Charlatan-in-Chief

It really doesn't matter whether or not President Obama was born in Kenya, as long as his mother had US citizenship.   I have son who was born outside the US in Germany.  We traveled to Hamburg to get him to register his birth with the consulate and get him a passport.   He is a full-blown US citizen and eligible to run for president.  

But what matters the most about the "birther" controversy is what Barack Obama himself said about himself through his own literary agents in the 1990s.   There is an article on this at Breitbart.com.  It seems his literary agents published a brochure claiming that he was born in Kenya.  The Obama administration has dismissed this by saying that he did not know about this, but that is a total laugh.  I have published a book and my agents always had me proof read the brochure wording and, moreover, were quite unable to come up with any bio without me first providing it, either in writing or verbally, but generally in writing.   Literary agents are not mind readers when it comes you bio; they don't just make stuff up without your approval, for they know that they can bet sued for publishing false information about you.    So the idea that Barack Obama knew nothing about his literary agent's brochure is just a bunch of crock.

The late Lawrence Eagleburger summed it up accurately on the night of the election in 2008 by saying that Obama is a charlatan.

No Need to Panic about Global Warming

No need to panic article in WSJ.

Lack of Leadership

The most recent budget -- over $1,000,000,000,000 -- was unanimously voted down by the Democratic-controlled Senate, 99-0.  What is wrong with the President that he can't even negotiate with his own party?  Or is this all a ruse?  Perhaps the nod-nod-wink-wink understanding between them was this:  "We'll propose a ridiculous, over-the-top budget and then you'll vote it down.  Afterward, we'll be on the campaign trail wringing our hands about the gridlock, do-nothing, Republican Congress and the stupid Americans who don't follow things that closely won't know the difference.  So we'll score a few demagogic election points for this."

Here the country is heading for a major financial cliff once again, with the ratings agencies about ready to downgrade the US again -- like Spain, Italy and Greece -- and these jokers are playing political games.

Where's the leadership?   Oh, I forgot, he doesn't have any.

For some analysis, go here:

Washington Times

Here's a quote from that article:

"The White House has held its proposal out as a 'balanced approach' to beginning to rein in deficits. It calls for tax increases to begin to offset higher spending, and would begin to level off debt as a percentage of the economy by 2022. It would produce $6.4 trillion in new deficits over that time."

This is the same game they've been playing for years.  Increase taxes and spend the revenues on projects that will bring the Democrats votes, usually social programs like EBT (aka food stamps) and bailing out or investing in political cronies.  Both sides do it, but the Democrats are by far the most egregious.

Leading from Behind

In Libya our famous policy was to lead from behind, i.e., let France and NATO take the lead and will just provide the logistics, some air power, command and control, and lots of ammunition.  Our rationale for getting involved at all was that if we didn't, Gaddafi would surely slaughter thousands of innocent Libyans. 

Now that Assad has already slaughtered nearly 10,000 innocent people in Syria, I wonder why we are so reluctant to get involved at all.  We seem to be biting our nails wondering whether or not we should send arms and humanitarian aid.   We didn't seem to have that hesitation with Libya.  What is different?

Well, for starters, the Europeans, who really didn't have much ammunition and had to rely on the US for basic material and logistic support, are now worrying about their collapsing economies.  It seems that while we were spending our tax dollars on protecting them during the Cold War, they were busy spending their tax dollars on building cradle-to-grave social welfare states.  They raised a generation of spoiled citizens who just want to play and not work as little as possible.  Now the piper has come to town and is demanding to be paid. 

So the Europeans are not much help here.

Second, it is now election season in the US.  Getting involved in another military conflict is something I am sure Obama's handlers are advising him against.  He's just biting his nails hoping that the Iranian thing doesn't blow up before the election.  And getting involved in Syria could cause the Iranian thing to blow up.

Victor Davis Hanson has a few thoughts on the matter.  He advises that maybe we shouldn't get involved in the Middle East because we don't know what the end game is.  The Syrian opposition hates us for not giving them arms.  Will they love us more after we do?  As Hanson says:

"After lots of interventions, we have learned one thing about loud Arab reformers, especially those who were educated at Western universities: They damn us for supporting their dictators; they damn us for removing them; they damn us for interfering in their affairs when we help promote democracy; and they damn us as callous when we just let them be.

