accompanied by a note that reads: “When you’re hungry, you understand hunger.”

Cold pizza of course makes for hot customers, whose irritation is mitigated hardly at all by the revelation that the pizza is free of charge. Yet, the article goes on to report that the account execs who cooked up the idea have turned out to be crazy como un zorro. To date, the campaign has collected 50 tons of food donations.

Food Bank has released a promotional video, using actors, that simulates the experience of the customers inconvenienced in the initial collection drive.

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Ron Paul revolution is well beyond the fringe

Craig Westover — Sun, 27 May 2012 18:14:53 +0000

After a lengthy analysis of the Ron Paul influence evident at the Minnesota GOP Convention May 18-19 in St. Cloud (“Libertarian surge remakes state GOP,” May 20), the burning question for the Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial Board was whether “a caucus-based political system that magnifies populist tides [and enabled Paul supporters to dominate the state convention] serves this state well.”

Couple that with a harsher Washington Post piece published in full online (“The party of Ron Paul?” May 24) — which labeled recently adopted planks in the Iowa Republican Party platform “wacky” and “nutty” and gleefully anticipated “a few highly visible fights” erupting over “Paulite positions in the national platform” — and it’s evident the Strib is a more than a little confused about what the Ron Paul revolution is all about.

Let me do what I can to clarify.

First, let’s understand what a “movement” or a “revolution” is. All movements — the Pat Robertson Republican coup in the 1980s, gay rights, women’s suffrage, civil rights and, yes, the Ron Paul movement — follow a common pattern.

Movements all begin at the margins with people who have little or nothing to lose. Unsuccessful movements never expand beyond the sloganeering fringe. Successful movements — those with an intellectual and moral basis — mature to attract a mainstream following.

The gay-rights movement is a great example. Shirtless hunks in leather tutus and motorcycling “Dykes on Bikes” are no longer the point of the gay-rights spear. It’s the gay lawyer/gay accountant, lesbian legislator/lesbian physician — same-sex couples with kids and fundamental concerns about faith, family and freedom — who are now the face of the movement.

Focusing commentary on the remnants of the gay-rights fringe is something the media would never do. But focusing on the fringe of the Ron Paul movement is exactly what the Strib and WaPo commentaries actually do.

Libertarians today are on that cusp between being all about the T-shirt and all about ideas. I was a libertarian before it was cool and a Republican when it wasn’t cool.

As a political force in the 1970s, libertarians had little to lose. They were the folks who couldn’t be Democrats because they believed their money was theirs to spend; but they couldn’t be Republicans because they wanted to spend it on drugs and prostitutes.

Times have changed.

Libertarians today are less about provocative issues and more about reversing the expanding scope of government. Government expansion is bad in itself, but the future consequences are worse: Without defined limits on government, our liberties, our American republic, are truly at risk.

But, says the Washington Post, Americans aren’t buying that argument. If it were, Ron Paul would get more than 15 percent of the primary vote.

The Strib offers its caucus-questioning advice to an implied majority of “voters who believe government remains a useful tool for improving people’s lives.” Unfortunately, that glass-half-empty perspective on the Ron Paul revolution misses a significant point.

In Ron Paul, you have a charisma-challenged old white guy who, without pandering or pushing prejudice, inspires young people with the always sexy message of monetary policy.

A viable presidential challenge built by sticking to principle, not telling people only what they want to hear, is a political story the Strib and the Washington Post would shout from the rooftops — if only the message were a message they wanted to hear.

The power of an idea, personal freedom, doesn’t lie in manufactured popularity.

What about that Paul-inspired “wacky,” “nutty” “constitutional fundamentalism” found in Republican Party platforms?

Sure, abolishing the Department of Agriculture and the Federal Reserve is not going to happen even under a President Paul. But a political party that seriously considers abolishing cabinet-level departments and unaccountable government entities is a political party that probably won’t advocate for a new cabinet-level “Department of the Internet” and is serious about monetary policy.

It’s a party that stands for something.

That brings us to the WaPo admonition that “Paulites” learn to compromise, lest, says the Strib, the philosophical gulf “that’s already proving difficult to bridge by those seeking to govern this state” grows even wider.

One does not compromise principle. It’s a cliché and a fallacy that, given two diametrically opposed points of view, the “truth” must necessarily lie somewhere in the middle.

The Republican problem is buying into the “compromise is good” argument and declaring victory for every move to the left that “could have been so much worse.”

Paulites won’t make that compromise.

Ron Paul delegates to the RNC will support the nominee. However, integral to that support is holding the candidate and the party to the fundamental principles of limited government and personal and economic freedom. Constancy to principle is the ultimate loyalty.

All that said, I urge our media friends to examine the default position that government is good and invite them to think for themselves. The Ron Paul revolution offers the media, the Republican Party and America that opportunity. Take it.

——–

Craig Westover is a Republican activist and a Ron Paul delegate to the Republican National Convention. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigWestover and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/craig.westover.

This article originally appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune May 26. 2012.

Miami police shoot and kill naked man chewing on another’s face

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 17:52:44 +0000

The naked chronicles continue, but this time the story is no laughing matter.

CBS Miami has the details:

Miami police shot and killed a man on the MacArthur Causeway Saturday afternoon, and police sources told CBS4 they had no choice: the naked man they shot was trying to chew the face off another naked man, and refused to obey police orders to stop his grisly meal.

The shooting occurred shortly after 2 p.m. Police had received a 911 call indicating that two naked men were duking it out on a bike path on the causeway, which was heavy with weekend vehicular traffic.

Police ordered the “man making a meal out of the other man to stop.” When he failed to comply, officers say they had no choice but to apply deadly force.

CBS quotes Det. Willie Moreno, a Miami Police spokesperson as saying, “During this confrontation an officer did discharge his weapon striking one of theindividuals.” According to the police report, the suspect died instantly.

The victim, meanwhile, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital. Police sources claim the man had virtually no face and was unrecognizable. His identity and condition have not been released, nor has the identity of his cannibalistic attacker.

There has been an odd spate of stories of public nudity lately, but this case has elements of another bizarre news item reported in this space in January, when Bridgeport. Ct., police arrested a homeless man for having cannibalized a local resident on whose porch he was crashing.

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Thomas Friedman: ‘Barack Obama is worst president I’ve ever seen’

Howard Portnoy — Sun, 27 May 2012 16:52:38 +0000

Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Liberal New York Timescolumnist Thomas Friedman calls Obama “worst president ever.”

Oh, forgive me. I was quoting out of context. What Friedman actually wrote in a Saturday op-ed was:

Barack Obama is a great orator, but he is the worst president I’ve ever seen when it comes to explaining his achievements, putting them in context, connecting with people on a gut level through repetition and thereby defining how the public views an issue.

I committed the sin of quoting out of context because I thought that was acceptable practice among liberal members of the press and the political class. They certainly had a field day with Mitt Romney’s comment in February about not being “concerned about the very poor,” purposely omitting the following explanatory sentence about a built-in societal “safety net.” Admittedly, the remark was a stupid one to make in the first place, but it was made far more pernicious by being taken out of context.

But let’s get back to Friedman’s argument. It is one Obama made himself multiple times. In 2010, the president said with respect to the wildly unpopular health care reform act that if he just explained it, say by giving a speech (or two … or three hundred), the American people would finally embrace the law (assuming they had the brains to understand the thought processes of a man of his stature).

Friedman in his musings takes another shot at explaining ObamaCare on the president’s behalf. He writes, “Think about this: Is there anyone in America today who doesn’t either have a pre-existing medical condition or know someone who does and can’t get health insurance as a result? Yet two years after Obama’s health care bill became law, how many Americans understand that once it is fully implemented no American with a pre-existing condition will ever again be denied coverage?”

There is no question that eliminating the one-year waiting period on pre-existing conditions is a good thing. That is why it appears in the Republican plan to replace ObamaCare with a viable reform package that includes other benefits ObamaCare doesn’t, such as portability of premium purchases across state lines and tort reform, both of which would drive down the cost.

