Crony Capitalism Targets The Internet

The internet has shattered monopolies everywhere. Journalists have discovered to their horror that the public can now find information without them, and doesn’t need their “analysis.” Self-publishing is killing publishers and is about to hit record companies. Retailers are horrified that you can buy anything from anywhere in the world without going through them. Hollywood is horrified that because people have greater choices, their attendance is crashing. Oh my! What to do?! Answer: call the government!

The issue in question is called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its Senate fellow-traveler is called the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Ostensibly these bills are aimed at stopping “online piracy” by “rogue foreign websites.” But in reality, they’re aimed at controlling the web. And it’s no surprise they’re backed by a bevy of Big Business monopolies: Hollywood, record companies, media companies, drug companies, unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sadly Republicans are in this up to their necks. Rep. Lamar Smith wrote SOPA because it’s a “good policy that protects American consumers from dangerous counterfeit goods and American business from having their products and profits stolen from foreign thieves.” Conservative (read: “idiot”) Marsha Blackburn actually claims this bill is conservative and that: “The same radical left-wing special interests groups that advocated for Obama’s so-called net neutrality regulations are trying to hijack conservative principles and mislead the public about SOPA.”

By the way, radical left winger Patrick Leahy wrote the Senate version, which should tell you all you need to know this... and Marsha’s judgment.

In any event, here’s why the bill is bad and anything but conservative.

This bill allows the US government and corporations to require internet service providers to block access to websites which they allege infringe on intellectual property rights. It also allows the government and these corporations to force companies like PayPal to block payments to websites which they claim infringe. And it allows copyright holders to sue these websites AND to sue sites like Google which link to them and sites like Facebook which host them if they don’t do enough (whatever that means) to block access to copyright-protected content. That’s like being able to sue the phone company because it gave a phone number to someone who stolen your film idea.

How does “conservative” Marsha Blackburn respond? “The fact is SOPA only applies to dedicated foreign rogue sites that are harming American consumers and creators.”

Except, that’s not how it works. The practical effect of this bill will be that search engines like Google will be forced to monitor the content of the sites to which they link. If the content could potentially violate a copyright, then Google must exclude it from the search. Think about that. That’s asking the phone company to make sure you aren’t doing anything illegal so long as they supply you with a phone number.

But hey, who needs Google? You can still get there if you know the name of the website, right? Nope. Your service provider can be sued if it doesn’t stop you from going there. In fact, the bill originally required your ISP to redirect you to a warning page if you tried to visit one of these sites. That language has been taken out and a “voluntary” provision has been put in its place. Of course, “voluntary” is just another way of saying “mandatory” when people can sue you to enforce it.

But wait, this only apply to foreign websites, right? Hardly. The law does say foreign websites, but how does Google know what’s foreign and what’s not when people can post on proxy servers? And if Google develops the skills to exclude copyright violating material in foreign websites, do you really think US courts won’t hold them liable for not doing the same for US websites? Don’t forget, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act is still out there. It provided a safe harbor for ISPs and search engines on the basis that so long as it wasn’t possible to filter these things out, then they didn’t need to do it. Once they show they can do it on foreign websites, that safe harbor goes away for domestic sites.

It’s no surprise that Google, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, AOL, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mozilla, PayPal and many, many more object to this. Even Wikipedia founder Jay Walsh says this will threaten the way the Wikipedia works. Flikr will apparently be shut down. I would suspect Blogger will too because Google (owner of Blogger) could be sued if, for example, we uploaded illegal content here.

What’s more, while retard Marsha Blackburn thinks this bill is conservative, ask yourself if ANY conservative would ever set up a legal system where you are guilty until you prove your innocence in court. That’s what SOPA does. Once an allegation is made that a site contains copyrighted material, the Big Business complainer goes to court and gets an order shutting you down. Once the order is entered, they send a copy to your ISP, to search engines and to money-processing companies like PayPal. They are then required to shut you out or they face liability themselves. That’s when you finally get involved in the process. Now that you’ve been found guilty, and you are suddenly kicked off the net, you have the right to go to court and prove that you were wrongly black-listed. A year or two later (and minus mucho legal fees), you’ll probably be back on line. That’s a great way to take out a competitor at a crucial time.

I guess Marsha Blackburn learned conservatism at the knee of Joseph Stalin. And for the record, this puts our government in the same company as China, Iran, Libya and Tunisia.

Lest you think I’m blowing this out of proportion, BOTH leftist and conservative bloggers have gone to war against the idiots who are sponsoring this assault on the internet and freedom on behalf of Hollywood, the music industry and drug companies. They are particularly outraged that this could destroy political blogging because it is so easily abused. Erick Erickson of RedState is actually leading the charge. He’s promising to fight to unseat any of the Stalinists who support this thing:

“I love Marsha Blackburn. She is a delightful lady and a solidly conservative member of Congress. And I am pledging right now that I will do everything in my power to defeat her in her 2012 reelection bid due to her co-sponsorship for SOPA. . . . If members of Congress do not pull their name from co-sponsorship of SOPA, the left and right should pledge to defeat each and every one of them.”

Fortunately, much of the corporate backing for this bill is starting to collapse. GoDaddy just found out how stupid it was to support this when people began boycotting GoDaddy en mass. They’ve since withdrawn their support, as have other large corporations and scores of law firms.

Paul Ryan ran into this issue when he gave a noncommittal response when asked if he supports it and found himself blasted. He now firmly opposes it. Naturally, Ricky Santorum, champion of the (non-gay) common man supports it. Newt apparently does too. Romney doesn’t, which makes him the only conservative on this issue.

Sadly, too many Republicans are little more than whores who do the bidding of Big Business. The list of companies who favor this reads like a who’s who of monopolists who have failed to innovate, failed to embrace technology, and simply don’t want to spend time or effort rectifying their past failures. Thus, they have called their minions in Congress and asked the government to cover up their mistakes.

It’s time Republicans stop this crap! CONSERVATISM DOES NOT SUPPORT GOVERNMENT REGULATION TO PROTECT LARGE COMPANIES! And since Marsha Blackburn and Lamar Smith apparently don’t understand that, they need to be voted out.

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Movie Rewind: Where Were You in ’82?

By ScottDS

Along with 1939, 1982 is considered a banner year for Hollywood. Many films we now consider classics thirty years later (and a few we consider “guilty pleasures”) made their big screen premieres this year. Some struck box-office gold while others needed some time to be appreciated. Let’s take a look at a few members of the Class of 1982.

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Republican Candidates Fall For Smear, Again

Some people never learn. These people are called failing Republican candidates. This time the media smeared Mitt Romney and like a pack of jackasses these candidates bought into it hook, line and sinker and promptly set about blasting Romney. . . and capitalism. Ug.

Here’s the set up. The Washington Post and other liberal outlets reported the other day that Mitt Romney said he likes to fire people. In fact, as presented by the leftist Post, the quote reads: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

That sounds kind of Grinchy. But it’s not actually what Romney said. Here’s what Romney said:

“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”

This is not what the Post described it as. Romney is not saying he likes firing people. He is saying he likes having choices as a consumer. He likes having the ability to change companies when he doesn’t like the service being provided and he wants Americans to have that power when it comes to health insurance companies. This is how all Americans think.

Of course, this didn’t stop the idiots from jumping on the liberal smear-version.

Rick Perry, who really is proving to be a total dipsh*t, turned the “I like to fire people” portion of the quote into a ringtone that people could download. Then he channeled Karl Marx and said this about Romney’s time at Bain:

“Allowing these companies to come in and loot the, loot people’s jobs, loot their pensions, loot their ability to take care of their families and I will suggest they’re just vultures. They’re vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass. They leave with that and they leave the skeleton. I don’t think they want someone who has killed jobs in South Carolina on the altar of making more money for themselves and their company.”

It doesn’t even make sense what Rick is saying, how could Romney make money buying companies and letting them fail? This is Oliver Stone “I know nothing about finance but I hate it” thinking. But even worse, this is Marxism. Rick is criticizing the very idea of capitalism here. He is saying that somehow it’s wrong (1) to buy another company, (2) to fire employees, and (3) to seek profit.

Gingrich piled on, saying: “If somebody comes in, takes all the money out of your company and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions, that’s not traditional capitalism.” This is, of course, nonsense as well because no one gives a company away for nothing so someone else can suck millions of dollars out of it. Huntsman jumped on this too just as stupidly.