These cautionary tales do not necessarily mean that we should not help the Syrian dissidents, only that we must ask ourselves who exactly are these guys, how much will it cost to see them win, and when it is over will our new friends rule any more humanely and competently than the monsters that we remove?"

The Liberal Echo Chamber

It has been noted more than once, but most recently by Michael Barone in his article "Cocooned Liberals are Unprepared for Political Debate". that liberals in America are effectively isolated from alternative points of view.  For, while conservatives cannot help but encounter "the other side" in their daily lives, the folks on the left can live completely isolated from minds different from their own.   And this works to their disadvantage, because they simply cannot imagine that anyone would think any differently than they and all their liberal friends.

This is more than just birds of a feather flocking together.  This is more like baby birds who have never left their nest and who only eat the worms what the mama bird brings.  For, while conservatives are always confronting and becoming at least somewhat acquainted with the views of liberals, many liberals never even come into contact with conservative thought.   And this, Barone points out, leaves liberals woefully unprepared to answer their opponents.

And so the pro-union left in Wisconsin can occupy the state house and rant and rave in front of the cameras and convince themselves that the whole world is against Gov. Scott Walker without realizing that they are operating in their own echo chamber.  They just keep passing around and sipping the Kool-Aid without realizing that folks outside Madison don't really appreciate what they are doing and don't relish the idea of working until they are 80 so that a government bureaucrat can retire at 55.  So, come June 5 it looks like the Kool-Aid drinkers will be crying in their, well, Kool-Aid.

Vin Scully: Greatest Sportscaster of All Time

I grew up in LA, and so you might think that I'm biased when it comes to rating or ranking sportscasters and when I say that Vin Scully is without a doubt the greatest sportscaster of all time.  Of course, I am biased.  But that doesn't mean that it is impossible for me to be right or to have compelling reasons for my belief.   It is sort of like the saying, I guess, that just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

Anyway, the reason Vin Scully is the best is because he is a fine human being.  I would sum up Scully's greatness with just one word:  charity.  This word doesn't mean that he excels in alms-giving, although I can imagine that he does that as well.  No, this word, 'charity', means that he has a loving heart that seeks to find the good and bring out the best in everybody.  It is the opposite of being narcissistic.  While other sportscasters try to impress you with their knowledge of the game, Scully is way past that and focused on something much more important.  He is more interested in the players of the game, more precisely, in the people of the game.  For Vin Scully loves people.  Period.  Yes, he can weave fascinating stories about these people, because he loves these people.  He cares about people.  You will never hear him say anything derogatory about anybody.  He roots for every player on the field, not just for the Dodgers.  And the Dodgers and their fans love him for that.

I have experienced baseball, the American sport, through the eyes of Vin Scully since the 1950s when the Dodgers moved to LA.  My Dad took my brother and me to the Roy Campanella night in the Coliseum, when they turned off the lights and had everybody light a match or lighter (a LOT of people smoked back then) as a show of support for Campanella and he was wheeled out in a wheelchair.  It still gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.  Recently Scully reminded us of that night in one of his between-inning vignettes.  I was transported back in time and realized that he loves not only today's players but also all the players who have gone before us.  Time doesn't change his charitableness.  Back then Scully was the voice of baseball and I didn't even know that other announcers were different until much later.  He provide a fine example of a good human being.

But the thing I like most about Scully is that he inspires me to be a better person, to look past my petty squabbles and pet peeves and look at the other person as someone who is special and worthy of being lifted up.  Vinnie does that with every batter who comes to the plate, with every pitch that is delivered, with every home run that is hit.  He tells you about all the players, where they grew up, whom they idolized, what their hopes and dreams were.  And if a story takes several plays to deliver, well, it just does.  He'll interrupt his story to call the play and add to your excitement of the game, but then he'll get right back to the story until it has been told.

To be sure, Vin Scully can call a game like nobody else, probably because he cut his teeth in the days of radio broadcasting before television.  He can paint the picture of the game better than anyone else.  In the old days of transistor radios nearly everyone in the stands would have one with little ear plugs to hear him call the game.

Vin Scully brings out the best in everybody because he sees the best in everybody.  And that's why I love him and why I suspect millions of others love him as well.

Like Greek Food? How About from the Frying Pan into the Fire?

