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.