Friedman turns to another topic that he thinks Obama did a lousy job of explaining: His auto bailout. Not only, Friedman writes, did Obama “save the auto industry from bankruptcy” but “he also got all the top U.S. automakers to agree to increase mileage for their vehicle fleets to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, from 27.5 m.p.g. today.” As proof of what a positive development this is, Friedman quotes a Popular Mechanics article that proclaims this as “the largest mandatory fuel economy increase in history.” This time it is Friedman who quotes out of context. Here is rest of the Popular Mechanics article, beginning with the next paragraph.

The ambitious new standards have encountered strong opposition from automakers, who suggest that the rules will mean large increases in cars’ sticker prices. But, as part of the announcement (where the CEOs of the Detroit big three and several foreign automakers were in attendance), Obama said that consumers would save an average of $8000 per vehicle in reduced fuel costs once the regulations are in full effect in 2025.

Make no mistake about it: The new regulations are hugely important. They will save consumers boatloads of money they would’ve spent on gas, drastically reduce American’s fuel consumption and carbon footprint and change the way cars are made. But, they present a major challenge to automakers, who must determine what technologies or combination of technologies will allow average fleet fuel economy to climb so high. They’ve got a lot of work to do.

Andrew Del-Colle, the author of the quoted article,is enthusiastic about the proposal—but expresses serious reservations about whether the plan is do-able. So far, there is nothing beyond a pie-in-the-sky promise from an administration that has a proven track record of breaking its promises.

In fact here is another the Obama White House made vis-à-vis the auto bailout: “The money that this administration invested, about $60 billion, we believe we’re on the path to recouping all of that.” That was on July 30, 2011. But on December 11 of that year, then-car czar Steven Rattner sang a different tune about recouping that $60 billion.

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Chris Matthews tired of being asked if he still feels ‘thrill up his leg’

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 21:51:24 +0000

Greetings! Another “jackass” here taking an opportunity to remind readers of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’s unfortunate (for him) decision in 2008 to announce that a speech by then-candidate Barack Obama sent a “thrill up” his “leg.”

I wouldn’t be bothering except that Matthews recently told another TB audience, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so because I’ve given a lot of jackasses the chance to talk about it.”

The occasion, Mediabistro reports, was a panel discussion on a cable station in Boston that included CNN’s John King, Univision’s Maria Salenas, and the Hardball host. The moderator was C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, who had the temerity to ask Matthews whether the thrill is gone.

Matthews’s visible annoyance is evident in this video clip from the program. In it, he admits to having made the same idiotic comment in 2004 (two’s a charm?), predicting as well that Obama would become “the first African-American president,” which Matthews self-indulgently insists “makes me look a little sharper.” If he says so!

He goes on to scold Scully: “I hope that you feel satisfied that you’ve used the most obvious question that is raised by every horse’s ass right-winger I ever bump into.”

On this point, I can actually sympathize with Matthews. If I had a nickel for every time someone made a joke about me that riffed on my surname—and those who have include a few fellow journalists I hold in high regard—I would be a wealthy man. The difference is that I had no role in the literary stylings of Philip Roth, while Matthews’s thrill is 100% his.

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Feds forced to release list of words used to monitor online speech

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 18:24:27 +0000

Pork. Cloud. Mexico. Exercise. Screening. Response. I have just given the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seven good reasons to investigate this article and its author.

The Daily Mail notes that a Freedom Of Information Act request has forced DHS to publicize a list of keywords it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

View slideshow: List of DHS’s online surveillance keywords

A complete list of the terms (which include Department of Homeland Security andsocial media) can be found here, as well as in the department’s 2011 Analyst’s Desktop Binder, which has also been made public via the FOIA request—or mostly public anyway. The version available via the above link contains some redactions.

According to the Mail, “analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.”

The FOIA request was filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a watchdog group that described the list in a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence as “broad, vague and ambiguous.”

EPIC made the cast that the items include “vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.”

I can see the group’s point. It is hard to fathom how words like aid, relief, or wave could be used to help agents tighten the noose on prospective terrorists. Then again, what do I know about SCREENING. Whoops, there I go again.

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The enduring legacy of Elizabeth Warren’s tribal roots

Howard Portnoy — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:32:35 +0000

The shrillest voices on the left will tell you that the lingering saga of Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s questionable claim of American Indian roots is a distraction. They will tell you it’s a media-manufactured story, and they will point to polls that show Massachusetts voters don’t really care about the issue.

The Warren campaign will tell you the same thing. They’re probably right for a change, but guess what? The story is not going away. In fact, it’s intensifying now that the press has picked up the scent of … well, blood in the water. The left-leaning Boston Globe devoted a lengthy article on Friday to Warren’s insistence that she’s 1/32 Cherokee. The piece was long not just in column inches but on skepticism:

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago.

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet.

Part of the reason the story gained legs in recent weeks was Warren’s and her campaign’s reaction, which was to stonewall. Fred Thys of the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR notes that Warren, who is running for as high-visibility an office as exists in this country, made herself invisible to the campaign-covering media for 12 straight days. The candidate, he writes, “held campaign events, but no press was there to cover them because her campaign did not want reporters there to ask questions.”

Finally, on Thursday, Warren emerged from the shadows, only—predictably—to be inundated with questions about her supposed Indian heritage. The Q & A went something like this:

Warren: I’m here today to support a new bill in Congress that takes the banking executives off the board of directors of the regional Federal Reserve banks.

Reporter: Can you tell us whether you are, in fact, a member of a minority group?

Warren: I… middle-class families are getting hammered.

Reporter: Members of the Cherokee nation want to know. They say you should come clean.

Warren: I have made the facts clear, and what I’m trying to do is talk about in this Senate race, what matters to America’s families.

Reporter: Why did you claim you were a minority and then stop? the reporter insisted.

Warren: I have told you, Warren replied. I have answered these questions. I am going to talk about what’s happening to America’s families.

The relentless chipping away went on in this same fashion for another ten minutes. Warren repeatedly tried to change the subject to the “issues” that were “substantive,” and each time the press brought her back to the question of whether she fudged her ancestral roots to get ahead.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast is one of the shrill skeptics cited earlier. He calls the story a “witch hunt” and asks what difference it makes whether the story is true. Dismissing the putative charge that it reflects negatively on Warren’s character, he writes, “Oh please,” adding “she was the daughter of an Oklahoma janitor, for God’s sakes, who started working as a pre-teenager when her father had a heart attack.” In other words, she fairly drips with character, whether she has so much as a corpuscle of Amerindian blood coursing through her veins.

The strong possibility that she may be a liar or the certainty in any case that she fell back on the flimsiest of technicalities to gain advancement do not count as character issues in Tomasky’s world—unless the individual being scrutinized is a conservative.

To the Tomaskys out there, Elizabeth Warren is—blood lines notwithstanding—a member of the tribe… the tribe being liberals, whom you can always count on to circle the wagons whenever it is one of their own.

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Is the Obama campaign really incompetent?

Karl — Sat, 26 May 2012 14:28:39 +0000

That seems to be the developing conventional wisdom, particularly right of center. To be sure, Team Obama has had its share of problems recently. However, there is probably both more and less to these problems than meets the eye at first glance.

The two big examples cited by writers like Matthew Continetti are Team Obama’s handling of same sex marriage and the seemingly ineffective attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. These two supposed stumbles share at least two notable features.