The Club for Growth, the driving force behind much of modern economic conservatism, blasted these attacks:

“[The] attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital are disgusting. Because of the efforts of Bain Capital, major companies like Staples, Domino’s Pizza, and the Sports Authority now employ thousands of people and have created billions in wealth in the private economy. Attacking Governor Romney for participating in free-market capitalism is just beyond the pale for any purported ‘Reagan Conservative.’”

Ron Paul also has properly defended Romney.

“I think they’re wrong. I think they’re totally misunderstanding the way the market works. They are either just demagoguing or they don’t have the vaguest idea how the market works. . . You save companies, you save jobs when you reorganize companies that are going to go bankrupt. And they don’t understand that.”

Gingrich, by the way, finally backed away from attacking the “I like to fire people” quote claiming that he didn’t know it had been taken out of context, but he has yet to repudiate his sudden embrace of Marxism.

This is frustrating. Once again, these candidates fall for an MSM smear without ever bothering to ask whether there is any truth to the smear. What’s worse, they knee-jerk attack Romney by blasting capitalism. All this does is reinforce liberal propaganda -- capitalism is evil and heartless and profit is bad. This is shameful and it hurts conservatism.

It’s no wonder 58% of Republicans want more choices.

Romney, by the way, had a devastating response to Gingrich and Perry:

“It is no surprise that, having spent nearly half a century in government between them, Speaker Gingrich and Governor Perry have resorted to desperate attacks on a subject they don’t understand. We expect attacks on free enterprise from President Obama and his allies on the left — not from so-called ‘fiscal conservatives. Speaker Gingrich and Governor Perry seem to think that running against the private sector is the way to revive their floundering campaigns.”

Yep.

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T-Rav's Sockpuppet Votatorium Presents: Primarily New Hampshire

Tonight only, live from New Hampshire, it's the New Hampshire Republican primary and monster truck rally! Join us. . . join us. . . join us.

In case you haven't heard, the town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire has already voted. Romney and Huntsman are tied with 2 votes each. The rest can pound sand apparently. Oh wait, there appear to be more results still to come!

While we wait for the rest of the results (network coverage starts around 7:00 PM EST), let's play a game... no, not like Saw, but a constructive game: tell us some policies you'd like to see made into law if you were President!

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The Real Rick Santorum

With the implosion of everyone else, Rick Santorum is now being given his turn to run as the anti-Romney. And many conservatives are jumping on Ricky’s bandwagon with the idea that he’s more conservative than Romney. Don’t believe it. Let’s talk about Ricky.

● “Conservative” Rick: Rick claims to be an all-around, genuine, dyed-in-the-wool conservative. But would a conservative do this?

● Rick voted to create the Medicare prescription drug benefit entitlement.
● Rick opposes even the voluntary use of eVerify, which would keep illegal aliens from getting jobs.
● Rick voted for Ted Kennedy’s No Child Left Behind.
● Rick voted to force states to let convicted felons vote.
● Rick voted to give $1 billion to bailout the steel industry.
● Rick voted for the ban on “assault weapons.”
● Rick voted to make it illegal to sell guns without a secure storage or safety device.
● Rick voted to fund anti-gun education programs in schools.
● Rick voted against the National Right To Work Act, which allows non-union shops.
● Rick twice voted against repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which is how the federal government supports union labor through government contracts.
● Rick twice voted to make it easier for unions to unionize FedEx. This bill was created by UPS and the Teamsters, and is essentially what Obama has done to Boeing, except it was done at the behest of a competitor.
● Rick voted to fund the legal services corporation, which pursues left-wing litigation around the country, e.g. suing cities to increase benefits or suing landlords to stop evictions.
● Rick voted to make fuel price gouging a federal crime.
● Rick opposed creating an independent Board of Governors to investigate IRS abuses.
● Rick voted to require a union representative be placed on the IRS oversight board, and then voted to exempt the IRS union representative from criminal ethics laws.
● Rick opposed cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
● Rick supported a large number of liberal nominees including Sonia Sotomayor to the Circuit Court, Richard Holbrooke to be UN Ambassador, and Alexis Herman to be Secretary of Labor.
● In 2004, Rick endorsed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey and cut an ad telling voters “Specter is with us on the votes that matter.”
● In 2006, Rick ran campaign ads playing up his bipartisan work with Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer: “Because it makes more sense to wrestle with America’s problems than with each other.”

● “Fiscal Conservative” Rick: Rick claims to be a fiscal conservative. Yet. . .

● Rick supported every budget during the Bush years, despite their then-record spending and then-record deficits.
● Rick now claims he opposes earmarks, but he previously said: “The idea that earmarks are the problem in Washington, D.C., is just ridiculous.” He also sought more than a billion dollars in earmarks, including such ridiculous things as $300,000 for a bilingual health care study, $250,000 for an “African-American cultural center” in Pittsburgh, $96 million to build a light rail system into Pittsburgh, $2 million to renovate the Vulcan Monument in Alabama, funding of museums in Nebraska and Seattle, the Stand Up for Animals Project in Rhode Island, etc.
● Rick voted for the Bridge to Nowhere.
● Rick voted for mandatory federal child care funding.
● Rick voted to increase funding for the Department of Education by $3.1 billion.
● Rick voted to provide $2 billion in home heating subsidies.
● Rick voted to increase social services block grants from $1 billion to $2 billion.
● Rick voted to give taxpayers $100 rebates on gas prices.
● Rick voted to create a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund, and voted against requiring uniform medical requirements to ensure claims were legitimate. Think “Pigford.”
● Rick voted to give $18 billion to the IMF.
● Rick opposed food stamp reform.
● Rick opposed Medicaid reform.
● Rick voted to divert gas taxes to pay for Amtrak.
● Rick voted to increase Amtrak funding by $550 million.
● Rick voted to increase spending on social programs by $7 billion.
● Rick voted to increase community development programs by $2 billion.

● Rick opposed the flat tax.
● Rick voted twice for internet taxes.
● Rick voted four times to raise tobacco taxes to fund Medicare prescription drugs, to pay $8 billion in child health insurance, to increase NIH funding, and to provide health insurance subsidies to small business.
● Rick voted to raise taxes by $9.4 billion to increase student loans.
● Rick opposed repealing Clinton’s gas tax increase.

● Super Hawk Rick: Rick claims everyone else is weak on defense and he specifically attacks Obama for not doing enough about terrorist states like Iran and Syria. So why did Rick do this?

● Rick voted for the Chemical Weapons Convention and then voted against forcing the President to certify that Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea and China have joined before the CWC would become effective.
● Rick voted to allow the sale of supercomputers to China.
● Rick voted to give North Korea $25 million in foreign aid.
● Rick voted to ban landmines.
● Rick voted for the START II Treaty.
● Rick voted against requiring President Clinton to get Congress’s authorization for military action in Bosnia.

● Ricky the Lobbyist: While Rick claims to be an outsider, he served 16 years in the House and Senate. What’s more he is deeply immersed in lobbying culture and has traded influence:

● In 2006, Rick received the most contributions from lobbyists of any Senator.
● After Rick lost to Bob Casey in 2006, he became a lobbyist for multiple groups. One group was United Health Services. Rick sponsored two Medicare-reform bills while he was in the Senate which would have aided UHS. Rick also joined the board of directors of American Continental Group, a lobbying company. As a Senator, Rick got earmarks for many of ACG’s clients.
● Rick voted to require broadcasters to provide discounted broadcast rates to politicians.

Rick is not a fiscal conservative, not even close. In fact, he’s closer to Obama than Bush and Bush was anything but a fiscal conservative. Rick’s also no foreign policy conservative. Nor is he averse to influence peddling.

And when it comes to social policy, he’s either a moron or a cynic. He will often contradict himself on issues like gay marriage where he speaks in circles about states’ rights, and he’ll make vague pronouncements like his belief in “marriage,” which he treats as a policy but provides no details. Moreover, the things he does propose, like passing constitutional amendments, are non-starters because they simply can’t be passed. So what is he actually promising? It sounds like he’s more concerned with pandering than he is in achieving anything.

Moreover, his stridency about his social conservatism is a disaster waiting to happen. Of all the candidates left, Santorum is the only one who is guaranteed to attract 0.0% of the moderate vote. He will even turn off many conservatives as well because, to borrow a line from Ghostbusters II, “he scares the straights.”

Think twice before you decide this man is the conservative alternative to Romney.


