A Moment Of Truth From The Left

Moments of honesty are rare from the left, but when they come, boy do they come. This week, the left is meeting at the posh Omni Shoreham Hotel in D.C. to gripe about Obama. This is the annual “Campaign for America’s Future” meeting, but we shall call it “CommieCon.” And this year’s CommieCon has been a little more truthful than you normally get when leftists open their mouths.

Let’s start right out of the gates with a statement by Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos. Moulitsas, whose name means “Dipsh*t” in Greek, warns that selling a liberal agenda to the American public is a nonstarter. Because of this, Moulitsas counsels against drafting a progressive policy platform for politicians to adopt because:

“What you get is irrelevant and scary to the American people. If we’re talking to people, the less details the better.”

There you have it. What the left wants is so disturbing to people that they should hide their goals! That puts Moulitsas in the company of racists, child molesters, and Satanists, each of whom needs to hide their beliefs from the rest of us.

Moulitsas, by the way, is all giddy that they are about to bring down moderate Democrat Blanche Lincoln (who did eventually vote for ObamaCare): “We’re going to take out Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. It’s an unprecedented alliance between netroots labor and the environmental movement . . . to hold people in D.C. accountable.” And get this, he notes, without any trace of irony, that politicians like Lincoln “are immune to public opinion.” This from the man who advocates hiding liberal views from the public.

Next up, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of Green for All admits that she doesn’t know what the heck she’s talking about. “Phaedra,” by the way, means “smelly hippy” in Greek. Phaedra is upset that Obama is proposing to loosen offshore oil exploration restrictions and she calls his “handling of BP. . . atrocious at best.” What’s worse, poor Phaedra feels betrayed: “We thought that an election was victory. We forgot that candidates don’t deliver change, that they become part of the system.” She then informs us boldly that “I believe in holding people accountable, even people we love.” Sounds bad for Obama right? Well, if you think that, then you and Phaedra must share a crackpipe, because Phaedra taketh away but she also giveth right back: “I voted for Barack Obama and I would again. . . I believe in this president.” So much for accountability and everything else she said.

Noted flake Arianna Huffington, whose name means “wack job” in Greek, also came up with some interesting truth, but you need a scorecard to follow what the heck she’s saying. Watch as the truth suddenly bursts forth in the middle of Huffington’s ramble:

“Bipartisanship is not the way to find American change. So far bipartisanship has brought us a no-strings-attached bailout. It has brought us the freedom from the burden of an affordable public option. . .”

Did you get that? Because they had to work with those evil Republicans, we poor Americans are left with the “freedom from the burden” of having a public option. In other words, they weren’t able to force the burden of a public option on us. The burden. Wow, thanks for being truthful WackJob. . . for once.

But this admission apparently was too much for poor WackJob, as she followed up with this doozy about what evil “bipartisanship” has brought us: “every day we see more penguins and dolphins covered in bipartisanship.” Yep. And nope, I did not make that up. “Penguins and dolphins covered in bipartisanship.” Hmm. If this is a reference to the oil spill, then I hate to tell her that there are no penguins in the Gulf. If this is a reference to something else, then I have no idea what it could be? Maybe second hand crack smoke?

Others noted from the low attendance and the lack of enthusiasm, as well as the open criticism of Obama, that the left is fed up with Obama and the Democrats. MoveOn.org’s campaign director Ilyse Hogue, which is Bostonian for “sub-sandwich,” points out that:

“We are willing to get out and fight for the people who fight for us, but no longer can they count on us for a solid Democratic vote. We are getting more sophisticated to understand that not all Democrats are created equal.”

Others warned: “We have the energy and the willingness to mobilize. We can be a huge ally or a huge obstruction.” Yeah, you make a better door than a window. Or did you mean "bowel"?

Pelosi spoke today and got heckled so badly that she literally had to yell parts of her speech. Check out the anti-Israel banner. Also, one of Pelosi's aids claims that the hecklers began "throwing things." And here I thought passing ObamaCare was supposed to endear the left to the Democrats and inspire them? Maybe Pelosi meant "inspire them to violence"?

Howard Dean is still scheduled to speak. I'm hoping he explains the penguin thing?

So what does this tell us? First, it confirms that ObamaCare didn’t inspire anyone on the left -- as we predicted. It also confirms what the polls are saying, that the left is demoralized and won’t be turning out in force in November. Secondly, it confirms that these people are hopeless and will never actually vote against the Democrats. Third, it confirms that they know that they need to lie about their goals and sneak their agenda through the legislation process. How sad. And fourth, it shows that the left is indeed a bunch of doped-out hippy morons. Where have all the flowers gone?

Finally, I’m reminded of an old adage: beware of Greeks bearing communistic ideals.


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The Unparody-able Liberal

An interesting question came up this weekend that deserves a full post. The point was made that only a liberal can ultimately do a parody of the left. I disagree. Parody requires an eye for the absurd and a talent for pointing out the absurdity in a way that cannot be denied. There is no ideological requirement. But that’s not what I want to discuss. I want to talk about why liberals will never accept a parody of liberalism, no matter who does it.

Liberals have no sense of humor about their beliefs. There are several reasons for this, but I think the primary reason is how they see their beliefs. Modern liberals don’t really have a fixed set of views. Indeed, for them, situational ethics are the order of the day, where right and wrong are assessed independently in each situation they encounter. And the principle that they think guides them is: “I believe in helping people.”

But of course, this is a sanitized view of what they actually believe. For example, while liberals like to believe that “they” want to help people, they don’t actually want to do it with their own time or money, they want the government to take your time and money to do it. They talk about freedoms, like freedoms of speech, but they only apply those to certain people and actively advocate the government stopping speech with which they disagree. They claim to oppose discrimination, but they advocate reverse discrimination to achieve that. And so on and so on.

But liberals refuse to see this. Instead, they believe that in each instance, they are simply helping people. And since “I want to help people” really can’t be parodied, it is not possible to the liberal mind to parody liberalism.

Moreover, liberals have three defense mechanisms that prevent anyone from parodying their views.

1. “That’s different.”

What conservative hasn’t heard the phrase “that’s different” come from liberals? “That’s different” is a catch all mechanism that lets liberals gloss over the problems with their beliefs. It allows them to reconcile their self-professed views with their contradictory actions without ever admitting that they are acting hypocritically or that they apply their grandiose principles selectively. Thus, they can tell racist jokes without considering themselves racists -- something they do not accept from conservatives -- because “that’s different.” And when a liberal politician breaks a promise, it’s never as serious as when a conservative does, even if the promise and circumstances are identical because “that’s different.” Basically, this mechanism allows them to sustain their views in light of such hypocrisies, e.g. they can both say “I believe in free speech” while simultaneously calling for the banning of speech they don’t like because “that’s different,” and they can simultaneously say that we need to end discrimination, while they impose discrimination on others because “that’s different.”

This mechanism also lets them sidestep logic. Liberalism withers when confronted with logic. But if you ever confront a liberal with logic, and you point out that something they say is not true or cannot logically lead to the result they want, they don’t try to reason it out. . . they just say, “that’s different” and move on without ever admitting that they are wrong.

Not coincidentally, this same mechanism allows them to dismiss any parody of their views because they will simply see whatever scenario the parody is being based on as “different” from what they really believe.

Thus, when Robocop II parodied their views when the executive board put all kinds of liberal garbage into his programming, which resulted in Robocop becoming laughably ineffective, liberals didn’t see that as a criticism of liberalism. To them, this wasn't an attack on their beliefs because what was happening on screen was different than the liberalism in their heads. If anything, they focused on the “say no to drugs” comment and assumed this was a criticism of Nancy Reagan and how "the right wants to turn everyone into robots."

For another example, liberals never seem to get that the guy in every science fiction/war/action film who says “if we tell them we don’t want to hurt them, they’ll leave us alone” is a parody of liberalism. This is a view liberals have espoused in every context you can image -- from appeasing dictators, to unilateral nuclear disarmament, to appeasing terrorists, to dealing with criminals -- and yet, somehow, once this view is being parodied on film, liberals suddenly become incapable of recognizing this as something they routinely advocate. That’s called a defense mechanism, which is a form of delusion.

2. “I’m not being political.”

Related to the first point is something you see all the time with liberals: they don’t think that their views are political, they think they’re facts. I see this all the time with liberal sports writers, who will criticize conservatives to no end for “injecting politics into sports” if they so much as appear at a Republican rally. But these same liberal sports writers think nothing of raving about a Michael Moore film, praising some Democrat they like, talking about how it’s “obvious” that guns should be banned, or advocating any number of liberal causes right in the middle of a sports column.