First, both reflect tensions between elite Democratic constituencies that in recent cycles have funded the party and the rank-and-file constiuencies that have voted for it. Same sex marriage is a cause celebre for Hollywood, gay rights activists and the post-grad crowd, but not nearly as popular with working-class whites and socially-conservative blacks. The Democrat apparat is well aware of how much financial support they received from Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms in the pre-Obama era, but young Occupiers, Big Labor dinosaurs and assorted class warriors would like to plead ignorance. The stories about these issues are less about the Obama campaign specifically than about the difficulty any Democrat president would have managing the party’s voting coalition. One of the major themes of Sean Trende’s The Lost Majority is the difficulty any major party has in maintaining a broad coalition over time (Obama’s is already narrower than Bill Clinton’s). The major theme of Jay Cost’s Spoiled Rotten is how clientelism is a particular problem for the Democrats.

Second, these conflicts have particular resonance with a key Democrat constituency, i.e., the establishment media. Both issues involved what the media perceived as hypocrisy on Obama’s part. More significantly, they both afforded the media to push Obama from the left. Joe Biden’s allegedly premature comments supporting same sex marriage gave the media the opportunity to grill the White House about the gap between Obama’s stated position and the position the media believed to be his true position. Does anyone think the media would have been that dogged if establishment journalists did not uniformly support same sex marriage? Is the media’s problem more with Obama’s Bain-based attacks, or with the part about Obama taking money from the finance sector?

These two points provide two cautionary notes. First, Team Obama’s problems on these issues are not necessarily a sign of the campaign’s incompetence, but are perhaps an inevitable product of having to manage the Democratic Party’s voting coalition. Team Obama was probably going to have to choose which of its constituents to please, and which to annoy.

Second, if so, the media storyline about these problems being an issue of incompetence may be mostly that — a media storyline. In particular, it may be a media storyline driven by journalists’ own progressive biases. Conservatives and libertarians ought to look at the track record of the media forgiving Obama’s hypocrisies (e.g., rejecting public funding of his campaign, any number of national security and foreign policy stances) before planning on the media continuing with the incompetence storyline through November. The establishment media has written about “How Obama Got His Groove Back” on any number of occasions during his first term. It is a fair bet we will see those stories again before Election Day.

Calling a spade a spade: most forms of entitlement reform are theft

Dustin Siggins — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:48:20 +0000

In the debate over how to deal with America’s looming budget problems, liberals and conservatives have starkly different solutions to entitlement reform. Necessary for the financial security of America, entitlement reform is difficult for a myriad of political, ethical and financial reasons. As Michael Linden of the liberal Center for American Progress stated last year: “It’s true in the long run…the major drivers of the federal deficit are an aging population, which means higher costs for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and also rising health care costs generally…we are going to have to have some really serious conversations about how to get those things under control.”

How serious will these conversations have to be? Social Security and Medicare spending alone totaled about $1.217 trillion in 2011, or one-third of the federal budget, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. This budgetary impact will reach 50% of federal spending in the next 20 years, as Veronique de Rugy calculates here. By 2020, according to the Government Accountability Office, 92% of the federal budget will be taken up by Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and interest on the national debt. Lastly, Social Security and Medicare alone will eventually require 100% of federal tax revenues to cover their costs.

So what is the solution to our growing Social Security and Medicare cost problems? Regardless of one’s political leanings, it boils down to one word: stealing. Despite having taxed employers and workers at a combined 15.3% of each employee’s paycheck at the point of a gun (AKA the rule of law), reforms are discussed primarily with the following four politically-viable options in mind:

Raise taxes on some or all earners. Given payers into the Social Security and Medicare programs were initially given a promise of sorts from the federal government that they would receive a certain level of benefits for a certain level of taxation, this is theft.
Directly cut benefits for current and/or future seniors. This is similar to Point 1 except benefits are being directly diminished instead of increasingly taxed.
Means-test Social Security and Medicare. While a popular option for both Republicans and Democrats, it would take away retirement monies from wealthier seniors who were promised the same benefits as everyone else.
Raise the retirement age for those receiving Social Security and Medicare. Average life expectancy for 65-year old Americans is over 40% greater than that of 65-year old Americans in 1940, yet the retirement age has yet to increase by even one year since that time. Unfortunately, raising the retirement age for anyone who has paid into the program – and especially for older workers – is to change the unwritten promise around which people organize their retirement plans.

(Note: Other options are available, and popular in certain circles, for reform. One of these is the partial or full privatization of Social Security to be received by seniors. This would not be stealing, but it is for all intents and purposes very politically difficult, if the 2005 failure of then-President Bush’s partial privatization plan to get through a GOP-controlled Congress is any indication. Payment reform related to greater efficiencies in Medicare is also often discussed and would not be stealing. This was included in the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, but those reforms are still in the experimental stage and thus their impact is as of yet unknown. Medicare voucher proposals such as those in the House-passed budget proposal are also of somewhat experimental value, and so far have received little Democratic support.)

Given the fiscal impossibility of maintaining retirement benefits as they currently stand, how should this theft be enacted? Is it right to take from current seniors, who are in the middle of retirement but who are also much wealthier as compared to younger people? Is it right to take from middle-aged people, who are years from retirement but have spent decades preparing for it with expectations of certain levels of federally-funded retirement dollars? Or should the focus of reforms be on young Americans, who have more time to change personal habits and prepare financially for lower benefits…but who as the Debt-Paying Generation are likely to face dire employment and other financial challenges that could prevent them from having the kinds of financial means in retirement today’s seniors possess?

Options abound for how to fix the programs, but in the final calculation stealing is likely to be most or all of the answer. Whether it be the financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare with no changes (thus stealing from all citizens), raising taxes on the wealthy or means-testing benefits (thus targeting the most successful of us for doing nothing intrinsically wrong or illegal) or increasing the retirement age for all recipients (thus forcing people to work for more years before receiving benefits), the federal government’s retirement promise to America’s citizens is going to significantly change in the next two decades. The only question that remains is to whom that promise will be broken, and how drastic the break will be.

To clarify: from a strictly legal perspective, the federal government is not actually stealing from seniors by doing any of the above. The original language of the legislation which created Social Security, for example, stated “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” Additionally, the 1960 Supreme Court case Flemming vs. Nestor declared that American taxpayers are indeed not legally entitled to the dollars they think they are. However, the implicit promise still exists, if the language of politicians and special interest groups is to be believed, and most Americans believe they are indeed entitled to receiving retirement dollars for which they have been taxed. Use of the word “stealing” is thus applied more from a moral, ethical and “if it weren’t Congress it would be illegal” perspective.

[This was originally published at Right Wing News.]

Thou Shalt Not Steal…Unless You Have To

Dustin Siggins — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:43:11 +0000

Public policy question of the next decade: Is it okay to steal?

Follow-up question: Would it be okay to steal a significant amount of money from a generation of people, or a smaller amount from multiple generations, to avoid a national fiscal collapse?

Final follow-up questions: Are these questions academic due to simple mathematical reality?

As 2012 wears on and Congress worries about November, the mathematics of these questions as they relate to our national debt are increasingly hard to ignore. Unfortunately, as I described earlier today at Right Wing News, the politically possible solution to fixing the major drivers of our debt – Social Security and Medicare – consist of one word: stealing. In fact, they consist of lots of stealing from one or more generations of Americans.

Last July, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf explained things well in a post on the CBO blog:

Thus…limiting federal spending to 18 percent of GDP would require a cut in spending relative to CBO’s baseline projections for 2021 of roughly one-quarter…[I]f Social Security and the major health programs faced no cuts, then defense and other non-interest spending would need to be cut by about 60 percent. Alternatively, if defense and other non-interest spending faced no cuts, then outlays for Social Security and the major health programs would need to be cut by about 40 percent…

The budgetary imbalance could also be addressed by boosting revenues above historical levels relative to GDP—but it would take a substantial increase to bring revenues in line with projected spending under current law. For example, under current law, the expiration of the tax cuts enacted since 2001, the growing reach of the alternative minimum tax, the tax provisions of the recent health care legislation, and the way in which the tax system interacts with economic growth would result in revenues in 2021 reaching about 21 percent of GDP—about one-sixth above their historical average. But even then…debt would be rising slowly relative to GDP. Thus, with older Americans receiving the benefits projected under current law, fiscal policy is not on a sustainable path even with: (a) tax revenues rising above their historical average share of GDP; and (b) the rest of the government apart from programs focused on older Americans playing a much smaller role relative to the size of the economy than during the past several decades.