It is really sad to watch a proud nation of good people go under, but that is precisely what is happening before our eyes in Greece.  The Greeks are about to elect a leftist government that is going to thumb its nose at the Euro zone.   They will default and do what leftists always do so well -- blame everyone else except themselves.  It was socialist pandering for votes that got them in this mess in the first place (sound familiar?) and now they are going to solve that problem by lurching even to the left.  They (Syriza) are already talking about nationalizing the banks and seizing people's assets.  Is there really any wonder that people are starting to withdraw their savings in a hurry and convert it to dollars or Swiss francs?

Here's a good analysis of the situation.

Elizabeth "Dances with Crabs" Warren

Marc Steyn takes the cake (crab cakes, that is) for the funniest story about the left's obsession with racial identity.

Left and Right Part IX: The Political Compass

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the so-called political compass, which is an attempt to get away from the one-dimensional Right - Left duality.  I think this is an admirable attempt to add more subtlety and sophistication to political discourse.  However, I also believe it is somewhat flawed in that it regards one of the dimensions as a social dimension and measures attitudes along this dimension in terms of how much one favors or opposes authority -- all kinds of authority without discrimination.

I think this is a bad idea because it tries to politicize things that are not political.  For example, religious authority, while having a role to play in society and tending to influence politics considerably, is most certainly not the same as political authority, i.e, authority of the state.  Similarly, religious authority has something to say about the other dimension of the compass, the economic dimension, but that does not mean that religious authority is the same thing as economic authority! 

Also, these two axes, the economic and the authority axes, do not seem to be quite independent.  For example, distrust of all authority would of course mean include distrust of the state as an economic authority.  Thus the term left-wing libertarian seems like an oxymoron.  The left tends to favor strong political authority that is also very much authoritatively involved in economics.  The extreme example is that of the authoritarian Communist and Nazi regimes who influenced nearly every aspect of economic life (not to mention nearly every aspect of life period, including the abolish of and / or strong suppression of all religious authority).

The political compass seems to be a somewhat muddled attempt to illuminate political discourse that falls way short of its intents.

Romney Speech in Iowa

Some excerpts from Mitt Romney's speech today in Iowa:  (Complete Text here.)

"President Obama is an old school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero. America counted on President Obama to rescue the economy, tame the deficit and help create jobs.  Instead, he bailed out the public-sector, gave billions of dollars to the companies of his friends, and added almost as much debt as all the prior presidents combined.
The consequence is that we are enduring the most tepid recovery in modern history.
The consequence is that half of the kids graduating from college can't find a job that uses their skills. Half.
The consequence is that retirees can no longer get by on savings and Social Security.
The consequence is that the length of time it takes an unemployed worker to find a job is the longest on record.
This is why even those who voted for Barack Obama are disappointed in him.
Disappointment is the key in which the President's re-election is being played. Americans will not settle for four more years of the same melancholy song. We can and we must do better.
President Obama started out with a near trillion-dollar stimulus package – the biggest, most careless one-time expenditure by the federal government in history.  And remember this: the stimulus wasn’t just wasted – it was borrowed and wasted.  We still owe the money, we’re still paying interest on it, and it’ll be that way long after this presidency ends.
Then there was Obamacare.  Even now nobody knows what it will actually cost.  And that uncertainty has slowed our economy.  Employers delay hiring and entrepreneurs put the brakes on starting new businesses, because of a massive, European-style entitlement that Americans didn’t want and can’t afford.
When you add up his policies, this President has increased the national debt by five trillion dollars.
Let me put that in a way we can understand. Your household's share of government debt and unfunded liabilities has reached more than $520,000 under this president. Think about what that means. Your household will be taxed year after year with the interest cost of that debt and with the principal payments for those liabilities. Of course, it won't be paid off by the adults in your household.  It will be passed along to your children. They will struggle throughout their lives with the interest on our debts--and President Obama is adding to them every single day.
And that's the best case scenario. The interest rate on that debt is bound to go up, like an adjustable mortgage. And there's a good chance this debt could cause us to hit a Greece-like wall."

Left and Right: Part VIII

So let's take a look at the Democratic and Republican parties to see where they stand.

If you go Democrat's website today, you'll see that their splash page is asking for visitors to stand with Barack Obama on the matter of same-sex marriage.  Now if ever there was a social change proposed of profound proportions and historical magnitude, this is it.   For all of humanity's history, there has never been until this generation -- and in America never until this president -- a serious proposal to include same sex couples in the definition of marriage.  This is probably the most radical social proposal of all time.

