Blogs For Victory

With polls showing no statistically significant advantage for Barack Obama, and some with a lead for McCain, Obama seems desperate to shift his positions to be more moderate… his latest flip-flop is on drilling. First he was against it, now he’s for “some” drilling and tapping the strategic oil reserve.

That well-famed claim that the US has a higher infant mortality rate than nations with socialised medicine? Not quite what it seems:

Q: If socialized medicine is so bad, why are infant mortality rates higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations with government or single-payer health care?

A: U.S. infant mortality rates (deaths of infants <1 year of age per 1,000 live births) are sometimes cited as evidence of the failings of the U.S. system of health care delivery. Universal health care, it’s argued, is why babies do better in countries with socialized medicine.

But in fact, the main factors affecting early infant survival are birth weight and prematurity. The way that these factors are reported — and how such babies are treated statistically — tells a different story than what the numbers reveal.

Low birth weight infants are not counted against the “live birth” statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.

According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.

But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies — considered “unsalvageable” outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive — is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.

When Canada briefly registered an increased number of low weight babies previously omitted from statistical reporting, the infant mortality rose from 6.1 per 1,000 to 6.4 per thousand in just one year.

According to research done by Canada’s Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health, “Comparisons of infant mortality rates by place and time should be adjusted for the proportion of such live births, especially if the comparisons involve recent years.”

Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. But when the main determinant of mortality — weight at birth — is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the United States.

This is entirely unsurprising – anyone who is surprised that a government-run health care system would fudge the numbers to make themselves look good is the biggest fool alive. Remember, when a government bureaucrat sits down to work, there are several factors governing the work done:

1. To do as little as possible, because you don’t get paid more for doing more work in government.

2. To have as few mistakes as possible blamed on yourself.

3. To ensure that 100% of the budgeted funds are spent each fiscal year.

4. To ensure that any information coming out from your bureaucracy reflects well upon your efforts.

The perfection of government is an agency which does nothing while spending a lot of money which has as its end product a fabulous report of how great you all did, with a pitch for increased funding because, well, you can see that we spent all the money budgeted. The perfection of government agency is not a lean, mean public service machine boldly telling the unvarnished truth and desperate to do everything it can to serve the public. Given the nature of government, it is no surprise that such things as infant mortality aren’t reported exactly fair and square. What we have here is the problem of how to reduce infant mortality in a government-run program – they could have either worked harder and done more (and where’s the upside in that?), or they could just change what is called an infant to the point where a large percentage of infants who die aren’t counted. Presto! Without any additional work, you’re doing an even better job than before…

This is the sort of incompetance Obama has in store for us if he wins. We’ll get progressively worse services by agencies who continuously tell us that things are getting better all the time. Its not because Obama is a bad man, but because by putting government in charge he’ll only be turning it over to the people who’s incentives are to not work yet spend large sums of money.

Grand Old Partisan remembers Oliver Morton, a Civil War-era GOPer:

During the Civil War, Governor Morton blocked a Democrat ploy to withdraw the state militia from the U.S. Army by having Republican legislators walk out, preventing a quorum. For the next two years, he funded the state government with contributions from Republican counties and the War Department. When Secretary Stanton told him that the War Department’s (illegal) financial support for the state of Indiana would open Governor Morton to prosecution should the U.S. Government lose the Civil War, Morton replied: “If we lose this war, I do not wish to live.”

A few years later, as a U.S Senator, Oliver Morton had this to say: “Every one who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat. Every New York rioter in 1863 who burned up little children in colored asylums, who robbed, ravished, and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, calls himself a Democrat. In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason, North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.”

Strong stuff, but when the truth needs to be told, then one should tell it – and back in those days, what Morton was saying was 100% true. I bring this up for two reasons:

1. To add yet more proof of the GOP’s ancient concern for the rights of African-Americans.

2. To demonstrate that some times we must speak boldly – that when someone is doing something really horrific, we should be horrified and tell everyone how we view the issue. To hide behind mealy-mouthed words in the service of false amity is to play the part of a coward.