In other words, Elmendorf is saying that in order to get our debt under control in the next decade we would have to significantly raise taxes or drastically cut federal spending. And yet even this wouldn’t be enough to keep our debt under wraps in the long run, as the budgetary impacts of Social Security, Medicare and interest payments would truly begin to take over the federal budget around that time. To quote Michael Linden of the liberal Center for American Progress last year:

It’s true in the long run…the major drivers of the federal deficit are an aging population, which means higher costs for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and also rising health care costs generally…we are going to have to have some really serious conversations about how to get those things under control.

So what can be done? In short, we as a nation need to accept that stealing is going to dominate the major public policy debate of the next two decades: reforming entitlement spending so our nation does not fall off the proverbial fiscal cliff. Or in other words, to quote my friend William Beach of The Heritage Foundation, “You can’t balance the federal budget and stay inside today’s policy lines. Rethink the lines, however, and you’ll be amazed how quickly we could move toward fiscal sanity. It’s all a matter of those tricky lines.”

What is outside of those lines? Necessary reforms such as the following (note: these are opinions I hold, not necessarily those of Beach, whose quote I stole from his Facebook page):

Aggressively focus on eliminating fraud, waste, abuse and duplicity in the federal government. I believe up to twenty percent of the federal budget is likely lost every year to simple mismanagement of taxpayer dollars.
Rethinking how our military is run, both from a mission standpoint (get out of Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible, to start) and from a structural standpoint (starting with reforming the contracting system currently in place, especially non-compete contracts).
Eliminate a federal bureaucracy or three, starting with the Department of Education, the Transportation Security Administration, Head Start and DARE. All of these agencies cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars yet have not actually accomplished their respective goals.
Raise the Social Security and Medicare retirement ages to 69 or 70 by 2030 and begin means-testing the programs. Is this stealing from current seniors and those nearing retirement? Yes. Is this necessary, considering that Congress has not told the truth about the sustainability of the programs for decades, and the American people been willfully ignorant? Yes.

Personally, I would prefer to phase out both Social Security and Medicare over a 23-year or so period, with reforms slowly phased in so retirees are less dependent on them, but I recognize this is politically impossible unless the programs simply implode. Which they are on the path to doing.

Phase out all federal tax loopholes and either enact a low-rate flat income or – preferably – eliminate all federal income taxes and enact a national sales tax.
Phase out all federal subsidies.
Allow greater cultivation of our domestic energy resources and allow the construction of more nuclear power plants.

Politics is full of soft language that hides harsh truths, but given the fiscal reality America faces I think conservatives ought to stand up and say what’s really going on: the most important spending reforms of our generation are those needed to prevent the collapse of Social Security and Medicare, and the most politically plausible of those reforms consist of stealing from at least one generation of Americans. Politically harsh and risky? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

[This was originally posted at Race42012.com]

Barack Obama: Scatologist in chief

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:24:25 +0000

Move over, Lenny Bruce. A new master of the scatological has emerged on the scene. His name is Barack Obama, and he dishes out dirt. A regular Cloaca Professional he’s become.

Matthew Continetti, writing about the president’s rapidly unraveling re-election team at The Washington Free Beacon, states that “one gaffe is an isolated event. Two is an embarrassment.” I submit that the same may be said of a verbally anal retentive administration’s inability to resist talking about excrement.

On Thursday, the day after White House Propaganda Minister Jay Carney accused the GOP of slinging “BS” by claiming that the Obama administration was guilty of profligate spending, the ever-hilarious president told a crowd in Iowa that candidate Mitt Romney had presented voters with a “cowpie of distortion” when he made similar claims.

Obama, always at the ready to crack wise at the expense anyone who disagrees with him, haughtily told 2,500 prospective voters at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that Romney, who had visited the same venue 10 days earlier, “left out some facts. His speech was more like a cowpie of distortion.” Hoots of laughter rose to the ceiling of the Knapp Center.

The president actually knows a good bit about distortion. This clip from Thursday’s Special Report with Bret Baier features a sound bite from a speech in which the president said with a straight face:

My opponents won’t admit it, because it runs contrary to … I guess, the only argument they have, but since I’ve been president, federal spending has actually risen at the lowest pace in 60 years.

The reference takes its cue from the same fanciful article that fueled Carney’s off-color putdown. The premise of that article is that if you count emergency spending as a regular fixture of any administration’s budget, then Obama—by perpetuating federal relief programs begun under George W. Bush—has arguably spent less than his predecessors. The question that arises is why anyone would fall back on such a bizarre calculus. It is the same “logic” that Obama used to explain the trillions of dollars he was saving the nation in 2010 by not extending the surge in Iraq into perpetuity.

Putting the current fiscal conflagration in terms familiar to the president, he is knee-deep in the “mess” he inherited because he has added immeasurably to it.

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My opponents won’t admit it, because it runs contrary to … I guess, the only argument they have, but since I’ve been president, federal spending has actually risen at the lowest pace in 60 years.

Putting the current fiscal conflagration in terms familiar to the president, he is knee-deep in the “mess” he inherited because he has added immeasurably to it.

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Senator Jon Kyl, sequestration, and the economy

Dustin Siggins — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:08:56 +0000

In an article published last evening, Politico outlined how Republican senators are pushing back against the sequestration “cuts” in defense spending that are supposed to begin next year. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) included in his argument the potential economic pitfalls of these changes to defense spending, citing a recent Congressional Budget Office report that says spending “cuts” set for next year – combined with the tax increases set to be enacted next year – would harm the economy’s growth by about 3.9%.

While there are many arguments for not cutting defense spending, I do not believe Senator Kyl’s is a convincing one. First and foremost, smart cuts (especially in waste, fraud, etc. in the Pentagon) could easily eliminate fifteen percent from defense spending without harming our national interests or the ability of the troops to conduct missions. And while I am in agreement with Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and The Heritage Foundation that sequestration’s form of defense cuts are not smart cuts, Kyl’s choice to oppose cuts on the behalf of the economy seems more ideological than economical. After all, Kyl has strongly supported significant spending reductions (including the House-passed Cut, Cap and Balance proposal) in the past, and introduced legislation with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) earlier this year to reduce the deficit by $110 billion through federal worker pay freezes and federal work force reductions. He also made a strong statement on the Senate floor in April 2011 in which he said the following:

And it is the private sector that creates jobs. What we need to do is spend less government money – not only to get ourselves out from under this huge debt burden, but to allow the private economy to have the resources to grow…

An argument against sequestration can be made a variety of philosophically-consistent grounds, and Republicans (including Kyl) have made many of them. But given what he said in 2011 about Medicare spending reductions via eliminating wasteful spending, Kyl should actually support smart defense cuts:

At a Sept. 13 hearing of the deficit-reduction Super Committee, several lawmakers singled out Medicare’s wasteful spending as one way to save a significant sum without gutting popular entitlements. “We can save on Medicare without cutting benefits,” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, said, citing a Cato Institute study on fraud and waste.

Senator Kyl has led Senate Republicans against the Democrats and their wishes to cut defense spending, and my disagreement with his stance does not diminish my respect for his generally consistent position on defense spending. However, his comments yesterday leave me with two important questions:

Why did Senator Kyl vote for the Budget Control Act – which enacted sequestration – given the CBO’s claims for years that even moderate spending reductions would harm economic growth?
How do the economic impacts of defense spending cuts differ from spending reductions or cuts in the rest of the federal government?

I reached out to Senator Kyl’s press secretary this morning via phone and e-mail regarding these questions, but received no response to either message.

