The Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare may come today. Thoughts and predictions?
UPDATE: No ruling today… next week it looks like…
Campaign 2012
Hey, Obama: Where is My Hoover Dam?
Interesting news story: Voyager 1 is now on the very edge of the outer solar system and will soon enter inter-stellar space, the first man-made object to do so. Clearly, a milestone in human achievement. But here’s the kicker – its actually an achievement of the 1970’s, as Voyager was launched in 1977. That got me thinking – our government has been wasting bags of money for the past 80 years, but we’re always getting less and less from it.
Think of it like this: when FDR started us on our path to bankruptcy, we at least got the Hoover Dam; the Civilian Conservation Corps (any of you camping enthusiasts out there can probably name a half dozen camping/fishing spots which were created by the CCA); Mt Rushmore. For Ike’s bags of money spent we got the inter-state highway system. For JFK’s profligacy we got the Moon shot. It all started to go wrong with LBJ; his building of the Great American Bankruptcy got us the “Great Society” and Vietnam. Nixon just went from bad to worse – spending still shot up and we lost Vietnam and got millstones like the EPA. And on and on it went – until, now, we’ve got Obama…who has spent at least $3 trillion more than would have been spent if McCain had been elected, and what did we get for it? Solyndra.
Our liberals are spending more money than ever and we are getting less and less for it – just more government; more payoffs to cronies; more bailouts for the well-connected. We, the people, are more than used to getting robbed blind by liberals…but at least we used to get something useful thrown in. Like the Hoover Dam and the Moon shot; in other words, things which useful people can either use or at least glory in. Can you imagine the shivers of horror among liberals if anyone suggesting building another Hoover Dam? Carving another mountain in to a grand, American monument? If, on the other hand, you offered to re-carve Mt. Rushmore in to a Gay Pride display, liberals would allow it – with no more than 10 years of bureaucratic red tape between proposal and first action.
Small minded, cowardly, little cretins who’s only concern is their place at the trough – that is modern, American liberals. That, by the way, is what was rejected in Wisconsin. That, also, is what the battle is ultimately about – will America shake off the chains of liberalism and rise to new heights of glory, or will we go on our knees and, fearful of doing anything, die a slow, painful death? Will we, that is, take the path of least resistance until the whole United States is Detroit? Or will we recover our courage and not only save America, but even return Detroit to its glory days?
Obama offers us nothing but more bureaucrats and more money for his cronies – Romney offers us a return to American greatness. A return of an America which can, indeed, put a man on the Moon.
My choice is made; and never have I had an easier one.
The Race Card
Well it’s started, and it will only get worse. This morning on the Obama reelection network, MSNBC, Melissa Harris-Perry and her guests are bemoaning the fact that Obama is seen through the lens as the “first black president” and what an extra burden that is. Evidently they have forgotten how they celebrated that fact just 4 years ago, and the fact that Obama has taken every opportunity to remind people of that fact – “if I had a son he would look like Trayvon”, so why the disconnect? Obama is slipping amongst “white voters” so it must be because of racism right? After all, white unemployment is less than black unemployment so according to MSNBC, white voters should be flocking to the polls to vote for this President and if they don’t, well then they’re just ungrateful racists.
Yesterday, Sam Donaldson chimed in to support the noton that the recent heckling on behalf of the daily caller news reporter was because ……… wait for it ……. Obama is black. No other president has ever had to deal with rude press reporters before right Sam? It seems to me Sam that you perfected the “rude press” persona, so it seems a little disingenuous for you to ascribe mal intent to other reporters following your lead.
This is going to be a vey interesting political summer folks, and the democrats will play every card they can to keep Obama in office. The race card will be just one of them, but it will trump all others.
Happy Father’s day to all you dad’s out there!
UPDATE:
As an addition to this thread, in my opinion we will have a very hard time moving this country forward, if we continue to wallow in the ethnic, race and financial divide that democrats, and Obama have us mired in. We are all children of God, regardless of our skin color, with the same needs and wants for ourselves and our family, so let’s stop listening to those who want to divide us for their political futures, and let’s start focusing on common sense policies that will benefit all of us, and not just a few.