The vast majority of Republicans are strenuously opposed to this redefinition of marriage.  Here is a excerpt from the GOP website on same-sex marriage:

"Because our children's future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it. In the absence of a national amendment, we support the right of the people of the various states to affirm traditional marriage through state initiatives. Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children. Children are our nation's most precious resource. We also salute and support the efforts of foster and adoptive families. Republicans have been at the forefront of protecting traditional marriage laws, both in the states and in Congress. A Republican Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act, affirming the right of states not to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states. Unbelievably, the Democratic Party has now pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which would subject every state to the redefinition of marriage by a judge without ever allowing the people to vote on the matter. We also urge Congress to use its Article III, Section 2 power to prevent activist federal judges from imposing upon the rest of the nation the judicial activism in Massachusetts and California. We also encourage states to review their marriage and divorce laws in order to strengthen marriage. As the family is our basic unit of society, we oppose initiatives to erode parental rights."


This sounds like a traditional, right wing position to me, one of desiring to preserve traditional marriage.  No transformation of society, no social experimentation.   Simply trying to prevent what the left is doing.

Left and Right: Part VII

In the last post, I indicated how the Democratic Party tends toward the left.  In this post I will show how the Republican Party tends toward the right.

Take, e.g., this quote from Ronald Reagan:  "I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."

As you can see, Reagan was a quintessential conservative in the sense of preferring smaller government over larger.  It is also interesting that right wingers tend to see as their program not the task of transforming government or society into some imagined utopia, but to stop the left from doing so.  It is in many respects, an anti-program.

It is also interesting and not a little paradoxical that both left and right in some ways violate their own principles.  For example, it is characteristic of the left to believe that humans are basically good and that it is genes or the environment that makes them behave badly.  Yet you might think that this belief in the innate goodness of man would result in a policies that give people more free rein to express their innate goodness.  Yet it does not.  The left generally believes that people won't behave well until their environment is transformed, i.e. society is transformed into something that will somehow magically enable them to behave.  They believe in the innate goodness of man, but believe that he prevented from expressing it by the evil social structures that make him greedy and selfish.  That's why they despise or at least distrust capitalism.

Folks on the right are also paradoxically inconsistent.  They don't necessarily believe that people are inherently evil, but they have a healthy skepticism toward individuals.  Yet they tend to advocate fewer governmental constraints on the individual.  This is probably best explained by the fact that right wingers tend to believe in giving people opportunities, but in punishing them if they screw up.

Left and Right: Part VI

Leftists tend to refer to themselves as "progressives," meaning that they yearn and strive for change, i.e., the transformation of society into something better.  Change itself sometimes becomes the end in and of itself.  Michael Moore, for example, says that the capitalist system doesn't work and when asked what would work he said merely that such a system has not yet been invented and that it will be invented by him and his fellow travelers.   Besides showing a boundless faith in change for change's sake, this view also shows an extreme naivete with regards to economics and a not so subtle strain of narcissism similar to candidate Obama's words that we are the change we have been waiting for.  Really?

People on the right generally seek to preserve what they perceive as good and do not pine for change unless it is meets a specific need and promises to bring about some greater good.  They tend to be wary of people who opt blindly for change.  Thus, candidate Obama's slogan of "Hope and Change" didn't make any sense to conservatives, because it was too open-ended;  it left them asking, "Change to what end?"  or, "Is it change for the better or change for the worse?"  

Nancy Pelosi's insistence that they had to hurry up and pass the ObamaCare bill so that they could read what was in it was another example of blind faith in change for change's sake.   You can be sure that if a Republican Senate leader had said anything similar about a piece of Republican sponsored legislation, you would hear no end of it being ridiculed in the mainstream media.

Left and Right: Part V

To get better handle on the differences between left and right, I highly recommend the recent book by Dennis Prager: Still the Best Hope. It is available on Amazon: 

One of the deeper insights that Prager offers is that Leftism is really a kind of Ersatz religion.  In the history of Western Society since the Enlightenment, leftist utopianism has tended to fill the vacuum left once religion is out of the picture.  His thesis is that religion is a basic part of our wiring and satisfies a basic human need for meaning.  Thus, when religion is absent, political utopianism will often takes its place.

Prager cites Hillary Clinton's expression "the politics of meaning" which she used as First Lady of the United States.  He points out that this phrase, while highly meaningful to the left, was meaningless to conservatives.  The reason is that conservatives do not look to politics to get their meaning, but many on the left do in fact.  Thus, politics is for many on the left their de facto religion.