** Don’t forget it’s Star Trek Tuesday at CommentaramaFilms!**

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Commentarama Endorses!

We officially maintain a “no endorsement” policy during the primaries (which doesn’t mean we won’t tell you when your guy is a fool). But these are desperate times and unity is important, so it’s time we made an official endorsement in New Hampshire. For the Republican nomination, Commentarama hereby endorses:

Vermin Supreme

No, that’s not a West Virginia pizza, that’s an actual candidate for the Presidency of our country. Apparently, in New Hampshire all it takes to get on the ballot is $1,000, and Santa brought Vermin and 43 others $1,000 and told them to go forth and inspire the country.

Why did we choose Vermin? Because his platform resonates! He’s wants to legislate mandatory tooth brushing, is concerned about zombie preparedness, and wants federal research dollars spent on time travel so he can “kill Hitler with my bare hands.” But none of that swayed us. What finally swayed us was his promise that if elected, he would give free ponies to all Americans! Never before has any candidate better expressed the principles upon which this country was founded!

So vote for Vermin and get your pony. . . . of course, no matter who you vote for, odds are they will be vermin.


Speaking of the vermin, Romney seems to have overcome his 25% hurdle. In the past, he couldn’t get above 25% in the polls, but two polls now have him at 35% in New Hampshire and (surprisingly) 37% in South Carolina. The next runner up in New Hampshire is Ron Paul, who has been doubling up on crazy pills again. In the last debate he accused the country of filling the military with minority kids (something which has been repeatedly debunked), and he accused the criminal justice system of racism for locking up black criminals. Gingrich and Santorum both slipped below 8% each. Perry remains at 1%, and his promise to re-invade Iraq probably won’t help him. . . maybe he should promise ponies? In South Carolina, Rick Santorum is second with 20%. . . somehow.

Finally, while we were watching the football game debate, we realized this whole process would be better if each of the candidates had a theme song that could play whenever it was their turn to speak. Here are my suggestions, add yours below:

● Mitt Romney: More Than This -- Roxy Music
● Ron Paul: Miracles -- Jefferson Airplane
● Newt Gingrich: Shock The Monkey -- Peter Gabriel
● Jon Huntsman: China Girl -- David Bowie
● Rick Perry: Friends in Low Places -- Garth Brooks
● Barack Obama: You’re So Vain -- Carly Simon

P.S. Anybody else think it’s weird Tebow threw for 316 years yesterday?

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More Crony Socialism From The DOJ

Eric Holder and the US Department of Justice (Civil Rights Division) have been handed another pot of gold to distribute to his racist friends. This past month, as a Christmas gift to Holder and Barack Obama, the US District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles and environs) issued its ruling in the case of The United States v Countrywide Financial Corporation.

A $335 million award was granted to blacks and Hispanics who took out loans with Countrywide during the period from 2004 to 2008. Now if this judgment had been entered after an extended court battle, including hard evidence and believable testimony, it might not be so bad. But Countrywide Financial is not in a position to defend itself, since it no longer exists. Its toxic assets were purchased in 2008 by Bank of America, and Bank of America seemed uninterested in pursuing the matter further. That might have something to do with simple financial risk calculation. I find it more likely that B of A, a recipient of largess from the federal government in the form of bailouts, was being very timid about offending its benefactors in the Obama administration.

So there was what is called a “consent decree.” The plaintiff (DOJ) and defendant (Countrywide/B of A) enter into an agreement on money damages, how they were determined, and how the agreement will be presented to the public in the form of a formal judgment. Here’s the money quote from the decision: “The money damages awarded are intended to compensate allegedly aggrieved persons for monetary and other damages they may have suffered.”

The court rubberstamped the DOJ contention that blacks and Hispanics were charged higher interest rates than whites based solely on their race or ethnicity rather than their creditworthiness. There were approximately 200,000 aggrieved borrowers, but it will be up to Holder and the DOJ to determine who gets what, and how much. Any money not distributed within two years of the decree will go to persons and causes to be determined by the DOJ. And you can bet there will be plenty of undistributed money left over to be used by Holder to reward his political cronies.

Holder and his boss are of course expecting to be back in office in 2012 with the full power of the DOJ to enrich their pet causes and supporters. And even before the election, Holder can play accountant-in-chief for how the money damages will be distributed and to whom. That is very likely to include those who would benefit most from Barack Obama’s reelection. Among the potential recipients mentioned in the decree are nonprofit community organizations that “provide education, counseling and other assistance to low-income and minority borrowers.” Isn’t that what got us into this mortgage mess in the first place?

There is honor among thieves, so Holder will make sure there is plenty of money “undistributed” and he will make promises to supporters of Obama’s reelection that they will be recipients of that money after Obama’s reelection and the passage of the two-year distribution period. I have no doubt that he will keep his word. There is no provision whatsoever in the decree for oversight of the distribution by any person or entity other than Holder and the DOJ themselves.

Holder’s history of favoritism and race-baiting pretty much guarantees that “leftover” money will be distributed to persons and interest groups which have no connection at all to the original lawsuit. The first one that comes to my mind is The New Black Panther Poll-Watching Consortium. Ok, I made that up. But is it really that far-fetched? Need I say that this is just another chapter in the history of what Michelle Malkin calls “the culture of corruption?”
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The Three Great Lies

“I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.” “The check is in the mail.” “The President really looks forward to working with Congress.” The third of the three great lies was mouthed by Jay Carney, President Obama’s press secretary and full-time sockpuppet. It's hard to see how The One plans to work with Congress since his executive/bureaucratic administration has largely ignored Congress (or at least about half of Congress).

Carney spoke the words at the weekly press conference, the day after Obama made four highly-questionable recess appointments—three to the National Labor Relations Board and one to the newly-created Dodd-Frank Consumer Financial Protection Board. Those appointments may or may not be valid, but they are clearly an exercise in derogation of Congressional privilege.

After saying “the fact is, the President firmly believes he has the constitutional authority to do so,” Carney offered a diametrically opposite theory of why the President proceeded with the appointments. “It’s not about whether Congress is in session. What it’s really about is the absolute urgency to install Richard Cordray as our consumer watchdog so that he can get to work today protecting the middle class.” This isn’t only about Republicans. The Senate that soundly rejected Cordray (and one of the three NLRB appointees) is still controlled by Democrats.

Well, in this instance, it is all about whether the Senate is in session. The President “firmly believes” a lot of things which are completely wrong—historically, constitutionally, legally, economically, factually, and politically. But in this case, Carney should have stuck to defense number one. There are respected authorities who argue that Congress is not in session, and the appointments are valid. I’m not one of them, but the problem here is that Carney has announced the President’s desire “to work with Congress” while at the same time challenging Congress on its own rules. That doesn’t sound like cooperation to me. Forget the anger and acrimony over the appointments for a moment, and consider how much Obama has any intention of cooperating.

For Obama, “working with” is a synonym for “taking potshots at.” As of this writing, only one Democratic Senator has formally announced that he believes the appointments are valid and that the Senate is in recess. All other Democrats who talked about the issue at all merely praised the appointments and scrupulously avoided discussing the issue of the Senate being in pro forma session. Senate Republicans had sent a formal letter to the President in December, signed by forty-seven of the Senators, requesting that the appointments not be made during a recess. Obama ignored them, and as a result the Senate did not consent to a recess, and the House went on vacation without the required consent of the Senate (Article I, Section 5 of the US Constitution).

But to make sure, the Senate avoided the three-day (or five-day) recess rule (depending on which expert you listen to) by staying in pro forma session. In his last exhibition of cooperation prior to his announcement of further cooperation (yeah, I know), the President spat in the face of the Senate. Right or wrong, the majority or near-majority of Senators believed that the pro forma session was sufficient to fend off recess appointments. Even if the President was right, which may have to be determined by the Supreme Court, the appointment of four highly-partisan and generally unpopular bureaucrats is anything but a demonstration of cooperation with Congress.

All tyrants and wannabe tyrants are in a hurry because they believe that they alone know what’s best for their nations, and waiting for any other branch of government to act is simply not acceptable. Some, like Hitler, simply declared the basic law null and void and ruled by fiat. Others, like Middle East potentates and clerics either write the basic law to suit themselves, or exercise a stranglehold on the legislatures which are charged with writing the nation’s laws. Obama hasn’t reached that point, but he’s on the path.