I Still Say Jeb Bush Was Right
It’s perhaps predictable that I, the guy who started Blogs For Bush back in 2003, would be defending Jeb Bush over comments he made this week suggesting that Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush would have hard time earning the Republican Party nomination today. Of course the thing is, I’ve been saying this for a while now, well before Jeb Bush said it this week.
So, yesterday I inserted my opinion into Cluster’s blog post on the subject, because I think it’s an issue worth intra-party discussion and reflection. Today, I have to respond to another piece on the subject, my friend S.E. Cupp’s commentary in the New York Daily News.
S.E. Cupp, like many other conservatives, took offense to Jeb’s comments, suggesting that Jeb switch parties if he really thinks Reagan isn’t conservative enough to get our party’s nomination:
Some of Reagan’s strongest opponents were, in fact, establishment Republicans — guys like Jeb Bush’s dad, who called Reagan’s fiscal policies “voodoo economics.”
If Reagan were alive today, he would probably find that some things have changed. But the party he loved and the causes he cared so deeply about are still here, still very much a part of the conservative movement.
She laid out a conservative case for Reagan. Here’s a few points:
- “He famously campaigned against state-sponsored welfare programs…”
- “Reagan so despised the caprice and power of organized labor that he told an entire fleet of air-traffic controllers to get the hell back to work.”
- “Reagan was so supportive of capital punishment he could make a Texan blush today..”
There are more examples… all of which have the same problem: these examples essentially all come from during his presidency or his campaign. But, as a hypothetical candidate in 2012 for the Republican Party nomination, we can’t look at Reagan, the two-term president, can we? It just doesn’t make sense, constitutionally or otherwise.
So, hypothetically speaking, what would have happened to Ronald Reagan in the 2012 primary, with the record of Ronald Reagan prior to January 20, 1981?
Based on what we saw in this year’s primary, with every single candidate being dubbed a RINO by supporters of opposing candidates, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Reagan being a former Democrat would have made many in the Tea Party skeptical, if not outright distrusting.
And then there’s his record as Governor of California. Though this occurred before I was born, it doesn’t take much Googling to find that there was and still is plenty of debate over just how conservative he was as governor.
But Reagan, like his Republican successors in presidential campaigns, campaigned on a conservative platform. Yes, as S.E. mentioned, today’s party did nominate McCain in 2008, and at CPAC 2008, when Mitt Romney ended his campaign paving the way for McCain to lock up the nomination, conservative activists all around me were furious. Those same activists were furious that the “conservative alternative to McCain” in 2008 would be their party’s nominee in 2012. Indeed, several of my conservative blogger/activist friends and counterparts put a lot of effort into a NotMittRomney campaign.
I’m not going to rehash the points I made the other day in Cluster’s blog post, but I am going say that it’s not a fair attack Jeb by using Reagan’s record as president. And yes, I am sure there are plenty of conservative cases for Reagan’s gubernatorial record, but there are also conservative cases against it, which most certainly would have been made… and in the internet age, Reagan’s path to the Republican nomination would have looked very different. There is no reason to believe that the Tea Party, or one of its many subgroups, wouldn’t have rallied against him for one reason or another, regardless of the conservative values and positions he ran on in 1980.
It’s not the party that’s the problem though, it’s the base… the voters who vote in primaries… we’ve grown less will to accept compromise. I’m not saying we trade in conservative values to achieve electoral victories, but we should be willing to take smaller steps in the right direction when bigger steps are less likely to be achieved.
For example: Senator Scott Brown’s 2010 special election victory came in part to Tea Party support from around the country. This year, as he tries for a full term, many of those supporters have turned away, because Brown has not been conservative enough. Apparently, to some conservative activists, a small step to the right is no longer worth investing in, even if it means a large step to the left is the alternative.
Activists on both sides of the aisle are becoming less tolerant of moderates in their party. There’s no use in denying it. When allegiances are made in primary it’s easier to brand the candidate you don’t support as RINO, than give them credit for a compromise that overal achieved a conservative end.
And Ronald Reagan would not have been immune to it.