One sports writer (gossip monger Mike Florio) said, “No matter what your politics are, you have to respect Robert Byrd and admit that he’s done great things for this country.” Another, (Peter King of S.I.) said, “Leaving politics aside, everyone should see An Inconvenient Truth because it’s so important that we do something to stop global warming.” And when he was called on this, King said: “I don’t know why everyone got so upset and why so many people tried to bring politics into this.” And that’s a fairly common response when these guys get called on their politicking.

These guys, like other liberals, simply don’t see their views as political. They see them as widely accepted facts that everyone believes, and they assume that anyone who would disagree with those “facts” is simply being political. To them, saying liberal things is nothing more than expressing that the Earth is round. Thus, if you parodied those views, it wouldn’t strike them as a parody of liberalism or their beliefs, it would strike them as a politicized attack on truth.

3. Disavowal.

Finally, liberals are extremely good at disavowing their failures. Liberal ideas fail because they conflict with human nature. But liberals don’t accept this because this would mean their entire worldview is wrong. Thus, whenever liberalism fails, they look to blame someone or something or they disavow that it was liberalism in the first place.

Indeed, if you listen to liberals, socialism has never failed because “it’s never really been tried.” Stalin apparently wasn’t a communist because he didn’t really put communism into place. Ditto East Germany, Cuba, China and so on. Hitler, who imposed all of the hallmarks of 1930s socialism on Germany (including eugenics, which was very popular with Western leftists at the time), found himself turned into a right-winger. Liberalism didn’t fail in places like England in the 1970s, it was betrayed by a bad economy, just like Obama’s policies aren’t failing now, they’re being betrayed by a bad economy. And his spending isn’t failing either, it’s being betrayed by huge deficits. And so on.

Basically, whenever liberalism fails, it's not liberalism, it's something else. This twisting of logic makes it impossible to parody liberalism because liberals simply will not accept any parody of their views that highlights the bad because they automatically disavow that the bad can be the result of liberalism. It's the perfect cocoon: “My beliefs can only lead to good things and if they lead to bad things, then it wasn’t my beliefs that were implemented.”

These are the reasons liberals will never accept a parody of liberalism, no matter who makes it. They don’t see their views as capable of being parodied, they can't recognize their views when they see them put in a negative light, they can't distinguish between their politicized views and established facts, and they will disavow any parody that suggests their views can be anything other than pure and saintly.

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Blinding You With Science!

It’s a great time to be alive. Science has given us things that were unthinkable to prior generations. Television brings us images of places and things prior generations didn’t even know existed. We’ve seen the surface of the moon and the bottom of the ocean. We can instantaneously talk to friends the world over. Medicine makes us healthier and gives us longer lives. Modern business methods bring us food, products and luxuries previously undreamed of. And science has been busily expanding our understanding of everything. Lets point out a couple of cutting edge theories you may not have heard about before, but which may soon change our lives again.

1. Life Abounds: When I was younger, I remember the first real scientist (sadly, the guy’s name escapes me) proposing that other planets exist. This made total sense to me. If the universe is nearly infinite, then there should also be a nearly infinite number of planets. This is just a matter of working out the probabilities. But when the guy said this, boy did the establishment heap scorn on him. To them it was easier to image the universe as empty, except for lonely suns and the handful of planets in our system. Talk about small minded.

Well now it’s been proven. There are other planets. In fact, the universe is teeming with other planets. The ones they’ve found so far have all been about the size of Jupiter, but that’s because of the crude methods we need to use to find them -- basically, we are measuring the gravitational wobbles of suns to see if planets are tugging on them. But as with all things scientific, the techniques are getting better and they are finding smaller and smaller planets.

Now they’ve discovered water on other planets in the solar system and on asteroids. And water means life. Thus, conventional thinking now holds that the universe is crawling with planets and that there is probably life on a great many. Nanoo nanoo.

2. The Multiverse: Remember the evil Spock? He might be real. Recent thinking has begun to suspect that there might be more than one universe. In fact, a great many scientists are now factoring that into their equations. This all started because there are problems with the Big Bang Theory, which can explain how our universe grew, but can’t explain where it came from the moment before the bang. Moreover, based on what we know, the universe is missing both matter and gravity. To resolve these issues, the current thinking is that our universe may be one bubble among many and that it leaks into other universes.

Proving this is the point to the New Hadron Collider in Bern. . . the one that was supposed to kill us all in a shower of black holes. What they are doing is smashing particles together at incredible speeds and then monitoring the ensuing explosion. If energy from the explosion goes missing, then they think that energy has shifted into another universe.

What does this matter you ask? Well, this is helping us to understand the nature of our universe. And that kind of knowledge will help us unravel the mysteries of existence. And, frankly, who knows what else this can lead to? Indeed, at a time when they are creating computer chips one atom at a time and they are talking about putting data on molecules, you simply can’t rule out the possible benefits of this kind of research.

3. The Missing Link: This one is not well-accepted yet by science, but it’s gaining traction. One of the problems I’ve always had with evolution is that it assumes that traits will appear as needed or that they already existed. In other words, if birds fly now, then either they always flew or, somehow, the ability to fly will develop when it becomes desirable. But that doesn’t make logical sense because that assumes that these traits were always there to begin with and just needed an environmental push to become the dominant traits. This can explain minor changes, but it really can't explain major evolutionary leaps.

But a new theory may solve this problem. This new theory speculates that it may be retroviruses that push evolution along. Yep, viruses like AIDS. A normal virus attacks living cells and kills them. But a retrovirus takes over a cell and changes it. Indeed, they are now discovering that retroviruses actually affect the DNA. Moreover, about 98% of our DNA is junk -- useless genes that apparently serve no purpose. The new thinking is that this is the result of mankind (and animals) being infected by millions of retroviruses over the millennia, and that these infections resulted in changes being made to our DNA, which resulted in new genes being implanted, which then spread as the infected bred. By adding new genes to the DNA, it would be entirely possible (indeed likely) that new traits would appear which didn’t exist before. If true, this may be the missing piece to the evolution puzzle that explains how we got from there to here and why different species evolved differently even though they had similar starts. It may also give us the key to controlling our own futures.

4. Faster Than Light: Everybody knows that you can’t go faster than light, right? Well, that doesn’t appear to be true anymore. Indeed, they have discovered that some particles can be changed from positive to negative and the process actually takes place faster than the speed of light would allow. Moreover, in lab conditions, they’ve now been able to pass light through matter at faster than light speeds. This could one day become the key to traveling the universe.

5. Gravity Smavity: Finally, let’s finish with another controversial theory. Some scientists are starting to wonder if there is such a thing as gravity after all. We think of gravity as a force that pulls two objects together. But there is a problem with gravity: there isn’t enough of it in the universe. Indeed, there should be more. So what if we’re wrong about gravity? What if gravity isn’t a force at all, but is really only the bending of space? In other words, we’ve learned that space, which seems empty, really isn’t. And we know that objects bend space with their weight, like a bowling ball on a mattress. Thus, an object traveling in a straight line will appear to fall toward the bowling ball as it follows the bent space. If the bend is large enough, the object with strike the bowling ball. It is entirely possible that what we perceive as gravity is actually objects simply rolling toward a heavier object that has bent space toward itself. And if the theory of gravity goes out the window. . . then how do we keep the change in our pockets? ;-P

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Where Have The Elves Been?

By the Boiler Room Elves

We know, we know -- the rumors have been rampant. The Elves are on an extended leave of absence; the Elves got busted importing illegal boilers without a license; the Elves tried to kill Andrew and pull off a coup resulting in -- oh wait, that's our “to do” list. The truth is - the Elves have been out taking advantage of the fine tax paying citizens of this country. That's right, the Elves are now 1st time home-owners, suckered in by The Dear Leader's Tree-House Tax Credit.

We found ourselves a cute little 100-year-old Victorian tree with all the gingerbread trimmings. A big kitchen for cookie baking, a lovely porch for whiling away lazy afternoons, and a basement just big enough for a boiler of our own. Ahhhh. The Bossmen are pretty much signing their checks directly over to Home Depot lately, and they're getting increasingly annoyed at our newfound lack of willingness to work overtime. In fact, don't tell the Bossmen, but as things in the treehouse get nicer and nicer, things in the Boiler Room are getting increasingly slipshod. Ahem. . .

Now, you may ask yourselves -- if the Boiler Room Elves are good little conservatives in favor of limited government and less spending, how dare they add to the problem by so flagrantly grabbing up one of The Dear Leader's handouts? Well, frankly, in this case, done is done, and we thought our own tax money is better spent back in our pocket than in the government's.