This President has chosen a course that is questionably constitutional, bootstrapping on the incremental power-grabs known as executive orders and recess appointments. He is not the first, but an alarming number of his executive orders seem to be aimed directly at seizing power from Congress. If Obama succeeds with these four appointments, he will have added a new chapter to executive power by establishing that Congress is not the branch which exercises power over its own rules and procedures.

Previous Presidents have acted by executive order, as well as weakening Congressional legislation with “signing statements.” Previous Presidents have made recess appointments. Then-Senator Obama somehow has changed his views on the subject since becoming President because he had opposed George W. Bush’s recess appointment of John Bolton as UN ambassador on the ground that presidents shouldn’t recess-appoint “unpopular” people whom the Senate had already rejected.

So back to the original theme. Big battles inside and between the various branches of government are not unusual and can be annoying or uplifting, depending on the subject matter of the quarrel. Even power-grabs can be politically-expedient if the president chooses to defy Congress by ignoring its own self-imposed rules. But don’t call it cooperation. Man up. Tell the truth. Don’t hide behind your questionable interpretation of the Constitution. If Obama truly “looks forward to working with Congress, these odd recess appointments are a strange way of showing it.

"Congress should do this, right away" is quickly becoming "Congress will do this right away, or else."
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The Great (film) Debates vol. 20

People’s tastes change over time, which is good or we’d all be wearing bell bottoms and listening to grunge. And sometimes, this means our taste in films changes too.

What movie did you like a lot at one point, but no longer like. . . and why?


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T-Rav's Sockpuppet Theater Presents: The Bad Timing Debate

The Republicans seem to have stupidly decided to stage a debate tonight (9:00 EST), starting just after the NFL playoff game between the Saint and Lions begins. Good luck with that.



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Film Friday: Apollo 18 (2011)

I’m of two minds about Apollo 18. On the one hand, I’m glad I saw it. But on the other, I cannot recommend it and I never want to see it again. Why? Well, it has a solid story, ruined by its presentation. It had excellent effects, squandered by its presentation. It was simultaneously too long and too short, both because of its presentation. Put simply, this was a potentially excellent film ruined by a misused gimmick.

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SPQR (Latin For "The Senate Is Irrelevant")

The Divine Caesar Obama Invictus has decided he can't wait any longer for the processes of the Living Constitution to rubber stamp his appointments to the various boards of proconsuls. It was time to get on with the business of fundamentally transforming America, at least in the proconsulships of Labor and Consumer Protection. Caesar (also spelled Czar) is delegating his authority to proconsuls of like mind. (Third time is the charm? If this post disappears, I'm going to give up and hope tomorrow's a better day)

In addition, he has instituted rule by fiat, ignoring the Constitution, Senate rules, precedent, and the res publica. The rules and precedent, growing from the musty old Constitution, allow for recess appointments. But it took this Caesar to take the decision of when the Senate is in recess away from the Senate in order to place that decision in his own imperial hands. You see, previous Caesars also made recess appointments, but they left it in the hands of the Senate itself to determine when they were actually in recess.

On occasion, in order to avoid Caesar placing some of his more dangerous personal pets in high positions during a recess, the Senate would remain in session by the device of "pro forma" sessions. A few Senators would hang around, making official (but largely meaningless) speeches and comments. The Constitution says that if the Senators are entirely absent for more than three days, it is in recess. A formal recess ruling is helpful, but not necessary. So the Senators appear on the floor briefly at least every third day to make their presence known and official. Which is exactly what was happening when Caesar announced the appointments.

Recess appointments have been done by Caesars of both the Plebeian and Patrician Parties. But in those cases, the Senate itself had determined that it was in recess. This seems to be the first time (at least as far as Senate records indicate) that Senators were performing their pro forma duties, only to be blindsided by Caesar making recess appointments anyway. It is unlikely that Caesar is unaware of this difference because he was at one time a professor of constitutional law at the Imperial Academy of Law at the University of Chicago. Though imperial historians Pliny and Tacitus did not mention this in their histories, it is common knowledge that Caesar knows the Constitution better than anyone else. It's alive! It's alive!

The pro forma Senators were there because forty-six Patrician Senators had earlier petitioned Caesar not to make the current appointments after having already rejected one of the nominees, only to be entirely ignored by the imperial personage. Prior to his elevation to the imperial throne, this Caesar (then merely a Senator from the Province of Illinois) had decried the recess appointment of John Bolton as imperial minister to the empire of the United Nations as being an insult to the prerogatives of the Senate. The previous Caesar, Bush Secundus, made that appointment when the Senate was, by its own rules, in formal recess.

Caesar says that the Senate refused to accept his nominee for proconsul of Consumer Protection because they don't like the underlying legislation passed by a previous Senate (with the concurrence of the Plebes). Caesar's alternate imperial title is Caesar Obvious. Instead of multiple agencies making decisions about consumer protection with Senate oversight, Caesar has now appointed a proconsul who will have control over the minutiae of every financial transaction conducted in America. The appointee, Richard Cordray, has sworn allegiance to every jot and tittle of Caesar's financial agenda. The dismantling of the private right to contract is in his sights.

Over at the Labor Department, Caesar has recess appointed three proconsuls, all at once. Two are members of the Plebeian Party and will be regulating the lives of owners and wage slaves with a strong preference for the slaves. The third is a member of the Patrician Party, but has strong ties to one of the current Plebeian proconsuls.

Caesar is clearly on a progressive course. When his empire is threatened, he must act, with or without the advice and consent of those doddering old Senators. The people must be protected from themselves and the recalcitrant Senate. Only a great Ceasar can do that. Ave Caesar.

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The Strange Case of Ron Paul

By: T-Rav

Ron Paul has suddenly become the darling of a large section of the Republican Party, even after clearly and repeatedly disqualifying himself from serious consideration by anyone not a member of the John Birch Society. In the past couple weeks, popular and long-time conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter have gone on record as saying they will vote for Paul rather than an establishment figure such as Newt Gingrich. Well, I won’t.

I have made my disgust and fury at Mitt Romney, for example, and his RINO-ism very clear on this site, to the point of being obsessive; but I will vote for Romney in a heartbeat rather than cast a ballot for the good doctor.

Paul’s current popularity is the result of some deep dissatisfaction with the field of candidates, which I can understand. And he does have some legit credentials as a small-government fiscal conservative. He wants to keep the government from exceeding a strict interpretation of its Constitutional authority; he wants an end to pork-barrel spending (although this hasn’t kept him from requesting and receiving his fair share of earmark money), etc. The chances of any of these proposals becoming law are about those of a snowball in the nether regions, but they’re nice to think about, and Paul deserves some credit for advancing the debate on fiscal and economic issues.

That being said, when you consider the whole man, Paul is such a disaster I am at something of a loss to comprehend how he became popular at all.

Let’s look at his record. For all the adulation showered on him as the leading voice of fiscal responsibility in Congress and “the godfather of the Tea Party movement” (seriously?), Paul hasn’t really done that much as a legislator. He’s authored/sponsored a number of bills, certainly; but most of them have been of a very simplistic nature, making demands such as “End the Fed!” or “Repeal the income tax!” without outlining a responsible alternative plan for monetary or tax policy. This suggests to me a man who either can’t or won’t think about these issues beyond superficial clichés—or who perhaps has no intention of waging a sustained campaign on their behalf and is therefore just throwing out slogans to get attention. Either way, he has not displayed the comprehensive, long-term thinking that Paul Ryan, Pat Toomey, or even Eric Cantor and others have. In fact, in his two decades, on and off, as a member of Congress, Paul saw only one of his bills be passed and signed into law—a bill authorizing the sale of a Galveston customhouse. Eh, I guess it’s because the establishment was out to get him or something.

But hey, he has done plenty outside of Congress, informing Americans through his newsletters about the dangers of big government and leftist policies, hasn’t he? Well. How about those newsletters?

During the 1980s and ‘90s, Paul published several newsletters, among others The Ron Paul Investment Letter and The Ron Paul Political Report. These would presumably focus on economic stuff, but they repeatedly included some very obscene racism. In June 1991, for example, a story on black violence in the nation’s capital was headlined “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” The following year, one issue described how “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration {of a basketball game}. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot. . . Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.” Another newsletter also discussed a “destruction of civilization” that was “the most tragic {to} ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara.” This would be the ending of apartheid in South Africa. Other issues claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. was a pedophile, a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and “seduced underage girls and boys,” and expressed support for former Louisiana senatorial candidate and former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke, who had “scared the blazes out of the Establishment.”