Obama Losing African-American Support?
Last week, in an update to an open thread, I linked to an article which shows that under Obama black Americans have suffered greatly, with black unemployment rising to ruinous levels. I asked, rhetorically, if these conditions will really cause black Americans to once again award 95% of their votes to Obama. My thinking was, yes, it would. Though I expect black turnout to be lower in 2012 as a percentage of the total vote than 2008, I fully expected a repeat of the overwhelming support for Obama.
Perhaps I was wrong – this poll (PDF) by the Democrat-leaning PPP shows Romney gaining the support of 20% of North Carolina African-American voters. To be sure, the polling sample of black voters is small; about 200 respondents. But, still – my goodness! If Romney can really win 20% of the black vote then not only is Obama doomed but about 2o or 30 House seats suddenly become “in play” for the November election (the Democrats have about that many House seats which are theirs by gift of a 90%+ black vote in favor of the Democrats…if that drops a bit, the Democrats lose the seat). It is poll results like this which must be costing Axelrod many a sleepless night.
Count on it that Obama will sweep the African-American vote by an overwhelming majority – but if there is really any movement to Romney then it is going to be a stunning political change. Maybe, at the end of the day it will take a black liberal to destroy African-American loyalty to the Democrats?
As an aside, the overall poll shows Romney up 48-46 over Obama in North Carolina – in line with the “battleground” status of North Carolina for 2012. On the other hand, the polling sample is 44% Democrat, 36% Republican. Almost certainly on November 6th the turnout will be more in line with 40%+ GOPer and no better than 35% or so Democrat…meaning that you can add at least 5 points to Romney’s total in this poll. I never believed stories that North Carolina was competitive for the Democrats in 2012 and I’m more certain than ever it won’t be – watch for the Democrats to pull the plug on the State right after the convention.
Because He Can
So why is Obama doing such a poor job, and getting away with it? Because he can, courtesy of a complicit media and an American populace with a very short attention span. Case in pointing is the recent call by Obama to put recently laid off teachers, and other public sector employees back to work. Well, the reason why they are being laid off in the first place is because the 2009 stimulus money is drying up, which was a temporary fix to begin with, but the administration won’t remind you of that and neither will the media. They both know that many people will fall for another temporary fix and they can get away with demogoging this issue one more time for political gain. Second case in point is the Bush tax rate cuts, which now should be called the Obama tax rate cuts. While the administration and the media continue to blame those rate cuts for the deficits, many people have forgotten that in December of 2010, Obama and a democratically controlled congress chose to extend those rate cuts, but again, they won’t remind you of that.
Maybe the most egregious example of this grand hoodwink the media and the administration are playing on America, is the Administration line that North America only has 2% of the worlds oil reserves. That is an entirely skewed number based only on identified reserves with completed EIS studies that have already been planned for extraction. The fact is, North America has nearly equal the crude reserves that Saudi Arabia has, as is being discovered with the Baaken Fields in North Dakota. There are many other examples of the media laying cover for this president – remember “shovel ready jobs”? By Obama’s own admission, those jobs “weren’t so shovel ready”, but that is of course assuming that Obama knew what he was talking about? It is past the time we demand that not only our elected officials be more competent and honest, but we must also demand that from the media. The lengths to which our media has promoted and provided cover for this president should possibly be investigated, and should certainly serve to inform future generations on how not to conduct themselves as journalists.
More media cover for the Obama administration. The media will gladly give time to Nuns and Priests that support the regimes efforts, but ignore the lawsuits and the protests. ABC, CBS, and NBC stayed true to their liberal slant and ignored the 164 rallies across the United States on Friday against the federal government’s abortifacient/birth control mandate under ObamaCare.
The Moment Obama Lost?
From Powerline, quoting Obama:
The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in.
And so, you know, if Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is how do we help state and local governments…
Three days ago the voters of Wisconsin rejected the notion that the people should pony up ever more so that government be flush with cash…and now Obama is asserting that if the GOP wants to be helpful, the way to do it is to get the people to pony up ever more so government can b flush with cash! This goes beyond stupid – this is an egregious rejection of basic reality. Whatever else the people might want, more government isn’t it.
