Think of the world as a pack of ordinary playing cards, and each card represents some conclusion about an external event. Progressive thought starts when one deals a single card, let’s say for example a Queen of Hearts, and sees that card as both a Queen of Hearts and a Queen of Clubs. Normally, a person would see only the Queen of Hearts, and proceed on the basis of that knowledge. However, the sufferer of PCD sees both, and is therefore unable to make a rational decision. In order to make sense of two simultaneous realities, the PCD sufferer must create an elaborate false reality so that the Queen of Clubs and the Queen of Hearts can occupy the same card. This false reality can take many forms, the most common of which is the concoction of some magical transformative power which allows the Queen of Hearts to become a Queen of Clubs if placed in the right situation.

A good place to look for PCD is anything involving children. Just about every piece of progressive legislation, no matter how heavy-handed, obtuse, or unreasonable, is somehow attached to the welfare of children. Perhaps children are such an important part of progressive thinking is that the competing realities concerning children color every aspect of the PCD sufferer’s worldview. Those realities are:

1) Children are beautiful, innocent beings with limitless potential, and therefore have the right to protection, nurturing, proper nutrition, and comprehensive education. 

2) A child is nothing but a slowly growing pustule of need consisting of a lump of multiplying cells. This thing cannot properly be called a human being, and its very existence is wholly dependent on the whim of the mother. 

Any rational person can easily see how these two statements cannot be simultaneously true. The only way to reconcile the two statements is to either separate the mind into multiple identities, or create a magical conversion process that allows the “pustule of need” mentioned in the second reality to become the “beautiful innocent being” mentioned in the first. Thus the PCD sufferer seizes on the moment of birth as the point at which the pustule of need suddenly becomes the beautiful, innocent being. However, in order to believe that, the PCD sufferer must ignore the continued development of the child outside the womb, as well as the physiological processes taking place within the child while it is still inside the womb. This underlying cognitive break is the source of a large swath of bad progressive policies. This is why we have both abortion on demand, and State-mandated education in schools run almost exclusively by the State. It is why anyone of any age can purchase abortifacient drugs, but that same person would have to show ID in order to purchase certain kinds of cold medicine.

By itself, the above example of PCD is serious enough. Unfortunately, there are others, and while they are possibly less unsettling than  PCD’s dual realities concerning children, they are still exceedingly dangerous. Consider the PCD sufferer’s dual realities concerning the finances of private citizens:

1) People are morons, incapable of managing their own finances. It is the duty of the state to commandeer a certain portion of a person’s income and keep it for them, so that they will have something to live on when they are unemployed or  too old and feeble to provide for themselves. For those who are too stupid to know when enough is enough,  the state is also obligated use its taxation power to limit the amount of money a person puts away in private accounts for his own use. 

2) People are financial geniuses, capable of serving a steadily growing number of recipients with money derived from a steadily shrinking number of contributors.  

Since people cannot be financial geniuses and financial simpletons at the same time, there must be a magical conversion process which allows a financial simpleton to suddenly become a financial genius. In order to retain enough sanity to function, the PCD sufferer simply assumes that anyone working for the government must have had financial genius bestowed upon him, even if that person has had no training in basic mathematics. When viewed through the lens of the PCD model, it’s easy to see how progressive financial policy gets its start. It explains why the United States is almost seventeen trillion dollars in debt, while half the population pays no income tax. It explains why the government funds studies on duck genitals and sends millions to enemy regimes, while also cancelling public tours of the White House. Finance is a field that demands logic and reason, which is why PCD is such a virulent problem in government.

Competing realities concerning human nature give rise to a large portion of PCD – inspired progressive thinking. Consider the topic of self-defense, which has dominated the national conversation for the last few months. As in all other cases, progressive thinking on self-defense stems from two mutually exclusive concepts:

1) People are either too cowardly and weak, or too brutal, lawless, and sadistic to be allowed access to tools with which they can defend themselves and their families. 

2) People are stalwart protectors of the weak and helpless, whose accurate aim and immense self-control are enough to thwart any crime without offending anyone, including the alleged criminal. 

