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Now is the Time for All Good Men (and Women) to Come to the Aid of Their Country

Mark Noonan

Gay Patriot reports on the election in Houston of a conservative lesbian to be mayor:

When the LA Times called Annise Parker, Houston’s Mayor-Elect “conservative,” I thought that maybe this lesbian is a Republican, but, alas, she is not. In the Space City’s mayoral runoff yesterday, she “defeated former City Attorney Gene Locke on an austere platform, convincing voters that her financial bona fides and restrained promises would be best suited in trying financial times.”…

…She wasn’t running as the lesbian candidate for Mayor, but as a prudent manager of the city’s finances who happened to be lesbian. Her victory seems to be emblematic of the changing attitudes toward gays, that if gay and lesbian candidates run for office on issues of concern to voters in their jurisdiction, where their sexuality is incidental to their political philosophy and campaign platform, voters will look past their sexuality and consider the merits of their person and their policy proposals.

With Mayor-Elect Parker’s background in financial management and commitment to sound budgetary policies, it looks like, come January 1, the City of Houston will be in good hands.

Gay Patriot does note that she was opposed by some in the religious right, but I find nothing from the largest groups (Catholic League, Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition, eg) about the election – so, I’ll put down the opposition to her from Christian groups as a minor issue, and it certainly didn’t sway the electorate. The bone of contention for the Christian groups in opposition was a worry that Parker might revive an old battle about domestic partnership benefits. She might, for all I know, but she didn’t campaign on it – and if she’s got any sense at all, she’ll leave that sleeping dog to lie, at least through her first term. Continue reading →

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Mark Noonan

Sorry boys and girls, was out with the step-daughter and son-in-law for dinner this evening and just don’t have the “oomph” to write something good for the AM. Have at it.

A possible subject for discussion is just how thrilled we all are that the Chargers have come back strong and look to take the AFC West, again…only trouble is they’ll probably have to go through Indianapolis to the Super Bowl.

Our Hack in Chief

Mark Noonan

Why is our White House just so entirely political?

On the eve of the first election of the Obama era, the Washington Post ran a long profile Monday of the White House’s “low-profile” political director, Patrick Gaspard. It was an unremarkable story filled with unremarkable tidbits about how the unassuming Gaspard has thrived in a West Wing filled with political heavies–save for one quote from Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina that caught my eye. Explaining what sets Gaspard apart from his White House peers, Messina said, “We are all campaign hacks. Patrick is a movement guy. He really came up through the movement and the grassroots.”

This was meant to be an innocuous bit of inside baseball touting Gaspard’s labor roots and progressive bona fides. But it wound up revealing the Obama White House’s biggest weakness: The president’s top advisers are not just overly political, they are almost totally political. Indeed, this West Wing is stacked with “hacks”–campaign professionals who are acculturated to think, act and win in the hothouse environments of elections, not to govern a bitterly divided country in extremely difficult times.

And so they continue to blame Bush and declare war on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News – its not that they think its the best thing to do, but that its the only thing they know how to do. Past masters at the art of spinning a news cycle, they fail at everything else because campaigning and governing are two very different skill sets – and thus Presidents usually have clearly delineated political and government staffs.

You see, all that campaign rhetoric about bringing us all together was just that – campaign rhetoric. And when the time comes for Obama to become the uniter, these people won’t skip a beat and Obama will suddenly start talking about bridging our differences and working together. Right now, that’s not on the political agenda because it doesn’t fit in with the current need to placate the leftwing base prior to shutting them up in the run-up to 2010.

A horrible government run by people who create and hammer home talking points – that is all we’ve got.

Weekly Recap (2009-12-12)

Matt Margolis

China's Demographic Time Bomb

Mark Noonan

Remember, yesterday, when I pointed out an anti-human article advocating that the whole world go on China’s evil “one child” policy? Well, here’s the kicker:

Wang Weijia and her husband grew up surrounded by propaganda posters lecturing them that “Mother Earth is too tired to sustain more children” and “One more baby means one more tomb.”