Left and Right: Part IV

Without a doubt we have seen over the last 4-6 years a trend toward increasing size and power of US government at the hands of the Democratic Party.   While most of the country was feeling the pinch of an economic downturn in late 2008 and throughout 2009, the Washington, D.C. was one of the few areas that showed an increase in the number of jobs, and these jobs were those of federal workers.
The powerful public employees unions, especially the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), lobbied the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House to obtain a nearly $1,000,000,000,000 dollar stimulus package much of which went to create or save SEIU jobs or jobs represented by other public service employees unions.  In the run up to passage of this stimulus act,  the most frequent visitor to the White House was none other than Andy Stern, then President of the SEIU.

The SEIU is a major donor to the Democratic Party, and it is clear that President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were engage in political payback.  If you go to the SEIU website you will see that the positions taken there are indistinguishable from the positions represented on the website.

Labor unions in the US have a long history of being very leftist and favoring big government.  But the prospect of government employees being unionized scared even the likes of left-leaning President Franklin D. Roosevelt and AFL-CIO President George Meany! See FDR Warned Us.     

President Obama, in defending his stimulus package, would often state a metric  "created or saved XXX jobs."  It seems that in light of how much of the stimulus went in to preserving or creating new unionized government jobs, the emphasis would clearly be on the "saved" aspect.  He did indeed save lots of government jobs, for which the SEIU will generously thank him this re-election season, but his creation record was very poor, even for a creator of government jobs.

Nonetheless, the point of this post is that the Democrats have done their utmost in the last few years to grow the size of government and with it the size of the national debt.  Because of this, most people would clearly label the Democrat party the left-wing party, even though they probably don't all mean to say that it is extremely left-wing as was the Communist party.  But government which tends toward totalitarianism is always a cause for alarm.

Left and Right: Part III

Although there are very few extremists on the left who openly advocate direct and immediate anarchy, the Marxist theory does in fact claim that the utopia to be brought about by the "dictatorship of the proletariat” should ultimately consist in an anarchist state in which the citizens, having been molded into good behavior (i.e., "politically correct" behavior) by the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat, now act in a fully responsible and kind manner toward each other. There will be complete harmony and no inequality. But, as mentioned above, Marxist societies have never achieved any state remotely resembling such a utopia.

The primary reason for the failure of Marxist societies is their unreal approach to human nature and economics.  The goal of equality is simply unrealistic because people simply are not equal.  Some are taller than others.  Some are more intelligent.  Some are stronger.   Some are more caring towards others.  Some are more selfish than others.   These are facts of life that one has to deal with.  

In terms of economics, capitalistic systems tend to reward those who work hard and invest their capital wisely.  In Marxist societies all incentive to work hard is eliminated and there are no opportunities to invest.  Thus workers are treated as robots who do not personally benefit by working harder unless they climb the ladder through political correctness.  Thus even in Marxist societies there was a way to get ahead materially through the political machine that allowed you to oppress others if you were politically correct enough.  The members of the Politburo, the most clever and ruthless among the Communists, managed to acquire perks not available to the average citizen.  Thus Communism not only failed to achieve the desired classless society but in fact created (at least) two classes -- party insiders and everyone else.  The party insiders had power and wealth to some degree.  There was indeed equality in the other class, the outsider class, but this was the equality of poverty and powerlessness.

Every left wing utopian movement since the French Revolution if left unchecked has tended to produce this kind of two-class society: Government bureaucrats and those who work for them, i.e., the rest of society.

Thus, one can see from this that one should be very wary of left-wing utopianism in all its forms.  You know a tree by its fruits and the fruits of left-wing utopianism are rotten indeed.

Left and Right: Part II

As mentioned in the last post,  the two world views differ essentially with regards to the perceived role and ideal size of government.   The difference is this:  People on the left tend to envision a larger role for government than those on the right, who tend to favor more limited government. This gives rise, naturally, to a whole spectrum of positions on this topic.

On the extreme left are totalitarian Marxists, who believe that government must have total power over its citizens in order to force the transformation of society into their vision of utopia, a vision based on an egalitarian view of society, i.e., a society in which there is no inequality with regards to rights and possessions. 

A number of nations have tried this approach to governing and the results have not been very successful. The Soviet Union was established by a leftist revolution in October 1917 and lasted until 1991. It was without a doubt a very totalitarian state in which the citizens enjoyed very few freedoms and millions of those who were opposed to or were perceived to be opposed to the regime were systematically murdered or sent off to prison labor camps. Despite its exercise for 74 years of unlimited, authoritarian government power over every aspect of  its citizens' lives, the Soviet regime failed to bring about anything resembling the utopia that Marx predicted.