Paul claims he didn’t write these articles, which is plausible as they were unsigned; what is not plausible is the idea that they were written and published without his full knowledge and consent, in a newsletter he profited from and in which he employed members of his own family. His supporters, for their part, are attempting to call this a case of fallacious guilt-by-association, or saying that this was all nearly 20 years ago, so it doesn’t really matter. Fine. But how is this any different from Obama’s longtime association with Jeremiah Wright (I refuse to honor him with the title “Reverend”) and other radical nutjobs? It seemed there was enough of an association then to call Obama a radical; why then, with similar associations here, is it not okay to call Paul a fringe radical with a serious race problem? More to the point, does anyone think for a moment that the same media which swept Obama’s skeletons under the rug would ignore Paul’s if he were to become the nominee?

I suppose it’s possible to argue, as his supporters have done, that this is either a big misunderstanding or an ugly smear campaign. That doesn’t help my evaluation of him, though, because I find those policies of his which are being championed equally dangerous. Simply put, the Congressman is proof of something I keep noticing among self-styled “libertarians”: a tendency to go to extremes with one’s ideology. His foreign policy positions are perhaps the most vivid example of this.

It’s one thing to say that the war in Iraq was a mistake, that the U.S. is too involved in the affairs of other nations, and that we need to get out of Afghanistan. These are positions I don’t entirely agree with, but one can rationally arrive at these positions and make a compelling case for them, and Paul was on more or less safe ground when he brought all this up in the debates. But then he kept going off the deep end. Even early on, he showed a total lack of understanding of the threat Iran poses when he insisted that, to paraphrase, “if we leave Iran alone, they’ll leave us alone.” For much of Bush’s term, this was a position no one to the right of Dennis Kucinich would consider taking. And let’s not forget, he essentially said that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself. Even if one can agree that radical Islamists were reacting against certain policies of ours, let’s be clear about this—a man who wants to be our Commander-in-Chief is implicitly absolving our enemies of all responsibility for their deeds. Does that remind you of anyone? And that last debate….oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. First there was his claim that Israel’s neighbors posed no threat, and that our military was just looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran. Then Bachmann started pressing him, and he started crying that the U.S. would “declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims.” Um, no.

Worse, it’s getting harder and harder to claim that Paul just got flustered and misspoke, or that his words got twisted around, or whatever his excuse is this week. Not only do we have to consider his recent remarks that Israel is responsible for the formation of Hamas, we must take into account his past positions on foreign policy. According to one former staffer, who worked for Paul on and off for over a decade, the Congressman was personally opposed to any military response to 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.

On the eve of the vote, Ron Paul was still telling us staffers that he was planning to vote “No,” on the resolution, and to be prepared for a seriously negative reaction in the District. Jackie Gloor and I, along with quiet nods of agreement from the other staffers in the District, declared our intentions to Tom Lizardo, our Chief of Staff, and to each other, that if Ron voted No, we would immediately resign.

The staffer adds that in private conversations, Paul would dispute American involvement in World War II, arguing that it was a humanitarian exercise for “saving the Jews,” in which, short of actual German attacks on our soil, the U.S. should not have become involved. One wonders what would have become of the people of Middle Earth had this guy been the king of Rohan or some other Tolkien character.

Is Paul a racist or an anti-Semite, or neither? Ultimately, that’s between him and God, and anyway, it’s beside the point. The point is he has no problem affiliating with those who are. He is demonstrably anti-Israel. He seems to believe that the CIA may very well have been behind 9/11 and that there really are international secret societies trying to control us through our currency. This is Ron Paul’s reality, and this lies at the heart of my problem with him. It’s not that he’s not as socially conservative as I’d prefer (and he’s not), or that he’s not as pro-Israel or as hawkish on foreign policy as I’d prefer (and he’s not). It’s that the world he lives in is so different from ours—even more so, in some ways, than the world Obama lives in—that it renders him incapable of looking after the interests of the United States, especially as he refuses to acknowledge the real threats facing America. Defending the country against threats is apparently less important to him than avoiding a “neocon” policy. Paul’s mind seems closed to the concepts of trade-offs or practicality; he must follow his ideology to its logical outcomes, regardless of the consequences.

Whatever his merits on a few issues, this is a committed conspiracy theorist and a hard-core ideologue determined not to let facts shape his beliefs, but to make his beliefs shape the facts—in other words, the very opposite of a true conservative. He should not be allowed anywhere near the White House, and any further flirtation with him is extremely dangerous.

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Whiz Kids Write Occupy Opera

It used to be said that if you had an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, one of them would write the complete works of Shakespeare. The formula has changed a bit. In one school, it has been proven that if you have a limited number of eight year olds and a limited number of word processors, some of them will write a song about the Wall Street Occupiers.

Third-graders are getting smarter. They apparently read Marx, believe in class warfare, and compose songs about greedy rich people. “Fun With Dick And Jane” has become “Fun With Karl and Mao.” These little rabid egalitarians also have the musical talents of the young Mozart. Or maybe Rogers and Hammerstein. Could your eight year old hold a tune or remember the words to any song more complicated than Merrily We Roll Along, let alone write an entire screed set to music? Then you don’t live in Albermarle County, Virginia. The little geniuses there wrote the following song, entitled “Part of the 99:”

Some people have it all
But they still don’t think they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes — they’re the 1 percent

I used to be one of the 1 percent
I worked all the time
Never saw my family
Couldn’t make life rhyme
Then the bubble burst
It really, really hurt
I lost my money
Lost my pride
Lost my home
Now I’m part of the 99

I used to be sad, now I’m satisfied
’Cause I really have enough
Though I lost my yacht and plane
Didn’t need that extra stuff
Could have been much worse
You don’t need to be first
’Cause I’ve got my friends
Here by my side
Don’t need it all
I’m so happy to be part of the 99.

A few grouchy parents and some local taxpayers have actually suggested that the song violates the school district policy forbidding political statements at school programs. Some others have even had the nerve to suggest that songs like that are not written by eight year olds. But the program at Woodbrook Elementary School went forward anyway. As school spokesman Phil Giaramita says: “We don’t really censor the topics that students come up with. This is the first time we’ve had the lyrics of one of these songs criticized.” As we say in the law, “I guess that’s dispositive.”

The school district, the school principal, and the teacher/advisors all tell us the same thing. The kids wrote it. It has no political message. And we don’t censor what the kids write. Now I can’t help wondering what they would say if the eight year old kids had composed a song entitled Jesus Was A Capitalist complete with music to rival George Gershwin.

Giaramita went on to say “Kids aren’t told what to write and you would be surprised or amazed at how creative and how thoughtful children even at that age are.” Ya got that right! I think “astonished and disbelieving” might be even more descriptive of my reaction. I have three kids and eight grandkids, all very bright and creative. Even if they had been brainwashed into thinking that rich people are evil, they still couldn’t have written this kind of propaganda at eight years of age. They were more likely to misremember the tune and words of If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler On The Roof.

According to the school authorities, the song was actually written four months earlier when the Occupy movement was still getting good press and there hadn’t been any rapes, robberies or murders yet. I think that is somehow supposed to explain why the song is non-political and capable of being written by eight year olds. Color me doubtful. If the song celebrated the second coming of Christ, I would still wonder how it was written by third-graders.

The school does say that “the boys and girls worked with a facilitator to come up with a theme, tune and lyrics for a song.” That must be one hellacious facilitator. I’m picturing it right now. Facilitator: “Hi, kids! You’re going to write a song today about things that you think about every day. What would you like to do?” Kids: “We want to raise the consciousness of the community about the disparity between the lives of the robber barons and the desperation of the proletariat. We want to tell our community that we march in solidarity with the 99% of Americans who are forced to live like Neanderthals while the 1% live in their mansions and on their yachts on their dividends earned over the backs of poor women and minorities. We also want to make sure that the tune includes at least two semi-hemi-demi-quavers in order to emphasize the leitmotif of the non-political words.”

Once having thought that over, I see the school’s point. I’m sure you feel the same way. I just can’t wait to hear the song they’re writing about the glorious new Supreme Leader, Kim Jong- Un.
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The Power of Clichés

They say the eyes are the window of the soul. They also warn us there be monsters in a film. Monsters like the Cheese Burglar!