They learned the lesson so well that when Shanghai government officials, alarmed by their city’s low birthrate and aging population, abruptly changed course this summer and began encouraging young couples to have more than one child, their reaction was instant and firm: No way.

“We have already given all our time and energy for just one child. We have none left for a second,” said Wang, 31, a human resources administrator with an 8-month-old son.

More than 30 years after China’s one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed “little emperors,” a population crisis is looming in the country.

The average birthrate has plummeted to 1.8 children per couple as compared with six when the policy went into effect, according to the U.N. Population Division, while the number of residents 60 and older is predicted to explode from 16.7 percent of the population in 2020 to 31.1 percent by 2050. That is far above the global average of about 20 percent.

And not only that, there is the imbalance between men and women. Chinese culture, as in the case of a lot of non-western culture, highly values male children – and, so, as one-child became the rule, more and more couples would abort female babies in favor of male children. The Culture of Death is just like that – everything about it is wrong, and all of its effects are bad.

It is high time that we stopped thinking that we can get justice out of injustice – that right will emerge from wrong. Doing the right thing almost invariably seems to be more difficult, but as facts come in, it is always revealed that it was the best thing to do. Life is a wonderful thing – even at its worst, it is still sublime. We’re always doing the wrong thing, these days. Faced with teen pregnancy, we teach them how to have sex. Faced with a growing underclass, we subsidize it. Faced with historic injustice, we apply further injustice. Perhaps we should just try to do the right thing, from now on?

Dopenhagen Update

Mark Noonan

This has to make all environmentalists proud:

Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe plan to address negotiators at international climate talks in Copenhagen next week.

After all, the intellectual ability and good sense of these three men is right up there with such AGW luminaries as Al Gore, right?

The whole thing is a sick joke – but one which could be quite expensive as it seems a lot of people, Obama included, want to shake down the United States for billions of dollars to fight the phony effects of bogus global warming.

UPDATE: To believe in AGW, you have to ignore facts.

Hard Times Ahead and What About Those Jobs Numbers?

Mark Noonan

Please read the whole article over at Mish’s and play the video “Mish: Nov. Jobs Report ‘Looks Fabricated’. Expect Harder Times in 2010”.

Its not like they are necessarily making up numbers out of whole cloth – they don’t have to. The very way the jobs are calculated allows Obama and his liberals to pretend things are better and try to sell us on that notion. Remember – the reason we lost “only” 11,000 jobs in November is because of factors like the BLS believing “X” number of jobs were created, when there is no indication any jobs were created at all, outside government, in November. Additionally, participation in the labor force continues to decline as people lose their unemployment benefits and/or just give up on job hunting – meaning that even as more people have been losing their jobs, the unemployment rate can go down.

But even if the jobs numbers are correct, the economic prospects are still bleak because we’re still losing jobs in manufacturing, construction and other wealth-creating businesses. While GDP is forced up by printing and borrowing money and then spending it like gangbusters, the actual wealth of the country continues to decline. How long can Obama and the Fed keep the magic going? I don’t know – but eventually, everything has to be paid for. I figure its months before it all comes crashing down – but it could be a year or two. But crash it will – and not just here, but all around the world where there are economic bubbles upon bubbles (China’s stock market and the European bond market, for instance).

Save as much as you can and get ready for the worst – it is still to come.

Boom Time for Federal Employees

Mark Noonan

The story:

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

This is horribly wrong – if anything, the federal workforce should be undergoing reductions in order to control spending. But what do Obama and the liberals propose? Much, much more of the same. This is insane! We need more people creating wealth, not more draining of our economic lifeblood to boost up AFSCME Union numbers, and donations to the Democrat party.

Message to everyone hired since January 20th: don’t get too comfy. You’ll be forced out soon – and that isn’t a threat, its a promise.

HAT TIP: Mish’s