A Union Made Bed

Make no mistake that this was a war that the unions were pining for. They may have screwed up and misjudged the outcome, but they were hankerin' for a fight. Now they want a do over.

They looked at Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder and they believed the picture that his moderate to centrist portrait portrayed--he simply wanted all this arguing over Michigan's right-to-work nonsense to go away. He told more conservative leaning members of his own party to back off right to work and they obliged. He did not want any such legislation to reach his desk and it did not.

But Snyder also made his position known to the unions. In trade for his stance on r-t-w, the union machine would not push for an amendment enshrining a closed shop mentality into the state's constitution. Michigan certainly did not need that in an age where job providers must seek business friendly climates in which to eke out a profit.

While Snyder stayed his course during his first two years (disappointing me and many others,) the unions predictably saw blood in the water and reneged on their portion of the understanding. Unions loudly placed the ill-advised Proposition 2 onto the ballot while also putting their cumulative weights behind two other propositions.

Sadly for the unions, this all occurred under a well focused spotlight.

The voters of Michigan had tired of seeing an adversarial union work force attack the foundation of Michigan's competitiveness in the national and global marketplaces. Bleeding jobs, potential workers, and the family members that must tag along when Mommy and Daddy move elsewhere to collect a paycheck, Michigan saw its population drop over the decade past. The unemployed, underemployed and the newly moved flooded residential curbs with colorful for sale signs as school hallway traffic thinned.

GM stayed afloat but by an ill advised government bailout. Chrysler was gift wrapped and presented to the Italians by the benevolent hand of the US government. The union dominated Detroit Public Schools racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while graduating about a quarter of its students. The union dominated city of Detroit, while fearing an emergency manager, riffled through so much cash that its city council members today are begging for a bailout of their own. Let's not forget union dominated Wayne County where democrat elected cronies toss around taxpayer graft like twist wrapped candies from the back of a parade float.

In front of this disturbing backdrop a disgusted voting population saw a union that was, to borrow a contemporary campaign phrase, moving forward. They maneuvered themselves into a position, with the help of Jennifer Granholm, where they could collect millions of dollars in union dues from people for whom they neither negotiated for nor from whom they had received the nod of representation. I'm certain yet how that didn't amount to theft.

They hinted at illegal strikes in school districts, picketed at universities where tuition levels are so high that many college age citizens can no longer afford to enroll, and put all their weight behind a divisive occupy movement that mocked productive citizens as heartily as it did personal hygiene.

Amid loud raucous chants, bullying, obstruction, and the more than occasional expletive, the unions made their never slaked rage and never satisfied demands known! Too bad for them, it appears that along with the disgusted voters watching the slow to convince Governor had also pulled up a chair.

The union championed Proposition 2 went down in flames and not without consequences.

The unions wanted this fight. They nurtured it by stoking the flames of covetousness among their members, and then turning them loose on a public that was tired of being victimized by the actions of goons.

They made the bed after washing the sheets and pressing the comforter. They patted out all the wrinkles, aligned all the seams, and fluffed the pillows. Now they just don't want to lay down.

Our Pragmatism Runneth Over

What a sad political party the GOP has become. Foundationless. Directionless. Clueless. At least they're pragmatic!

Today the Republican Steering Committee decided that those within the party who disagree with establishment party ideals (i.e. none) must be pushed aside in favor of those within the party who have nothing new to add.

Among the punished is Justin Amash who decided, unpopularly with the establishment, that the Paul Ryan 40 year plan to reach a balanced budget was not aggressive enough.

Let's face it, the GOP is as unserious about dealing with this enormous debt as are the Democrats.

No More of that Of, By and For Crap

There is no Akin relativism here; this was not some GOP party candidate who opened his yap without thinking.  Nope, this is a finely crafted piece of progressive propaganda brought to you by the Democratic National Committee for their convention in Charlotte.

That stupid comment?  

"Government is the only thing that we all belong to."



It looks like we need to change that old "of the people, by the people, for the people" axe to a more simple "over the people."

Benevolent progressives are so beholden to the government on which they hold the reins that they cannot even identify the animal that they are riding.

h/t Ace of Spades

Math, Sacrifice and Big Brother

 A Detroit News columnist accidentally unearths an economic truth: 

Clearly, we have a national economic disaster at hand, unless you figure out that you can offset the rising gas price menace by packing your own lunch three days a month, or just buying the cheap scotch.

It is true that a few cents here and there do not have a significant impact on many consumers.  While we do have to go to work with gasoline in our tanks, if we wish to offset the pittance of higher gas prices with a counterbalance of personal austerity, we can always cut back somewhere else.  The example in the article is great--it points out that the problem can be solved by carving out but three unnecessary restaurant meals a month (apparently sans tip.)  Voila!

Solved, that is, for the gasoline consumer, but not so much for the restaurant owner and her employees.   If there are (as the unblemished source of all things referable, Wikipedia, has to say) 254.4 million registered vehicles in the United States these days, and each of these vehicles represents the loss of three restaurant meals per month, we are looking at 9,000,000,000 fewer meals eaten at restaurants around the nation each year.

The fact is, whether the consumer voluntarily makes a choice to enter into personal austerity or whether the cutting back is mandated by idiotic government intervention into the free market, consumers, employers, and ultimately employees (or the unfortunately unemployed) suffer.  And lets be honest, just because Debbie Stabenow could maybe use a few less burgers over the course of twelve months, that doesn't necessarily mean that she wouldn't be foregoing a delicious salad.  Who are we to judge?

It shouldn't be shocking to anyone that $20.28 a month can be easily compensated for by a gainfully employed columnist at a major metropolitan newspaper, after all such literati would likely have the disposable income necessary to hurdle such manageable obstacles. Or, for that matter, avoided by a buffoon-Senator whose hard-earned wages automatically rise to compensate for those pesky $20 per month price hikes that routinely befall humble and heavily-lipsticked public servants. 

However, I cannot help but wonder how easy it will be for the average waitress to make up that $20.28 per month, particularly when restaurant revenues shrink--what with baloney and cheese celebrating en vogue status.  And saving $20 a month won't get any easier on reduced hours especially with certain customers already tipping decidedly less than the full 15 percent.

We also should not forget that while gasoline prices do affect our pocketbooks when we drive to work, they also have a big impact on every product that is transported by truck along America's highways.  Perhaps we'll all have to forgo a fourth meal.   

So, screw the waitresses and cooks, the cashiers, the entry level custodians and just about every other unskilled laborer in this country who has to drive to work to collect a paycheck.  Let them buy a garage sale bike, apply at school for reduced-price lunches, or answer a government ad for food stamps--after all, we're just cutting back on three meals a month, buying cheaper scotch, staying out of the movie theater, vacationing less, going longer between oil changes and, my personal favorite, showering less while foregoing deodorants. 

Artificially high gasoline prices are easy to compensate for!  All you need is to do a little math, make some personal sacrifices, and beg big brother for a helping hand.

It's the new American Dream.  

Throwing Stones Inside a Glass House Isn't Very Smart Either

Let's be clear about one thing--this doofus Akin was never the pick of the tea party.  He was, in fact, the democrat's favored candidate to face Claire McCaskill in the Missouri senate race.

The Alaskan snowbilly Sarah Palin endorsed another primary candidate as did a number of other national and state (truly) conservative voices.  That being said, McCaskill is the embodiment of generic leftist talking points and would be the poorer option on the ballot were she facing off against a poorly garnished platter of slightly green cold cuts. 

But Todd Akin is no poor man's hors d'oeuvres--he is a Republican.   Which means that after he makes the mistake of uttering something dreadfully dumb he can expect to be excoriated by those of his own party with greater passion than those within the party of Claire McCaskill. 

Barack Obama (and McCaskill) has said so many dumb things about the economy, about the American Dream, about the military, about the motivations of others, about history, and about the country he leads that were he held to the same standard as Akin our dear leader would have been bullied out of his own slot on the ticket by about week three.  But no, only one major political party holds itself to that standard.  In fact, Obama can stand pat behind his belief that a baby who survives an abortion against the wishes of the mother can be killed after delivery--no vetting necessary.  No defense necessary.  Therefore, no apology necessary.

Not the republicans who seem to have turned into a party of losers displaying symptoms of Münchausen syndrome.

For democrats, no apology is ever expected for blatant serial stupidity while at the same time Akin's apology over his isolated absurd statements cannot suffice for any political party--never mind that his abortion position has been consistent all along and that his comments, regardless of their absurdity, fit within his well known opinion on abortion.. 

Am I angry with Akin for not stepping aside once the landslide began to fall on his head?  Ya, this is an important election and the timeliness of. this prolonged absurdity is disastrous.  He got baited into saying something dumb by a cheer leading media and he should have know better. I wish the incident had never occurred.

What pisses me off the most though is that the good old GOP rolled as many rocks down the hill as did the democrats.

This is not an election about abortion.  This is an election about the economy.  How we can allow stupid comments on the former to sway an election while we aggressively ignore stupid ones on the latter is beyond me.  Perhaps Karl Rove knows the answer. 

Heat Wave Musings

While driving through Kentucky on Friday I saw the exterior temperature soar to 103 degrees.  I hadn't been in that kind of heat since leaving Texas in 1994.  So, I cranked up the a/c another notch and comfortably stepped on the gas.  This is what a good dose of relative wealth will buy you--the ability to sidestep problems that are so destructive to those people and societies that are unable to purchase their way out of it.