For both of these things to be true, there must be a magical conversion process that changes the nitwit in reality number one into the modern-day Gawain in reality number two. PCD sufferers place that conversion into the hands of Law Enforcement academies across the country. Unfortunately, no matter how hard those academies work, and how many Gawains they churn out, there will always be places they can’t reach in time.  Thankfully, PCD thought in this case is much more narrowly defined, and is therefore much easier to counteract. Today’s Senate vote is a clear indication that firearms PCD is much milder form, and much more easily treatable.

A final example should be enough to convince even the most skeptical reader that PCD is a legitimate mental disorder. A good many sufferers of PSD must contend with the following two versions of reality:

1)      Man is nothing more than a mutated ape. He, like the solar system he resides in, arose from the primordial soup spontaneously. His actions are dictated by genetics, and he has little actual control over what he does. Choice is really just an illusion. 

2)      Man is possessed of a divine spirit, and with this goodness is capable of slowing the rise of the oceans, healing the earth, and bringing justice and equality to all of God’s children. 

Thus, in the mind of the PCD sufferer, responsibility for poor choices is unnecessary, and whatever proclivities one might have ought to be honored and encouraged. Everything a person is has been hardwired into their very cells since he or she was a little pustule of need. However, it would be downright dangerous to hand over the reins of power to a bunch of mutated apes outside of a Charleton Heston picture. What is needed is a magical conversion process powerful enough to change the mutated apes of reality number one into the Man-God Philosopher Kings of reality number two. Somehow, there must be a mechanism that allows the meat-computer powered automaton to become a magnificent, transformative  superman.  Obviously, no such process exists, which is why our country operates  with the current crop of failed Philosopher-Kings in positions of power, many of whom suffer from the same PCD that runs rampant in American cities.  Unfortunately, this particular form of PCD is extremely pervasive, and it is historians, not psychologists, who will understand the full extent of the damage it has caused.

Only by understanding the root of Progressive Cognitive Disorder can we hope to formulate effective treatment. Since PCD theory was only invented a couple of hours ago, we are still a long way from a cure. But if we work together, and swindle enough public money out of the financial geniuses writing the checks, I firmly believe that PCD could become as easily treatable as gingivitis or planar warts. Only by treating it at the source do we have a chance to eradicate this terrible, costly disease and realize the full potential of freedom and liberty.

A a citizen of the United States, we have a civic duty to explore the issues, weigh the facts, and come to a conclusion based on what we believe will be the best course for our city, state, or country. We then go to the polls and choose a person who best represents our beliefs and our approach to dealing with problems and safeguarding our liberty, which is the primary purpose of government. Well, was the primary purpose of government. Now, not so much. The people seem to have decided that the government’s job is to give us money and other necessities, to eliminate the consequences of our bad choices, and to protects us from making those bad choices in the first place.

If the citizens of the United States are not exploring the issues, weighing the facts,and coming to a conclusion based on their deliberations, they are not fulfilling their responsibilities as a citizen. The ground game, as I understand it, is the efforts of people to go around and convince other people  that their side is right. The better the ground game, the more people they convince as to the rightness of their side, and consequently, the more people go out and vote for that particular side.But isn’t the necessity of a “ground game” indicative of a more serious problem? If citizens were actually fulfilling their obligations, everyone would go to the polls with a clear approach for dealing with the problems of the day. Or, to make it even simpler, if citizens were actually fulfilling their obligations, everyone would go to the polls. Low turnout as a percentage of the voting age population is clearly a factor in how we as a nation arrived at this particular precipice. Low turnout lets the people in charge know in no uncertain terms that the majority of the people they work for don’t care what they’re doing. Incumbency is almost as good a university tenure when it comes to job security.

Granted, one major flaw in this view of an ideal citizen is the quality of information the citizen has access to. One cannot make a rational decision without accurate data, and that’s something we have to go out of our way to find. It’s not just shamelessly liberal shills, either. Based on what we’ve seen, it’s pretty obvious that what we call the “News Media” is two very loud voices shouting at one another, and the noise makes it almost impossible to determine who is telling the truth and who isn’t. Case in point: the President maintains he identified the Benghazi attacks as terrorism on the first day, and many in the liberal media shouted it was true, while Fox shouted it wasn’t true. On the other hand, A number of conservative Pundits excitedly told us that turnout would favor the GOP, and other media outlets said that wasn’t true. As it turned out, Fox was right about the President, and wrong about the voters. The point is that there is literally nowhere to go in order to get an agenda-free presentation of the facts. Perhaps this is a factor in the horrendous behavior of our elected officials. They do it because they can, and even if they get caught, it’s so noisy that only a few people who are listening closely are able to hear about it.

