Even at 15 percent, the rich will pay more. For argument’s sake, someone who earns $100,000 would pay $15,000 in taxes, while someone who makes $100 million would pay $15 million. Delicate calculations confirm that $15 million exceeds $15,000. The rich will pay more dollars in taxes, but as a proportion of income equal with everyone else. Hello, “fair share.”
Gingrich also would chop America’s corporate tax from 35 percent (the industrial world’s second highest, after Japan’s) to a flat 12.5 percent, which would tie Ireland’s as the lowest and most competitive among developed nations. Coupled with immediate, 100 percent expensing of capital purchases, such a stimulus would unleash dramatic economic expansion — rather than the Obama-style “stimulus” that yields bankruptcies, layoffs, and FBI raids.
Compared to Gingrich’s gutsy blueprint, Romney’s exhibits the caution that has made the former Massachusetts governor the “Oh, well, if we must” choice, even among his supporters.
While Romney would ditch the death tax and cut the corporate tax to 25 percent, he would preserve today’s income-tax rates. He would scrap taxes on interest, capital gain, and dividends, but — echoing Obama — only for those making less than $200,000. – [Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – the vast majority of those who make over $200,000 in what the IRS calls “earned income” are small and medium sized businesses. Mitt’s plan is so mild that it cannot do the economic heavy lifting to get us out of this morass. Speaking in economic terms, Obama’s plan is an economy killing machine and Mitt Romney’s is only marginally better.]
(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.
When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.
The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s administration, but it did get close.
By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away from the July 2008 high.
The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak. (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)
Whole wheat bread prices from January 2009 to December 2011 increased about five percent (5.02 percent) from $1.97 to $2.07. (The inflation rate in December 2011 was 3.0 percent.)
Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December) showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.
Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.
Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.
One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.
When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home.
The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.
In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public.
The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Exceptions allow for ball-throwing in predesignated areas, when a person obtains a permit, or playing water polo “in or over the Pacific Ocean”.
However, during the winter off-season, the new rules will be relaxed.
Officials warned that any activities that could potentially harm “any person or property on or near the beach” should not be allowed during the peak summer season.
Your kids could also end up costing you big bucks: the ordinance also prohibits digging any hole deeper than 18 inches into the sand except where permission is granted for film and TV production services only.
The city of West Allis has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit prompted by one of the first tests of Wisconsin residents’ right to openly carry guns.
Brad Krause was planting a tree in his backyard in August 2008 — while wearing a holstered handgun — when police arrived, drew their weapons and arrested him.
In February 2009, a municipal judge found Krause not guilty of disorderly conduct, and in April of that year state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a memo advising law enforcement agencies that the mere fact of wearing a gun, by itself, would not support a charge of disorderly conduct.
“This is a clear victory for Mr. Krause and Wisconsin residents who wish to assert their rights under the state and federal Constitution to bear arms lawfully,” said his attorney, John Schiro.
In reaching the settlement, the city did not acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Several other gun rights advocates arrested for openly wearing their weapons in public, assisted by Wisconsin Carry Inc. and a Georgia attorney who specialized in such cases, have won similar lawsuits against other Wisconsin municipalities. Settlements ranged from $6,500 or $7,500 to $10,000.
But after his acquittal, and even after the Van Hollen memo, Krause contends, he was warned by West Allis police that if he wore a gun in the city he would be arrested again.
In fact, when TV reporters were interviewing Krause in West Allis about the Van Hollen memo on April 21, 2009, two squad cars pulled up with their emergency lights on, and officers began to question Krause, according to his lawsuit.
“During the questioning, one officer stated that had television camera not been filming, Plaintiff would have been taken to the ground at gunpoint, disarmed, and possibly arrested,” the suit reads.
Now keep this in mind, the officers knew who this citizen was, knew he was not a threat, and yet they put him at gunpoint anyways, meaning that they were looking for an excuse to pull the trigger and take his life.
Self defense shootings in Detroit are up 79% as the police has been cut from 5,000 to 3,000 – LINK.