The media have been alarmed for some time about what to do with climate change.  Their deity, Al Gore, has helpfully suggested a return to the stone age, not literally mind you, but by advocating economic strategies that can lead to no other station.  We must include within these musings the shutting down of integral portions of our power grid, mandated cost increases that force consumers to choose smaller and less effective electric and gas powered machines, huge amounts of borrowed and taxpayer monies redistributed to crony agricultural capitalists who dine greedily at the public trough (see the latest agriculture bill), and mass transit initiatives designed to entice Grandma out of her Beemer and into a money losing and heavily subsidized bus sitting next to a guy with no deodorant.

You'd think that the whole world has reached a boiling point.

Yet, while the US suffers this year from triple digit heat, Europe is struggling with the flip side of that coin.  Many European watchers are concerned with the unseasonably cold and wet weather that might prove near ruin to the London Olympics starting up later this month.  

Power failures have plagued the Midwest and East during this latest heat.  Storms last week knocked many electric customers offline while huge demands on the still operating portions of the power grid have industry analysts concerned.    Several dozen people have died in the US as a result of this blasted heat and with only moderate relief coming in the next day or two the number of deaths is likely to grow. 

Many Americans, including Mr. Gore, yearn for a more European like style of control over its citizenry.  While many good Americans are willing to voluntarily cut back on loathsome energy using devices, too many of the rest of us demand a car bigger than a refrigerator, a refrigerator bigger than a microwave, and a microwave bigger than a cellphone. All of which causes the former VP to gnash his well worn teeth inside his 15,000 square foot Tennessee home, that is, at least while he isn't gnashing them while jetting off to a climate change conference in the belly of a private jet. 

Heat waves come and go.  In the mid 90s those Europeans to whom our elitists are so enamored suffered through a little heat spell of their own.  When the dust had finally settled an estimated 60,000 people had succumbed to the blistering thermometer with an estimated 20,000 dying in French nursing homes alone.  (Hey America--does that make you quiver in anticipation of government controlled healthcare?) Air conditioning, it would seem, was not such a priority to those on our idol continent who, to this day, strain themselves attempting to control the temperature on the outside while they deny themselves the comfort of setting the thermostat just a little bit lower in the living room.

Wealth is what makes America more easily able to sidestep widespread disaster. I can say this because I drive a wonderfully new 1998 Buick that possesses a kick-butt a/c unit. 

America's elites want to destroy the wealth producing capabilities of our free market economy in order to combat climate change.  I would rather we allow the wealth generated by the free market to purchase more effective and market driven solutions to our energy needs that will in turn generate more wealth and the benefits it can unlock. 

This would be a tough pill to swallow for self-proclaimed geniuses like Al Gore and Barack Obama.
They believe they have all the answers, and they believe the market driven solutions arrived at by billions of producers and consumers are a huge portion of the problem and not a solution to it. 

Sixty thousand dead Europeans could not be reached for comment.

Walking to Greece

Barack Obama has singlehandedly created well over 4,000,000 jobs since he took office amid the worst economic maelstrom in the history of the solar system.  Granted, most of them are czars with the few left over being on Michelle's personal staff, but we shouldn't pick at every little thing especially when there is a people to enslave.

Four million is a big number.  Seriously, multiply it by a thousand and you get the much larger (though mysteriously less important) number of dollars that the US borrows each and every day to spend above and beyond what it can afford.  Our country wastes more money on needless shit than the GDP of most nations on Earth. 

But needless is in the eye of the beholder.  We absolutely need the green energy sector because sooner or later the wind turbines in mid-Michigan will begin to spin. Yesterday they were sadly lazy in the middle of a heat advisory.  Meanwhile, coal plants, the low cost and guaranteed round-the-clock alternative to those stone still wind blades are being necessarily bankrupted by an administration and EPA who believes a once exceptional country should get used to its new station in the world==one less affluent and a bit more sweaty staying at the Howard Johnsons. 

Obama sits atop a federal government complex dedicated to regulation and the curtailment of wealth in the hands of a few and this can only result in the stifling of an economyfully otherwise capable of lifing all boats on a rising tide if it is left to grow sans hobbles.  But that is not the aim of this administration. 

After some five trillion dollars in additional assumed debt steered to the pet projects of bureaucrats, the latest jobs report released this week showed an additional 80,000 jobs having been created for the month of June. Incidentally, it takes in the neighborhood of 300,000 jobs every month just to break even given population growth, and it takes a heck of a lot more than that to have tax revenues increase sufficiently to compensate for the flooding tide of baby boomers hoping to cash in on Social Security before that albatross goes belly up too. 

However undaunted by that rather sour report, Barack Obama has hailed the June jobs numbers as another step in the right direction--another step in a long line of unwavering steps that has helped the US economy remain exactly stagnant with substandard GDP growth, substandard job expansion, substandard manufacturing and housing activity, and substandard consumer confidence. 

Barack Obama has been in office for 41 months.  Measuring optimistically this economy has created on average about 120,000 jobs per month since he has been in office.  In all fairness to our dear leader, Barack Obama jumped aboard the con with our ship greatly off course.  In all fairness to our dear leader's detractors, Barack Obama agreed with every policy that sent the vessel toward the rocks and has been spouting disastrous orders from the helm ever since. 

While I would not blame Obama for everything that got us into this mess, after a while his assumed innocence has to become less important than his incompetence in trying to turn things around.  Sooner or later we will have earned some positive results, right?  After all, this is being financed by our grandchildren.

With an election coming up we are left in a very precarious situation.  Those on the left point to Obama's innocence in the matter while complicit extablishment Republicans seem to be intent on getting back the reins of power in order to unleash the true effectiveness of an ever larger bureaucracy run by their own bevy of life long bureaucrats.  Conservatives shudder at the implications of continued ignorance of economics in Washington regardless of who is left in charge.

We know that Obama has no interest in severely curtailing the size of government and I have my doubts that Romney has much interest in cutting much--I mean, here is a guy who advocates climate change initiatives, is critical of Reagan's economic beliefs, envisioned the foundation of Obamacare (admittedly on the state level) and embraces destructive overlord dictates such as minimum wage hikes.

If we are to ever get our debt back in order (and I'm not certain our leaders have any intention of ever doing so) the size of our government must shrink while it dispenses with its desire to control the behavior of each of its subjects.  Somehow I don't think this idea is catching on.  Today it was announced that the brokest nation in the history of all mankind has entered into a partnership with the brokest state in the history of our nation to begin construction on a train project that will ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars that neither entity can afford, will cost future billions in maintenance that neither entity will ever afford and if everything goes as smoothly as could ever be expected will provide a service that is inefficient, perpetually subsidized, and grossly underused--that is until the multi-car family is outlawed, a provision easily adhered to if only the size of families could be regulated.

Today's progressives believe for a fact that things will begin to turn around if only their policies are given the opportunity to work for a sufficient amount of time.  The failures of the Soviet state, European socialism, and the generational enslavement of a billion Chinese prove nothing to this nation's elite who firmly believe that the reason those systems failed is because their leadership made bad decisions and not because there is a definational flaw in centralized planning.

So today's 80,000 created jobs are a step in the right direction.  How many steps does it take to walk to Greece?

Lie? Big Lie? Who is the liar?

PolitiFact awarded it the Lie of the Year for 2009.  Now, let's not over complicate things--PolitiFact is no more an enlightened arbiter of truth versus lie than is my dachshund, but rather a sole proprietary concoction of the St. Petersberg Times.

Of course, to give the Times a bit of a break, the term "Death Panel" was a colloquialism so in a literal sense it was abjectly false, sort of like saying "there are a trillion stars in the sky" is a lie because who can really count that high?  So the Times stepped to the plate, made its award, and forever stamped Sarah Palin with the tag of liar regardless of what the true intent of her words were.

Well, out of Great Britain we are getting a snifter of what Ms. Palin's lie and all the associated ado were really about as an expert in the NHS has estimated that about 130,000 people annually have their lives ended prematurely at the hands of their benevolent overlords.

While there may have been no single death panel overseeing the starving of Grandma or of Great Uncle Angus dying of thirst, they are currently both pushing up daisies.  Oh, they as well as 129,998 others in just the last year.

Obamacare might not refer to death panels.  Obama himself, the economic genius he has proven to be, might not even believe that the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans per year is the only conceivable outcome of his signature supported legislation.  Yet, there is nothing in the law that reduces the costs of health care, it simply adds onerous regulations and myriad boards and committees and commissions.  In effect it caps total spending on health care while making per item procedures more expensive.  So, when the money runs out and the feeding tube gets disconnected, Aunt Edna can clutch her rosary and be thankful that a death panel doesn't exist. 

h/t Bruce at QandO

Georgia Professor Groping For Answers

What could possibly have occurred that might cast doubt onto the integrity of the University of Georgia or one of its professors?  Sometimes there simply is no clear answer.

"I am deeply remorseful for anything I may have done to bring any kind of doubt to the integrity of the university and myself," 

What deep-felt remorse.  

While the professor doesn't sound too certain himself of what he "may have done" that could result is damaging the reputation of himself and his employer, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the professor probably shouldn't have placed an escort ad in a magazine, rented a hotel room, met a potential client dressed in drag, called himself "Sasha," and negotiated a half-hour price for sexual services to be performed on undercover authorities.