 

On the other hand, folks on the extreme right tend to be very libertarian and favor a very limited form of government that has no claim at all on a person’s property.  Government intrusion of all kinds is abhorred.  The emphasis here is generally on economics with libertarians preferring that the government stay out of commerce altogether and generally not get involved in the private lives of citizens. They generally acknowledge, however, that a certain limited form of government is necessary in order to "ensure domestic tranquility" and to protect a nation (i.e. via armed forces such as police and armies) from enemies domestic and foreign. Thus, they tend not to be anarchists in the sense of preferring no laws and no government whatsoever.

Some would like to claim that the Nazis of Hitler's Germany and the Fascists of Mussolini's Italy are the prime example of right wing extremism.  However, this assertion is factually incorrect.  Both Nazi and Fascist regimes were totalitarian in nature, giving supreme power to the state.  In fact, the full name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany.  It is true that Nazi appealed more to nationalist sentiments than did the more internationalist Communists, and it is also true that the Nazis allowed some limited private property ownership.  But without a date Nazis and Fascists did not advocate a limited role for government.  They were more like the Communists in their basic beliefs about the role of government.  Their utopian visions for the end game may have been different, but their means and methods were quite similar.

Thus, when viewed from the aspect of the role of government and the limitations put on government, the left / right distinction comes down to the distinction -- at the extremes -- between total government and no government.   Total government that acknowledges no rights of the individual has always been a failure in history.  They have never endured.  The 20th century saw the annihilation of over 200 million people as an outcome of several experiments in totalitarian government.  On the other hand, it can be argued that the extreme right wing solution of no government at all is also failure, being nearly impossible to implement because human beings are social animals in need of each other and naturally gravitate to form social units such as the family, towns, cities, states, nations and so on.  Extreme laissez-faire economics without regulation has usually resulted in some groups (the wealthy) exploiting others (the less wealthy).  It is no more desirable than extreme left wing approaches to total government.

Left and Right: Part I

This series of posts comes at the request of some friends who wish to have a dialogue to help clarify the distinction made in politics between right and left, and between the Republican and Democratic parties. There is way too much spin doctoring in the media and online, and it is thus sometimes hard to get a grasp what the real differences are, indeed to determine if there are in fact any real differences at all between these two parties. It is sometimes asserted that the distinctions between left and right, liberal and conservative, blue states and red states, Republican and Democrat are overly simplistic. It is also asserted in tandem with this that a voter should simply choose a candidate based on his/her stands on certain issues that are important to the voter, or perhaps simply based on “feelings,” and to avoid being too rigidly tied ideologically to a particular party or party platform.  It is also sometimes asserted that the two parties are simply beholden to different special interests and are basically pandering to these constituencies. 

 

I will try to show in this series of posts that there is indeed a real, clearly discernible and fundamental difference in the world views underlying the distinction between right and left, and that Republican and Democratic parties are clearly different with regards to these views. I will also argue that one of the parties is by far more guilty of the sort of special interest pandering indicated above and that one of the parties is actively in the process of trying to  purge itself of its special interest ties.  In this regard, I will attempt to share that there has been a real awakening in America with regards to political values and their relation to impending economic disaster, and that business as usual within the parties is no longer an option.

Obama is no Clinton

Article by Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot, comparing and contrasting Bill Clinton's conciliatory, common sense approach to business with the doctrinaire, antipathetic, left-wing approach of Barack Obama.

The Winds of War: 1967 and 2012

Charles Krauthammer is showing the obvious parallels between May of 1967 and June of 2012.  Israel may attack Iran in June.  Or they may wait until October or November, after the American election.  But they may not be able to wait, since the Iranians are proceeding with full speed to develop their nuclear capability and want to do so while there is still a wimp in the White House, a wimp too busy pandering to his favorite splinter groups and too inept to understand what is happening on the wider international front.

Romney Landslide

Dick Morris is saying that if the election were held today, Romney would win in a landslide.  His reasoning is that undecideds almost always break against the incumbent in the last weeks before the election.  And he is saying you have to look at the likely voters, not the registered voters.