I found a report, “Fighting For Our Future,” which Chairman Webb gave at a meeting of the National Committee of the Communist Party on June 26, 2011. Webb said:
“Socialism isn’t yet embraced by large sections of the American people…. In these circumstances, the role of the left is to step up our efforts to energize, broaden, deepen, and, above all, unite the movement against the draconian plans of the Republican right…. Nothing is more important than the ideological and political strengthening of this movement….
It is obvious that there is a growing feeling of frustration and even anger among supporters of the Democratic Party with its performance over the past two years…. I am also disappointed with some aspects of the Obama administration’s domestic and foreign policy. But I don’t forget that this administration governs in a very hostile political environment in which the right is laboring overtime to wreck its initiatives at every step of the way….
But the main question from a strategic point of view is this: Does it make any difference, from the standpoint of the class and democratic struggles, which party gains political ascendency?
In our view, the differences between the two parties of capitalism are of consequence…. Neither party is anti-capitalist, but they aren’t identical either. Differences exist at the levels of policy and social composition. Despite the many frustrations of the past two years, the election of Barack Obama was historic and gave space to struggle for a people’s agenda….
The 2012 elections have begun…. No other struggle now or in the foreseeable future has the same possibility to effect a change in the political balance of forces in a progressive direction…. While millions understandably feel dissatisfied with the Democratic Party…it is the only viable alternative to the Republican Party at this moment.”
Recently we saw Donald Trump blast Rick Santorum for losing his Senate seat by 18 points in the Democrat 2006 landslide.
Ummm hey Donald, when Mitt Romney ran for Senate he lost by 16 points. And the same year Rick Santorum lost, Romney was polling so bad he dropped out of the race.
So your teachers union asks you to donate the the children’s charity associated with the union. They do everything to hide the fact that the money does not go to help children at all. It goes to billionaire John Kerry and multimillionaire Barack Obama.
Here’s a quote from House Oversight Committee testimony re unions:
“Later that day, while in the restroom, I over heard two ladies from California discussing the Children’s Fund. I asked them if they were required to give and the ladies told me no. They did not give to it because it is a political contribution. I cannot tell you the rush that came over me at that time. It was a mixture of anger and stupidity. I felt as though I had been totally duped. To add insult to injury, later that afternoon, then NEA President, Reg Weaver announced the NEA would be endorsing John Kerry for President. President Weaver went on to announce the NEA Children’s Fund had raised a large amount of money; and that, too would go to our friend in education, John Kerry. I felt a wave of illness come over me like none I have ever felt before. These who were supposed to be my people; duped me into donating to a candidate I was voting against.
Anyone who has ever used a Catholic hospital or school and enjoyed those services should not vote for another Democrat. The Democratic Party from Obama on down has declared war on these services.
By the way, we conservatives warned that this could happen under ObamaCare as it was phased in. The elite media and the Democrats said we were crazy liars. Well, now here we are.
Of course here is the rub. Mitt Romney after promising it wouldn’t happen, ended up having RomneyCare mandate that Catholic Hospitals had to give day after abortion pills under some circumstances.
Oh and you Catholics who dare to act surprised by this; your church leadership has been pushing statism (far left Democrats) for decades. Now you have it. Learn from this and do the country a favor and make it a lesson you remember.
Here is a video of Rick Santorum’s speech. After the introductions and thank you’s his message to President Obama and the American people is a solid conservative economic message – LINK.
DENVER — It took one night for Rick Santorum to become a player again in the Republican presidential race.
The former Pennsylvania senator came out on top in the voting in all three contests Tuesday night, including an unexpected five-point victory in Colorado’s caucuses. Santorum also won the Minnesota caucuses, by an 18-point margin, and he won by 30 points in the Missouri primary.
Santorum moves on without any new delegates, but with plenty of momentum.
For everyone who flat-out declared the GOP battle a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, voters in three states Tuesday night said, “Not so fast.” Rick Santorum pulled off huge wins in Missouri, Minnesota and, incredibly, Colorado — a state Romney was supposed to have locked up.
“Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota,” Santorum told a cheering crowd in Missouri.
Santorum was such an underdog that, just a week ago, people were speculating he’d drop out. Last night, he not only won — he blew out his competition.