That may have been it.

When he figures it out perhaps he'll get back to us.


  

Freep and MLive: Uneducated Legislators Hating on Higher Ed

An editorial headline caught my attention this morning over at the Detroit Free Press.  Lawmakers playing politics with higher ed budget should go back to school. 

The headline caught my eye because it hints that budgetary considerations are little more than offensive moves on a checkerboard.  I reject the notion that balancing the budget according to the requirements of the state consitution is merely playing politics with the budget.

Upon reading the article I decided I wanted to go a couple of steps farther in my criticism.

What is lost on these journalism souls is that every dollar spent in Michigan has to be balanced with a dollar of revenue.  When a buck is tossed out the window in order to pay for the lavish benefits of a bloated state government, that dollar must come from somewhere; from the pocket of a tax payer.  If that same dollar was not given to cover a portion of the dental benefits of a secretary working at the DOT, it could have been allocated toward higher education, or could have been put on a Bridge Card, or could have helped to pay for a Pure Michigan ad playing down here in Georgia, or could have been used to help bail out another generation of corrupted Detroit politicians.  Heck, even a couple of stellar journalists ought to be able to figure that one out.

Alas, it appears as if some jouralists are little bothered by the suffering of tax payers.  Taxpayers in Michigan it would seem are cash cows to be milked by benevolent bureaucrats at the cheering insistence of journalists such as Brian Dickerson at the Freep and the woefully untalented Susan Demas at Mlive.

Dickerson's regurgitated point appears to be little more than echoed drivel of Demas who writes that too many Michigan legislators are not college educated and that this could be why money is not flowing like milk and honey onto the heads of educators at our state operated colleges and universities.

But no one wanted to talk about why lawmakers really don't want to shell out for universities.

The fact is, too many of this current crop of Republican lawmakers don't give a fig about our universities, which they regard as little more than liberal indoctrination factories whizzing away your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

A group like BLM -- whose political action committees give the vast majority of donations to Republican candidates -- can't really be expected to talk about that inconvenient fact, however.

The hostility to higher ed might have something to do with the fact that almost 30 percent of Michigan legislators don't even have a college degree themselves -- putting us 31st in the nation, according to a study by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

But perhaps things aren't quite as easy as Dicerson and Demas envision.  Perhaps there is not a never ending gush at end of the tax revenue pipe.  Perhaps the constitution hobbles legislators from slathering every line item in the budget with dreamed for millions. 

The well educated Dickerson and the well educated Demas might be supreme in their abilities to propagate leftist dogma, but they are not wizards when it comes to economics.   For decades the state of Michigan subsidized the educations of tens of thousands of college graduates who left this state to make their fortunes in Texas, New York, Virginia and elsewhere.  They took our tax money and now pay the taxes on their new fortunes to other state capitols. 

They didn't all leave this state because they wanted to wash the taste of Michigan out of their mouths, but usually they fled because the jobs they needed were located in states that had done a better job at nurturing their own signature industries.  They followed the jobs.

So, what would be wrong with Texas, or New York, or Virginia taxpayers subsidizing the educations of graduates that will eventually settle down in Michigan when the jobs grown in a business-friendly and an entrepreneur-friendly state actually start sprouting?   

There has been recent talk of a potential Chinese village being started near Ann Arbor so that out of country students can fulfill residency requirements which would allow them to languish in the benevolence of Michigan taxpayers like Demas and Dickerson and you and me.  I'm not wilfully so charitable with Demas' money even though she would like to spend some of mine and the Chinese are aware.

When it gets right down to it, of course I want my legislators to understand the workings of all angles including budgetary and economic. 

In a perfect world the same standards would apply to journalists. 


 

The Electability Snooker

Recent polls show that Mitt Romney is catching up to and passing Barack Obama in favorability for November's presidential election.

While it has been said for months by the likes of Rush Limbaugh that Obama would lose to whomever the GOP put at the top of its ticket, establishment party operatives pushed the "Romney is the only electable candidate" meme.  The catchy jingle stuck and Romney essentially ran away with the delegate count despite being a candidate who clearly was not favored by a majority of GOP voters when given more conservative options.

Many of those who ultimately voted for Romney in the primaries did so solely on the electablity issue--he was not in tune with what they believed personally on the role of government in the everyday lives of most Americans, but they refused to take the chance that Obama might win the election if a more risky candidate was chosen.

Well, here we are almost a full half year from the upcoming election and the Obama campaign is stumbling over economic and foreign policy hurdles with almost dizzying regularity.  He is crashing and burning and every bit of news that comes out of Washington these days tosses a little more gasoline onto the fire. Obama might very well prove to be the weakest incumbent presidential candidate in history--and the GOP, at the behest of moderate party leaders, is facing him with a moderate country club republican who believes in global warming, socialized medicine, supported raising the debt limit, TARP, and spent a good amount of his last two decades dissing on Ronald Reagan.

Is Romney favorable to Obama?  Dumb question--I'd also rather lose a toe than a hand.  The better question is whether or not the GOP should have produced a truly conservative candidate to run against a guy that by comparison makes Jimmy Carter appear competent.  

The unelectable guy in this contest was always Barack Obama. 

Obama Evolves Into His More Obvious Self

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
                                -- either the Beatles (or Joe Biden)

Barack Hussein Obama is in a state of evolution having now determined that his support of civil unions in lieu of gay marriage was so yesterday.   He doesn't want to see his kids picked upon when either he or Michelle come out of the closet.  He doesn't want to see anyone within the L-B-G-T communities go without the exact same rights that those non-L-B-G-T members get to enjoy.  Most importantly, he wants more campaign money.

The interest given by everyone to this topic has allowed Obama to do something that no conservative would ever be allowed to do at a time of such great economic upheaval--steer the political narrative back onto the largely irrelevant social issues.  Mitt Romney, of course, was quick to respond with comments at Liberty University thereby lengthening the time when irrelevancy will dominate the airwaves.

In case anyone was interested, Obama's former public stance on civil unions was one of perhaps three or four issues with which I had agreed with Obama, but he needn't lament the loss of my vote over this--I was never going to vote for the buffoon anyway.  What strikes me as comical is the response, both positive and negative, to a perceived change in position by Barack Obama from one that no one believed he had anyway, to a brand spankin' new position that everyone perceived he had to begin with. 

Obama needs huge piles of money because his campaign is charged with the nearly impossible task of expunging the obvious if he is to be reelected.   Employment numbers must be erased.  Production numbers must be forgotten.  Tax revenues must be ignored.  Deficits must be expunged.   Mandated liabilites must be tossed aside.  Prices at the pump must be chuckled at.  These suspensions of disbelief can only be purchased with a huge pile of money and his campaign was not bringing in the cash it had promised America it would raise. 

Obama has to realign his base behind his inept and disruptive presidency and he only has a limited amount of cotton candy to spread around to the maws that open whenever his shadow appears above them.  The gay marriage issue was little more than a marked ace he had up his tattered sleeve.  Conservatives would be better off calling it what it is rather than fortifying their positions on the social issues in response to Obama's rather lame lunge.

We have one big suck of an economy out there.  Don't let Obama's misdirection fool you.

Parents in Massachusetts Suck at Parenting

but, despite the fact that Massachusetts food tyrants have enacted rules that will effectively outlaw bake sales at school events

 “we’re not trying to get into anyone’s lunch box,” [Dr. Lauren Smith, DPH’s medical director] Smith told the Herald. “We know that schools need those clubs and resources. We want them to be sure and have them, but to do them a different way. We have some incredibly innovative, talented folks in schools who are already doing some impressive things, who serve as incontrovertible evidence that, yes, you can do this, and be successful at it.”

 No, of course not. We understand that the nature of your invasion into the realm of parenting is purely benevolent.  You really really, really, really had been giving parents a fair shot at bowing to the will of the all-benevolent and all-knowing food police before things got so unnecessarily necessary, but parents simply weren't falling in line. 

State Sen. Susan Fargo (D-Lincoln), chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Health, said the problem of overweight children has reached “crisis” proportions.

“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” Fargo said.

“But,” she added, “this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long healthy life.”

 Yep, you parents asked for it--you practically forced their hand. 

I see unhealthy behaviors every day as I travel this world.  Smoking.  Drinking more than occasionally.  I know people that refuse to get enough sleep but when they wake up they try to compensate for it by quaffing an early cup of black coffee. Then there are those that drink too many sugary drinks, salt their food, and fry up the occasional morel.  And honestly, nothing pisses me off more than kids who are allowed to watch too much television--and do so while sitting too close to the boob tube.
 
Ms. Fargo and Dr. Smith need to go farther in protecting the children of Massachusetts from their sucky parents.    In order for these unfortunate cherubs to get a chance at a good, long healthy life, their inadequate parents must take a diminished role in caring for them.   

Its for the best. 

France and Greece

Recent developments in Europe and the US have reminded me of the frailty of the human condition and the flawed human character that drives it. 

Let us not forget that the human condition throughout all of recorded history has been one of misery.  Man's history on Earth is a perennial calendar of death, disease, pestilence, drought, blight, hunger and savagery toward one another.    It was not until capitalism and the industrial age that it spawned that man began to experience security in his surroundings--and even then it did so only in those areas where capitalism was practiced or where capitalism provided the necessary wealth to drive charity.