Anyway, if you out there in Commentarama-reader-land want to make a real difference in cutting spending and waste, have you checked out THIS SITE?

Every week, Republican House Whip Eric Cantor is putting up 5 things to cut from Federal spending that We The People (and Elves) get to vote on. Then, the Republicans are introducing a motion on the floor of the House to cut that item. So far, we've voted on two things. Last week was an amendment to eliminate a pay raise for federal government employees, which would have saved $30 billion. Representative Michele Bachman introduced the amendment, and naturally the Dems voted it down without even allowing debate. But the Dems are now on record voting not to skip their own pay raise this year. As Representative Cantor said in his e-mail: "(W)e are beginning to change the culture here in Washington. We will not stop until we have brought spending under control."

Go Representative Cantor! Go Representative Bachman! Go Commentarama and vote on the You Cut site!

Now, where did we leave that crown molding for the tree-house....


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Artificial Life: The Biggest Danger We May Ever Face

In the photo to the right are Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith. You’ve never heard of them? Well, they might soon be as famous as J. Robert Oppenheimer. What did they do? They created artificial life. And that may bring with it some amazing benefits to human kind. . . or it may kill us all. Indeed, what they have done presents us with a danger unlike any danger we have ever faced before, and that’s not hyperbole.

In 1995, American biologists Venter and Hamilton became the first people to unravel the DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium). This was a major achievement that brought with it both the possibility of good and bad. For example, this advance promised to one day end genetic disease. It promised new drugs, the ability to make us all stronger, smarter, healthier, and to give us longer lives. That’s all good. But it also brought with it the possibility that parents would set out to create designer babies, with unknown consequences. Also, many worried that this could create a two-tiered society in which the haves have all of the best genetic traits money can buy and the poor don’t. Some feared this could even lead to two completely different human species. Yet, even assuming the worst, such concerns could be controlled through careful legislation that restricted the use of that technology for good purposes.

The new danger, however, will be well beyond such controls and it’s far more dangerous.

On May 20, 2010, Venter and Hamilton became the first human beings to create an artificial life form. They did this by creating a strand of synthetic DNA with 100 genes on it. Then they placed that DNA onto an existing dead cell. Through the introduction of various chemicals, the DNA strand took over the cell. Then it duplicated itself, and life was born. . . life without ancestors.

So what’s the problem? Here’s the problem. What they did is actually quite simple once you know how to do it. Unlike the creation of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, this process does not require extensive hardware or massive amounts of technical know-how which only a handful of governments possess. Indeed, it is being suggested that this process is so simple that, someday soon, creating new life will be as easy as choosing genes “off the shelf” and most anyone will be able to learn to do this.

What this means is that millions of people all over the world will be able to create whatever they can dream up. Thus, controlling the use of this technology will be impossible. Indeed, forget the analogy to controlling nuclear, biological or chemical weapons -- which involves monitoring a few governments and controlling the export of certain technology and hardware. A more appropriate analogy will be trying to stop computer viruses, which can be created by anyone in the world with access to a computer and a little knowledge of computer code.

And the word "virus" is key. When people think of “life,” they typically think of animals. But animals aren’t really the problem. If some biologist in Russia creates a half-pig, half-dog, that’s not the end of the world. But what if that same biologist creates a virus that looks like the flu, passes just as easily, and acts like Ebola? What if an Al Qaeda scientist changes mad cow disease to let it skip across species to humans?

That’s the real danger, not that people will create brand new super-bugs from scratch, but that they will modify existing ones to make them more fatal, to make them harder to detect, or to make them spread quicker or easier.

There is no limit to the depths of evil that we could achieve with this technology. And given that human nature rarely stops trying to plumb those depths, it is not hard to see viruses suddenly appearing that cause blindness, deafness, infertility or death. It is not hard to see new species of plants created that wipe out whole eco-systems, or bees with poison in their stingers, or ultra-violent versions of existing animals. All of this will be possible.

So what do we do? Sadly, this is where I have few answers. The Economist recommends that we turn this knowledge loose to everyone. Their thinking is that it is best to have millions of good guys all working on solutions whenever something evil appears, like we do with computer viruses. But that analogy doesn’t work in this instance because the ability to counteract these things quickly may not be enough, and the danger of letting this knowledge out is so great. For example, if I designed a killer virus that spread like wildfire, but waited 60 days to show any symptoms, by the time people started dropping dead, it would be too late to find a solution. . . hundreds of millions of people would have it.

But what are the alternatives? Government control? From the sound of it, it will be impossible to keep this genie in the bottle. As with nuclear weapons, now that everyone knows it can be done, it will only be a matter of time before others figure it out. Thus, even if we put a stop to it right now, that may only delay the inevitable and it will leave us without the research needed to counteract the new things that suddenly appear.

Criminal punishments? Those only stop people who don’t have criminal intent in the first place. No angry 16 year old wiz kid in the Philippines is going to care about a prison sentence in the US. Neither will an Al Qaeda scientist.

Monitoring? How? We can’t monitor the creation of computer viruses now.

Ultimately, there may not be an answer. But I would suggest a combination of things and I would suggest we start immediately. First, I would suggest some sort of export control to try to limit the spread of the technology, and I would suggest registering the necessary chemicals. I would also suggest establishing procedures for genetic testing when people arrive at hospitals with strange diseases and establishing some form of improved communications or database through the CDC to track unusual symptoms. Finally, in all honesty, I recommend that anyone caught creating such a virus be dealt with brutally, and that the punishment for such a crime be death. That is the one penalty that might dissuade most people from playing around with these things.

Normally, I favor all scientific advances. But this one could be the exception. This one appears to be a true Pandora’s Box, and we need to tread very carefully on this.


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Obama’s Katrina?

Some are suggesting that the BP spill in the Gulf could end up being Obama’s Katrina. That’s possible, but I doubt it. My reasoning has to do with the differences between right and left, not with how Obama responds to the disaster. Here’s why. . .

There is little doubt that the BP oil spill in the Gulf is a total disaster. The spill was avoidable, its timing couldn’t have been worse for Obama -- having just proposed expanding drilling, and it is already the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever faced. Indeed, this spill, which now apparently can’t be stopped until at least August, is likely to put at least 2.3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf and will wipe out whole industries and ruin beaches all along the Gulf coast for years. The environmental and economic damage is staggering and, frankly, I am starting to suspect that BP will need to seek bankruptcy protection before this is over.

And Obama’s handling of this matter has been incompetent. He was slow to react, and has been more interested in pointing fingers than finding solutions. He has made repeated assertions that he’s in charge and keeps assuring us of quick fixes, but he’s done nothing to make things better. He’s also made huge public relations mistakes, like going golfing or going on vacation rather than visiting the Gulf. And he’s failed to get a point man on this, leaving his underlings to issue contradictory statements.

In fact, Obama’s handling has been so disastrous that the Democrats are getting nervous. The Democrats have tried hauling BP’s management (and others) into Congress as a diversion, but that didn’t work because people just wanted the thing fixed and they saw these hearings as little more than political theater.

Nancy Pelosi tried taking the preemptive step of blaming Bush, but that didn’t work either. Even if we all believed that Bush was evil, as the Democrats state reflexively, Obama has had two years to deliver us from Bush’s sins. So a failure at this point is on Obama, not Bush, especially since Obama has been unwilling to reform the problems that have now been exposed.

And now other things are coming out, like BP giving a ton of money to Obama’s campaign. And like evidence of the far-too-cozy relationship between Rahm Emanuel and BP's PR firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosne. Apparently, Stanley Greenberg is married to Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn), and Greenberg/DeLauro let Rahm live in the couple’s Capitol Hill townhouse in violation of congressional ethical guidelines. “Coincidentally,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid Greenberg’s firm $500,000 in 2006 and 2007 while Rahm lived in their townhouse and while Rahm “coincidentally” ran the DCCC. Whether there is a connection to BP is not known yet, but the mere fact that the MSM is looking at this is bad news for Obama.

Thus, we now have an unprecedented disaster, utter incompetence, and influence peddling. We even have Democratic newspapers like the Washington Post getting nervous with headlines like: “Obama Struggling To Show He’s In Control” and Congressional Quarterly describing Obama as “defensive, un-authoritative and equivocal, he came across as a beleaguered bureaucrat in damage control.” Bill Maher has even made jokes about Obama on this. And some have even used the words “Obama’s Katrina.”