It is true that we must work for peace and for the calm settlements of our differences – but when one side continually usurps the rights of the people, continually protects their corrupt members and continually undermines the war effort in the service of partisan goals, then we are justly outraged, and we should say so. We have allowed, in the name of national unity, the Democrats to have too free a time with their partisan, hate-filled and corrupt attacks. Part of this stemmed from an admirable impulse on the part of President Bush (as well as John McCain, and others) to honestly work with Democrats for the public good, but another part of it stems from a fear of censure. Too many GOPers fear to be called divisive…and the absurd part of this is twofold: we’re going to be called divisive any time we disagree, and we’re being called divisive by those who feed on the divisions in our society.

What we must do is stand up and make our voices heard – remembering that while we may lose even so, at least we’ll at least lose honorably after putting up a strong fight.

Nevada Pundit asks the question, and provides some insights into what McCain and the GOP might want to do to ensure that come November Obama remains the empty suit and McCain becomes President-elect.

At 89 years old:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose stubborn, lonely and combative literary struggles gained the force of prophecy as he revealed the heavy afflictions of Soviet Communism in some of the most powerful works of the 20th century, died late on Sunday at the age of 89 in Moscow.

His son Yermolai said the cause was a heart ailment.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had battled through years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile.

Mr. Solzhenitsyn had been an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town when he burst onto the literary stage in 1962 with “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The book, a mold-breaking novel about a prison camp inmate, was a sensation. Suddenly he was being compared to giants of Russian literature like Tolstoy, Dostoyevski and Chekhov.

Over the next five decades, Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.”

The great man is gone, and may God give him the reward he long ago earned – in an age of lies, especially those all too modern and cynical lies from liberals and sundry leftists who insist, in the face of all evidence, that it is they who are wise and caring and who fight against oppression. Solzhenitsyn left us the warnings:

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good… Ideology – that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors…

…I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death…

..We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable…

Michael Barone thinks it might be:

…there is some evidence that the balance of enthusiasm has shifted and that young people — who seemed to turn out and vote for Obama in unusually high numbers in the primaries and caucuses — are no long so enthusiastic about him.

The first bit of evidence comes from the July 10-13 ABC/Washington Post poll. It asked registered voters if they were “certain” to vote. Only 46 percent of voters under 30 said they were — substantially lower than the 66 percent who said so in the ABC/Washington Post poll taken Feb. 28-March 2, at a time when Obama was enjoying a string of primary and caucus victories and before the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were circulated on youtube.com on March 13. The 46 percent of young voters saying in July they were certain to vote was far lower than the 79 percent of 65 and over voters who said they were.

The second bit of evidence comes from the Gallup/USAToday poll taken July 25-27. This poll showed that when you narrowed the base of respondents down from registered voters to likely voters, John McCain was ahead 49 percent to 45 percent. That’s a vivid contrast from the contemporaneous Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, and it was the first national poll since May showing McCain ahead.

The declining enthusiasm of younger voters could also be related to the length of the campaign – younger people being notoriously more impatient than older people, and this campaign has dragged on for quite a long time. Meanwhile, when Obama started acting like President-elect right after wrapping up the nomination he also started acting like the campaign was a sprint rather than the most grueling of marathons. A good reason to have been wary of McCain was on the count of whether or not he – at his age – could stand up to the pounding of an exhausting Presidential campaign. Well, he has – while Obama has shown a marked lack of long-term campaign stamina. He’s got youthful energy, but his lack of experience is showing in his assumption that he’s got it in the bag.

As Barone goes on to note, gauging enthusiasm and turn out is always very difficult – you really don’t know who is going to show up until they show up. With that said, I figure there is a shift going on – of course, a shift which can swing back to Obama – in the sense that Obama is wearing out his welcome…his arrogance, self-centeredness and sheer presumptuousness starts to rub people the wrong way. We’ll see in November the final outcome of this, but my prediction still holds – Obama with a shriking advantage, and the race will go down to the wire.