Since its inception, capitalism has lived side by side with its detractors.   For every individualist plowing his own soil there were hundreds of others who subsisted miserably on either the benevolence provided by or the forced servitude demanded of others.   These inefficient economic systems resulted in shortages of nearly all necessary produce while robbing individuals of the capital required to improve their destinies.  Generation after generation suffered with the same intensity as those that came before. 

And yet capitalism is still attacked the world over.

Greece is a land that denounces capitalism and is currently mired in perhaps the worst financial situation throughout all of Europe.  It is buried under debt, is woefully lacking in industrial production, is an unattractive suitor for foreign investment, and its population is now bristling at the prospect that it might have to either cut back on its own consumption of the produce of others, or start producing more of its own.  For many years it has sustained its meager living standards by living off of the production of others within the EU, a situation that Germany has tired of.


A majority of Greeks are unhappy with the way that its financiers are forcing them to adapt to conditions not of their own liking--Greeks want charity, and they want it provided according to their own ideals. 

The French too have tired of austerity.  With the recent election of socialist Francois Hollande as President, the French have chosen a candidate to lead them who is decidedly anti-capitalist.  His platform of promises is a cash box full of socialist giveaways that will further stymie French productivity and wealth creation. 

The Socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year.

He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

This treasure trove of predictable socialist reforms will shrink the economy, dissuade employment, help to chase corporations out of country, add to the number of unproductive people who will live on the backs of taxpayers, and also raise prices.   In a socialist's view, this is pro-growth. 

Call it either a flaw or a feature of the human character, but people will typically care for themselves better than they will contribute to what is perceived as the common good. Likewise, when a government in authority stands in the way of self sufficiency while it also promotes communal consumption, it predictably gets what it begs for--a population of demanding consumers that produces too little to provide for itself.

You go Greece!  Way to go France!

Time to turn another page on the perennial calendar of misery.

Too Much Money Going Somewhere

As if there wasn't enough proof already, a recent study has identified the fifteen richest counties in the USA. But, what do I think this is evidence of proving?

Okay, think very hard.

Where does the average citizen send a lot of its money? Sure, there is the grocery store and the gas station. But, those are typically local entities. So, where do you think large numbers of people, all of them in fact, might send a lot of their money?

Bingo! Washington, DC--that grand recipient of not only trillions of dollars of taxpayer money every year, but over a trillion additional dollars of money borrowed from the Chinese and our grandchildren each year is surrounded by ten of the fifteen richest counties in the United States surround Washington DC.

We send trillions of dollars every year to Washington so that lawyers, lobbyists, special interests, and crony capitalists can fight over it like Michelle Obama would a fine rack of ribs.

Barack Obama laments that the rich are getting richer, but I wonder how much he worries about them becoming more concentrated?

In Utopia No One Gets Offended

This is simply a glimpse at what the future of America will become if modern planners are allowed to control those around them with their vision of a society in which no one can become offended.



An unacceptable mural today is tomorrow's thought crime.

h/t Protein Wisdom

Was it Hilary Rosen, Hilary Rosen, or Hilary Rosen?

Don't ask White House Press Secretary Jay Carney because he cannot be sure which of the three Hilary Rosens that he knows might be the one that visited the President or high level staff at least 36 times at the White House.

For all that he knows, each of the three Hilary Rosens with whom he is familiar might have visited the White House a dozen times.

“I haven’t seen the records. I don’t know that Hillary Rosen– I know three personally, women named Hillary Rosen,” Carney said. “So I‘m not sure that those represent the person we’re talking about necessarily.”

Hilary Rosen is a leftist Democrat strategist, CNN contributor, and White House public relations expert who accused Ann Romney of "never having worked a day in her life."

Rosen's foray into the Republican's War On Womyn farce has roundly backfired while also helping to expose yet another layer of the left's contempt for anything Republican. Sarah Palin was attacked for being a working mom. She couldn't be bothered to stay at home with her children. Michelle Bachmann was an opportunist seeking to use her foster children as props for higher political office. Laura Bush was, like Ann Romney, a non-worker...that was until it was pointed out that Mrs. Bush had spent several years teaching.

Whichever Hilary it was that went to the White House all those times to work on political strategy, it might be time for her to become a bit more self-reflective before she charges onto the battle field of words. If the tables were turned using Rosen's reasoning, one could question Ms. Rosen's ability to comment on mothering because she has a job while her children are home. Isn't it Ms. Romney's lack of a job that, according to Rosen, disqualifies her from commenting on anything having to do with balancing a budget or worrying about economics?

When will this end? One might also question Michelle Obama's standing in talking about nutrition--when did she become a dietician? For that matter, when did Barack Obama ever create a job?

That is the wonderful thing about America--we can all pretty much say whatever we want to say. Lies are easily exposed while integrity is gathered to those who are proven right.

I'm not certain where that leaves any one of the Hilary Rosens--at least one of whom happens to be gainfully employed as a duly qualified public relations expert while also happening to suck at her job.

Scandal at the Secret Service

These are odd times.

Why, just a few short years ago it was accepted among Democrats that an orally beloved President could expect to get himself a clandestine hummer in the Oval Office while being briefed on foreign policy. If George Costanza could have sex on the desk at his job, why couldn't our Commander in Chief? Any follow up investigation and questions pertaining to it had to be "all about sex" and not about Paula Jones' legal rights or little foreign countries that may or may not have possessed chemical or biological weapons. We know this because Charlie Rangle said so.

The problems with the moral frailty of a president are myriad. The acts themself can become the vector of foreign espionage (as has been speculated with the Kennedy administration,) and the acts can wreak terrible damage onto a first family. Perhaps worst of all, at least in terms of reputation, the office itself can be cheapened to the point of disrepect at all levels.

I don't blame anyone but the involved secret service agents for the acts that have ultimately cost them their jobs--we should expect people who are the highest called to have the highest calling. Yet, what realistically can be expected of those who serve the presidential office when a short term review finds the office itself sullied by history of blue dresses, lies about events exposed by blue dresses, and coordinated attacks upon those who were brave enough to refer to blue dresses?

We've come a long way. Time to backtrack.

Now Who Does A Conservative Vote For?

Santorum out.

The Republican still in? Well...

the only thing better than offering the American people a choice between a candidate who supports socialized medicine, TARP, federal minimum wage increases tied to inflation, cap-and-trade, green energy boondoggles, bureaucratic precedence over religious conscience, federal government “stimulus” programs, rising gas prices as a matter of necessity, the wisdom of an individual mandate, and the anti-Reagan sentiment embodied by all big government types who consider a collaboration with Ted Kennedy a great social and political achievement, and one who doesn’t, is offering them no choice at all while insisting that they actually have one.

So now we will be blessed with a truly "electable" GOP candidate who has espoused myriad beliefs in exactly the same big-government solutions as the candidate that we have been told must be defeated!

My last horse in this race has pulled up lame. Palin. Rubio. Bachmann. Cain. Perry. Santorum.

Thank you GOP.

h/t Protein Wisdom

Because it Worked So Well in Zimbabwe

Ken at Popehat pokes fun at Marion Berry and the "certain" academics and theoreticians who find themselves, at times, completely dismissive of cretins such as Marion Berry.

What this country needs is a lecture on race

The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman incident is developing into national ugliness. We've had a killed minor, a contract taken out on the killer, mobs formed, the media exposed for its advocacy, allegedly committed retaliatory murders, allegedly committed retaliatory murder retaliation, a post-racial president stirring the racial pot, and perhaps a hot summer of discontent--all before the full facts of the case have ever been released.

This all got me thinking about race relations in this country and how Barack Obama was lifted up by his worshipers as being the man who could help heal all these wounds. One of his first moves as president was to nominate career race baiter Eric Holder as his Attorney General who lamented early on that America was afraid to have a conversation on race.

Well, perhaps Eric Holder was correct all along, though the reasons behind this fear is not quite as misunderstood as it was before Obama's coronation.

It is leftist ideologues like Holder himself that make having a conversation on race the firefight that it is. You see, Holder, as with many Obama minions, has waged a war on free speech in this country that is beginning to bear its bitter fruit. It has done so by redefining the meaning of language itself, molding words, co-opting contexts, and by helping to lift the burden of language altogether from the person who utters a comment onto the person who hears the comment.

Along with this shift of responsibility of the meaning of words from the speaker to the interpreter, the person who was so unfortunate as to have engaged in the conversation must then allow his words to be reinterpreted, stretched, morphed, reconstituted, adapted, and changed into a new meaning by which the interpreter himself is then allowed to vilify and castigate the speaker for a cynical interpretation that is the sole creation of the interpreter.

Well, who wouldn't be afraid to jump into a controversial topic if he has no control over the words he has spoken?

We should congratulate Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, among others, for the difficulties we will forever experience should we ever be dumb enough to have a conversation about race in this country.

These conversations, supposedly pined for by Holder, aren't intended to be conversations in the first place. Holder has no large desire to discuss the frailties of our fractured culture and what we can do to break down divides as we all go about our daily lives. What Holder has in mind is for me to sit down and shut up and accept my white guilt and the responsibilities that come with it--or I can cling to my contrary opinions which should be kept to myself anyway because, well, racist!

America will remain largely afraid of this so-called conversation until it can be had honestly and openly. Until then it will simply be a lecture.

Internet Back Up

In case no one has noticed, the past few weeks have left the Earth disastrously absent of the Rougblog.