TV chef Lidia Bastianich sued for stealing tips from staff at swanky restaurant

Howard Portnoy — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:24:09 +0000

Like son, like mother. Despite her matronly presence on her homespun PBS series (“Give Nonni a kiss,” she affectionately demands of her grandchildren and occasional sous-chefs), restaurateur Lidia Bastianich beneath the surface is evidently no less a shark than her son, Joe. Which is saying a mouthful considering that the younger Bastianich and his partner, Mario Batali, settled a class action suit in March for a record $5.25 million that alleged the pair was stealing employees’ tips.

Now, the New York Post reports, Lidia is being sued for the same malfeasance. A complaint filed in Manhattan federal court states that “until recently,” Lidia was short-changing waiters at her exclusive upper East Side restaurant, Felidia.

The Post notes that three current and former servers insist they were cheated out of gratuities equaling approximately 5% of the nightly wine and beverage sales at the Italian restaurant. Court papers also allege that a “significant percentage” of the mandatory gratuities charged for private parties was kept from the staff or paid to the event coordinator.

Lidia, sad to say, is no stranger to the courts. In August of 2011, she was sued by a former home employee brought over from Italy who claimed that the Bastianich family treated her like a slave.

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Movie Review: “For Greater Glory”

Dustin Siggins — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:23:09 +0000

Over the last several years Catholics in America and Europe have experienced what they believe are the stripping of religious rights, and many are concerned the situation could easily turn into a public confrontation with various governments. One example of this is in England, where just this week the federal government has moved to declare wearing crosses in public is not a right. On this side of the water, my church’s parochial vicar Father Robert Lange often quotes His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, who in 2010 said the following: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Such things were on my mind as I watched “For Greater Glory,” a movie about the Cristeros, or “soldiers for Christ,” who fought against religious persecution by the Mexican government from 1926 to 1929. The movie starts with laws which encroach upon religious freedom relatively benignly, such as not allowing the public wear of religious symbols. The Mexican government then moves to decry foreigners who allegedly control the nation’s citizens, particularly the Vatican, and rounds up all foreign-born bishops and priests to force them to leave the country. Peaceful rallies and protests are responded to with military force, which leads to an economic boycott.

The boycott is the last straw for Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles. Ignoring the counsel of his advisers, he begins invading churches and killing Catholic priests and parishioners. This leads to protests of various forms, from peacefully marching in the streets to violent rebellion. At the heart of the entire movie are a teenage boy who sees his mentor shot before his eyes, an atheist whose wife’s Catholic faith and his own belief in religious freedom cause him to lead the rebellion, a woman whose network of faithful Catholic women is critical to the rebellion’s early formation, a rebel whose legendary fighting skills are matched by his disdain for authority, and a priest whose violent leadership in the rebellion causes a great deal of spiritual uncertainty.

As a movie, “For Greater Glory” isn’t a bad watch. It is rated R for violence and graphic imagery (a number of lynched bodies are seen hanging, for example, throughout the film). However, it often struggles to capture and hold the viewer’s emotions. In aiming to fully develop over half-a-dozen major characters, often through individual scenes and interactions with secondary and lower-ranked characters, the movie comes across as a bit of a whirlwind. This fast pace allows a great deal of history to get on to the screen, but it does not allow for the full depth of emotion one would expect when, for example, young Jose sees his mentor and local priest (played by Peter O’Toole) shot by Mexican authorities.

The movie also has many scenes which seem disconnected from the rest of the movie. When Andy Garcia’s character breaks a vase, for example, it is done in a way that fails to add to the viewer’s knowledge of him or his family, or even his eventual role in the movie as general of the rebellion. Jose leaves his family to join the Cristeros, but how a young boy finds them in the middle of nowhere in Mexico is left to the viewer to discern. Part of this could be due to cutting the original movie down from its initial length of over three-and-a-half hours to two hours and twenty minutes, which may not have allowed for fleshing out of certain scenes. Another reason could be that Pablo Barroso, the movie’s executive producer, is a strong Mexican-Catholic who wanted the full story told and was the movie’s sole financial backer. Either way, though, the movie does struggle to fully draw the viewer into the emotional and structural importance of many scenes.

“For Greater Glory” comes out on June 1 in limited release, and has a variety of important, if understated characters played by O’Toole, Bruce McGill, Bruce Greenwood, Eva Longoria, Eduardo Verástegui, and Catalina Moreno. Truly leading the film both visually and spiritually are Garcia, Santiago Cabrera and Mauricio Kuri. Kuri stars as José Luis Sánchez del Rio, a 14-year old boy who was one of many Cristeros beatified or canonized in the last dozen years, and Cabrera plays an internally conflicted priest. While it is not the typically slick Hollywood film, it does draw upon a lot of history in order to portray the breadth of Cristeros who fought for freedom in their own ways, and even draws in the international political community – where the American ambassador, played by Greenwood, at one point offers American assistance to Calles if he will allow American oil companies access to Mexico’s resources.

Religious Americans will see a great deal of similarities between the beginning of the movie and the contraception/sterilization/abortifacient mandate the Catholic Church is fighting today. To quote my friend Arina Grossu, Executive Director for Fr. Francis Martin Ministries: “If the government can impose mandates that go against your freedom of conscience, what’s to stop it from taking the next step and imposing mandates that go against your freedom of speech and freedom of religion, like wearing a crucifix or practicing your faith in public?” While the First Amendment and other protections should prevent anything close to what happened in Mexico from taking place in our nation, the similarities are hard to miss and should draw a great deal of media and viewer attention.

Confessions of a Conservative Woman

Amy Lutz — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:55:57 +0000

I guess it’s time for women to duck and cover, at least according to the mainstream media. For months now, left leaning news sources and politicians have been preaching the existence of the GOP’s “War on Women.” In actuality, it’s nothing but a blatant attempt to pander to women voters. Under the liberal version of “war,” Republicans have been busy targeting women by “denying” us free birth control, aiming to restrict abortion, and defunding Planned Parenthood. However, if that’s what war means these days, then call me a pacifist. Fighting against a socially liberal agenda isn’t exactly the textbook definition of war. However, that does not mean there isn’t another version of “war” going on in our society against women. The real “War on Women” is a horse of a different color, and it’s not coming from the GOP.

As a woman in the United States, I do see a partly unintentional cultural war on my gender everywhere I turn. However, this isn’t one orchestrated by the Romney campaign. It’s one that’s deeply embedded in our culture and fueled by the media itself, the entity which often claims to champion “women’s rights.” I can’t walk through Target anymore without being bombarded with sleek magazine covers of airbrushed women who represent our cultural expression of beauty. Magazines and television shows subliminally say to women that we are not beautiful if we don’t meet the impossible standards set by our culture. They say, “You’re not pretty enough, buy this makeup,” or “you’re not thin enough, lose 20 pounds.” In short, they’re saying “you’re not perfect enough.”

I’m sick of hearing from Cosmopolitan that I’m not beautiful or thin enough. It’s insulting and degrading. Sure, the media also places standards upon men, but they are far less restrictive. In magazines and television everywhere, women face an onslaught of superficially-based warfare.

While there has been significant pushback against the plethora of airbrushing and superficial standards for women in our culture today, it’s still present. The long term effects of these standards still weigh heavily upon women. We are told by the shiny magazine covers that we must be perfect, thin, and beautiful to be “accepted” in society. As women everywhere try to achieve these standards, we constantly come short because we are seeking something we will never achieve. The “perfect” body, face, etc. is an impossible-to-attain social construct. As a result, thousands of women struggle daily with body issues, low self-esteem, and even eating disorders. Additionally, when the image of female perfection is so superficial, women are often not taken seriously because our worth is appearance-based.