I’m no political science expert, but it seems to me that it makes very little difference what sort of campaign a candidate is running if a majority of the people aren’t even paying attention. I think it’s deeper than the partisan divide, striking to the heart of what made our country the envy of the world for so long.

In light of this, I find it difficult to congratulate one side for having a good “ground game” while chastising the other side for having a bad “ground game”. What we’re really judging here is who has the better shepherds, without addressing the fact that the job of shepherds is to move around flocks of sheep.

The sheep, it seems, are the only thing both sides have in common.

Like all disorders worth their salt, mine has a slick, easy-t0-remember acronym, so that people can point to him on the television and say, “yes, that is classic SCARS.” S.C.A.R.S. stands for Selective Credit And Responsibility Syndrome, and it is characterized by the patient’s  pathological desire to take credit for any positive thing that happens anywhere, even if the patient was nowhere near the event and had nothing to do with it, coupled with a second overwhelming desire to avoid responsibility for anything bad, no matter how insignificant, that ever happened while the patient was in a position to do something about it.

A quick look at Obama’s record shows  that he has suffered from SCARS for a very long time, but the pressures of the Presidency have very likely exacerbated his condition. A good example of the President manifesting SCARS symptoms can been seen in his handling of both Fast and Furious and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Erick Erickson wrote an excellent piece on the subject, though he didn’t mention SCARS, because at that point, research on the disorder was still in its infancy. The President, suffering from SCARS, takes credit for Bin Laden’s death, even going so far as making it a campaign slogan (Bin Laden is Dead and GM is alive). What he refuses to acknowledge was that anyone with an IQ over twenty-five would have made the same decision, and that it was actually the SpecOps warriors who went in there and did the wet-work. Conversely, he has refused to take any blame or responsibility for anything related to the Fast and Furious scandal, even going so far as to blame the previous administration for the mind-bogglingly sloppy operation that seemed to be bereft of any kind of safety consideration or basic rational thought. Both of these events occurred far from where the President actually was. Both events were run by people other than the President, who worked in various capacities for the Executive Branch. Yet the President has convinced himself that he all but pulled the trigger on Bin Laden, while knowing nothing at all about the death of Brian Terry. The compulsion to compartmentalize external events based on their perceived effect on one’s reputation is a dead giveaway for SCARS.

SCARS offers a psychological explanation for why the President decided to alter the presidential biographies of his predecessors. Rather than a simple case of narcissism, or a insidious trick to subtly affect the opinions of 8th grade social studies students, it was something the President had no control over. He was compelled to insinuate himself into the lives of our former Presidents. Of course, when it comes to unpleasant things here in the present day, he is equally compelled to disavow even the most tenuous responsibility for them. Take for example his response to the events unfolding in North Africa. His skipping of the intelligence briefing and his appearance at a Las Vegas fundraiser while our embassy burned  Department of State employees  (which is under the executive branch) were killed and dragged around the streets of Benghazi are both directly attributable to his SCARS. He is compelled by his condition to take absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. He had no choice but to go to Las Vegas and ask people for money. In his mind, the events in Egypt and North Africa were someone else’s responsibility, because they adversely affect his reputation.

The President should look into having SCARS added to the DSM – V. Coming out publicly with his condition can only help his reelection bid, because it would enable him to avoid responsibility for avoiding responsibility. What’s more, he would look like a brave man while facing a serious psychological condition, which he could then take credit for.

Unlike Carroll, David Axlerod’s Wonderland is bereft of even the twisted logic of Carroll’s creation. He was concerned enough about Rep. Ryan to send me an e-mail, urging me to spread the word about the slowly gestating Devil masquerading as a member of Congress. Mr. Axlerod writes:

On so many issues, Paul Ryan, like Mitt Romney, has taken extreme positions that are out of touch with the values most Americans share.

It’s our job, especially in these first few days and weeks, to make sure voters get the facts on his record, and a clear picture as to what a Romney-Ryan administration would look like for regular people, when the slogans fade away and the real policy decisions they’d face as president and vice president are on the table.