But I don’t think this will ever become “Obama’s Katrina” because of the hypocrisy of the left. The left will attack people it doesn’t like for any reason. It will even make up reasons when it can’t find any real reasons. No fact is too significant to ignore, no lie is too obvious not to believe, and no amount of hate and anger is too much. But when leftists make the same mistakes, the left gets amazingly quiet. No error is too large to overlook, no justification is too fake to accept, no injury is too horrific to ignore, and no third party is too blameless to demonize.

If BP had happened under a Republican administration, there would be ten thousand journalists in the Gulf at the moment. We would have round-the-clock coverage of every single drop of oil, every closed business, and every protestor that the left could bus in. But it didn’t happen under a Republican, so the media is silent. Rather than rushing to the Gulf to show us "the human cost," we get stories about BP’s corporate management. Rather than attacking the President for his failures, we get Obama’s justifications and excuses fed to us without any critical examination.

Where is Greenpeace? Where is the Sierra Club? Where are any environmentalists? Where are the celebrities who flew to Alaska to wash off birds after Exxon Valdez? And where are the pictures of animals covered in oil? They don’t exist because the left and their fellow travelers who populate these groups don’t want them to exist. Dying animals is an inconvenient truth that must be avoided until a Republican fall guy can be arranged.

Before this spill can take on the political significance of a Katrina, there must be a concerted effort to make it into a huge political issue. And that is the forte of the left, not the right. For unlike the left, the right actually looks at issues on the merits. The right accepts the existence of accidents and it doesn’t automatically try to exploit these events. The left suffers no such limitations.

So unless this disaster gets big enough that the left itself turns on Obama, don’t expect this bigger-than-Katrina disaster to become anything like the politicized Katrina that Bush faced.

Of course, there is one caveat to this. While the Gulf spill may not become as politically poisonous as Katrina, it may be just one more nail in the coffin to those in the middle who thought that Obama at least offered a level of competence that Bush lacked. And if Obama spends his time trying to point fingers, the mushy middle will turn on him.

I guess we’ll see what happens.

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“I Did Not Offer A Job To That (Joe)Man.”

Ah Bill Clinton, is there no scandal you won’t join? Let’s dissect this Joe Sestak matter because it’s import. Indeed, it appears that a very serious crime has been committed. BUT, this is something the Republicans need to shut up about. Here’s why. . .

1. The Facts: What Happened

Here is what happened in JobGate.

1. Joe Sestak begins a primary challenge against turncoat Sen. Snarlin Arlen Specter.

2. Soon Sestak starts bragging that the White House offered him a job to drop his senate bid. On Larry King, he was asked: “Were you ever offered a federal job to get out of this race?” Answer: “Yes.” The following day, on FOX News, he was asked if he was offered “a federal job, a White House or administrative job.” Sestak said “yes.” On Joe Scarborough he was asked if it was “an offer to run the Navy.” Sestak said “yes.” At no point in this interview or any others did he ever suggest that he wasn’t actually offered a job or that it was only an advisor position. That’s called an admission.

3. People start pointing out that this is a felony (see below). And the Republicans ask Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor. Holder refuses. That’s called a cover-up.

4. Obama is questioned by the media and avoids responding: “You will get it from my administration, and it will be coming out shortly. . . I can assure the public that nothing improper took place, but as I said, there will be a response shortly on that issue.” That’s called a non-denial denial and indicates a cover-up in progress.

5. Sestak is asked to clarify exactly what the job was. He now refuses to answer: “I have nothing else to say on the matter.” That’s guilty talk.

6. Obama and Clinton meet for lunch. That’s called conspiracy.

7. The White House issues a very carefully-worded, very evasive white wash memo that claims that Bill Clinton met with Sestak, not anyone from the White House, and that Bill only offered to put Sestak on an “uncompensated advisory board.” It also claims that Republicans have done this in the past too. . . although it doesn’t cite any examples. Demonization is always an acknowledgement of guilt

8. Finally, Sestak issued a statement saying he had turned down an unpaid advisor job. That's called conspiracy after the fact.

2. Why This Is A Crime

If a job was offered to Sestak, then a felony was committed. Here’s why:

1. 18 U.S.C. section 211 makes it a crime to solicit or receive anything of value in exchange for appointing (or influencing the appointment of) someone to an office or job with the United States. This is subject to one year in prison and a fine.

2. 18 U.S.C. section 595 makes it a crime for anyone to use a federal job, federal funds, or a federal position to interfere with a Senate election. This is subject to one year in prison and a fine.

3. 18 U.S.C. section 600, makes it a crime to offer public employment in exchange for political activity. This is the Hatch Act, which was passed in 1939 to stop the practice of hiring political hacks for government jobs and to stop the use of government resources to promote political parties, i.e. to depoliticize the federal work force. However, the only penalty appears to be termination of employment.

Each of these applies “directly or indirectly,” meaning that going through a third party is the same thing as doing it yourself. . . hi Bill. Thus, everyone involved in this could be sentenced up to two years in prison, fined, and lose any federal job they hold. Removing a President would require impeachment.

3. Why This Should Be Investigated

Speaking as an attorney, this has all the hallmarks of a crime that is now being covered up. Can it be proven? Possibly. That’s why you need a special prosecutor. They can call in all the witnesses and quiz them, including secretaries and assistants. It is the secretaries and assistants who usually break a case open either because they decide not to lie for their bosses (though, in truth, they usually do lie) or they don’t know what lie to tell (this is more common). The prosecutor can also subpoena phone records and computer records -- including e-mails, which is also where these things usually fall apart. After that, one or more main players will usually roll over and start telling the truth.

The other reason a special prosecutor should be called is that this is not an isolated incident. In Colorado, Andrew Romanoff is running against Sen. Michael Bennet in the Democratic primary. According to The Denver Post, Jim Messina, Obama’s deputy chief of staff, “suggested a place for Romanoff might be found in the administration and offered specific suggestions, according to several sources. . . Romanoff turned down the overture, which included mention of a job at USAID.” The day after, Romanoff announced his Senate bid. The White House has denied this, but “several top Colorado Democrats” have confirmed it anonymously to The Post.

4. Why Republicans Need To Shut The Heck Up Fast

Despite the fact that this is a crime, the Republicans need to shut the heck up about this. They should push to get a special prosecutor, but should not talk about impeachment and should not try to score points on this once a special prosecutor is appointed. Here’s why.

People do not like attacks that seem purely political. And they don’t like politicians using the criminal justice system to attack their opponents. They particularly don’t like politicians trying to “get” their opponents with esoteric laws. And the public will see this as esoteric. Why? Because Obama could have done this legally.

Presidents have the power to appoint anyone they want. Thus, Obama could have appointed Sestak to whatever position he has in mind and it would have been entirely legal, even if Sestak needed to drop his Senate bid to take the job. It only became illegal because of the quid-pro-quo aspect, the “you only get this if. . .” aspect. But since Obama could have done this legally by just omitting those words, people will see this as a “technically illegal” illegality. In my experience, people do not like those, and they hate it when politicians use those against their opponents.

Moreover, look at the history of using these kinds of attacks on opponents. Iran Contra made Oliver North into a hero and made the Democrats looks like incompetent, anti-American jerks. The impeachment of Bill Clinton made Bill Clinton much more popular than he had been and made Republicans look like nasty, intolerant, sex-obsessed tyrants. It also ended many a career on the Republican side, but only enhanced those on the left. Even consider Watergate. The Democrats didn’t bring down Nixon, Nixon brought down Nixon. And what did the Democrats gain? Nothing. They only beat Ford after he pardoned Nixon, and four years later came Ronald Reagan and a dramatic shift to the right.

This same history gets repeated in other countries as well. When politicians try to use criminal laws against their opponents, the crime better be ultra-serious. Anything that sounds technical or snippy will always blow up on the party that is perceived as exploiting the law.

The better approach is to let the investigation do its thing. Let a prosecutor go after these people and let the steady drip of allegations and the infighting do the damage. In the meantime, just keep saying, “serious allegations have been raised and there should be a prosecutor appointed to uncover the truth. The American people deserve the truth. Beyond that, I’ll wait to comment until after the investigation.”

That may not be the sexy strategy, but it's the smart strategy.


** Update: It now turns out that Sestak would not have been eligible for the job Clinton supposedly offered him. That makes their claims look even more like a coverup. That's what happens when you try to make up an "alibi" after the fact.

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Money, It’s A Gas

The United States is in deep deficit doo doo. Like Greece, we are flirting with insolvency. So what do you do if you are one of the Democrats who has driven us to the verge of bankruptcy? How about spend more money? Pink Floyd once said about money: “if you ask for a raise, it’s no surprise that they’re giving none away.” Apparently, Congress is intent on proving that wrong. Here are some of the spending bills Reid, Pelosi and the crew are planning before November.