William Ruger in the Anchorage Daily News thinks so:

Despite the apparent closeness of this presidential contest, one does not have to be either a rocket scientist or a political scientist to realize that McCain faces long odds. Intuition, academic forecasts, and even political futures markets all suggest that the election is Obama’s to lose. And this tells us something important about the vice-presidential candidate McCain should select. His steep challenge dictates a very unorthodox pick.

McCain needs to create buzz for his campaign and give voters a reason not to toss the Republicans out of the White House. He should avoid the dubious conventional wisdom of picking someone with electoral votes in mind. McCain needs a bold, unconventional pick like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Selecting Jindal certainly has advantages. He would add much-needed youth, diversity and vigor to the McCain camp. His selection would also go a long way toward exciting the conservative base that has long been wary of McCain. And it would help the Republican nominee’s own attempt to be seen as an agent of change by picking a new face, and an Indian-American at that.

However, it is Palin who could best ruin the predictions of the pundits, traders and forecasters.

Palin, the 44-year-old mother of five and popular governor of Alaska, would add a lot to a Republican ticket that will face an uphill battle no matter who is picked. First, the attractive young governor, like Jindal, would provide much-needed energy and youth to a ticket whose main candidate is frequently on the receiving end of “he’s so old” jokes. McCain should remember that this did not work out too well for Bob Dole, another senior war hero.

Ruger goes on to note that Palin would help Hillary voters to cast a McCain vote, that she’s the outsider’s outsider as far as DC politics goes, that she’ll help on both energy and environmental issues (being as she’s the governor of a very wilderness yet very oil State) and, finally (and perhaps most importantly) that she’s a Reagan conservative who could very well rally a conservative intensity for McCain that he can only dream of at this point. Ruger does also throw a semi-pitch in for Jindal, but the case he lays out for Palin is strong.

As for me, either Palin or Jindal would be excellent and automatically far superior to anyone Obama could pick.

Excellent McCain ad – hammers Obama using Obama. Amazing how many times Obama has said what a wonderful person he is…

I guess his handlers have seen some polling showing McCain and the GOP clobbering Obama and his Democrats on this issue:

In An Interview With The Palm Beach Post, Obama Said He Would Support Offshore Drilling:

Obama Said He Would Be Open To Offshore Drilling Because He Wanted A “Comprehensive Energy Policy That Can Bring Down Gas Prices.” “U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said today he would be willing to open Florida ‘s coast for more oil drilling if it meant winning approval for broad energy changes. ‘My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,’ Obama said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post. ‘If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,’ Obama said.” (Michael C. Bender, “Obama Would Consider Off-Shore Drilling As Part Of Comprehensive Energy Plan,” Palm Beach [FL] Post, 8/1/08)

But Obama Has Vehemently Opposed And Derided Offshore Drilling:

Just A Few Days Ago, Obama Called Offshore Drilling A “Scheme.” Obama: “Now the latest scheme is well, we’re going to drill offshore. Now, I want to be absolutely clear to everybody about this. If I thought that I could provide you some immediate relief on gas prices by drilling off the shores of California and New Jersey , I understand how desperate folks are. I met a guy who couldn’t go on a job search that lost his job, couldn’t go on a job search because of the high price of gas. Just couldn’t fill up his tank. I met a teacher in South Dakota who loved her job as a teacher on an Indian reservation, she had to quit because the drive was too far, it was taking up too much of her paycheck. I know how bad people are hurting. So If I thought that by drilling offshore, we could solve our problem, I’d do it.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At Campaign Event, Springfield , MO, 7/30/08)

As Matt noted recently, Obama’s “bounce” from his “Teach me, please” foreign tour had dwindled, and with Gallup’s tracking now showing Obama and McCain tied for two straight days, Team Obama is probably starting to get worried…though I doubt, at this point, that Obama is. While Obama does have to real solid political “nuts and bolts” troopers on his side, he seems to believe he’s the Chosen One Destined to Save the World.