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The Economist: Religious Jews Are The Real Evil

Sometimes The Economist has to be read to be believed. In December, The Economist began worrying for the first time that things weren’t going right in Egypt because “inexplicably” some religious types were winning the elections. How bad are these religious types? Almost as bad as ultra-Orthodox Jews. . . the worst of the worst.

When the Arab Spring hit Egypt, there were plenty of reasons to hope the country would move in the right direction. Egypt had a history of religious tolerance before the modern era. The country is relatively modern. The country has a huge Christian population who would presumably be a moderating force. The Army was definitely a moderating force. And the Muslim Brotherhood has publicly forsworn violence and any intention of imposing strict Sharia law on the people. It seemed very possible Egypt could become a Turkish-style moderate-Islamic democracy.

But there were also plenty of reasons to believe things would go wrong. The Muslim Brotherhood’s political history is more radical than they admit. Islam would not see subjugating a Christian population as much of a moral dilemma, see e.g. anywhere in the Middle East, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, etc. And there is another group, the Salafists, who are openly pushing for a Taliban-like puritanical interpretation of Islam to become the law of the land.

People with brains saw the potential for good in this and the potential for bad, and they waited to see how the middle class and youth would respond. Idiots, i.e. liberals like The Economist, saw only the good parts.

With the first round of the elections in the books, the bad appears to be winning. The Muslim Brotherhood have become the big winners with 46%. Even worse, the Salafists got 24%. The question now is whether the Brotherhood will team with the Salafists, which they originally promised they wouldn’t. That will decide Egypt’s future.

And now that things appear to be going wrong, liberals are shocked to discover there was ever a potential for bad. Who knew there were Muslims who really meant it when they said they want to stop women from driving, going to school, and fondling vegetables, when they said they want to murder Christians who won’t convert, and when they said they want to go to war with Israel? Who could have known this, whined The Economist when it confessed to being misled by all the Egyptian Facebook pages that seemed so hopeful and so liberal.

Anyway, The Economist is now trying to save face by equating the Salafists with ultra-orthodox Jews. Indeed, according to The Economist religious Jews are just like the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra-orthodox are just like the Salafists. Let’s compare:

● Religious Jews are “carving out no-go areas for the authorities with their own legal and morality police.”

Yep, that’s just completely evil. It’s kind of like how it’s a death sentence for non-Muslims to be in places like Mecca and Medina and how Jews aren’t allowed in Saudi Arabia and how the Muslims in places like Sudan and Ethiopia slaughtered their Jewish and Christian neighbors. Yeah, those imaginary no-go areas are about as bad as it can get.

● Religious Jews are “using their power as parliamentary kingmakers [and] religious Jews are the state.”

Oh, so they’ve imposed Torah law and Rabbis select political leaders now? Oh wait, no, that still only happens in Muslim countries.

● “The hotter-headed religious soldiers boycott military pageants at which women perform,” . . . “Municipalities cancel concerts with female artists or insist that they fully cover their bodies and remove advertising of even modestly-clad women from streets and buses.” . . . and “Hillary Clinton recently said she was worried that women’s rights in Israel were being eroded.”

Wow, if Hillary says it, then it must true. Of course, boycotting parades and demanding that scantily-clad women be covered up isn’t quite the same as requiring women to wear veils head to toe, sentencing women to be stoned for having sexy eyes, attacking male doctors who try to help women, sentencing women to death for adultery or sorcery or being raped, allowing instant divorce by husbands, not letting women vote, hold office, drive, work, go to the same churches, go to school, etc. etc. But yeah, I TOTALLY see how you could equate these things.

● “In ultra-Orthodox suburbs of Tel Aviv, women, like their Saudi counterparts, do not drive.”

Of course, in Israel, it’s a choice. In Saudi Arabia, it’s a law and women drivers get a death sentence. Also, it’s not just Saudi Arabia. It’s all over the Gulf and spreading.

● “Religious Jews tend to be more dismissive of Arabs than their secular compatriots.”

Yep, that’s bad. There’s nothing worse than being dismissive. . . like how the left is dismissive of Christians. Of course, Muslims aren’t really dismissive of Jews so much as “murderous of.” Tomato... tomato I guess.

● “Polls suggest that a high percentage of religious Jews would deny non-Jews the vote.”

But they can vote. Show me a Muslim country where non-Muslims can vote? In fact, in several Muslim countries (e.g. Pakistan) being a Jew or Christian gets you a death sentence.

Oh, those evil Jews! Won’t someone rid us of their terror?!

This is shameful, but it’s also par for the course these days among liberal journalists for whom anti-Semitism and stupidity are tools of the trade. They casually mix anti-Semitism with their bizarre language of equivalency to come up with stunning comparisons like this, where a blood thirsty murderer can be equated to someone shushing you at a theater. Nice work Economist.

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The Case For Romney

Romney’s not a conservative. He’s hardly exciting or inspirational. He’s flopped around so much it’s just not possible to say what he really believes. But strangely, the more I think about it, he is the Republican candidate who would probably make the best President. Here’s my take on the strange case for Romney (since I can't have Cain.)

Let me start by pointing out that other conservatives are now making a case for Romney.

● Charles Krauthammer invokes the William Buckley rule: vote for the most conservative candidate who can win. He says that’s Romney.

● Ann Coulter argues Romney is the only candidate we can trust to both repeal ObamaCare and stop illegal immigration. Her point about ObamaCare is an “electability” argument, but her point on illegal immigration is solid. Only Romney and Bachmann actually oppose amnesty. The others claim to oppose amnesty, but really support it in hidden form. Some go even further. Perry wants to give illegals more rights than Americans. Newt wants to grant illegals all the rights of citizens without the name “citizen” and thereby hand the Democrats a double victory -- new voters through amnesty plus a political charge that Republicans want Hispanics to be second class citizens. Santorum actually opposes voluntary use of the e-Verify system because his Big Business friends want the system gone so they can hire cheap illegal labor.

My take is different. Not only do I believe Romney is most electable -- in fact, he may be the only electable candidate -- but I think Romney may turn out to be an excellent President, something I cannot say about the rest. Here’s why:

Most Electable

The electability case is simple. This election will be an referendum on Obama. And as such, Obama is doomed. No President has been so low in the polls so consistently for so long. This tells us the public has reached its verdict and will not change its mind. In 2010, we saw the result of this when the public punished Obama’s party with an historic thrashing. Even now, Democrats see the writing on the wall so clearly that people like Barney Frank and Ben Nelson are quitting before they get tossed out. The Democrats know they’re doomed.

The only thing that can save Obama would be if we pick a Republican who makes the race about themselves rather than a referendum on Obama. Egomaniacal loose-cannon Newt Gingrich, gay-baiting Rick Santorum or Michelle Bachmann, corrupt Bush-clone Perry, or the terrifying Ron Paul, would all make the race about themselves and the public would need to decide if it can trust these Republicans before it ever looks at Obama. That’s the only kind of race Obama can win because it distracts from his record. But Romney is mild, bland, and inoffensive. His background is competent and shows the right kind of experience. He isn’t someone the public will worry about. That leaves the election as a referendum on Obama’s record, and in that election, Obama goes down in an historic landslide. Thus, not only is Romney the most electable, he may be the only electable candidate on the Republican side.

The Best Potential President In The Bunch

But electability only goes you so far. The real question is, what kind of President would Romney make. In that regard, I’ve come to believe that for a very strange reason, Romney may end up being a really good President. Here’s the thing. Our two best Presidents in recent memory were Reagan and Clinton (after his disastrous start). What they had in common was a form of conservatism that just isn’t on display in any of the other candidates or in any of the recent Presidents. I think Romney has that.

The best way to explain what I mean is to first point out the problem with the other candidates: they all think they have magic bullets to fix the country. Santorum and Bachmann think they can fix America by ridding it of gays. Santorum now adds a new-found populism which mixes socialist ideas like favoring manufacturing with the middle-class-destroying policies of Big Business. Rick Perry thinks he can fix America by handing it over to his corporate donors. Huntsman thinks he can fix America by taking the partisanship out of politics. Newt thinks he’s God and can fix America by issuing grandiose ideas. And Paul thinks he can fix America by turning the clock back to an idealized 1776 that never was.

This is all destined to fail because it misunderstands why America and conservatism work. Genuine conservatism does not try to run an economy by fiat. It does not pick winners and losers and it does not look for magic policies to kickstart the country. Genuine conservatism recognizes that the government cannot fix America, only Americans can fix America. And Americans can only fix America if the government stops trying to organize the economy and lets people do their own things.