Living in the sticks of Northern Michigan, my only real option for a faster than molasses internet service is to tether my cell phone to the computer. Alas, the PdaNet driver became cobbled somehow a couple of weeks ago and I didn't have the time to tax myself silly over getting it straightened out. This event, though difficult to subsist through, will help casual readers to assign not only a relative value to all of my opinions (quite low) but also helps to illustrate my amazing computer skills (even lower.)

Over the next couple of days I'll get my thoughts down on the Treyvon Martin circus, on the SCOTUS's apparent cynicism toward Obamacare, and about the train wreck of a GOP whose best hope for electing a President this fall is precisely due to the fact that Obama himself is perhaps even more unelectable.

High gasoline prices. Check.

Obama delivering off-mic messages to Putin via Medvedev. Check.

A Mitt Romney staffer hinting at the campaign's desire to quickly get the nomination in the bag so that it can go about the business of cutting the conservative wing of the GOP loose while believing it can depend on its votes regardless. Check.

Another failed green energy company. Check.

All of these are simply different verses of the same old song. Give me a day or so to get back on pitch.

I'm guessing Monday.

Conservative Extremists

Tom Backers has a good post up over at Right Michigan.

The major impression most people get from their preferred form of media these days is that the Tea Party is made up of a collection of racist, homophobic, gun and Bible toting extremists so far to the right that they make Barry Goldwater look liberal; the younger generation will have to `Google' Goldwater, but in the print media, folks in my generation and those older will know who I'm referring to. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There is so much truth to this--the media has hammered so relentlessly on the tea party and on conservatives that the truth of movement and its people has been obscured.

I replied in the comments.

It is truly an odd set of circumstances by which those who are fed up with a $15 trillion national debt, see troubles ahead for a health care system soon to be run by the same bureaucrats who currently run the postal service, and those who would like to see the departments of Energy, State, Interior, and Transportation collude on something other than how to make energy prices necessarily skyrocket, are seen to be the extremists.

Tea party activists are seen as too confrontational to compromise. We fall outside the mainstream, hate progress, and yearn for the days when choiceless women did nothing but bake pies and make babies. No wonder we are hated.

We hear this sort of drivel on every network news broadcast, on every cable news network (save sometimes FOX), on NPR, read it in nearly every major newspaper across America, and have to listen to it from both Democrat and establishment Republican leaders alike whenever we're unfortunate enough to have one of them find a microphone. As comrade Lenin said so many years ago, repeat a falsehood often enough and soon it becomes the truth.

Barbara Bush in a recent interview asked "when did compromise become a dirty word?" She was lamenting the polar opposites of both political parties, harsh rhetoric, and was largely criticizing the uncompromising desires of the tea party. (For Barbara's sake I'll clarify something...compromise is not a dirty word. The recession caused by her husband's compromise on his "no new taxes" pledge was downright filthy.)

Making compromises has never been the problem of conservatives--our problem has been that those for whom we have voted in the past too often already represent a compromise. In fact, the greatest single motivation I had for becoming more politically active was the selection of John McCain to represent conservatives in the last presidential election. Don't tell me that having that milquetoast bureaucrat sitting atop the ballot wasn't a huge compromise of conservative principles.

Conservatives are asked by the GOP to compromise at the ballot box and then the candidate we poorly select is asked to compromise further for the children or the elderly or the environment or for reproductive rights. This is how we end up with a $15 trillion debt--electing compromise candidates who make very stern faces while compromising even farther from a foundation built on shifting sand.

Perhaps no one wants that $15 trillion debt. But actually wanting to elect somebody up front who will do something about it--now that is extreme.

Staged Rush Outrage and the Cynical Left

Make no mistake...every progressive media personality, leftist politician, or socialist pundit that called tea party activists "teabaggers" were, with a quick wink and a sneer, announcing their contempt for conservatives by telling their audiences that conservatives like to dip their testicles into the mouths of one another.

That is what "teabagging" is and what a "teabagger" does. How funny it was for the ever clever left to be able to exude such contempt for all of America to hear without ever being held accountable for what was said.

Where was the media outrage when its own engaged in this sort of attack on opponents? Where was Jennifer Granholm's outrage? Where was Nancy Pelosi's? Where were the statements of David Alexrod and Valerie Jarrett? Did Barack Obama call anyone accused of being a "teabagger" to see if he or she was doing okay?

This latest Rush Limbaugh controversy is little more than the worst sort of cynicism being played out in a series of staged events while making it even more evident the world could end tomorrow by noon--and if it doesn't it probably should.

The political left is a shameless gaggle of disingenuous doofi intent on destroying the America that I know and love. They do it by framing the debate in a false light and then attacking their opponents on the merits of their concocted scenarios.

Rush Limbaugh called a 30 year old feminist activist a slut because she lamented that she and too many of her fellow Georgetown law school enrollees could not afford birth control. These are students that somehow manage to attend a $30,000 per year law school but cannot afford to pick up a box of Trojans every week or so. They want their Catholic university to cough up the money for their Yaz or their rubbers or their diaphragms.

There are apparently no agencies within necessary proximity to give these coeds their relief. There are no Planned Parenthood clinics. There are no women's centers. There are no government agencies available that do such work. No, it has to be the Catholic school. Rush's point, irrespective of his apology, is that these women want to have someone pay them (through the purchase of their birth control) so that they can enjoy sexual activity.

He then called anyone who would do such a thing a slut or a prostitute.

I don't see the problem. Lets be brutally honest. Acts of sexual gratification, repeated so frequently that a horny coed can burn through a couple grand of birth control over the course of two years, more closely resembles sluttishness than does a person believing our government ought to govern according to the founding documents resembles an act of teabagging.

One comment by Rush raises the nation's rafters while thousands of comments by the left brought about a chorus of crickets.

Rush said he was sorry because he lowered himself to the left's standards. Bah. Do it a few thousand more times and he might have a point.

Romney Perched Atop The Fulcrum

The fat lady might not be singing, but she's standing back stage with some salt water gargle and just the slightest touch of crimson rouge. While it is still a mathematical possibility that another candidate could sweep into the GOP catbird seat, with Mitt Romney having gathered as many delegates as he has unto himself at this point in the delegate season, it would take a near miracle for any other GOP candidate to knock him off the November ticket.

What a sad state of affairs this is.

I'm not going to go into the flaws of every candidate left on the GOP ticket other than to say that from a conservative standpoint, the most flawed is the one standing tallest. I say he is the most flawed because his years in government service indicate an to me that he is the biggest believer in big government solutions among all the other big believers.

An important part of his impending victory in the GOP nominating process has been his assurances that he is indeed a conservative. He knew that the conservative base of his party was jumping from one non-Romney candidate to another in sheer terror over the possibility of his carrying the GOP torch. This forced the man to pander to conservatives.

He needed to hold off a charging more conservative Santorum just as he had to put aside the charge of a more conservative Gingrich, a more conservative Perry, a more conservative Cain and a much more conservative Bachmann. (Ron Paul doesn't count in this regard as it appears the two have long been working on a back room deal with the avowed conservative Paul's contribution to the pact being unrelenting attacks on whoever is currently most threatening to Romney.)

But all of this conservative pandering is soon to change.

Romney believes, as do all establishment Republicans, that he can take the votes of conservatives in his party for granted particularly in this election when the need to defeat Obama is so great. Once he has locked down this nominating process he will then move toward attracting centrist and independent voters--a targeted audience that he is much more philosophically inline with.

We are very close to that point.

And this is when we will see what side of the fulcrum Romney lands on. Will he continue to try to soothe conservative voters when he believes they will be compelled to support him regardless, or will he begin to posture to those in the middle with whom he actually finds more common ground?

I believe now that super Tuesday has passed we are going to be seeing more and more of the latter. Contrary positions with the left will soften. So-called pragmatism will trump that of what were once important conservative ideological leanings. Global warming will become even more important as will compassionate immigration reform. Conservatives will simply have to suck it up and take one for the team. (By the way, this is the same thing we had to suck up during the McCain run.)

All of this is pissing me off in advance. It is a certainty that Romney will be taking my vote for granted. I'm certain he shouldn't.

Conservatives Lose a Hero and a Media Warrior

Rest in peace Andrew Breitbart.

Breitbart's story is one of transformation from that of a wrongheaded progressive into a keen conservative with insights that someone always outside of progressivism could never have gained. He used his experience from within the socialist machine to combat that same machine once he saw the light.

He was combative, insightful and always fearless.

I will miss his contributions to the cause.

A Freely Cast Vote For Freedom

My vote is cast. There. My civic duty has been completed. I've tried my best to arrive at the best candidate for whom I should cast my vote and my vote has been legally cast and, hopefully, legally recorded. (The graphite pencils that were provided to fill out ballots that clearly indicated black or blue ink could be problematic.)

I am not the first to do so and I hope that countless generations of free Americans will cast similar votes before there is a last.

I've tried to vote in every general election since 1980 and in most of the primaries. Yes, I am an old fart. I did get turned away from the polls (DISENFRANCHISEMENT!) in Lewisville, Texas one year because my recent arrival from Coppell had not been conducted in an appropriate electoral fashion.

I did not have to travel to any precinct during any of those times under threat of gun, rocket or bicep. I was never hassled at any poll, exposed to unlawful propaganda at the polling place, or told to ignore my rights as a voting citizen.