In short, “beauty” is synonymous with “ability.” I can say for a fact that it is much easier to succeed as a woman if you are considered attractive. It should not be that way. This is a symbolic statement that says women should be judged based on appearance, not merit or character. America is supposed to be a meritocracy, not a nation where image is somehow a golden ticket for success.

iving as a conservative woman in the United States is even more difficult. While the National Organization for Women (NOW) will charge into battle for liberal women like Sandra Fluke or causes like abortion and birth control, they remain silent in the face of blatant attacks on conservative women. Recently, a video emerged of union members hitting a piñata with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s face on it because of her unease with the labor movement. NOW and other feminist groups had nothing to say on the issue. Talk about being warriors for women’s rights, huh? Then, a sexually explicit photoshopped image of conservative pundit S.E. Cupp appeared in Hustler Magazine, bashing her for her “dumb ideas” such as defunding Planned Parenthood. Hustler publisher Larry Flynt responded to the wave of complaints by defending the article and saying, “that’s satire.” Again, from feminist organizations: nothing. At least several liberal women such as Sandra Fluke have come out in S.E. Cupp’s defense. Conservative women like S.E. Cupp, Nikki Haley, and myself do not receive a defense from feminist organizations (not that we need it anyway) simply because of our political stances. It is an example of another liberal double standard. NOW and other liberal women’s groups are liberal ideologues who are pursuing a liberal agenda under the guise of gender equality.

For liberal women’s groups, the answer to the “War on Women” is taking legislative and political action to support Planned Parenthood, extend abortion, increase the distribution of birth control, etc. Once again, if that’s their weapon of choice, I don’t plan on carrying anytime soon. However, for all women, not just conservative women, there is another solution to the cultural assault on women’s images and the lack of a liberal defense. We need to be the women who are so often neglected in the media: real women. We need to be women of character who hold family values while still fighting for respect from the media. We need to be examples for our sisters, friends, and children. Gender should not determine our place in society.

Culture changes slowly, but it does change. That change begins with us. Our place should be determined not based upon the media’s impossible standards or a liberal feminist ideology. It should depend on merit. I am beautiful, but not because the media tells me I am. I’m beautiful because I value myself no matter who tells me otherwise. I’m a woman, I’m conservative, and I will not take this anymore.

Russia, Iran standing off from Obama’s showcase events

J.E. Dyer — Thu, 24 May 2012 22:35:55 +0000

Vladimir Putin decided not to attend the recent NATO summit in Chicago – although probably not out of petty pique at our president. Regardless of his sentiments about Obama, he would have attended if he had thought it was in his interest to do so. Now Iran has abruptly ended the scheduled talks on her nuclear program in Baghdad, affirming no interest in continuing this round without some lightening of sanctions up front. The next round of talks is to be held in Moscow.

If they occur, as promised, in June – before the US election – the most likely outcome is more stalling and no progress. But that is not because there has been no prior interest on the Western side in making big concessions in order to get an agreement. What Iran is doing actually amounts to avoiding being presented with a favorable agreement. The abruptness of the talks’ end indicates mostly that Iran doesn’t see it as advantageous to stick around and talk anymore, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the P5+1’s anxiety to negotiate a good deal for Iran.

As for Putin, his proximate reason for not attending the summit is obvious. Missile defense was – as always, over the last decade – to be one of the two main topics in Chicago, the other being Afghanistan. The collective NATO missile defense system for Europe was to be declared operational at the summit. It was. Russia’s main bone of contention with NATO is missile defense. Although Russia has been invited to be a missile defense partner with NATO, and has participated in extensive talks on the matter, there remain fundamental disagreements between the parties over how to operate and orient a collective missile defense.

Putin had no intention of being present for photo ops under a “NATO missile defense” banner – in spite of President Obama’s assurance to Dmitry Medvedev that the US would be more “flexible” about the whole thing after our November election. Putin’s reluctance is partly because Obama’s NATO allies have a different view. They aren’t interested at all in more “flexibility”: the Europeans, in their own special way, have actually been quite stringent on the need for missile defense, determined to go ahead with it for political purposes if not for the capabilities of the inaugural system. The initial capability relies entirely on US Aegis warships being stationed in the Black Sea or Eastern Mediterranean, along with an early warning radar in Turkey whose data the Turks – against NATO policy – don’t want shared with Israel. The vulnerabilities of this initial set-up are obvious, but for the Europeans, the point is the show of commitment.

Writing at NRO earlier this month, Daniel Vajdic assessed Putin as increasingly detached from reality. I’m not so sure it’s Putin who’s in that condition.

If Greece leaves the Eurozone rather than staying in and swallowing some very nasty-tasting medicine, who will come to Greece’s aid? The door will be open to Russia, in a way it wasn’t in 2010 when reports abounded that Russia offered Greece a 25-billion-Euro loan, but was rejected by the Greek leadership due to opposition from the EU and US. Russia is already keeping Cyprus afloat, and has for centuries had a national interest in maintaining the principal geopolitical influence over Southeastern Europe. Russia and Greece have begun a significant naval rapprochement – but that’s not the only rapprochement going on between the two Orthodox Christian nations. Russian businessmen promised in September 2011 that Russian investment in Greece would be increasing dramatically, a credible promise given the level of investment Russia (and China) already had in Greek infrastructure. As the Eurozone crisis rages – literally, at this exact moment – the second Greece-Russia Investment Conference is unfolding on the island of Evia.

The leaders of Europe have a problem. If they effectively force Greece out – a move that would be understandable from a fiscal and monetary perspective – they will have to outbid Russia if they want to turn around and buy Greece back. The implications for NATO are as uncertain as anything else. A NATO missile defense, opposed by Russia and relying on the nations and waterways around Greece? America has to be acting like the alpha dog to make that one work.

And we’re not. There are a couple of potential factors in the decisions of Putin and the mullahs not to treat seriously with the US, for the time being, on the most important security matters. One of them is that the US has little credibility as an enforcer. What are we going to do if Iran cuts off nuclear talks? Demand more talks? Obama pre-neutralized US credibility on missile defense with his “flexibility” promise to the Russians; why come to the NATO summit when you can just wait for a collapse of American will after the US election?

Waiting could turn out to produce much bigger benefits than trying to fit into today’s American-sponsored multilateral efforts. The second factor, which is both cause and effect of all the others, is that the world’s correlation of geopolitical power is changing. It’s already happening. The strong potential for Greece’s departure from the Eurozone is just the best publicized, most urgent of the current developments.

But there are others, like Japan’s growing concern over the predations of Russia and China on islands long claimed by Tokyo. In early May, Japan made the unprecedented move of proposing that Russia return only two of the four northern islands – the Kuril Islands – claimed by Japan but occupied by Russia since World War II. This is a major concession, and is undoubtedly related to the growing belligerence of China over the Senkaku Islands on the other end of Japan.

It may well have been encouraged in part by the Russian strategic bomber exercise in April that saw 40 bomber aircraft flying just outside Japanese airspace, along with the near-simultaneous naval exercise between Russia and China in the Yellow Sea (the first such exercise ever conducted). Japan can ill afford to be in armed disputes on both ends of her archipelagic territory, but neither can she afford to suffer humiliating losses in those disputes. Asia is not a good place to appear weak or friendless; Japan will want to be on better terms with one of the land powers at any given time, and it appears Russia is Tokyo’s first choice.

In theory, Japan should be able to rely on the support of her principal ally, the United States. Our posture on the Senkaku Islands dispute is that it must be resolved through negotiation, not through force majeure. On the Kurils, we have explicitly supported Japan’s claim since 1952 – but early in 2011, when Russian plans to upgrade the weaponry on the islands made headlines, our embassy in Moscow hid behind the claim of a media misstatement, when the Russian foreign ministry complained about our position on the matter.

If Obama is shifting our security focus to the Far East, one thing he will have to understand is that the resolution of our allies’ territorial problems is the hinge-point of our effectiveness. We don’t weigh in on the negotiations; that’s for the parties to work out. But we do back our allies up. The problems may not seem big or important, but the security context we set for the resolution of these issues is what makes it useful – or not – to be an ally of the United States.