Another Jobs Bill: First, they need another jobs bill because the last three or four jobs bills didn’t produce any jobs. . . unless you count the people who got paid to print the bills. This time they want to spend $190 billion. But there’s a problem. Moderate Democrats are freaking out about the price tag. Said Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) “With the entire world focused on sovereign debt, [this] is not moving in the right direction. I am highly skeptical.” Government “worker” unions aren’t skeptical though, so look for this giveaway to pass.

Interestingly, to get the price tag down they cut a few things from the bill. First, while the bill does extend jobless benefits, that provision will now expire on November 30. Call me crazy, but something about that timing seems suspicious. . . though I can’t quite put my finger on what is happening in November? Secondly, they have cut back on the “doctor fix,” because those greedy Medicare doctors don’t deserve to be paid 50% of the cost of the treatment they provide!

As an aside, the New York Post is now reporting a “jobs creation” scam that the Census Bureau is running. Apparently, they have been hiring people, firing them for the slightest cause, and then rehiring them. . . repeatedly. The reason is that any employee who works one day or more gets counted as a new job created, even if they were just fired from the same job. Thus, several whistleblowers are now claiming that they’ve been counted as new hires as many as four times in recent months.

Afghanistan: This week, the White House will send a second emergency appropriations bill to the Congress, seeking $58.8 billion, give or take a few pennies, to keep the troops in Afghanistan long enough to make it look like the administration isn’t soft on terror.

Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats are hoping to add numerous spending provisions to show that they aren’t soft on pork. After all, this is the same Congress that passed an omnibus spending bill in December that included 5,000 earmarks costing $447 billion.

Skool Is Cool: Finally, the Democrats are planning to give $23 billion to local school districts to prevent them from laying off fat-cat administrators, er, teachers. Sadly, the teachers unions apparently haven’t donated enough yet, because the White House has been noncommittal on this (though Secretary of Education Spending Arne Duncan says this is “an absolute myth”. . . as compared to the “partial myth” about Democrats being tax and spenders, or the just plain old "myth" that is the Easter Bunny). Still, the Democrats plan to sneak this into the military emergency appropriations bill, because nothing says national defense quite like wasteful spending.

No word on any new mascots they may be planning to create, but I hear a crack team of government operatives are working on a budget mascot called "Willy Wasteful."


So there you have it: $271.8 billion in good money to be thrown after $2.184 trillion in bad money. Thank you team Donkey.

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Deepwater Horizon: Government Failure

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon presents us with a true teachable moment. But the lesson isn’t that offshore drilling is bad or dangerous or wrong, or that oil companies are evil. No. The oil companies do bare the brunt of the blame and should be made to pay for all of the damage they have caused. But the real lesson here is that it’s time to reform our government because it keeps failing to do the few tasks it should be doing.

Under federal law, the Minerals Management Service is charged with inspecting offshore drilling rigs to make sure that they comply with all federal safety regulations. The MMS is supposed to inspect each rig at least once per month. We are now learning that they haven’t been doing that.

The exact number of times MMS inspected the Deepwater Horizon is not clear because MMS has been giving different numbers. They originally claimed to do 26 inspection in the last 64 months. But then they mysteriously raised this number to 48 out of 64, no explanation given. In either event, MMS failed to conduct between 25% and 59% of the required inspections.

This follows a citation in July 2002, when the Deepwater Horizon was shut down because the company had failed to conduct a pressure test of the blowout preventer -- a device that is supposed to stop the kind of gusher they can’t seem to stop right now. And in September 2002, the rig was cited again for problems with the blowout preventer.

Moreover, several years ago, MMS weakened its testing requirements on the very cutoff valves that should have prevented the current disaster. Indeed, they weakened these testing requirements so much that there is virtually no oversight of these key safety features. As a result, there have been repeated failures of these cutoff valves on other rigs in recent years -- at a time when inspections have been falling. This time, it went seriously wrong, costing eleven lives and billions of dollars in damage.

So why was this rig allowed to operate? Did BP trick MMS? No. Believe it or not, it turns out that the Deepwater Horizon was allowed to operate without providing safety documentation showing that these valves were functioning. Apparently, many of these rigs are. And Team Obama has ruled out stopping the process of granting such waivers, despite all the sound and fury coming out of the White House about this incident.

The problems here are obvious. First, the government is wasting so much money doing things it shouldn’t be doing that it has lost focus on the things it should be doing. Moreover, the government is too rife with conflicts of interest. For example, last year, MMS awarded the Deepwater Horizon an award for its safety history. Aside from the obvious of “you gave an award to people who kept being cited for violations?”, is the bigger question of why is MMS giving awards in the first place? Their job is to inspect. They are to shut down those who fail and pass those who do. Their job is not to pass out awards or to play footsie with these companies.

And lest you think this is a minor point, a report by the Interior Department's Inspector General now reveals that the relationship between the agency employees and the oil companies was so close that it bordered on bribery. Apparently, agency personnel accepted sporting-event tickets, meals, and other gifts from the oil companies they were supposedly monitoring. The report also finds that agency personnel, rather than doing inspections, were using government computers to view pornography.

Further, why is the agency doing inspections with the one hand, but collecting billions of dollars in royalties with the other? How can it make sense to give the inspection role to an agency whose primary incentive is to maximize output? Where is their incentive to do honest inspections?

The time has come to remake the government. It is time to strip out the conflicts of interest, it is time to hold everyone in the agency chain of command accountable for their failures, it is time to divorce government from its incestuous relationship with industry, it is time to focus these agencies on doing the job they should be doing and doing away with all of the distractions.

It is a scandal that the government allowed defective gear to be put into place without a substantive inspection. And it is a bigger scandal that Team Obama is not planning to fix this situation.

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School Killings In China

Anyone who follows the MSM will have heard that America is an evil place because our “gun culture” has led to the murder of vast numbers of school kids. By comparison, the rest of the world is a peaceful Garden of Eden where nothing bad ever happens. Of course, this is a lie, but it fits the narrative the MSM wants you to believe. Nothing shows this more than the non-coverage of what has been going on in China in the past couple of months.

For starters, let me remind you that despite the high profile that the media loves to give school shootings, they are incredibly rare. In the last five years in the United States, there have been five shooting sprees in schools that resulted in three or more deaths. A total of 50 people were killed in these five shootings (32 at Virginia Tech and 18 during the other four). This compares to 2.5 million deaths in the US annually. Thus, while each of these is indeed tragic, this is hardly a common occurrence as the media would have you believe.

Moreover, pinning this on our “gun culture” is pure politics. Indeed, all we hear from the MSM for weeks when such a shooting happens is how it could have been prevented if we banned guns. Of course, this is a lie, and they know it. But they are looking to exploit this tragedy and no lack of logic on their part will stop them.

If you want proof that this is not the result of our “gun culture,” look at Europe. In the same five year period just discussed, anti-gun Europe had four mass killings at schools. These resulted in 49 deaths. Almost the identical number as in the United States. Thus, while the media plays up the idea of US “gun culture” being the cause of school killings, the reality is quite different.

(I am not including things like Beslan, where terrorists killed more than 340 people in a school or Afghanistan where there were more than 80 school attacks this month alone to keep girls from being educated.)

Further, consider what has gone on in China, something that is not being reported in the MSM. On May 12th, seven children were hacked to death in a kindergarten in Shaanxi. Eleven others were injured. In April, more than 50 children were injured or killed in a half dozen similar attacks. On March 23, in Fujian province, eight children were killed. These incidents are becoming so common that the Chinese have started putting armed guards in their schools with orders to shoot suspects on sight.

The current thinking in China is that this is a response by people who feel powerless to oppose their system and that these killers choose to strike at the most vulnerable in response. This strikes me as false just as the gun culture argument is false. The reality is that some people are just sick. And the idea that we should remake society, e.g. eliminate guns in the US or more closely monitor dissidents in China, to stop these people is ludicrous.

What we should take away from these events are that (1) we should not politicize tragedies, (2) we should not attribute the acts of the deranged to political groups, political causes, or groups of people, and (3) we should be more watchful of people with mental conditions and we should look to intervene earlier and with greater care.

Finally, we should take away one last fact. Some things cannot be stopped. If a lunatic is intent on hurting people, they will find a way. Thus, we must expect these things to happen. Therefore, we should consider ways to improve our protections in the event something like this does happen. Indeed, it must be pointed out that each of these killings could have been stopped sooner if we had not tried to keep peaceful, innocent people from protecting themselves through the possession of firearms.