This is not the case in many place around the world where it is rather routine to see men with guns offering effective dissuasion on the road to the polling place. Nearly half of this planet's habitable land is governed at the whim of a tyrant while nearly half of this planet's humans are governed by the threatened force of a tyrant's hand. (I include the affable Vladamir Putin among the tyrants--so sue me.)

Worldwide press clippings over the last 100 years should indicate to us the fortune we here in America have enjoyed. Most of us did not, and certainly I did not, suffer the Soviet or Maoist starvations, the gulags, or life behind the wall. I did not see the killing fields, witness the Bataan march, smell the choking air over Krakow, or ever fear a machete's chopping. My local sheriff's department does not hide for fear of a drug cartel's reprisals and my children learned in a school that was never threatened by fanatics. (Then they went to Michigan State where the jury remains out.)

While there used to be an insidious poll tax in some southern states, today there is none. In America, if you are a citizen and if you register, you may vote--despite whatever the Democrat Bull Connors wannabes would like.

With all apologies to Charles Dickens, it appears that from this perch of freedom, this truly is the best of times and the worst of times. Despite our victories and our advancements, America has long since reached and passed the pinnacle of liberty--an apex from which collective forces have finally decided that they will not allow individuals to enjoy more freedom and the fruits thereof.

America today, though blessed with benefits that most anyone else on Earth would gladly exchange for their own suffering existence, is facing a challenge from within from those who either suffer the guilt of have, or the sin of want.

It is this sad truth that I carried home from the polls today.

I have but one vote, anchored in my desire for freedom, with which to fight off the human frailties of guilt and envy. Today I cast it with a smile and some light banter at the precinct. (Thankfully no handcuffs presented themselves.)

Today, at least, under sunny skies and the absence of gunfire in the distance, was a great day to be an American. I hope my vote will help ensure many more such days.

Some People Need To Grow Up and Get Lives

This from the Daily Mail:

'On behalf of Ben & Jerry’s Boston Scoop Shops, we offer a heartfelt apology if anyone was offended by our handmade Linsanity flavour (sic) that we offered at our Harvard Square location,' a spokesman posted on @benandjerrys.

'We are proud and honored to have Jeremy Lin hail from one of our fine, local universities, and we are huge sports fans. We were swept up in the nationwide Linsanity momentum.

'Our intention was to create a flavor to honor Jeremy Lin’s accomplishments and his meteoric rise in the NBA, and recognize that he was a local Harvard graduate. We try to demonstrate our commitment as a Boston-based, valued-led business and if we failed in this instance, we offer our sincere apologies,' the statement continued.

Its hard to tell who was offended by this, though the offended undoubtedly do not include those who gobbled up the many gallons of overtly racist cream dairy products around Cambridge, Mass.

So, Ben and Jerry's, a liberal guided corporation if there ever was one, is now under the thumb of racism hunters for which B&J is sorely sorry. Yet, does anyone really believe that this product was envisioned and marketed for racist purposes? Is it the yellow swirls or is it the crumbled fortune cookies that make it racist?
Is the term Linsanity racist to begin with?

The charges are silly and any offense suffered is specious. The irony like the ice cream, however, is delicious.

An Honest Vote

Of all the candidates left standing in the GOP presidential primary race I find myself least sympathetic to Mitt Romney. He is a man who simply has not governed as a conservative during his time in office. His record is lengthy, broad, and very public. I wouldn't mind studying things for a few more weeks, but with Michigan voting tomorrow I need to make a decision now based upon the information available to me.

It is difficult to remain discerning at all times when it comes to these races. The media is decidedly against whomever the GOP selects in the primary process, negative campaign ads frolic frequently within the playground of dishonesty, and progressives are willing to launch any attack believing that desired ends will always justify any required means.

So, while I have done my best to discern whom I should support honestly and with diligence, I recognize that many of the attacks against Mitt are misguided in nature and actually border on the silly.

Romney's tenure at Bain Capital is one such example. Bain uses its resources to attempt to redirect failing companies toward financial viability. They take companies destined for the scrap heap, provide them with capital and management, refocus operations, and then hope for the best. Results are not always positive in these situations as many companies, doomed to fail prior to intervention, fail even after intervention.

Yet there are tales of success too. Staples is the most storied.

Romney was the target of attacks by progressives because these efforts to save companies typically result in workers losing their jobs. Of course, if the company goes belly up without an intervention, job loses will amount to 100 percent of the workforce. Interventions are often necessary to save a company and workers, sadly, are sometimes discarded in favor of corporate viability.

This is a basic tenet of business management; a managing truth that still hasn't caught on at the US Postal Service or Amtrak. When businesses falter they must be redirected to remain viable. Governments do not operate in such a way. In government work employees are typically handed a lifetime contract at top dollar and with benefits the private sector could only dream of--these businesses are never considered nonviable and employees of these operations are therefore never expendable. Their staffs regardless of how bloated or redundant, are buoyed into the next year and decade and century through higher taxes, the government printing press, or borrowed Chinese money.

Attack Romney if you must over his management while in government, but there is no worthy reason to attack him over his stints at Bain Capital. It might actually prove beneficial for the country to have a man with a practical attitude toward management in the Oval Office. What would be wrong with the wholly owned business of the taxpayers (government) finally being operated efficiently, staffed properly, and with layer upon layer of redundancy removed?

This past weekend Mitt Romney made another gaffe according to pundits, pollsters and opponents. He talked about his four cars and his wife driving two Cadillacs. With every opponent of Mitt talking about his rich fat-cat social status, admitting such a circumstance might not be particularly wise for a presidential candidate, but why should such an admission be considered an admission at all or worthy of guilt? It ain't like he had a picture of himself taken with a doobie hanging out of his mouth. Unless his wife is trying to operate both vehicles at once while texting and eating a hamburger, I don't see any reason for the current panty twisting.

The opposite is true. In America we should applaud the creation of wealth. We don't mind when an auto worker buys a second home on some Northern Michigan lake or purchases a nice eighty acre hunting camp. (This even though one home should be enough and ten acres ought to be plenty.) And what about snowmobiles and ATVs? How many of those machines can a guy drive though the fields at once--and really does anyone really need those noise makers? Should those of us in the north get upset over this conspicuous display of opulence? Should we get hysterical when those same auto workers spend their gain in the restaurants and motels that dot Michigan's peninsulas? And how many people are eating tall stacks down at the local Coffee Shop? How many calories do these flatlanders actually need?

That seems to be what is going on among progressives and the more blockheaded among the GOP. Yet, why would any UAW member or supposed conservative ever discourage any businessman, bureaucrat or teacher for purchasing a product that they produce? Shouldn't they be twice as happy over selling two luxury vehicles to the spouse of a one percenter?

Class warfare is a signature tactic of today's left even if the leftist union population doesn't understand the ridiculousness of it. Back in the early 1990s, a too happy to compromise President George H.W. Bush signed off on a luxury tax designed to get rich yacht buyers, those wrapped in fur, and wearers of fine jewelry to pay their fair share. After the dust had cleared and after an estimated twenty five thousand boat building laborers lost their jobs, the tax was scrapped. (It should be noted too that the tax increase helped drop tax revenues on the sales of those particular products by 77%.)

Stick it to the rich. Demonize the rich. Attack the rich. Why? Because, even though it is demonstrably counterproductive and self-destructive, it makes a misguidedly vengeful and envious population feel better.

Tomorrow I am going to the polls and voting for Rick Santorum without hesitation--my only regret being that a more conservative candidate is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney has done enough during his governance to give me confidence in my understanding of his philosophy on the role of government. He likes it big and benevolent.

While my decision has led me away from Romney, it isn't because of any progressive and media driven Bain Capital or two Cadillac nonsense. We conservatives can vote with our brains. Let progressives operate on hysteria.

About That Purity

We have had pointed out to us just how important purity is to the tea party wing of the Republican Party. We have been told that those seeking purity would destroy the party, would paint the party as extreme, and would lead to yet another defeat of the party of McCain come election day.

Well, here we are, at least a year after those initial claims of tea party intolerance, and the tea party wing has no candidate even close to "pure" remaining. The closest candidate to pure in my opinion at the start of this campaign was Michelle Bachmann. She is gone after having made little more than a blip. The second closest was probably Herman Cain, a man whose political experience was close to nil but who tempered that with a quest for freedom and individual responsibility. (He was too dangerous to the Democrats however and had to be stopped with trumped up accusations of infidelity, a badge of honor had it only been applied to the chest of a Democrat.) After that it was probably the dropped-out Rick Perry who remained the least unpure.

Today we are left with four candidates who do not even vaguely resemble what a "purist" would demand. The GOP candidate-darlings left standing are a country club collection of Cap and Traders, of TARP enthusiasts, of earmarkers, of tax raisers, of single payer health care lovers, of NCLB supporters, of minimum wage hikers and of comprehensive immigration reformers. This is not a purist field. Once again the tea party has been marginalized as the country drifts ever father off the cliff.

There is little doubt in this tea partier's mind that the reelection of Barack Obama will make it almost impossible to ever steer this once great republic back on course. We are farther in debt per capita than Greece has ever dreamed of being, and our current overlords plan on adding trillions more in debt over the coming years.

No remaining member of the GOP field has shown the mettle to make the exceedingly tough changes necessary to alter the course away from bankruptcy. Their political histories speak for themselves regardless of who might score a point or two at this or that debate.

Purity is dead and the Republican establishment breathes a sigh of relief. Hopefully the nation can survive.