If we can’t beat Obama, now, then we might as well close up shop for good. He’s just proven himself to be completely out of touch and in opposition to the direction Americans want to go.
Hate To Say I Told Them So…
A “Your Turn” article that I wrote a month or two ago was rejected by the St. Cloud Times editorial board. In it I said that the Right to Work amendment would make it to the Minnesota ballot in November. I admit that I was wrong about that, though given what happened last night, I believe it will happen next November.
What I was correct about was thus:
…when the union leadership organize angry demonstrations like so many 60s hippie throwbacks or a cadres of Bolsheviks running roughshod in near-riotous mobs, they’re not doing themselves any favors. At the same time, they just don’t seem to have a clue as to just how precarious their position is, or how to fix it.
Up to this point, Minnesota’s teacher and other unions, having had the luxury of being able to act like spoiled teenagers; largely without consequence, have been virtual one-trick ponies in terms of defaulting to in-your-face, thuggish tactics to get demands met.
As Minnesota native Bob Dylan once crooned, “Oh the times, they are a changing. If Minnesota’s unions want to survive, they better damn well change with them.
Randy Krebs, St. Cloud Times editor, stated that my language was too strong. Sometimes though, the truth hurts. Those who work in the media, above all, should know this.
My point was that “in your face” demonstrations no longer work. The unions instead need to focus on winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, and that would need to take place via a positive public relations campaign that you can visit here (See the Mormon Church, for example). I am a union member, but I am also far-enough removed from the kool-aid drinking, monolithic union culture to know how the public views unions; and that in this economy, there is precious-little sympathy for their ‘plight’ and their propensity to throw temper tantrums over health care benefits, tenure issues, and the like, when many non-union counterparts are worrying about simply finding a job in this rotten economy that the democrat party, abetted by those same union footsoldiers, have created.
The Wisconsin union goons sealed their fate when they laid siege to the Capitol in Madison. The Wisconsin Democrats sealed their fate when they retreated like ‘Brave Sir Robin‘ across the Illinois border.
There is, thankfully, a different political course upon which we as a nation are embarking; a course in which reason is gaining an equal footing with, and dare I say, is on a trajectory to soon overtake ‘might makes right’ thug tactics.
I’m just wondering how long it will take before the unions (and, incidentally, the media that blindly support them) realize this. Or will they instead find themselves huddled together, and pouting in a feckless corner of irrelevance as the rest of the world moves (and prospers) beyond them.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Turns out there is a reason to vote for Obama.
On, Wisconsin!
According to the polls, Walker will be re-elected (is that the proper term for surviving a recall?) today by the voters of Wisconsin – by 5 to 10 percentage points, depending on which poll you believe (I tend towards the higher margin of victory – not because a poll says so, but because the dynamics of the race are showing increasing GOP support and a collapse of Democrat support). While various liberal pundits and power brokers have spent the last week or so downplaying the significance of the Wisconsin result the fact remains that the American left poured everything it had in to Wisconsin – first to try and prevent Walker’s reforms from being enacted then in an attempt to undo them, with this recall vote today just being the last gasp. After all this effort if Walker survives, then this is the death knell for the American left.
The left, since the 1930’s, has used the government to fund the increasing power of the left. Public sector unions are just this sort of thing on steroids – such unions lobby themselves (essentially) on whether or not government will get bigger while they also ensure that anyone who plays ball with Big Government and the left gets rewarded with wealth and/or political power. The real reason that government never gets smaller is because the government funds (on a gigantic scale) a vast army of lobbyists who work night and day against the concept of reducing government. As long as public sector unions have unfettered power to draw money from government workers and use it in support of those politicians who are willing to increase the power and size of government (and thus the power and size of the public sector unions, as well as other leftist groups), so will government continue to grow. While Walker’s reforms did a lot of things the most important aspect of it was to liberate the workers of Wisconsin government from a de-facto requirement to be a member of the union.