Reagan understood this. His goal in office was not to find some clever policy to spur something specific. His goal was to eliminate regulations and lower taxes and unleash the public to make their own choices. None of the candidates except Paul (who fails for other reasons) understand this because they aren’t genuine conservatives. . . they think they can tinker America to greatness by making its choices for it.

Unlike the others, I suspect Romney understands this. For one thing, Romney’s background as the hamstrung governor of a liberal state tells us that Romney knows the limitations of political power. Secondly, his business experience is critical. Since he didn’t just run a company, but was instead involved in buying failing companies and turning them around, he is familiar with the vagaries and uncertainties of the business world and the degree of latitude business needs to function. Those are exactly the kinds of lessons that underlie Reagan’s beliefs.

But even if Romney doesn’t get this, there’s another reason to suspect he would make an excellent President, and believe it or not, it’s his lack of principles. Clinton was an awful President when he first arrived. His people were far-left radicals who planned to remake America. The backlash against their hubris gave us the first Republican Congress in forever. That’s when an interesting thing happened. Clinton, who apparently had no values of his own, decided the best way to govern would be to stick his finger in the wind and do whatever the public wanted. Since the public was leaning right, Clinton ended up moving right and became one of the better Presidents in history because the public pushed him in the same direction Ronald Reagan had gone -- toward getting the government out of the way.

One of the concerns people have with Romney is that he lacks principle. This is true in a specific sense as he has been both liberal and conservative on almost every issues. But there is one overriding principle Romney does follow: he does what the public wants. Right now, the public is sending highly conservative, Reaganesque signals. Romney has adopted these and presents a platform that is easily the most conservative of any of the candidates. And there is good reason to believe he means it, because he thinks this is what the public wants and, thus, that is what he intends to deliver.

In other words, as strange as it may sound, Romney’s lack of principles may be what make him the most trustworthy candidate because he will do his best to please us, the public. And since the public is conservative in a Ronald Reagan sort of way, there is significant reason to believe Romney will adopt Reagan's principles. I don’t see that in any of the other candidates, each of whom seems more interested in legislating their own pet peeves.

That’s why I think Romney deserves support. Not only is he the most likely to beat Obama, who simply must be beaten for the sake of the country, but he also has the potential to become an excellent President. I understand the fear that a man without principles is unpredictable and that RINOs have too often lied about their views to sneak through the elections, but I think Romney is a different case because Romney isn’t a principled RINO who has adopted a conservative cloak, he’s a principle-less mirror who adopts whatever the public currently wants. And with the public channeling Reagan and Romney signaling that he understands that, I think he could well become a President in the conservative mold of a Reagan or the good-Bill Clinton years.

That’s my take on it. I guess we’ll see what Iowa thinks tonight?

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Merry Mayhem From Santa

Most of us got gifts and hugs and stockings filled with little treats for Christmas. A few got stockings filled with coal (Santa sometimes does carry out his threats about knowing when you've been naughty). One family got a really big surprise. Santa appeared at the door instead of coming down the chimney and murdered mom and her daughter.

Incidentally, four other relatives of various degrees were also murdered by Santa because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Collateral damage, if you will. Celebrate Christmas, open your gifts, get murdered in cold blood. ABC, NBC, CBS, Yahoo News, and most of the mainstream media reported the tragedy in Grapevine, Texas, describing Santa as "the estranged husband." Just another tragic domestic dispute. Most were careful to mention that the couple had split up, and they were having serious money problems.

But looking at the story behind the story, it quickly becomes apparent that this was yet another attempt by the politically-correct press to cover up what is becoming a common occurrence in America. Any lawyer practicing family law will tell you that domestic disputes are among the ugliest of events. But marital problems were the effect, not the cause of this mass murder. Those who read MSM reports or listen to TV talking heads were probably immediately suspicious when the real name of Santa was revealed--Aziz Yazdanpanah. But that's because we're all Islamophobic bigots, don't you know.

Yes, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and others have committed horrible family atrocities as well. But their religions don't mainstream murder, and when the name of the religion is invoked as the reason behind the killing, it's tolerated only among a fringe group of lunatics. Not so with a considerable portion of those who practice fundamentalist Islam. But to get that information from the MSM, you have to work very hard to find the obvious.

Islam in general and fundamentalist Islam in particular have a whole list of "crimes" which bring dishonor on the man's family sufficient to result in a "righteous execution." In this case, mom was a little too friendly with her non-Muslim neighbors, celebrated "pagan" festivals such as Christmas (but not Easter), and disagreed with the pater familias frequently and openly. As if this was not bad enough, the nineteen year old daughter was seriously dating a non-Muslim in direct violation of dad's orders.

Yazdanpanah is an Iranian immigrant, who believes not only in honor killing but also the apocalyptic "hidden imam" theology of his former countryman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But you wouldn't know that from the vast majority of the MSM reports. They immediately and almost simultaneously dubbed him the "Santa Killer." It almost seemed as if they blamed Christmas itself for the murders. We've all heard the common and mistaken statement that more suicides take place during the Christmas season than any other time of year. Add a little financial hardship and love turned to hate, and you have another typical Christmas tragedy.

What you really have is the growth of a uniquely fundamentalist Islamic trend--honor killing in America. This one was only a slight change in form with no change in substance. Who wouldn't open the door for Santa on Christmas Day? This was just a way for the follower of strict sharia law to get past the civil restrictions which restrained him from getting anywhere near the rest of the family. Those MSM reports which even bothered to mention honor killings tangentially immediately stated (incorrectly) that this was a very rare event that has nothing to do with traditional Islamic belief.

But then these are the same reporters who couldn't connect the shouting of "Allahu akbar" and the mass murder of thirteen servicemen at Fort Hood with the religion of peace. Yet these same people will immediately identify the alleged religion of any other murderer, even if the killer does not practice that religion or claim a religious purpose in performing the murder(s). Remember that the MSM immediately identified Timothy McVeigh and the Norway mass murderer Anders Brevik as Christians, though in both cases the murderers had rejected Christianity.
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My New Year's Revolution

Campaign year 2012 is now officially upon us. As a conservative who deeply wants to send Barack Obama back to his job as a Chicago South Side community organizer, I have to look at the current Republican field with more than a little trepidation. By tomorrow, the Iowa vote will be in, and I'll know if I have even more reason to worry.

I haven’t been this excited about anything since my mom decided to give me a dose of cod liver oil. The “excitement factor” will play a big part in defeating the snake-oil salesman currently occupying the White House. I don’t subscribe to the idea that any Republican nominated can automatically beat him. I’m not even convinced that any of the current front-runners in the Republican Party can beat him. I’m just one person. But if someone as determined as I am to beat The One can’t get enthusiastic about the chances of the current field, I suspect there are millions more like me.

Now don’t get me wrong. I haven’t missed a vote since I came of age (which was 21 at that time). I have voted in every presidential election since 1968, sometimes twice, back when I was a Democrat (the statute of limitations has long since run out on that confession). But not everyone is a political junkie like me. And not everyone who feels as unenthusiastic as I do has that same track record of voting. Many vote simply because they are habitual party voters. A great many others vote because they see a clear and viable alternative to the incumbent. And a huge number of voters do so solely because there is a candidate they can actually get enthused about, thus overcoming the lethargy factor.

John Huntsman—cold oatmeal. Rick Perry—master malapropist. Ron Paul—crypto-anarchist. Newt Gingrich—idea-a-minuteman, a few of which might actually work. Michelle Bachmann—likeable opponent of “forced vaccination.” Herman Cain—gone with the wind. Gary Johnson—gone to the Libertarians (if they’ll have him). Rick Santorum—running for moralist-in-chief. Mitt Romney—here-we-go-again.

So here’s my New Year’s Revolution. Time for those who could actually generate excitement, beat Obama in debates, and appeal to thinking independents to get into the race. Aw, to hell with promises not to run. Part of the fun of being a politician is you can break promises that get in the way of the public good. At PajamasMedia, Zombie has even gone so far as to print up an Absolution Coupon—Good for One Broken Promise. It’s awfully late in the process for the excitement candidates to get into the race. But it’s not too late.