The questions are (a) whether Obama can understand and act on that reality, or (b) whether it even matters all that much at this point. There will be no magic pill in the election of anyone to the Oval Office this fall; a switch of administrations will probably produce a brief hiatus, but will also represent an opportunity for status quo-busters. Things have changed so much already that the political constructs within which the US and Europe operate too frequently come off now as complacent, head-in-the-sand pieties. The holiday from history is over, although we may be the last ones to see it. Neither Russia nor Iran – nor China, North Korea, or Syria, for that matter – is very interested in signing anything with the West right now. Good deals based on the old assumptions aren’t as tempting when better ones seem to lie just over the horizon.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

How To Make Obama’s Spending Look Small (MarketWatch Rebuttal Infographic)

Political Math — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:54:57 +0000

It’s been going around Facebook and the Twitters.

It’s been rated “mostly true” by Politifact.

It is the MarketWatch piece on how Obama hasn’t really increased spending all that much.

And I’m damn tired of picking it apart 140 characters at a time, so I put together this sarcastic infographic showing exactly how sloppy this piece really is.

There are two things in this infographic that should be called out more explicitly.

First, much of the debate here centers around who exactly should catch the blame for FY 2009 spending. This is actually a very tricky question and I think compelling cases can be made for both sides of this debate.

My personal position is that it’s really complicated. But one thing is for certain: in hindsight the CBO January 2009 estimate is so obviously wrong that using it should be called out and mocked.

The January 2009 CBO estimate might have been a “best estimate of what Obama inherited”, but only in January 2009 when spending data was *very* hard to predict. January 2009 marked the worst part of the recession and the uncertainty was very high. Only a few months later, Obama’s budget estimated 2009 spending would be $400 billion higher than the CBO estimate.

But now we can look at the data, not the estimates. And we should. The spending data ended up $20 billion lower than the CBO estimate… and that included the stimulus spending (which Nutting says was $140 billion, but I’m still trying to track that number down). If that is the case, the high-end estimate for Bush’s fiscal year is $3.38 trillion. If we compare that to Obama’s 2013 budget proposal ($3.80 trillion), that’s an increase of 12.5% (3.1% annualized). Which isn’t that high, but it’s also using a baseline that is still filled with a lot of what were supposed to be 1 time expenses (TARP, Cash for Clunkers, the auto bailout, the housing credit, etc).

Second, Nutting uses the CBO baseline in place of Obama’s spending. This is easily verified and I can’t think of a serious economic pundit who would say this is OK. I can think of two reasons for doing this: Either a) Nutting is a monstrously biased ass who (rightly) figured no one in the liberal world would fact check him so he could use whatever the hell number he wanted to use or b) Nutting had no idea that the CBO baseline isn’t a budget proposal. I’m actually leaning toward the second explanation. Nutting uses so many disparate sources it seems clear he doesn’t know his way around federal finance.

Congrats, Mr. Nutting. I don’t think you’re a huge jerk, only that you’re hilariously unqualified for your job.

References:

Bush requested $3.107 trillion, but the final budget of $3.52 trillion was passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama on March 12, 2009.

For actual spending, I used the monthly Treasury Reports, which have spending and revenue for every month since 1981 in an Excel file. Easy to work with.

For the CBO fiscal year 2009 estimates.

The CBO baseline (which was referenced by Nutting for the $3.58 trillion number) is found here.

President Obama’s actual 2013 budget

And just for kicks, here is the CBO analysis of the President’s Budget which pegs Obama’s 2013 spending at $3.717 trillion.

Thanks to the Hot Air team for letting my cross post this in the Green Room!

‘Hustler’ publisher Larry Flynt answers criticism over obscene Cupp photo

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:27:09 +0000

Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt has responded to criticisms over his magazine’s publication of a salacious doctored photo that depicts conservative columnist S.E. Cupp engaging in the act of fellatio. Flint’s defense? The photoshopped image was intended as satire.

In a statement to The Blaze.com, Flynt wrote:

That’s satire. I’m able to publish this because of the Supreme Court case I won in 1984 [sic], Flynt v. Falwell.

The reference, the date of which Flint got wrong, is to a highly publicized court decision handed down in 1988 that upheld Hustler’s right to parody public figures so long as it could not be considered libel. The lawsuit in the case was brought by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who Hustler claimed “was a drunk and had engaged in an incestuous sexual encounter with his mother in an outhouse.”

The statement reveals that Flynt is not only unable to get his dates straight but that he has no idea what satire is. Satire is defined as “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” There is no mention in the definition of humorless debasement of another person whose political views you find repugnant, which was obviously the case in the photoshopped image of Cupp.

Now if one were to photoshop an image of Flynt deep in thought about a subject other than naked women and/or perverse sexual acts, that would be satire.

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Thank God for the Atom Bomb

Libby Sternberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:14:40 +0000

The title of this short piece is actually the title of an essay by Paul Fussell, the writer, literary and cultural critic who just passed away at the age of 88. His New York Times obituary notes his “withering scorn for the romanticization of war,” which was due, in part, to his own experience of battle in World War II as an infantryman wounded in southeastern France. His most well-known book is probably The Great War and Modern Memory (about World War I), of which Steven Hayward at Power Line says:

Fussell managed the extraordinary feat of weaving together a spare account of the salient military and political facts with a sweeping survey of the literary impact of the Great War, in neither case overdoing it.

Hayward calls Fussell a “typical postwar liberal,” a description that I wasn’t aware of when I encountered his essay “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” In it, he fiercely defends the decision to drop the atomic bombs that ended World War II.

“I want to consider something suggested by the long debate about the ethics, if any, of that ghastly affair,” he wrote on the 42nd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Namely, the importance of experience, sheer, vulgar experience, in influencing, if not determining, one’s views about that use of the atom bomb… I’m talking about… having to come to grips, face to face, with an enemy who designs your death….Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was ‘wrong’ seem to be implying ‘that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs.’ People holding such views, he notes, ‘do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots.’”

Fussell went on to argue that those who did have firsthand experience of World War II combat were “not elaborately educated,” and thus were unlikely to articulate the benefits of dropping the bombs when critics, who had been nowhere near the war’s devastation, heaped scorn on the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan.

“In general, the principle is, the farther from the scene of horror, the easier the talk,” wrote Fussell of those who wrung their hands over the bomb decision after the fact.

In his essay, Fussell spoke for those “not elaborately educated” fighting men. He took on the bomb’s critics with a muscular ferocity, and I found myself cheering him on with every paragraph I read. The argument that people of conscience — even soldiers — recoiled from the bombs’ punishing blows, Fussell dismissed as “canting nonsense.” “The purpose of the bombs was not to ‘punish’ people, but to stop the war.”

At the very end of the essay, Fussell reveals his liberal stripes with some criticism of Ronald Reagan and nuclear policy, but up until that moment, I was marching with him, saying a dozen or more silent “hear, hear’s.” I urge readers to get hold of this excellent essay before the bomb anniversaries this summer.

I have my own personal reasons for saying “Thank God for the atom bomb.” My father was on a ship in the Pacific when the bombs were dropped. He, along with his other Army comrades, would probably have been involved in the invasion of Japan had the war not been ended those first weeks of August 1945.

RIP, Paul Fussell, and thank you for speaking for the “not elegantly educated” man who was my father.

—-

Libby Sternberg is a novelist.

NYC public school to require students grades 2 through 5 to learn Arabic

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:47:21 +0000

If u c rd ths, u c b a terrrist: الموت للكفار. The sentence reads “Death to infidels,” but if you can’t read it, not to worry. Soon there be 200 new translators of Arabic in the country to assist you with the task.