As I’ve been saying, if “story” (in the children’s fairy tale sense of the word) is most important, than Obama gets sworn in on January 20th…if, on the other hand, the election turns on competance, then we’ll have ourselves President McCain come January. The Gallup tracking is a good poll, as far as polls go, and while it will warm GOP hearts to see it tied for a while, we can expect it to fluctuate around a bit. When Obama selects his VP he might get a bounce, but so might McCain when his VP selection is announced. Ditto with the respective conventions. But the fact that Obama has only very temporarily ever opened up what can be considered a lead (ie, a poll lead outside the margin of error) shows that there are grave doubts about Obama in the general populace, and this is the are McCain can exploit – especially as we get closer to the vote – to derail the Obama express.

As it relates to offshore drilling, only the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal thinks its the wrong idea – in fact, more than that, one has to be a downright fool to say we shouldn’t. If you’re going to have a plan to get America to be all or mostly energy independent, expanding domestic production of oil is a vital piece of the puzzle – not as a permanent solution, because the solution is to find an alternative to oil, but as part of the bridge between oil and alternative. McCain sees this, Obama didn’t – untill pressed to it by the hard facts of life, and the risk of a loss on his own part.

The problem here is not so much that Obama is slow off the mark on these common sense ideas, but that he has to be under threat to his own success before he’ll move. Again and again, only the risk to his own political prospects makes him ditch the liberal/left ideology and deal with facts as they are. This is the recipe for weak President who will be the laughingstock of the world, as our enemies exploit his weaknesses and our friends shake their heads in wonder that we managed to elect another Jimmy Carter. America should not place itself at risk just because one guy is telegenic and speaks well in a set piece campaign rally.

UPDATE: NRO’s The Corner has an eyewitness account of what happened when the Democrats cut and ran from the energy debate:

It’s too bad they’ve turned off the cameras and microphones in the House of Representatives because the Republicans are orchestrating an excellent political scene. As I was making my way over to the House chamber, I could hear the crowds inside chanting, “Drill! Drill! Drill!” Families, staff members and press were sitting in the gallery space above the floor listening to one speech after another – there were even some families and staff members sitting down on the floor – when one of the members came to the floor and said,

“The Capitol Police are going to be closing the Chamber in a few minutes, which means all of you are going to have to leave. But we’re not going to let that happen. Instead, we want everyone in the gallery – yes, everyone – to come down to the floor so they can’t kick you out of the Capitol. Members will be coming up to escort you downstairs right now.”

And sure enough, one member after another starting bringing groups of us down to the floor. The place was packed and people continue to come into the chamber as members were speaking without microphones from the central pit in front of the dais. The atmosphere reminded me of a session of Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons. People were shouting out from the crowd that they wanted to Democrats to come back to debate this issue, members were requesting the President to exercise his constitutional right to request the House to come back from recess to debate gas prices, and when I left the floor five or six Congressmen were hosting a press conference outside the chamber.

According to one speaker, forty-eight members had come to the floor to speak for a total of more than five hours.

Can you believe this chickens*** nonsense? Using the cops to clear the floor? Turning off the microphones? Never in the course of American history has there been a more cowardly act than these Democrats – Obama’s Democrats – running away rather than dealing with the people’s business….and the fact that they ran away gives us more understanding of what Obama is up to. He knows he’ll be crushed on the oil issue, and thus wants out of it…the House Democrats, on the other hand, are afraid to move either way for fear of angering the kook left or the center…

Did I forget to mention that I was going? Oh, sorry…but, hey, there was fishing to do, or at least some alleged fishing…one friend caught 2, another friend caught 5…but the fact that I came up with zero was only bad because the friend who caugh five? Well, his four year old caught three…

Shoulda just stuck with the beer drinking part of “fishing”….