Example #4,433,218 Of How Government Screws Taxpayers

You know that $7,500 tax credit being used as a bribe to get wealthy Americans to buy the Chevy Volt? Well, it seems that another layer has been peeled from this particular onion.

When the purchaser of the Volt is a government entity (purchases that Barack Obama promised his benevolent government would make because it is the smart thing to do) that $7,500 credit does not get deposited back into the taxpayer's wallet. No. That $7,500 goes into the pocket of the dealership that administered the transaction.

What, dealerships don't already get enough of a commission on the sale of a $40,000 vehicle that they get to receive another seven large? And taxpayers aren't already sufficiently screwed by the billions of dollars they they will never get back--not only in the auto bailouts but in the green energy initiatives that our overlords seem so intent on saddling the rest of us with?

These bums in office and their armies of bureaucrats and regulators are fleecing the American public to a point beyond mathematically certain bankruptcy. I don't blame GM dealerships for accepting every slothful penny the government has tossed its way. Instead I blame a turncoat government that has tossed us aside like garbage in favor of their cronies like GM, GE, ADM, Chrysler and the UAW.

The Evil One Percent: Yesterday and Today

This is not about class warfare says Barack Obama, it is about fairness and what is good for the American people. This is about a struggling middle class, about more and more Americans needing government help while the richest of Americans amass a larger portion of all of America's wealth. This is about a small number of Americans not paying their fair share.

These cries are nothing new--simply insert another geographic area into the appropriate space and you will find it echoing earlier times.

The kulaks were the wealthiest of Russian farmers. They were therefore the enemies of the people and a target of the Soviets shortly after the communist revolution. Hundreds of thousands of kulaks were murdered by the 99% who demanded the wealth they had amassed. This slaughter of humans and with them the expertise needed to produce nourishment, has been blamed for the starvation of tens of millions of Soviet citizens who no longer able to eat the foods produced by their version of the evil one percent.

The definition of the kulaks was fluid depending on who was using the term and how badly one hated another. However, the Council of People's Commissars provided any one of these points as the criteria for being a kulak:

• use of hired labor
• ownership of a mill, a creamery (маслобойня, butter-making rig), other processing equipment, or a complex machine with a mechanical motor
• systematic renting out of agricultural equipment or facilities
• involvement in trade, money-lending, commercial brokerage, or "other sources of non-labor income".

In other words, a job provider was a target for murder. A person who processed food with motorized equipment, or creating mechanized efficiencies in the production of food was an evil one percenter. A farmer who was willing to rent out his tractor or combine to another farmer who did not own such equipment was guilty of state defined greed. Any person who tried to provide his fellow man with capital to help him better his life was a person keeping the people down.

Later, the Soviet state under Stalin established kulak quotas for arrest, after all, it had to make certain the people believed the Soviet state remained diligent in its war against greed. When a government official was short of his detained kulak quota he could get creative with arrests. Poor farmers who did not meet the traditional kulak definitions were executed or sent to the gulag to meet the desired numbers. Disliked neighbors were turned over to the authorities with little or no evidence.

Today's Democrat Party is fanning the flames of hatred toward the most productive and beneficial class of Americans. The wealthy pay the most taxes (the top one percent paying approximately 40 percent) produce the most goods, employ the most people, provides capital that develops new industries, and gives more money to private charity than any other group in America--for all of which they are despised by party stalwarts. Blaming the rich is always an easy thing to do particularly in an age when one believes that the creation of wealth is a zero-sum game.

Human nature has not changed since Adam and Eve strutted around the lush Garden of Eden. We would like to believe that today's refined man has evolved into a more gentle creature. Despite this, in the past century alone there has been multiple genocides in Europe, Asia and Africa. Muslim extremists throughout much of the world seek to convert, enslave or kill all infidels. Latin American drug cartels are responsible for the murders of tens of thousands south of our border. Syria shells its people (while getting political support from China, Russia and Iran.) Iran threatens Israel as it refines its nuclear program. A quick Arab spring begot a cold Arab winter where yesterday's liberated are today's torturers. North Korea hates everyone.

Promoting hatred of the evil one percent might seem like nothing more than political expediency but the long term effects of such tactics can be beyond brutal. We are, after all, only human.

Follow the Money

Southeast Michigan today and the Detroit News offers us three wonderful examples of the corruption, mismanagement, and waste that seem to go hand in hand with progressive urban-based power politics.

This is not to say that there isn't corruption elsewhere or that it is not engaged in by centrist milquetoasts, but by definition, a conservative eschews the amassing of power through ever greater government and the money it attracts.

First, we have the Highland Park School District, located in a city largely surrounded by festering Detroit. It is a city that manages to blend the look and feel of a demilitarized zone with the urban accent of a burned out Reliant-K.

This week teachers in that school district might be working for free because the district has mismanaged itself right out of viability. The city itself has been devastated by business loss, population flight, and urban unrest--developments not atypical of most other Detroit urban neighborhoods. But it is not for a lack of revenue coming into the district. This year the district spent approximately $16,000 per student while the state average is closer to $9,000.

This from the Detroit News:

"The Highland Park School District has financially collapsed. There are no excuses for the bad decisions made by the adults in charge, but we had to act to protect the students," [House Speaker Jase Bolger of Marshall] Bolger said.

"We have a constitutional requirement to provide children with an education, but we have an even stronger moral obligation to protect them from adults who have put them in peril."

Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer said she voted "no" because the state caused the district's problems by cutting education funding.

"We've got many school districts in Michigan that are in crises right now," Whitmer said. "What we're addressing today is a symptom of what ails our education system.

$320,000 for a classroom of twenty students is clearly not enough money for the intellectually challenged (yet lovely) Gretchen Whitmer. If only the state could kick in a little more...

Just down the road and to the right, the majestic Guardian Building provides a fragile veneer to the corruption and mismanagement in Wayne County--the same county in which Highland Park lies. Here the administration of Robert Ficano, the long time progressive Wayne County Executive, has been frittering away a fortune to cronies and on speculative deals designed to do little more than protect the fiefdom of Mr. Ficano and line the pockets of his aides and associates.

The FBI is investigating and things are not looking good.

Again from the Detroit News:

The FBI's probe into Wayne County has broadened to include allegations a fired top political lieutenant to Executive Robert Ficano bought a list of registered voters with money intended for the poor.

Poor? What poor?

Finally, a little story about the City of Detroit where benevolent city administrators of benevolent federal dollars funneled through a benevolent State of Michigan have been cited for waste and overall inefficiency.

According to a City Council internal memo obtained by The Detroit News, about $44 million was allocated to Detroit last year. About $9 million of that was block grant dollars and $35 million was for the weatherization program, which is intended to cut energy bills for low-income homeowners in Detroit. Nearly $1.8 million in block grant money and $15 million of weatherization grant money remain unspent.

The memo says the state wants to create an authority to merge Detroit and Wayne County human services agencies, with a board that includes one-third of local elected officials.

"Due to alleged mismanagement, improper accounting and instances of criminal conduct that are still under federal investigation, the state will not be renewing its grant management contracts with Detroit DHS and will be taking the remaining funds away from DDHS," the memo reads.

It later adds, "The State indicated the change is essential because the State DHS … is ultimately on the hook for how the grant dollars are allocated and spent, and whether it's properly handled or not."

The memo offers no specific allegations, but the city's Department of Human Services came under fire for spending $182,000 on office furniture.

No wonder the size of government keeps expanding. It takes more and more dollars every year to fill the holes of corruption and inefficiency that burgeon whenever our civil overlords discover that they can spend, live off, and provide sustenance to family and friends by simply spreading around vast amounts of other peoples' money.

Gretchen Whitmer wants to shove more money into the tunnel, Robert Ficano and his staff would like to apply it where it can do their careers the most good, and city DHS officials stumble all over themselves to score some new furniture while the poor freeze their asses off in single pane houses.

When people spend their own money they make better decisions. Sadly, this hasn't happened in the HPSD, Wayne County, or the City of Detroit for decades.

Congratulations Barack, Dad Will Just Stay Home

And wasn't that the point all along--getting consumers to reduce the amount of gasoline (and other energies) that they consume? After all, didn't then-candidate Obama tell us that energy prices had to necessarily skyrocket? Didn't he tell us that a slow increase in gas prices was a good thing? Didn't Sec. of Energy Stephen Chu admit his pining for European level gasoline prices? Didn't Interior Sec. Ken Salazar effectively (and illegally) remove millions of acres of approved offshore oil fields from exploration and drilling? Didn't Hillary Clinton's State Department, despite years of study and affected state approvals, put the kibosh on the Keystone Oil Pipeline in order to keep oil off the market?

Incidentally, this morning gasoline hit $4.59 a gallon in Oscoda County. (That's $1.15 a quart for those traveling short distances.)

And Barack Obama saw all this and said that it was good.

High prices are good because of the choices they force on people. This is the one economic truth that has permeated progressive politics--that is, except in the case of higher taxes which are truly designed to produce tons more revenue! So, except in the case of taxes, higher costs and prices will result in fewer purchases of the product in question.

Consumers, subjected to those beloved skyrocketing energy prices, will buy less of it. When faced with a shrinking disposable income, consumers make choices. They set priorities. They deny themselves pleasures for need of necessities. Once they buy a 4-pack of the new Chinese produced and Fred Upton mandated mercury engorged CFLs at the Home Depot, they will forgo McDonalds for fear of coasting back to Oscoda County on fumes.