Check out the new video and site on Romney-Ryan:

David Axlerod, as we all know, has a curious relationship with vague concepts like “facts” and “truth”. Let’s have a look through the fun-house mirror, and take a gander at Mr. Axlerod’s idea of a “Biography”, which you can find at BarackObama.com:

Paul Ryan is a career Washington D.C. insider. A Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he is the architect of the Republican “Ryan Budget.” This extreme plan would turn Medicare into a voucher program, increasing seniors’ costs by up to $6,350 per year. It would also slash education and clean energy funding, along with other middle-class investments critical to economic growth—while raising taxes on millions of middle-class families to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Liebman, based on Mitt Romney’s own projections on the impact of deep spending cuts on the economy, Paul Ryan’s budget plan could cost the U.S. more than 1 million jobs.

Congressman Ryan holds severely conservative views on a number of issues. He cosponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization as well as many common forms of birth control, including the pill. It could also ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. He supported letting states prosecute women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

Congressman Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women fight for equal pay for equal work. He voted against repealing the discriminatory policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and supports writing discrimination into the Constitution with an amendment banning gay marriage.

So when is a Biography not a biography? Why, when it says “Biography” at the top, but then fails to provide any real information about the life of the person being discussed. I think there’s a good reason why Axlerod and his cronies might want to leave out some key information about Mr. Romney’s running mate. If people found out that Paul Ryan lost his father at age 16, worked summers as a camp counselor while he attended college, where he earned Bachelor’s  degree in economics and political science, that he’s a dedicated family man, a fitness enthusiast, and an avid hunter and fisherman, they might get the impression that perhaps Paul Ryan isn’t an Infernal Fetus at all, and that Mr. Ryan actually has some expertise when it comes to complicated things like managing vast sums of money. If word got out that perhaps there was some kind of deficiency in the current administration’s ability to manage vast amounts of money, it might spell trouble. President Obama’s bio mentions that he trained as a lawyer:

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

 

Conspicuously absent from the President’s  biography is any mention of experience or training in handling vast sums of money. Certainly, he has demonstrated all the shady, smarmy, slick, greasy, underhanded qualities that make lawyers slightly less popular than oral surgeons and proctologists on the list of admired professions, but hasn’t really performed well in the Money Management Department. Why, the Ryan “Biography” itself contains evidence of the Obama administration’s utter cluelessness when it comes to any numbers that don’t involve the word “par”.

Consider the following (and, if you’re able, try to keep in mind that this is somehow related to Paul Ryan’s biography):

It would also slash education and clean energy funding, along with other middle-class investments critical to economic growth—

Now, a lawyer might be forgiven for not knowing some basic rules about investments. One is that investing money you can’t afford to lose is a very risky business. It’s why there are so many pawn shops in Reno and Las Vegas.  With 16 trillion dollars in debt, can we really afford to gamble on “clean energy’? And shouldn’t we be getting a better return on our education “investment” than we are right now? If we’re going to invest in education, shouldn’t we expect educated people as the dividend? “Investing” in Solyndra and American public schools is probably the worst example of prudent financial planning that I’ve ever heard of.

Another rule that has been studiously ignored (if indeed, it was ever stumbled upon in the first place) was that leveraging – using borrowed money to increase potential returns on an investment – is extremely risky, and is partially responsible for the economic downturn the President is so fond of blaming others for. Isn’t that what the federal government has been doing at a terrifyingly accelerated rate for the past three years? According the President’s bio, he’s a student of the law, not economics, so during his years at the Harvard Law Review he might not have encountered these ideas. Paul Ryan, however, almost certainly has.

Only down the rabbit-hole of the Axlerod/Carney/Jarrett/ Wonderland can a Biography contain almost no information about a person’s life, yet still be touted as “facts” that need to be shared with others.

In the spirit of their “biography” of Paul Ryan, I would like to offer my own “biography” of the President, which I fittingly ripped off from the works of none other than Lewis Carroll himself:

“You are old,” said the youth, and your jaws are too weak 

for anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak

Pray, how did you manage to do it?

 

“In my youth”, said his father “I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw

Has lasted the rest of my life.”  – Alice In Wonderland, pg 65 

Here is one such missive:

Michael –

Election Day will be here in less than four months. And we’re facing a big problem right now that could directly affect the outcome that day.

The Romney campaign and the Republicans raised $100 million in the month of June alone. That is a massive sum.