As was reported a few days back, public sector union membership has collapsed in Wisconsin – all due to Walker’s reform which took away the union’s power to deduct dues automatically from and employees pay. Now the unions have to rely on voluntary subscription…and the workers are showing they want nothing to do with the union. It was this which really impelled the leadership of the left to go ballistic. While rank and file liberals are still convinced that Walker just hates workers, the union bosses know that the real issue is whether or not workers like the union. Events are showing that they don’t – and each person who quits the union takes one more bit of power from the union. The power to influence elections and lobby for ever larger government is ebbing away from the unions, and thus from the overall left.
This is for the whole ball of wax. If Walker wins, then the public sector unions are on the ropes – and it then becomes only a matter of time, given our budget crisis, that the rest of government funding for the left goes to the chopping block. Think about this – the taxpayers provide a great deal of money for Planned Parenthood. PP spends a great deal of money not only advancing abortion, as a cause, but also attacking Republicans in service of their cause. Boiled down – though PP pretends to keep the funds separate – the tax dollars of pro-life Americans are being used to fund the political advancement of pro-abortion Americans. On and on it goes through a whole host of groups…all of them leftist, all of them getting all or part of their funding from the taxpayers, all of them advancing causes which most of the taxpayers oppose. With fear of the unions gone, more and more politicians will be willing to slaughter liberal sacred cows to balance the budget.
So, get ready first off for a lot of fun tonight – watching crestfallen liberals and making fun of their increasingly bizarre attempts to spin this as not a loss, at all. But then watch them come blazing back on the attack, knowing that if Obama goes down to defeat, there will be nothing stopping the federal government from duplicating Walker’s efforts.
UPDATE: So far reports indicate a very high turnout.
UPDATE II: Still many reports of high turnout and some indications of Democrat ballot box stuffing efforts. Drudge is saying that early exits indicate Walker by 5 – which is doubly encouraging because it appears that Democrat areas had the higher turnout early on. It will be what it will be – and I expect Walker will win as his victory margin will be outside the Democrat “margin of fraud”.
The Impending Implosion
The American Progressive movement is soon to collapse upon itself and we can
probably expect the self destruction to be loud and messy – there are signs of it already — everywhere. The brain trust at MSNBC are getting more shrill by the day, as evidenced by Al Sharpton’s recent tirade; Elizabeth Warren appears poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory due to a convenient lie told to further her liberal cred and career; Obama is now known to have told a similar lie to further his standing in the progressive movement including his recent endorsement of same sex marriage; Obamacare is most likely to lose in the SC, as is their lawsuit against AZ; even some democrats are now opposing the incessant attacks on private equity; the “war on women” has gone no where; and now they find themselves the subject of 42 lawsuits on behalf of a very powerful institution in the name of the Catholic Church, and these are just some of the current troubles confronting this regime. Add to that the Euro crisis, the Egypt thing isn’t turning out well and oh yeah, there’s that economy thing, and we’ve got the makings of the perfect storm
Scott Walker winning in WI will hopefully be the beginning of the end for progressives, culminating in November, and most likely we can expect an all out assault on conservatives, decency and common sense by the media, the administration, and by their loyalists, ie; OWS, SEIU, AFL-CIO, etc, throughout the summer. I hope Romney stays focused and on message through what portends to be a very vicious campaign, and I hope conservatives will hold him to account to do the necessary things to get us back on track when he wins. This is an important election in not only rescuing the country, but in hopefully “fundamentally transforming” the Democratic Party of Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, into the party of people like Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford and Joe Manchin, and digging back into the past, people like John Breaux and Sam Nunn. Maybe then we can start getting things done.
Thanks to Cluster for the content of this post.
UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:
Can you say “meltdown”, boys and girls? From the LA Times:
Artur Davis, one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Democratic party for good.
In a post published Tuesday on his website, Davis was vague about his future political endeavors, but declared: “If I were to run, it would be as a Republican. And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”
Davis, who represented Alabama’s seventh congressional district from 2003 to 2011, was notably the first member of Congress outside of Illinois to endorse then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 presidential bid. And it was Davis who seconded the official nomination of Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention…(emphasis added)
This is pretty huge – this is the draggled, rotting, tail-end of “hope and change”.
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