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A Primer On Capitalism

Marxism, socialism, and other forms of leftism have long been discredited to anyone not driven by ideology. Indeed, after having bankrupted country after country, it has become obvious that even a little bit of socialism is destructive. But capitalism has failed now too, right? Actually, no. What has gone “wrong” is that liberals have misinterpreted capitalism and falsely attribute their own failures to it. Let’s dispel a few of these misinterpretations.

1. The Left Misuses “Market Failure”:

Since Clinton’s term, the left has started using the lingo of capitalism. They just don’t use that lingo correctly. For example, capitalism is not entirely opposed to regulation as the left likes to claim. Capitalism has long recognized that regulation is important where you have “a market failure.” A market failure is a situation where the normal disciplines of the market, which allow buyers and sellers to exercise their preferences, are impaired for some reason. This prevents the “market mechanisms” that solve problems from working. Thus, regulation can be appropriate.

Leftists have learned the phrase “market failure,” but they misuse it. Rather than using it only where market mechanisms cannot work, they apply it whenever they don’t like what the market has done: prices are “too high” for everyone who wants the product, demand is too low to keep companies like GM working, consumers won’t voluntarily select features the left wants them to want. . . those are not market failures. Those are, in fact, market mechanisms at work.

Examples of market failures are situations where you have a chicken and egg problem that keeps would-be-willing suppliers from making a product that would-be-willing consumers desire because neither group is willing to act first, or where consumers and producers are able to push “externalities” onto third parties (typically safety or pollution concerns), or where a monopolist can control the market price.

So when the left tells you that there has been a “market failure” that requires government action, ask yourself if there has been true interference with market mechanisms or if consumers have simply rejected the things the left wants.

2. The Involvement of Private Business Does Not Make It Capitalism:

In both the healthcare and cap and trade debates, the left argues that they are employing “market solutions” because they are involving private firms in their schemes. That’s not capitalism. Capitalism involves producers and consumers exercising their preferences and thereby creating market prices. When the government requires producers or sellers to make something or buy something, that’s not capitalism, that’s socialism even if private firms benefit. Said differently, just because a crony private firm will profit from government action does not make that action capitalism, it is still state control over the economy, i.e. socialism.

3. Capitalism Requires Failures:

The left loves to whine that capitalism “has failed” whenever a business goes under -- like GE’s Jeffrey Immelt said during the big crash in 2008. This is stunningly ignorant. Capitalism does not assure there won’t be failures. To the contrary, it expects them. Failure is a market discipline. If you don’t produce something that consumers want, then you will fail. And when you fail, the resources that were allocated to you, will seek out higher valued users. That’s how the market ensures that resources are allocated efficiently. The idea that businesses can't be allowed to fail, i.e. that the government should substitute its judgement for that of consumers, is anti-capitalism.

4. "Crony Capitalism" Is Not Capitalism:

2008 proved (once again) that crony capitalism does not work. But it proved nothing about actual capitalism because crony capitalism is not capitalism. Crony capitalism is corporate socialism, where the taxpayers prop up large businesses but well-connected private investors reap the benefits. That’s the situation at the top of our banking system. When everyone at CNBC kept talking about the failure of our banking system in 2008, what they were really talking about was the failure of the top tier of corrupt banks. What they tried hard never to mention was that right below the corrupt names you know -- Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers -- were a whole group of next tier banks ready to take their places.

That's how capitalism works. In a capitalist system, we would have let these institutions fail and be replaced by the Jefferies and Raymond James of the world. By the same token, we would have let GM and Chrysler fail and let Ford take the next step up. So don’t buy this idea that somehow capitalism was what failed in 2008.

5. The Left Loves The Broken Window Fallacy:

There has been a fallacy in economic thinking on the left that holds that regulation is not harmful. This is based on the broken window fallacy. This is the idea that if we break a window, we create economic activity as people need to replace that window. What this theory completely fails to consider is that by forcing people to replace that window, we are keeping them from using that money on something more worthwhile. Thus, while we may create a job in the window industry, we are destroying jobs in other industries (and these are more valuable jobs).

This is the problem with regulation. Regulations force people to allocate their resources to things they would not have otherwise chosen. Thus, it is disingenuous to claim that regulations will ever create jobs because every job created when someone is forced to comply with regulations is more than offset by jobs destroyed elsewhere in the economy. So don’t believe for a minute that cap and trade regulations will “create jobs.”

6. The Left Loves The Fallacy of Certainty:

Finally, the same thing is true with the fallacy of “certainty.” The left has claimed for years that all business wants is certainty. In other words, business doesn’t care what the rules are so long as it knows what those rules are. This is garbage. When rules are put into place that harm business, business will respond by hiring fewer people, investing fewer resources, and by looking for more profitable pursuits. They don’t just shrug this off and say “hey, at least we know what the rules are.”

I had to laugh recently when I read how mystified The Economist was at the current lack of job growth. They pointed out that everyone now knows what Obama will do, so we have certainty. So why aren't businesses responding by hiring? To The Economist, this was a “mystery”. To the rest of us. . . it wasn't.

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Elective Thoughts

There are four conflicting trends that are making this election season quite interesting, though not entirely comforting: (1) Obama is on a long losing streak; (2) the Republicans are making no inroads with Democratic voters; (3) the prospects are bleak for establishment types; and (4) turn out has been surprisingly low. Let’s make some sense of this.


Trend 1: In the past year, Obama has endorsed almost a dozen candidates in races as varied as the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey and Senate races in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Arkansas. Every single candidate he endorsed has lost.

What does this mean? It means Obama no longer has the ability to sway the public, or indeed, to sway Democratic voters. It means that Obama, like Bush before him, has become political poison. It means that anyone tied too closely to Obama is doomed.

Longer term, this means that Obama’s agenda is doomed. As the members of his own party start to realize that he’s more albatross than eagle, they will begin to oppose him in favor of their own agendas.


Trend 2: Since Obama’s election there have been various special elections throughout the country, around ten total. The Republican candidate has lost every single one of these, for one reason or another, except for the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Last night, the Republicans lost the chance to pick up Jack Murtha’s former seat.

Here’s the catch. While the media makes a big deal of these seats being “conservative leaning” seats, the reality is quite different. Each of these elections has taken place in deeply Democratic-leaning states. Moreover, most of these seats have been in districts that are heavily unionized. Thus, the only trend that can be drawn from this is that the Republicans are not making any inroads with Democratic voters. But, in truth, they don’t need to. As I pointed out before, the Republicans can win 70 additional House seats without winning a single Democratic-leaning district.


Trend 3: The media is making out a case that incumbents are in trouble. I think this is incorrect. The reality is that candidates who are seen as corrupt or “malleable by the establishment” are the ones who are in trouble. Charlie Crist (I-Florida), Arlen Specter (D/R-Penn), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), and Bart Stupak (D-Mich) showed themselves to be unprincipled opportunists. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) showed they were willing to do Washington’s bidding against the strong wishes of their constituents. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn) were corrupt. And so on and so on.

There is no evidence that incumbents in general are in trouble, but there is evidence that anyone who has partaken of the waters of the establishment is. Anyone who has willfully handed taxpayer money to cronies, flirted with lobbyists, glad-handed and traded favors or proclaimed their power to milk the system, is in serious trouble.

What’s troubling about this, and what bothers me a good deal about the results last night, is that the Democrats are managing to clean up some of their weakest candidates. Chris Dodd easily would have lost to whatever Republican challenged him. The new guy, despite his Vietnam lie, is a much stronger candidate because he has shed the thing that the Democrats of Connecticut did not like about Dodd -- his corruption.

At the same time, Specter would have been a much weaker candidate against Toomey than Sestak will be. Sestak will have the strong support of Democrats, unlike Specter, and will not enrage moderate Republicans like Specter did. Ditto in Arkansas and anywhere else that the Democrats replace corrupt, establishment co-opted candidates with fresh faces.


Trend 4: Finally, we come to the issue of turn out. Turn out has been low, almost bizarrely low, in every election since the Presidential election. This indicates that the public is not as enraged as people wish to believe. Sadly, this means that the Tea Party effect is quite limited, if it exists at all. But at the same time, this means that Obama’s ability to turn out voters has evaporated. The Kool-Aid is gone and his magical ability to mobilize the masses is no more.

So what does this mean? It’s actually good news. Low turn out means that the party that is more energized has the advantage, and that’s the Republicans. Moreover, this low turn out has taken place during contested Democratic primaries, which further indicates that Democratic voters are demoralized.