Indeed. Romney is not selling us a product, he is just carpet bombing the other candidates with almost 100% of his ads being negative. Why should we vote for Mitt Romney? What policy heavy lifting has he gotten done for conservatives? This is a must see.
Can you imagine? When Rick Santorum was running in 1994 for the Senate. He won his house seat against a Democrat in a 3 to 1 Democrat district and he ran as a Conservative. He ran statewide in 1994 as a Conservative in a relatively blue state, a heavy union state. And in 1994 he was talking up Ronald Reagan. Go over a few states, or up a few states, and there you have Massachusetts, at almost exactly the same time, if not exactly the same time, Romney was running for the Senate against Kennedy, TRASHING Ronald Reagan. Distancing himself from Republicanism. Called himself an Independent PROGRESSIVE if I recall correctly. Now THIS Romney is attacking Santorum from the Right, as if he’s the Conservative and holds the high ground. Mitt Romney is not questioning Santorum’s Conservative credentials. He is attacking Rick Santorum from the Right. This is what is so damned annoying, because it is so disingenuous.
Because Romney has now taken in the last few years solidly Conservative positions, even though he can’t articulate them very well past one line in the Declaration of Independence (Come on America. Let’s go. Come on. I’m for America. Come on. Let’s go. Hey. Everybody. Line up. Lets just go) Anyway, the point is, Santorum was a true Conservative. You don’t have to agree with everything he voted for; everything he says. I get all that. Honestly I do. But that’s not the point. His principles were not negotiable. His principles were not mush. You could disagree with a vote here and say that vote does not line up with your Conservative agenda. I get that. I really do. But he was a very high, what was he in the 90’s with the American Conservative Union, if not 100% with pro-life groups and so forth. Romney was mush. He’s Jello. So now he’s going to attack Santorum as a Liberal while Romney is posing as a Conservative. This is why I’m so sick of this and disgusted with it…
I look at Rick Santorum at so many things that he did and tried to do from a Conservative perspective throughout his career and I can’t think of very many that Romney did. I’d even look at Newt Gingrich. You can attack him for a thousand things but one thing you cannot say is that he wasn’t a Conservative speaker. He was a Conservative speaker. Even though people may not have liked certain foibles and all the rest, the fact of the matter is, Gingrich gave us the House back and Gingrich lead a Conservative house and he did it in a way that was more Conservative than the way Boehner is leading this house. And he’s attacked from the Right by Romney too! So while Gingrch was trying to do the right things in the House, Romney was a Liberal; excuse me, a PROGRESSIVE; an Independent. So Romney attacks Gingrich from the Right when Romney at the time was on the Left and he attacks Santorum from the Right when Romney at the time was on the Left. Now he’s Mr. Conservative. How do you get away with this?
I’ll tell you how you get away with it. A massive amount of money to flood underfunded campaigns, a lot of media support, old media and, yes a lot new media which has been sucked right into this like the old media. And everybody just says well that’s just the way campaigns work, negative negative, you know, you’ve just gotta be a big boy…
This idea that Romney can attack bonafide Conservatives, at least they were, from the Right when he was on the Left is just so crazy. I hope you folks in Minnesota and Missouri and the other states coming up, I hope you remember this because you are now going to be flooded with ads telling you that Santorum was no damned good, he was a gutter snipe. Oh, he was a sell-out. He was a this or that. You remember those ads are paid for by a man and people who support a man who was all but trashing Ronald Reagan and when he ran against Ted Kennedy tried to move to the Left of Ted Kennedy; when Gingrich was running the House of Representatives and fighting Clinton and when Santorum was fighting the Democrat machine in Pennsylvania, a formidable machine, to win the Senate as a Republican. Just remember!
Oh, and by the way, the Romney people like to say that Santorum lost his reelection in 2006 by 17 points or 18 points. But in 1994 Romney lost to Kennedy by 16 points. Well guess what. Obama is every bit Kennedy and Kennedy was Kennedy. So, I’m asking you, is this the kind of nominee that you want?”
In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland, and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.
It wasn’t. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there’s much of an emergency.
Traffic flows no better on most of the state’s freeways than it did 40 years ago — and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K–12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state-university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, though half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don’t graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.