Of course you’ll have to travel to New York City, to the Hamilton Heights neighborhood, to avail yourself of their services. All of these new recruits are elementary school students (second through fifth grade) at P.S. 368, in the uptown Manhattan community

According to the New York Post, Arabic was chosen by Principal Nicky Kram Rosen over more common foreign language offerings, such as Spanish or French, because it will help the school obtain a prestigious International Baccalaureate standing. Like it or not (and considering its use of an unfamiliar alphabet, Naskh, and the fact of its being written right to left, I’m guessing “not”), indoctrinees will be forced to spend 45 minutes twice a week on their Arabic lessons. That’s approximately the amount of time devoted currently to the study of science.

Angela Jackson, CEO of the Global Language Project, which is backing the initiative, is quoted by the Post as saying that Rosen floated the idea of teaching Arabic by the parent association who, she insists, “were very supportive.” Jackson adds:

Arabic has been identified as a critical-need language. It means they can spin the globe and decide where they want to work and live.

The article offers a testimonial by one student, 7-year-old Nayanti Brown, who participated in last year’s pilot program. “I like Arabic class. I like the words we learn,” she is quoted as saying. “I thought they sounded funny at first, now I think they sound cool. I teach my little sister the words I learn.’’

The mandate goes into effect in September, but insofar as P.S. 368 is a so-called “choice’’ school, no child is forced to take Arabic. That sounds reassuring, but then the article goes on to state in the next sentence that “if the school ever enrolls a student who objects to learning Arabic, administrators will deal with that on a case-by-case basis.”

Let me say in advance of the dozens of shocked and outraged emails I will be receiving that my intention in this article is not to conflate the speaking of Arabic with the philosophy or practice of Islamofascism. It is rather that mandating the teaching of this language at this particular time strikes me as an odd choice.

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Necessary skyrocketing

J.E. Dyer — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:48:23 +0000

Here it comes. DirectorBlue (Doug Ross) has a superb summary of recent updates on the colossal increase in electricity prices being imposed by the Obama EPA. With the ongoing and prospective shutdown of coal-fired generating plants throughout the Northeast, the recent power-capacity auction for the year 2015 produced a market-clearing price of $136 per megawatt, or eight times the price from the 2012 capacity auction.

For northern Ohio, the price was a surreal $357 per megawatt – because northern Ohio has been heavily reliant on coal plants that will all be shut down by 2015.

These increases can only be passed on to the consumer – or taxpayer. Again, this is what bidders actually committed to pay for power generating capacity. As Doug Ross reminds us, this isn’t information from a model; it’s a real-world, market-driven data point. It’s going to cost that much to generate power without the coal plants. If you want electric power, you’re going to have to pay the rate that makes it possible to generate power at that cost.

And, of course, almost no one can afford to do that. Suppose the eight-fold increase in the auction price produced a commensurate eight-fold increase in the unit price of a kilowatt-hour for the consumer. (It may not, but it will produce a significant increase, probably on the order of 500-700%.)

Imagine the average $120 or so monthly electric bill of Northeasterners exploding to $960 a month. The 500-700% increase would produce average bills running from $600-720 a month.

Even just doubling the amount of people’s electric bills would entail a huge economic shock. The eight-fold-increase numbers are hard to get our minds around, but supposing that the increase no more than doubled or tripled the amount of the average electric bill – with the residue being absorbed by taxpayer-debt-funded government programs – it would still have a very disruptive effect on social cohesion. Only a small percentage of Americans would riot in the streets, but millions of Americans would begin fleeing the areas where they could no longer afford to live.

Those who already live in rural parts of northern Ohio would no doubt turn exclusively to diesel generators, propane heaters, and wood fires. (Which we can expect would then be outlawed.) They and their rural confreres in the neighboring states would be joined by more and more refugees from the cities. Suburbanites would go off-grid to the extent they could, but would remain captive to urban regulation. Many in the Northeast and Midwest would make the long delayed decision to move elsewhere – south and west – even if that meant losing the investment in their homes. Still others would begin considering the move for the first time.

What Americans will not do is blithely revert to living in 19th-century conditions in the cities. More than household electric bills will skyrocket: the cost of everything in life that relies on electricity – in other words, everything – will skyrocket as well. Retailers, no matter what they sell, will have to charge much, much more for their products, not only because making them costs the producers more, but because keeping the lights on or the machines operating in the retail facility will cost so much more.

This electricity increase will force thousands of businesses to shut down. Even many big businesses can’t handle this cost increase. It will kill more jobs than anything has to date, making the Great Depression look like a roaring recovery. It will make things we take for granted, like fresh produce, impossible to obtain unless you live right next to a farm (and live outside of the Northeast, where commercial farming will die out entirely) – but it will also distort and suppress all kinds of sophisticated and packaged production, including those related to the most basic necessities. The price of gasoline may remain comparatively stable, but if there are far fewer retailers to ship products to, many truckers will still go out of business.

Doug Ross cites the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) predicting that the massive shutdown of coal plants will compromise the reliability of the power grid in the Northeast. But we must also consider the likelihood that power companies will lose so many customers, and lose so much revenue, that they will go under. “Saving” them with big bailouts would only make the areas they serve more beholden to their “patrons” in the federal government.

These are mostly first-order effects. As distortions mushroomed in the Northeast, we can assume that the federal government would not stand idle. If its priority remained limiting the people’s access to electric power, it would do whatever was necessary to ensure that there would be no benefit from fleeing to the other parts of the country.

The bottom line on this prospective skyrocketing is that it cannot happen without tremendous social disruption. That doesn’t mean the American people will turn violent or undisciplined – a small minority would, and they are already displaying their character as we speak – but it does mean that we cannot continue life as we know it, with almost everyone in the northeastern part of the country artificially priced out of the convenience of central-grid electric power.

Keep in mind, this is entirely artificial. This is government policy, made independently of any sort of outside crisis. Nothing imposes this on us except the Obama administration’s acceleration of hallucinatory ideological extremism.

Ross notes that after NERC published its estimates on the reliability problems of the future power grid, it was promptly investigated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

Breaking: Man who claims he lured and killed Etan Patz in NYPD custody

Howard Portnoy — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:02:56 +0000

It could turn out to be déjà-vu all over again, but a man who willingly implicated himself in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz is in the custody of New York City Police this morning.

The New York Post, the Associated Press, and other prominent news outlets report that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has issued a release stating that the man, tentatively identify as Pedro Hernandez, was arrested in Camden, N.J., yesterday and brought to New York for questioning.

The Post quotes an unnamed source as saying that Hernandez “told investigators that he lured the boy with candy, stabbed him, cut up his remains and put them in plastic bags.”

At the time of the alleged crime 33 years ago, the suspect lived a few blocks away from the Patz family in SoHo and worked at a neighborhood bodega. He is said to have confessed his crime to family members, one of whom phoned the NYPD last month after police and the FBI excavated the basement of a building near the one where the missing child’s family still lives. The dig exonerated 75-year-old Othniel Miller, who had been identified as a possible suspect.

Hernandez, who has been on investigators’ radar for years and identified as a “person of interest,” has a criminal history. He was sentenced to three years for possession of cocaine and battery in 1997—his third such offense—according to Indiana Department of Corrections records.

The news of the arrest comes nearly 33 years to the day since Etan Patz disappeared. Following the child’s disappearance, May 25 became known as National Missing Children’s Day.

There is probably no family on earth that craves closure more than Stan and Julie Patz, the parents of the missing boy. The AP notes that the couple has been reluctant these many years to move or even change their phone number in case their son tried to reach out to them. They live to this day in the same apartment, which probably still contains haunting memories.

No doubt, the Patzes felt on the verge of that much-prayed-for closure last month when the police and FBI had refocused their attention on Othniel Miller only to have the basement dig come up empty of clues.

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The news of the arrest comes nearly 33 years to the day since Etan Patz disappeared. Following the child’s disappearance, May 25 became known as National Missing Children’s Day.

There is probably no family on earth who craves closure more than Stan and Julie Patz, the parents of the missing boy. The AP notes that the couple has been reluctant these many years to move or even change their phone number in case their son tried to reach out. They live to this day in the same apartment, which probably still contains haunting memories.

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