We'll probably have a good idea of what's going to happen in Iowa by the time this article posts. New Hampshire looks like a Romney victory. That only leaves forty-eight states (though many of those at this point would require a write-in candidate, if the state law even allows it). My list of top revolutionaries would include Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Allen West, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie. Of these, I only have serious reservations about Christie, and I would still find him to be a candidate I could get behind with more enthusiasm than I could with any of the current candidates.

Clinton should have been an easy victory for Republicans in the reelection campaign, but it was Robert Dole’s turn, so we lost. Empty-suit Obama should have been an easy victory for us, but it was John McCain’s turn, so we lost. Socialist Obama should be an easy victory for us, but it looks like it’s Mitt Romney’s turn. God help us all. As I said earlier, I’ve never missed a vote. And I wouldn’t miss this one. I’d vote for Romney since voting for Obama would be a rejection of everything I’ve come to believe, and voting for a third-party candidate is a waste of a vote.

I’m not as worried about Republicans staying home on election day as I am about independents staying home. Independents are a major force these days, and without a party commitment and/or a strong Republican candidate to get enthused over, they might just sit this one out. In which case, Obama wins. If Romney had a strong, anti-statist platform and could generate excitement with his political record (and get past the Evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment), our chances would be a great deal better. He has the smarts, and he seems to be improving daily. Let's hope he has the will and the guts to do what needs to be done.

What I see with Romney versus Obama is a strong similarity to the Nixon-Kennedy election. Unlike most of my “revolutionaries,” Romney has as many similarities to Obama as he has differences. Big government doesn’t seem to bother him much. He doesn’t see the graduated income tax as a serious problem in itself, and only wants to tinker around the edges. In a very dangerous world, roiling with Islamic extremism, he doesn’t seem to have the fire-in-the-belly necessary to put America back in charge of the defense of the West.

Romney doesn’t seem to comprehend the difference between strategy and tactics, which will be a major factor in the upcoming presidential election. Instead of returning regularly to the strategic theme of smaller government, fewer taxes, fairer taxes, and cutting wasteful government spending, he talks about the tactical details. It is absolutely necessary to have a command of those tactics, and Romney does seem to have that.

But touting the details instead of promoting the basic concepts tends to put voters to sleep. I want to hear you tell me you will cut government and get the bureaucracies off our backs, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out how. In other words, when I ask you what time it is, don’t tell me how to make a watch. Which is part of why I see the Kennedy-Nixon similarity. Kennedy had bold concepts. Nixon said “me too.” I don’t want to hear Romney saying the kinds of things Nixon said. “I agree with Mr. Kennedy (Obama) on those issues. I only disagree on how we should implement them.” Romney (or whoever the candidate is) must present a clear alternative view of government, not merely seeming to say that he will do the same job, only better.

What I (and millions of others) want to hear is: “This administration has been leading us down the road to a socialist disaster. I disagree deeply and completely with Mr. Obama’s entire philosophy of government. There is no way that this President can modify his views to fit into even the most basic of American beliefs. Any politician who does not believe in American exceptionalism should not be living in the White House.”

I can see my list of revolutionaries saying just that. So come on you guys. Break that promise. We’ll forgive you. Help! And that’s my New Year’s Revolution. Wait a minute. It’s supposed to be a New Year’s Resolution? Oops. Never mind.
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Welcome Back Peeps! :)

Welcome back! We’ve missed you! Hopefully everyone had a nice Christmas?! Anyhoo, here’s a quick update on what you missed followed by a brief discussion of negative campaigning. This will all be on the year-end test...

Wha’d I Miss?

● The big news is that Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska announced his retirement. This is great news for several reasons. First, I suspect Nelson had a solid chance of getting re-elected. Nelson was down in the polls, but polls this far out are unreliable because they are little more than a means of registering a protest. And come election time, people rarely look at the past but instead focus on the future. That’s where things like seniority, client services, and comfort level with candidates all come into play and Nelson scored well in those. Secondly, if Nelson had won, then the MSM narrative would have been that ObamaCare obviously wasn’t a problem with voters. This cuts that off.

● Speaking of ObamaCare, the Supremes have agreed to hear the ObamaCare case, and they’re giving it an unprecedented three hours for oral argument. Except in rare instances, each side normally gets 30 minutes.

● Still speaking of ObamaCare, there are more problems arising. Remember how the plan calls for subsidizing everyone’s healthcare? Well, it turns out the bill was written poorly and this may not be possible. Even the Obama people admit it will require a Congressional fix to solve this problem. That ain’t happening. So even if the Supremes don’t strike it down, ObamaCare may collapse under Obama/Reid’s incompetent drafting.

● Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum and Perry all failed to get their names on the Virginia ballot. This shows a lack of seriousness as candidates which should alarm their supporters. Gingrich then doubled-down on stupid by blaming one of the people he hired to get signatures. Apparently, this individual submitted 1,200 fake signatures. . . like ACORN. But this shows Gingrich’s stupidity. First, everyone knows you hire people to cross-check the names against voter rolls. What competent candidate could let someone get away with making up 1,200 fake names? Secondly, Gingrich played too fast and loose with the rules by only giving himself about an 11% margin of error. This is stupid. Romney and Paul gave themselves 50% margins. In any event, Gingrich sued and apparently will be let on the ballot if he agrees to stop crying.

● Rick Perry also sued Virginia for not protecting him from his own stupidity. Nice conservative values there, Rick: when you don’t follow the rules and things don’t work out. . . sue. Perhaps a homosexual/teletubby conspiracy slipped Rick litigious pills? In any event, recent reports have his whining working and he too will be let on the ballot.

● American Idol Kelly Clarkson endorsed Ron Paul. While I would have preferred she picked a different Republican, I am thrilled that a young, single female in the pop music world would endorse a non-leftist.

● A new video has emerged of Gingrich praising RomneyCare when it was passed and saying it would lead to great things.

Negative Campaigning

Negative campaigning is a tricky thing. Almost everyone professes to hate negative campaigning and it’s pretty clear that truly negative campaigns backfire on the candidates who wage them. But on the other hand, negative ads do work.

In fact, negative ads can be so effective, that some blame them for bringing about the current cynical state of our politics. I understand the logic in this -- if everyone attacks everyone else, then everyone is brought down in the public’s estimation and there’s nothing positive to latch onto -- but I don’t actually buy this argument. I think the cynical state of our current politics is a reaction to the lack of clear ideological choice, deep-seated corruption in both parties, and Democrats and Republicans blatantly lying about their intentions.

But what constitutes a negative ad? The Economist just wrote a stupid little piece in which they “worried” (read: hoped to promote the idea) that the Republican candidates were becoming so negative that no one would support them in November. Interestingly, the ad they discuss is a Ron Paul ad about Gingrich which shows:

● Gingrich sitting with Pelosi “warning of the dangers of climate change”;
● Gingrich bragging about receiving “speaking fees of $60,000 a pop”; and
● A voiceover pointing out that “Gingrich once supported the individual health mandate.”

This is hardly “going negative.” These are legitimate policy questions. Does Gingrich or does he not support global warming legislation? He did before and he’s hazy on it now. That’s a pretty important issue. Gingrich claims to be an outsider, yet he’s bragging about his speaking fees at large corporate gatherings. Is it not valid to question who his supporters are? And how can Gingrich’s support for the central abuse of ObamaCare not be a policy issue? (Also, isn’t it funny that supporting a Democratic agenda is “going negative”?)

The reality is none of this is negative. Negative is false statements, distortions of records, and baseless smears hinting that someone is a racist, a harasser, a philanderer or a bigot. Negative is repeating isolated, context-less quotes from decades ago and pretending they represent a lifetime record. Negative is smearing a candidate’s family or invading their bedroom. Negative is suggesting Barry Goldwater is unstable and will start a nuclear war, suggesting Ronald Reagan is old and senile or that he cut a deal with the Iranians, and publishing fake rumors about affairs that never happened, spreading lies about military records, and springing stories about a drunk driving arrest 40 years prior. Negative is NOT pointing out that your opponent supports political policies with which you disagree.

I am not a believer in negative campaigning. I think it cheapens your victory and destroys your mandate, and positive candidates will always be better leaders. But I also think we need to stop calling the pointing out of policy disagreements negative campaigning. And we really need to stop letting the MSM spin any criticism of another candidate as negative just so they can drive the narrative that Republicans are all negative.

(P.S. Don't forget, Star Trek Tuesdays start tomorrow morning at the film site.... 9:00 AM, be there.)

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