In 1960, there were far fewer government officials, far fewer prisons, far fewer laws, and far fewer lawyers — and yet the state was a far safer place than it is a half-century later. Technological progress — whether iPhones or Xboxes — can often accompany moral regress. There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming.
The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility — and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.
A keen visitor to Athens — or Los Angeles — during the last decade not only could have seen that things were not quite right, but also could have concluded that they could not go on as they were. And so they are not.
At first blush United States v. Jones is an important victory for the Fourth Amendment because it reaffirms the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Court held that the Government’s planting of a GPS device onto a Jeep constituted a “search.” Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner, was convicted in Washington DC of dealing drugs. Much of the evidence used to obtain his conviction (2,000 pages to be exact) was procured from a GPS that had been planted to the bumper of his wife’s car.
The decision is important principally because it re-affirms an enormously important principle articulated by Justice Harlan in Katz v. United States, which states that the Fourth Amendment protects people not places and as such a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” It was thought before cases like Katz that the Fourth Amendment’s protections extended to places…homes, private residences, etc (arising from the idea of trespass).
Yet the opinion itself is far more interesting than the ruling of the case because the Court’s dicta (outside the ruling on the matter at hand) raises some profound issues. The first of these is that it addresses how a person’s reasonable privacy expectations need to be defined by the Legislature in light of how technology has affected our lives. There has been a shift in the balance of power between the governed and the State.
Of course the so called “assault weapon ban” did not target guns used by criminals or actual assault weapons at all. They target self loading rifles popular with collectors, enthusiasts and sportsman while showing you a picture of a machine gun.
CONTACT:
Shawn Feddeman
Nicole St. Peter
(617) 725-4025
ROMNEY SIGNS OFF ON PERMANENT ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN Legislation also makes improvements to gun licensing system
In a move that will help keep the streets and neighborhoods of Massachusetts safe, Governor Mitt Romney today signed into law a permanent assault weapons ban that forever makes it harder for criminals to get their hands on these dangerous guns.
“Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts,” Romney said, at a bill signing ceremony with legislators, sportsmen’s groups and gun safety advocates. “These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.”
Like the federal assault weapons ban, the state ban, put in place in 1998, was scheduled to expire in September. The new law ensures these deadly weapons, including AK-47s, UZIs and Mac-10 rifles, are permanently prohibited in Massachusetts no matter what happens on the federal level.
“We are pleased to mark an important victory in the fight against crime,” said Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey. “The most important job of state government is ensuring public safety. Governor Romney and I are determined to do whatever it takes to stop the flood of dangerous weapons into our cities and towns and to make Massachusetts safer for law-abiding citizens.”
The new law also makes a number of improvements to the current gun licensing system, including:
Extending the term of a firearm identification card and a license to carry firearms from four years to six years;
Granting a 90-day grace period for holders of firearm identification cards and licenses to carry who have applied for renewal; and
Creating a seven-member Firearm License Review Board to review firearm license applications that have been denied.
“This is truly a great day for Massachusetts’ sportsmen and women,” said Senator Stephen M. Brewer. “These reforms correct some serious mistakes that were made during the gun debate in 1998, when many of our state’s gun owners were stripped of their long-standing rights to own firearms. I applaud Senate President Travaglini for allowing the Senate to undertake this necessary legislation.”
“I want to congratulate everyone that has worked so hard on this issue,” said Representative George Peterson. “Because of their dedication, we are here today to sign into law this consensus piece of legislation. This change will go a long way toward fixing the flaws created by the 1998 law. Another key piece to this legislation addresses those citizens who have applied for renewals. If the government does not process their renewal in a timely fashion, those citizens won’t be put at risk because of the 90 day grace period that is being adopted today.”
“Never before has there been such bi-partisan cooperation in the passage of gun safety legislation of this magnitude in this nation,” said John Rosenthal, co-founder and chair of Stop Handgun Violence. “I applaud the leadership of the Governor, Senate President, House Speaker and entire Legislature for passage of this assault weapons ban renewal. They have shown that Massachusetts can continue to lead the nation in protecting the public and law enforcement from military style assault weapons.”