That’s good. But all in all, these trends are somewhat troubling. With the anger the public showed when ObamaCare passed, there was a hope that a massive wave of public support would rid us of the Democrats and their RINO hangers-on. But, instead, these trends tell us that we are looking at a very tactical, low-turn out election where local personalities have much greater influence than national trends.

I think the Republicans better consider why they aren’t riding the expected wave.

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The Supreme Court Goes Stupid

Yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that anyone under the age of 18 cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole unless they’ve killed someone (they ruled out the death penalty for teens in 2005). To some, this might sound like a good distinction, but it’s not. By focusing on the outcome of the crime rather than the actions undertaken, the Court has created an illogical, arbitrary and nonsensical law. Consider this. . .

Actions and Intent Should Matter, Not Outcomes

The Supreme Court’s new ruling focuses on the outcome of the crime, as courts must now look to whether or not the teenager killed someone. This is ridiculous. Under the law, taking an action has always been enough to receive the maximum punishment for the crime without any consideration as to the outcome. Thus, the punishment doesn’t change depending on how successful the criminal was, e.g. if you break into a bank, you are charged with bank robbery whether you get away with anything or not. But the Supreme Court’s new ruling turns this on its head and the result is arbitrary.

Assume that you have two teenagers, both age 17. Teenager A pulls out a gun and shoots another person. Teenager B does the same. Both empty the clip with the intent of killing the person they are shooting at. The person shot by Teenager A dies. The person shot by Teenager B does not die. Under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, Teenager A can be locked up for life, whereas Teenager B can not. Does that make sense? Both had the same intent. Both took the same actions. Teenager B is merely lucky that the person did not die. Distinctions like this are arbitrary and discredit the law.

Moreover, intent has always mattered under the law. Indeed, there are defenses like self defense that are entirely based on intent. Similarly, the law often enhances the punishment level where the criminal’s intent was evil. Yet, the Supreme Court’s new ruling ignores intent and looks only to the outcome and age of the criminal, and consequently, the Court reaches a bizarre result.

Let’s change the scenario from above. Teenager A pulls out a gun and shoots someone. The case is arguably self defense, but the jury doesn’t buy it. Teenager A can be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Meanwhile, Teenager B kidnaps, rapes and tortures a child. Teenager B then shoots the child and leaves the child to die. But the child does not die. The child is, instead, left paralyzed, in permanent pain and mentally disabled. Teenager B cannot be sentenced to life in prison. Does that make sense? Under what standard can we consider Teenager A to be a greater danger to society or more depraved that Teenager B?

Age Is An Artificial Distinction

Finally, drawing a line between the ages of 17 and 18 is an arbitrary and senseless distinction. Eighteen was chosen as the age of majority eons ago for the sole purpose of creating clear lines in the law. Below that age, you had no legal rights. Beyond that age, you did. The reason 18 was chosen (it used to be 21) was that it was assumed that 18 (21) was the age where you finally matured into an adult and that you could understand your actions. But there is nothing magical about the age of 18, nor is 18 even the age of majority in all countries; in some countries it is as low as 14. Thus, there is no logical reason for picking 18.

Once again, assume two teenagers. Teenager A turned 18 years old today. Teenager B is 17 years and 364 days old. They commit the same crime, together. Teenager A can be sentenced to life in jail with no parole. Teenager B cannot. What possible difference can that one day make? Shouldn’t the Court be concerned with determining whether or not the teenagers were aware of the consequences of their actions? That’s the supposed reason they drew the cutoff at 18 in the first place. So why draw the distinction using some arbitrary date set a thousand years ago rather than having teenage defendants examined to determine their competence?

Conclusion

This is the problem with weak reasoning. When a court looks at a case and abandons intellectual rigor to reach a particular result, it thinks it’s being fair and decent. But what it really is doing is making the system less fair and more arbitrary. This ruling creates a system where the truly twisted can escape justice because of the date of their birth, while less depraved others face greater punishments.

It will only be a matter of time before you see your first 60 Minutes show about some poor murdering teen who is in jail for life when other teens who tortured and maimed their victims are roaming free. When that liberal 60 Minutes anchor turns to the screen and asks you “how can we let such an unfair system exist,” look them straight in the eye and tell them “because a group of liberal judges wanted to make the system more fair, and this is what their illogic wrought.”


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Elena Kagan Is A "Racist"

As you know, whenever the left doesn’t like someone, they call them a racist. Yawn, whatever. And when that person also refuses to advocate adopting an Apartheid-like system of racial spoils and preferences in America? Then, I guess, they're double-racists? Well, get this, using the left's definition, it turns out that Elena Kagan is a racist. . . a dirty, dirty double-racist.

Ever since Martin Luther King said that he wished that we would judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, the left has been busy trying to make sure that the law judges people by their race without regard to their characters. Indeed, nothing obsesses the left more than separating people by race. And nothing angers them more than character tests.

But in the mid-1990s, a group of “New Democrats” appeared who felt that there was no way this country would ever move beyond race so long as we continued to give out legal protections, benefits, school seats, jobs, Congressional seats, and even government funding on the basis of race. Yeah, they were crazy like that. In fact, these people, who would have been considered dirty racists if they had been on the right, somehow managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the Clinton administration -- much to the chagrin of the old-line Apartheidists. . . er, civil rights types.

What this group argued was that it was counterproductive and harmful to the country to keep separating people by race and ensconcing race-based legal preferences into the law. Instead, they advocated using broad-based, color-blind assistance to help poor people, regardless of color, and limiting affirmative action to narrowly-tailored circumstances to remedy actual past discrimination. That’s almost the conservative view, if you drop the affirmative action crap.

So what does this have to do with Kagan? She was smack dab in the middle of this group of modern New Democrat bigots. Oh the humanity! Yep. And this isn’t sitting well with the race hustlers. Indeed, they have begun an angry “muttering” campaign against her, pointing our several damning facts:

1. She never did the kind of “civil rights” work that other Democrats do.

2. Not one single black person became a tenured or tenured-track professor at Harvard Law School while Elena “Bull Connor” Kagan guarded the doors as Dean.

3. Recently released memos from the Clinton Presidential Library and Dirty Book Store show that she “clashed with and sometimes mocked” Clinton’s advisers who were involved with Clinton’s initiative on race. As if these people know what true mocking is. One little whiner, Chris Edley, complained that Kagan ignored his efforts to contact her by phone, email and even “hallway greeting.” It got so bad that the poor dear threatened to resign and go work at UC Berkeley as the dean of their law school. Oh no! Hey Chris, if you read this (if you can read), give me a call and I’ll show you real mocking.

4. In November 1997, she co-authored a memo that said: “We believe that the central focus of the race initiative should be a race-neutral opportunity agenda that reflects these common values and aspirations.”

Well, I’ve never heard such unbelievably vile thoughts. And she wasn’t even done there: “The best hope for improving race relations and reducing racial disparities over the long term is a set of policies that expand opportunities across race lines and, in doing so, force the recognition of shared interests.”

The monster! This woman is worse than Hitler! What have you done Barack Obama? Have you no shame?! This woman clearly wants to set back the clock to the age of slavery.

In all seriousness, this is great news. If she follows through on these views, and there is no reason to think she won’t -- unless you want to believe that she’s gone through the last twenty years hiding her views in the hopes of one day sitting on the Court -- then she will push the court irretrievably to the right on race. And even if she doesn’t, we still don’t lose anything because we’re replacing one of the Court’s most liberal members. So the worst we can do is break even. But the left, the left has a lot to lose here. They could find themselves going from 4-5 to 3-6, from which they will probably not recover in our lifetimes.

Maybe there is something I like about Barack Obama after all?

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“Immigration Splits America”. . . Not Really

The AP is pushing a new article that tell us that we, as a nation, are truly “split” on immigration. This article is based on a poll conducted by the AP and Univision. The AP’s spin is garbage. Even a cursory examination of the poll shows that Americans are amazingly unified on this issue. . . just not in the way the AP wants.

This poll broke out its results into two groups: Hispanics and non-Hispanics. And check out these results:

• 66% of both Hispanics and non-Hispanics consider illegal immigration a serious problem.

• 83% of non-Hispanics believe the federal government should be doing more to stop illegal immigration. (52% of Hispanics)

• Only 20% of non-Hispanics oppose Arizona’s new law. (67% of Hispanics)

• Only 30% of non-Hispanics hope their states don’t pass the same law Arizona did. (70% of Hispanics)

• 62% of non-Hispanics think that being in the U.S. illegally should be considered a serious crime. (24% of Hispanics)

• Only 46% of non-Hispanics think that police crackdowns are likely to target Hispanics unfairly. (73% of Hispanics)

• Only 35% of non-Hispanics believe that illegal immigrants “mostly contribute” to society. (74% of Hispanics)

The headline and the story focus on the supposed “split,” but the real story here is the level of uniformity. Americans have varied opinions and it is exceedingly rare that you ever get more than 60% support for any position. In this case, we are well beyond that. Excluding Hispanics, we are looking at between 66% and 80% of Americans who believe that illegal immigration is a problem, that more needs to be done, and that Arizona has done the right thing.