And Barack Obama sees this and says that it is good.

One such consumer is my Dad. He is 92 years old, on a fixed income, too blind to safely drive, and an all around cheapskate--a condition that predates high oil prices. He doesn't need to go much of anywhere even though my Mom would like to get him out of the house once in a while.

Due to circumstances surrounding his age, disability, and a lifetime of vocations that left him less than wealthy in retirement, Dad finds himself in the bulls eye of the economic consequences of politically motivated high energy prices. After all, a man who needs to stay within a finite budget does not toss around dollars like certain presidential spouses do, you know, the ones that care little about the amount of fuel consumed during husbandless weekend ski trips to Colorado.

This summer due to skyrocketing gasoline prices, fewer people will be vacationing than in summers past and those that do vacation will generally be staying closer to home. This will not bode well for bed and breakfasts, novelty stores, or tourist attractions on and off the beaten path. While some people who would normally visit Europe during the summer might instead hit Mackinac Island, this change will not help airlines, taxi services, or Hare Krishna recruiters on a strict quota.

Businesses are going to be forced to pick the bones of fixed income consumers for survival at the same time that fixed income consumers will be picking the bones of their wallets. Any product shipped in America will become more expensive. Any product containing petroleum will become more expensive. Any company producing products normally purchased with disposable dollars will find it harder and harder to survive. Every one of these developments will force consumers into more wallet-sensitive choices.

These are good choices according to the ruling party in Washington. These are also good choices to a few sympathetic Republicans--a couple of which are currently running to depose our reigning King.

What it all boils down to is this--keeping Dad home is now a goal of the US government. Let him eat day old cake.

And Barack Obama sees this and says that it is good. But Mom is pissed.

$105.84

The closing price of West Texas Crude today.

This despite an economy that has sputtered for the past four years, despite a weather trend that has graced most of the continental US with a warmer than average winter, despite higher than ever MsPG for American driven vehicles, and despite fewer actual driven miles over the past year in this once great land.

The American recovery cannot occur without inexpensive energy. When energy prices first began to pinch consumers in early 2008, democrats blamed the big oil companies while relentlessly trying to kill any and all fossil fuel production that it could. Democrat policies have closed coal fired power plants, have prevented the opening of clean coal power plants, have put offline plans for expansion of American shale oil, have stymied the Keystone pipeline, have left millions of acres of oil rich land untouchable for the oil industry, and have engaged in an illegal moratorium against offshore drilling in the gulf (a moratorium they will relax when enough exploration rigs move to foreign waters and cannot be called back.)

I already know many people who are no longer consuming products and services because they know that their fuel bills are going to eat up too much of their paychecks. Hamburgers remain uneaten, trinkets unpurchased, and movie seats unoccupied.

Billions of dollars are being sucked out of the pockets of consumers because of our disastrous energy and environmental policies. This is exactly what Barack Obama wants and said he wanted. This is exactly what Stephen Chu wants and said he wanted. This is exactly what Lisa P. Jackson wants and said that she wanted.

When gasoline gets to $5.00, $6.00, $7.00 and $8.00 per gallon, how much of your disposable income will evaporate into your gas tank instead of at other local businesses already on the precipice of closing?

Hope and change, baby, hope and change. Enjoy.

Capitalism Is The Problem!

And yet this country has not operated in a capitalist bubble for decades. What is today decried as a failure of capitalism is in fact, more reflective of fascism--a system in which state blessed ideology is carried out by industry groups willing to implement those polices for suckle provided by government.

Companies willing to tote the government's line gain greater competitive advantages not only because of money received directly through government grant, but also because their competitors have to hurdle regulations put in place designed to hobble them. Companies and entire industries are allowed to survive despite their inherent inefficiencies even though true free market capitalism would have allowed them to die a quick death without intervention.

So, ethanol stays alive in order to provide a fuel that uses more energy in its manufacturing and transport than it actually produces. Chrysler stays alive (as a free gift to the UAW and Fiat) despite two government bailouts. Duke Energy gets theirs too.

Who is the American Taliban?

There is fear in America. There is the gnashing of teeth. There are ravens sitting atop the weather vanes outside of progressive voters' windows.

It is an odd thing to watch, this hysterical response to a Christian perhaps earning the presidential nomination of the GOP. There was no such hysteria from progressives when Barack Obama, a twenty year member of Jeremiah Wright's congregation and an avowed born again Christian, won the nomination of today's American socialist party.

Perhaps this is because Obama more or less admitted during the campaign that he had no idea what Wright was blathering on about during all those years that he sat in the pews being elbowed by his enthusiastic though never-proud-of-America spouse. More likely it was the belief among progressives that Obama's constitutional scholarship would prevent him from ever (wink, wink) using assumed executive powers to subvert the Constitution toward his own favored outcomes.

I have no idea about the sincerity of Obama's core religious beliefs, but on the second point progressives certainly had it right, and it was the conservatives who should have been worried about the dismissal of the Constitution and an unprecedented executive power grab.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama spoke eloquently about his family and about the importance of family. He spoke about the importance of his religion, about community, and about service to others. Oddly, he completely forgot the presence of some guys in the neighborhood. He lamented the break up of the family and incidentally said that gay marriage was not something that he believed in though he favored civil unions. None of these comments shook up the American political landscape.

Things are a bit different this time around. Yesterday comments by Rick Santorum in West Michigan were enough to scorch the foreheads of progressive socialists. Santorum's sin was spending some time talking about traditional values and in particular, about the failures of the American family.

This apparently is taboo in 2012.

Statistics are statistics and to the dismay of liberals, Santorum knows a few of them. In today's America too many children are born out of wedlock. In today's America, too many children grow up in one parent households or in households where no parent is present at all. In today's America, too many families are plagued with the scourge of drugs and alcohol and Alice reruns.

In today's America too many children reach their schooling years with no adult outside of the school caring one whit whether the child attends class or learns anything at all. Sadly, too many of those parents who actually do seem to care about their children prove their parenting incompetence by sending little Sally and Johnny to school packing only a turkey sandwich, chips, a banana, and apple juice.

It is well known that poverty rates are much higher among children who grow up in one parent households. Children who grow up in one parent households are more likely to do drugs and drop out of school and are much more likely to live a life in poverty. Both the American legal system and the Jerry Springer show are choked with persons who grew up in broken families.

Mentioning these uncomfortable facts on the campaign trail breeds hysteria in progressives.

One of Santorum's most offending statements of the weekend:

"We know the devastation the family breakdown causes our society, yet you will never hear any politician run around and talk about it.

We can cut taxes, grow the economy, we can cut spending and ... reduce the size and scale of government, but it won't work unless the family starts … coming back together."

It was as if Santorum had threatened to burn down city hall.

In comments at the Detroit News were some of these gems:

Santorum hates everybody: Protestants, non-married people, people who take birth control or God forbid seek pre-natal (sic) care, the blahs (he said he did not mean black people it came out blah people), people who send their kids to public schools, environmentalists, people who go to college aka "the elites" and people who support unions. ok. OBAMA LANDSLIDE 2012!

Another:

West Michigan:Home of this state's branch of the American Taliban.

And from a Ron Paul supporter:

ready for the christian version of sharia law?

Of course, in terms of one's religious or social beliefs, if a President abides by the Constitution he must lead his administration lawfully and according to that document. Attacking Santorum as if he would not govern in such a way is to project onto conservatives the same sort of political maneuverings that are common among democrats in general and Barack Obama's administration in particular.

Rick Santorum has vowed that he will abide by the Constitution, and while Obama took an oath to do the same when he came into office, it is not something that he has allowed to hobble him during his three years of post-Constitutional tyranny. What progressives fear in Santorum is exactly what their guy has delivered in Obama; a routine flanking of Congress through regulation, the corralling of administrative tasks beyond congressional oversight, recess appointments when Congress is in session, a war fought without Congressional approval, and countless departmental overreaches that fly in the face of both Congressional approval and popular sentiment.

In fact, should Santorum be fortunate enough to win the GOP nomination and go on to an electoral victory, it will be Obama himself who will share much of the blame should Santorum decide to govern as Obama has--that is, largely outside of Congressional oversight.

So, why wouldn't progressives decry the possibility of a Santorum who says that he believes in a moral American society? Why wouldn't they quake in fear over the new American Taliban? After all, they sat by and applauded the Constitution's shredding and welcomed with open arms a sitting President's tendency to overreach--they are, in effect, the offensive line that opened the hole.

Don't get me wrong. I would have the same problem with Santorum as I do with Obama if he decided to govern in the same manner. As for his comments yesterday, if he desires the reestablishment of the American family (something that he can only do inspirationally, by the way, and cannot legislate or administer within the limits of the Constitution that he has sworn to uphold) what can it hurt, except of course, if he tries to govern unconstitutionally--a precedent that Obama should be proud of.

As a Christian, I want to live and believe in the way that I want to, and I want to live my life in freedom beyond the reaches of a federal government wanting the power to establish its own church and morality and then adamant about forcing me to abide by them. While these are my God given rights as recognized in the Constitution, it is these same rights that are under attack today--not by potential President Rick Santorum who has vowed to govern constitutionally, but in President Barack Obama who has shown no interest in doing so.

I do not fear the future American Taliban. I want to get the ones currently in office tossed out.