Hanson on Obama's Narcissism

Hanson's article today is so important that it deserves several posts.  He brings up several insights.  The most disturbing insight, however, is the consequences that Obama's self-absorbed, "I/me/mine/my team" frame of reference seems to be having for national security.  The world's bad actors are now simply ignoring him.  Putin just canceled his trip to the G-8 summit.  Why bother to meet with Obama?  Such a wimp, that Obama.  After all, he has cowardly revealed to Medvedev over an unsuspected hot mic that he is ready to bow before Putin as soon as this pesky November election is out of the way.  Why should Putin waste time meeting with Obama.  There is nothing to negotiate with this light-weight.  Obama gives him everything for nothing in exchange.  So much for the "reset" button.  Putin has now clearly shown how emboldened he is.

The Great Pretender Finally Takes Off His Mask?

Perhaps he is just weary of the charade and figures that if he is going to go down, he is going to at least be true to himself and his fellow travelers.  The pretense is over.  The mask is off.  Our president now openly admits that he is in favor of same sex marriage.  But this has been his position all along.  He was only pretending to believe that marriage was something sacred between a man and a woman.

Now his wet finger is in the air and he wishes to take a "courageous" stand.  His views have "evolved."  I guess your views on what is sacred can "evolve" just like that.

The truth is that he never felt the way he claimed in 2008.  He only said that marriage was sacred between a man and a woman because that got him votes, especially from the African American community.  Perhaps he feels safe now with that demographic; perhaps he thinks that community will vote strongly for him no matter what.
But I suspect otherwise.  I suspect that African American Christians are now going to abandon him, as well they should.

The other possibility is that this is just another attempt by Obama to put a wedge issue at front and center to distract from his actual lack of accomplishment during the first four years.   Perhaps he is banking on their being enough support for same-sex marriage that he count on his attack dogs to use this wedge issue to bludgeon conservatives as "extreme radicals."   In this way, he puts the conservatives on the defense and hopes to control the narrative so that the story doesn't turn to his own failures as a president.

Even his one supposed accomplishment, the killing of Bin Laden, was only an accomplishment in a negative sort of way:  He managed to not get in the way of Bush protocols and policies on national security that he openly opposed as senator and 2008 presidential candidate, protocols and policies that helped the Navy SEALS do their job.  Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting article on this that shows how all of this ties into Obama's extreme narcissism.  Clinton's narcissism is also on Hanson's chopping block.

Please Read This: Why America Should Not Follow Europe

  Hollande: A symbol of European decline
In this article, Nile Gardiner quotes from a pamplet entitled:  Why America Should NOT follow Europe
Gardiner also mentions an important statistic that Americans would do well to pay attention to, their own percentage of world GDP:  "Western Europe's share of world GDP fell from 36 percent in 1974 to just 26 percent in 2011, with a projected fall to 15 percent by 2020. In contrast, the US share has remained steady at about 26 percent of world GDP."

And this is due, as Gardiner points out, to Europe's stifling regulations, very high taxes and resulting unemployment.  Who is going to hire someone you can't fire?  You are only going to hire the cream of the crop, and, of course, even the cream of the crop can become complacent and comfortable with 30 hour work weeks and 2 months of vacation time.  Heck if I got paid well to produce little and had a safety net that wouldn't quit, I would probably produce little. 

And the rest of the slobs?  They just don't get hired in the first place.  So you end up with countries like Spain and France with huge unemployment. 

With Europe in decline, France has just elected itself as the poster child of decline:  "And France is a potent symbol of that decline, with huge levels of public debt, now standing at more than 80 percent of GDP, government spending at 55 percent of GDP, and a tax burden equivalent to 42 percent of total domestic income."

Ominous Signs in Greece

The outcome of the Greek elections are even more worrisome than the French outcome.  What is disturbing is the rise of extreme groups on both sides of the spectrum, and the fracturing of power in the middle.  This polarization is reminiscent of Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s before Hitler came to power.   The left and the right battled it out in the streets.  And there is a new class of scapegoat in Greece, the immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.  Greeks look at their own wages and benefits declining and ask themselves why are there so many foreigners receiving assistance from the government? 

But the one thing that all parties on either extreme seem to agree on is their common loathing for austerity measures required to pay back the national debt.  The parties in the middle don't care for austerity either, but they are at least realistic in realizing that the spending can't go on and that they need to pay back their debts.
 
Greece appears poised to reneg on its deals with the euro zone, and is probably now solidly on the path to defaulting and exiting the Euro.  What then will become of the Euro?  Investors will continue to lose faith in the Euro and look for other safe havens. 