The teacher asks the students to write an essay on the American Dream. 80% of them said that the government should buy them a house, pay for their college, and give them a high paying job. They also were taught nothing about capitalism or mainstream economic concepts.
Earlier this week during his State of the Union address, President Obama said, “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that [American] promise alive.”
What he conveniently omitted from his speech was that his failed policies have done nothing to make it easier to achieve, or afford, success. In fact, as the table below shows, the Obama Administration has left Americans worse off.
America Before President Obama Took Office and Now
The latest taxpayer-funded boondoggle to emerge from the Obama Administration’s infamous Energy Department grant and loan program has cost taxpayers $118.5 million, new bankruptcy filings by electric battery maker Ener1 reveal.
From Bloomberg News:
The company listed assets of $73.9 million and debt of $90.5 million as of Dec. 31 in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Ener1 has been affected by competing battery developers in China and South Korea, “which generally have a lower cost manufacturing base” and lower labor and raw material costs, interim Chief Executive Officer Alex Sorokin said in the petition.
Like Solyndra, Ener1 was a company touted by President Obama as being a shining example of his vision for taxpayer-subsidized clean energy.
The day following President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address, Vice President Joe Biden toured Ener1’s lithium-ion battery system manufacturing facility in Greenfield, Indiana and said:
As you heard President Obama say last night, this Administration is forging a new path forward by making sure America doesn’t just lead in the 21st Century, but dominates in the 21st Century. We’re not just creating new jobs-but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come-industries like electric vehicle manufacturing.
Ener1’s EnerDel unit, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, likewise received a Solyndra-style shout out from Mr. Obama during a 2009 swing through Indiana. During his remarks, Mr. Obama said:
See, I’m committed to a strategy that ensures America leads in the design and the deployment of the next generation of clean-energy vehicles. This is not just an investment to produce vehicles today; this is an investment in our capacity to develop new technologies tomorrow. This is about creating the infrastructure of innovation.
Indiana is the second largest recipient of grant funding, and it’s a perfect example of what this will mean. You’ve got Purdue University, Notre Dame, Indiana University, and Ivy Tech, and they’re all going to be receiving grant funding to develop degree and training programs for electric vehicles. That’s number one. We’ve got EnerDel, a small business in Indianapolis that will develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.
Now, in the wake of the Dec. 31st bankruptcy filing, Mr. Obama used his 2012 State of the Union Address to make it clear he intends to double down, not reverse course, from his decision to use taxpayer dollars to prop up clean energy companies that are too weak to compete and thrive on their own:
Payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away. Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail. But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.
This had to be done. Ann Coulter came out with the worst column of her career called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare”. Before Ann lost all perspective desperately pushing for Mitt Romney she was rightfully critical of the economic disaster that is RomneyCare. As a fan of Ann’s intellectual work I must say that I am shocked by her recent behavior and am concerned for her.
Our good friend Tamara De Silva has written a series of articles on the MF Global scandal. In her latest piece Tamara presents the information “in English” so that regular folks who are not in the industry can understand it.
This is one of the MUST READ pieces of the year. Here is a teaser:
….a possible conflict of interest between Jon Corzine [former NJ Governor and Democrat Bundler] and Mr. Gensler [CFTC Chairman] based upon their friendship, and a common political and professional involvement. What follows is a laundry list of connections-the applicability to MF Global comes later. For starters, Jon Corzine was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs during part of the eighteen years that Gary Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Gensler donated $10,000 to Corzine’s campaign for governor of New Jersey. They worked together in Congress when Corzine was a Senator and Mr. Gensler a Senate aide. They worked closely together drafting large portions of the investor protection act, Sarbanes Oxley, while Corzine served on the Senate Banking Committee.
More…
In 2010, Corzine invited Gensler to lecture at Princeton about financial regulation and Gensler also spoke to the audience assembled about his friendship with Corzine. Gensler donated $300,000 to the prominent Democratic candidates including President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Corzine has been one of President Obama’s elite bundlers, this past April 2011, alone holding an exclusive fundraiser from his Manhattan apartment where he was able to pass the hat around for more than $500,000. Gensler authored much of the Dodd-Frank Act and analysts like Sandler and O’Neill Partners wrote that they expected Corzine’s contacts in Washington as he took over as CEO of MF Global in 2010 to help him “navigates a shifting regulatory environment.”