That’s incredible. If a similar number had come out in favor of ObamaCare, the headlines would have screamed about “stunning uniformity” and “entire population favors.” The limited dissenters would have been dismissed as fringe idiots and cranks. But here, because the AP doesn’t like that uniformity, it ignores that story.

Moreover, it tries to create a “split” by comparing non-Hispanics to Hispanics. But that’s hardly relevant. First, there are only 46 million Hispanics in this country compared to around 270 million non-Hispanics. If 6 of your 7 friends agreed on something, would you say that your friend are “split”? Further, one third of Hispanics are here illegally. Excluding those changes the ratio from 6/7 to 8/9. Also, presumably, these illegals will vote for self-interest in the poll, thus we must assume that the Hispanic numbers are themselves skewed and that missing number nine is more like a half.

And even if we assume that somehow the pollsters got only legally-resident Hispanics for this poll, the Hispanic numbers are themselves not as unified as presented by the AP. Indeed, a sizeable minority of Hispanics, around 30% to 40%, think just like the vast majority of non-Hispanics. Again, let us assume this was 30%-40% of Republicans supporting ObamaCare; wouldn’t the headlines have been “strong bipartisan support for ObamaCare”? Yet, somehow this qualifies as unified opposition and creates this vast split within the country. . . between your eight friends and the one dissenter.

So what are the lessons here? First, that the AP continues to be a political organization, not a journalistic one. Secondly, that the American public is remarkably unified on this issues, across all races and the entire political spectrum; they are fed up and they want something done. And third, that the left is barking up the wrong tree when they are attacking Arizona.

Finally, here's an interesting thought. Arizona's new law enjoys this massive amount of support despite the best efforts of the MSM to present the law in as draconian a manner as possible. That means that either the public no longer listens to the MSM or the public supports the draconian version of the law presented by the MSM. Either way, that's a loser for the left.

Good for us.

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Commentarama Right, Legal Experts Wrong. . . Again

You may recall that a number of states Attorneys General brought suits to stop ObamaCare. The number is now up to 20. And you may recall that all the “legal experts” laughed at these suits, claiming they were frivolous. And you may recall Commentarama pointing out how ridiculous it was to call these suits frivolous and pointing out how parts of these suits had significant legal merit. Guess what? It looks like the legal world is coming around to the Commentarama view.

In an article published in The New York Times two days ago, the mouthpiece of the left came up with this:

“Some legal scholars, including some who normally lean to the left, believe the states have identified the law’s weak spot and devised a credible theory for eviscerating it.”

Really? And here I thought all the “experts” had concluded not only that these suits could not win, but that they were “frivolous,” i.e. so obviously wrong that the courts should sanction anyone who brings such suits. How can this be? Are these experts fools? Or were they lying to support political positions?

In any event, the thinking now is that ObamaCare overstepped its bounds when it tried to regulate “inactivity”:

“The power of their argument lies in questioning whether Congress can regulate inactivity — in this case by levying a tax penalty on those who do not obtain health insurance. If so, they ask, what would theoretically prevent the government from mandating all manner of acts in the national interest, say regular exercise or buying an American car?”

Sound familiar? It should. We pointed this out to you weeks ago. The article then goes through the same cases and same analysis that we pointed out to you here: (click me).

First, it points out how the Supreme Court has allowed the Congress to use the Commerce Clause to stop locally grown marijuana, but that the Court then struck down two attempts to use that same logic to defend other expansions of the Commerce Clause. Finally, it points out that while the pro-ObamaCare people will argue that the effects of people not buying insurance will have an economic effect on the nation (the “cumulative effect” argument which we told the Court has already rejected), there is reason to believe the Court won’t buy that:

“Every decision you can make as a human being has an economic footprint — whether to procreate, whether to marry. To say that is enough for your behavior to be regulated transforms the Commerce Clause into an infinitely capacious font of power, whose exercise is only restricted by the Bill of Rights.”

Gee, who could have guessed that?! ;-)

You may now shower us with praise! Just kidding. But seriously, this is very good news for our country that even "legal experts" are starting to admit the flaws in ObamaCare. When even leftist legal scholars are seeing these defects, it’s a fairly sure bet that the same Supreme Court that has been drifting further and further into a re-recognition of federalism will use ObamaCare as a defining moment for the Court to plant the flag of federalism and revitalize our constitutional structure. And that will be a great day for America.


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Why Hillary Won't Challenge Obama

Some people are speculating that Hillary Clinton might challenge Obama in the Democratic primary for the 2012 election. They base this on Obama’s low poll numbers and the anger he’s producing in the country. But that doesn’t make sense, as I will explain. Moreover, I’m not even sure Hillary could run anymore at this point. Here’s why.

Why Nobody Is Running Against Obama Yet

Let’s start by dispelling the two reasons most commonly given for someone challenging Obama in the Democratic primary.

Low Poll Numbers Don’t Matter: Yes, Obama’s poll numbers are about as low as modern presidents can get, and yes they’ve been consistently low for almost a year now. But low poll numbers in and of themselves don’t matter because they are subject to change, especially with more than two years to go before the election. In other words, no one chooses to run against a sitting president just because he has low poll numbers. What politicians need to inspire them is some sort of disaster from which the president's electability won't recover. And right now, the only potential catalyst on the horizon is a potential total debacle in November. So barring that or something else dramatic, don't expect anyone to jump into the ring.

The Wrong Anger: Anger won't do it either at the moment because it's the wrong anger. There is no doubt that Obama is producing anger in the country, just as Bush produced anger in the country. But that’s not translating into anger in the Democratic ranks. Obama currently enjoys between an 85% and 92% approval rating among Democrats. Unless that changes, no Democrat will attempt to challenge him in a primary.

What this means is that we need to wait until after November to see if the Democrats suffer a big enough disaster that they start pointing fingers. Only if that happens, and only if the party itself starts to become angry with Obama will anyone challenge him. But it won’t be Hillary.

Why Hillary Won't Run

Hillary won’t run because of a combination of two factors. First, she’s smart enough not to run. Secondly, she’s put herself into a bind.

Smart Enough: No matter what we may think of Hillary, she’s not stupid. She knows that the history of insurgent candidates against a sitting incumbent president is less than glorious. I can’t think of any that ever defeated the incumbent, and most have basically destroyed their political careers in the process. This is because politics does not tolerate losers. To run and lose is almost a guarantee of the end of your political career in America. What’s worse, running against your own side makes you into a traitor. And that bad blood will keep you from being appointed to any other post or winning any other election. Since Hillary doesn't think she's done yet, it doesn't make sense for her to squander her future on a low probability run.

In A Bind: Moreover, it's not clear Hillary could run if she wanted to. Hillary may not be stupid, but she does have poor judgment. When she gave up her Senate seat, she took herself off the political map. Not only did she give up her bully pulpit, meaning that she no longer has a place from which she can challenge Obama, but she took herself out of the news cycle. When a politician makes themselves irrelevant, their support withers and dies, which has already happened to Hillary. Indeed, when Game Change came out, the political grapevine openly asked why no one came out to defend Hillary. In the past an army of Clinton people would have come out to denounce the book. This time we heard nothing but silence. That means her support is gone.

Further, by going to the State Department, a notoriously unglamorous and dead-end position, she put herself into a place where (1) she can’t raise funds, the lifeblood of any candidacy, (2) she can’t introduce legislation to rally her supporters, (3) she can’t do constituent favors, (4) her television appearances are limited to foreign policy issues, and (5) she must be loyal to Obama, bearing the brunt of his failures and sitting quietly as he steals the credit for her successes. And all of this was compounded with Obama’s disassembling the Clinton machine that Bill Clinton left in place upon leaving office and which remained in place until Obama purged it and replaced it with Chicago lackeys.

Basically, Hillary has no political machine, no profile, no base of support, no way to raise money, must do as she is told by Obama and play Obama's scapegoat, and has no way to change any of this from her present job.

If she wants to run in 2012, she needs to resign now and start rebuilding immediately, so that she can start campaigning if there is a disaster in November. Unless she does that, and there are no hints she's willing to do that, then I can't see her doing anything in 2012.


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