This could play well for the US as long as the American people are smart enough to remove from the White House by means of the election in November the idiot they idiotically placed there in 2008.  Obama and his band of loons have created so much economic uncertainty and so many threats of new regulation and oppression of small to midsize businesses that they are all playing a wait-and-see game.  There will be no more significant hiring until November or at least until the polls show clearly that Obama is going to be out.  If the polls show otherwise, businesses will start looking at the regulations and hire some lawyers, but not many workers.

This is what over regulation does for you.  You get an increase in lawyers and accountants, but that is generally not the core competency of most businesses.  And so you don't get growth;  you grow only in your ability to cope with the new regulations.

California is a shining example.  The regulations are so stifling that entrepreneurial people are leaving the state in droves.  California was recently ranked dead last among states for business-friendliness,.  The upshot is that you will ultimately get a situation like East Germany.  The innovative people left and the lazy people without initiative and eager to be dependent on the state, gladly stayed behind and let the state take care of them.

And yet this is precisely the sort of nanny state that Obama and his cohorts seem to envision.  But they are nothing more than demagogues.  They are only really interested in getting another four-year gig in the White House.

France Takes a Wrong Turn

In true demagogic fashion, a relatively unknown socialist in France has captured the fancy of the people by promising exactly what they want to hear, namely, to solve the economic crisis without hardship.  And many in Greece have fallen for that trap as well, although there are disturbing signs of extremism in that country that I will deal with in a subsequent post.

But in France they are saying non to austerity but oui to "growth."  Has anybody explained exactly what this growth is to consist of?  Sound a bit like "hope and change?"  Yes, hope springs eternal and people keep wanting to believe that you can get something for nothing, that you can just hit the reset button and all will be well.

What foolishness!

It is sad that some people simply aren't capable of learning that socialism doesn't work in the long run.  You can print money in the short run, you can rob Peter to pay Paul, but eventually debt, inflation and lack of investment will catch up with you.  As Maggie Thatcher so brilliantly put it,  "Socialism works great until you run out of other people's money." 

France is now in for a period of decay and decline, not that it was any sort of rising star in the global economic firmament in the first place, but compared to Spain and Greece it must seem like an economic powerhouse. 

The Morality of Capitalism

A Case for the Morality of Capitalism.   Capitalism certainly isn't perfect, but thus far it is the most successful economic system ever conceived.

Ah, that shining city on a hill -- Venezuela

This article Central Planning Won't Fix Health Care says it all when it comes showing where socialist policies lead. Price controls, one of the left's favorite tools to use, from the failures of which they never seem to learn. Hugo Chavez has imposed strict price controls on basic commodities and guess what, surprise, surprise these commodities are become scarce. Folks in Venezuela have to wait in line for basic items like food and toilet paper. This is the sort of shining city on a hill toward which our current president would like to lead us. This article talks about the price controls imposed by Obamacare, for instance.

May Day: Beware of those who claim to speak for the 99%

1st of May, the day in which socialists and communists, and their sympathizers, hold parades and rallies to openly proclaim their ideology and their solidarity with workers.  Honest workers should indeed be honored, but be wary of those political elites who appoint themselves the representatives of workers!  Generation after generation since even before the time of Marx the story has been the same:  Workers of the world unite!   But the subtext is always "And we will lead you into the new bright future!"  Marx and Engels even cleverly gave a name to this ruse: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.   This is the cadre of revolutionaries who through violence or other corrupt means grab hold of the levers of power and dictate to the rest of us just how they are going to usher in the new egalitarian utopia.  Their track record is plain for all to see, who care to see:  The Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, China.  They do manage to bring out equality for the masses -- they tend to make everybody but themselves extremely poor.  Giving everybody poverty is certainly one way of achieving equality!  Except that they and their elites do not tend to share in this great equality.  Stalin, Mao, Castro and the Kim Jong family have all managed to stay affluent while the proletariat starved.  And if anybody complained, they were sent to Gulags -- if they were lucky -- but more often they were simply murdered.  Mao, by himself, has probably murdered more people than any other regime in the history of mankind.

Thus, celebrate the dignity and honor of those who work, but don't listen to the elites who claim to speak for them, the wolves in sheep's clothing.  We are seeing these folks in a variety of guises today, the various Occupy movements and union thuggery being prime examples.  Always be wary of those who claim to speak for the 99%