Hmmm I wonder if the CFTC will have the ability to put service before self and investigate their own boss? After what we have already seen in the Obama Administration I am not holding my breath.
Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Keith Olbermann, The New York Times and The Washington Post all said he was. McCain was “a great guy” according to Chris Matthews. So why aren’t we in year four of the McCain administration?
Because electability is absolute, unadulterated, straight-out-of-the-cow bullshit. And I can prove it with two questions.
1.) Did anyone ever ask if Barack Obama was electable?
Potential candidate liabilities: Obama has a weird name. He’s aloof. He’s an elitist. He spent his formative years in Indonesia. His father was a Muslim. His mother was a Marxist radical. He won’t release his college records. He never served in the military. He never held a job in the private sector. He had a negligible impact as an Illinois state senator. He had a negligible impact as a U.S. senator. He had no foreign policy experience. He had no executive experience. He spent 20 years of Sundays with a lunatic pastor who despises America. He’s a product of the notoriously corrupt Chicago political machine. He had close personal ties to domestic terrorists and other unsavory characters.
2) Did anyone ever ask if Hillary Clinton was electable?
Potential candidate liabilities: She’s a left-wing feminist. She’s not attractive. She has a cold demeanor. She’s not charismatic. She and her husband were scandal-ridden and scandal-prone. She had well-known, shady business dealings. Her life’s major political achievement was staying married to a husband who cheated on her every chance he could. She was an unpopular first lady (until the Lewinsky sympathy). Her only major leadership role (Hillarycare) resulted in abject failure, ultimately causing the Democrats to lose their majority in Congress for the first time in more than three decades. She was a junior senator from New York in the second term of a legislative career without much distinction.
And the answer to each of those questions is no.
The list of potential political liabilities for Hillary and Barack could go on for days. Each had an ideology far to the left of mainstream America. Neither had an executive’s pedigree. Yet, somehow, electability wasn’t an issue for them.
I have been very concerned that the establishment assault on grass roots conservatives can lead to a massive strategic blunder. While in a worst case scenario it can lead to a conservative third party, it is much more likely to have grass roots conservatives staying home on election day which in 2006 and 2008 they have proved that they are all too willing to do.
I was wondering when I wrote the editorial linked to above if I was alone in thinking that. American Thinker, columnists such as Thomas Sowell, Milton Wolf, and Ben Domenech have now voiced the same. I am confident that John Hawkins will be asking this shortly.
The Republican Party has a tenuous hold on the conservative movement in America. At present the only home for the 40 per cent of the electorate that identify themselves as conservative is the Republican Party, but it appears that those who are nominally identified as the “Republican Establishment” are doing all they can to alienate the vast majority of the current base of the Party.
There is no office on Connecticut Avenue in Washington with a sign reading “The Republican Establishment” or the “The Democratic Establishment”; rather it is an amalgam of like-minded groups with one common interest: control of the government purse-strings.
The Republican Establishment is made up of the following: 1) many current and nearly all retired Republican national office holders whose livelihood and narcissistic demands depends upon fealty to Party and access to government largesse; 2) the majority of the conservative media, including pundits, editors, writers and television news personalities based in Washington and New York whose proximity to power and access is vital to their continued standard of living; 3) numerous think-tanks and members thereof who are waiting to latch on to the next Republican administration for employment and ego-gratification; and 4) the reliable deep pocket political contributors and political consultants whose future is irrevocably tied to the political machinery of the Party.
The overriding interest of this cabal has been and continues to be: the accumulation of power through the control of the income, borrowing and spending by the Federal Government. Thus, with the exception of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Republican controlled House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, the Republican members of the Ruling Class have been content since 1952 to merely slow down the big-government policies of the Democrats while publicly decrying their tax and spend policies.
This insider apparatus has been the primary determining factor in whom among those choosing to run for office will receive the financial, media and logistical support so vital for any political campaign, but particularly for national office be it the Presidency or either house of Congress. It is this cabal that has given the nation Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain in the presidential sweepstakes and innumerable go-along to get-along members of Congress.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 