Just wait until they start spending all that money in full force in key states we need to win.

Folks, here is the simple reality: Building this campaign today is more important than it was a few days ago. We can still win even while getting outraised by these guys. But we’ve got to keep it close.

That means none of us — not one — can wait to make a difference right now, with whatever we can afford to chip in:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Closing-the-Gap

A little incentive: A donation before midnight tonight will also automatically enter you for the chance to sit down with me for a cup of coffee sometime soon. We’ll fly you out, and you can bring a guest.

And really — thanks, for whatever you’re able to give today.

Joe

 

First of all, it’s good to know that Joe is aware that 100 million dollars is a massive sum. Massive sums of that sort deserve careful consideration, which is why, after careful consideration, he called the 940 billion dollar (at the time) “Affordable Care Act” a big deal.

It’s a far more massive sum than the 100 million dollars he’s warning his Rabid Fans about in his email. People with as much experience in government as Joe Biden has are quick to recognize massive sums. Massive sums are what the government is all about. After all, spending massive sums that one doesn’t have is a surefire way to head off economic disaster.Or, as Joe tells it:

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.

Joe wants to make sure that all his rabid fans know that the Romney Machine is raising money faster than a Fighter Jet on Biofuel. But Joe is a longtime government official, and he knows exactly what to do. What Joe wants is for all of his rabid fans to chip in and counter that massive sum with suitcases full of cash in three dollar increments, and he has a brilliant plan for how to spend that money, too.

He’s going to take that money, and fly some lucky Rabid Joe Biden Fan across the country, put that person up in a nice hotel…and have a cup of coffee with him or her.

I went ahead and looked up some package deals on Orbitz, to see some ballpark figures on how much it would cost to fly a person out and put them up in a hotel for a Coffee Summit.The deals ran from a a cheap 398 dollars to a pricey 778 dollars. Of course, I did mine conservatively, assuming that a Rabid Joe Biden Fan would cut off his own hand before sharing the glory of Joe’s presence with another human being. Therefore, the 338-778 dollar range is for one person, not the two that is advertised in the email.

So to recap, here’s the plan:

1) Take in money to counter a massive fundraising advantage by the Romney Machine, but do it in ridiculously small increments.

2) Rake up all those dollar bills and quarters and dimes and put them in a sack.

3) Take that sack to the travel agent, and purchase a plane ticket and a hotel room for a person who is already a shoo-in to vote Democrat, because he or she already CONTRIBUTED MONEY to the campaign.

4) Have a cup of coffee with this person, and then send him or her home.

As an outsider, I really can’t understand how a person could read this email, and think “Hey, yeah.  That could be me! Heck, I only live seven and a half hours from the airport. After that, a four and half hour plane ride, with all the requisite greenhouse gas emissions, TSA groping, airline taxes, hotel gratuities and finally, COFFEE.  Not breakfast, not lunch, not a beer with maybe a Nathan’s Hot dog. Just coffee. But hey, Coffee with Joe! Then I’d get to enjoy the crowds, the embarassingly thorough TSA searches, and the greenhouse gas-emitting goodness of a Union Built Boeing 737 for four more hours, followed by another seven hour bus ride! Here’s my money! Heavenly Father, smile upon my three dollars and grant me this one, tiny insignificant wish.”

Now, if that person had $40,000 to blow on the President’s re-election campaign, he’d probably have his choice of beverages. There would probably a nice fruit tray thrown in as well.

Unfortunately for our elected officials, the money they swipe has to be used for massive Ponzi Schemes, providing guns to Mexican Narco-terrorists,  Official Business conducted in Las Vegas hotel suites, and 26 dollar a gallon Battle Fuel, which leaves precious little for things like protecting the border, reducing the debt, and getting re-elected. With the use of force out of the question,  our politicians, who are so hard at work at all these other big projects, also have to find time to scrounge up campaign cash, the all-important lifeblood of the Washington Professional. Cash is such an indispensable part of life on the Campaign Trail that politicians often do their best work while obtaining it. Perhaps it’s the thrill of convincing reasonable people to do something unreasonable, such as giving money to a person who has already demonstrated beyond any doubt that he is utterly incompetent, so that he can go on an extended job interview for the very position he’s already shown he can’t do. This goes for the lady politicians as well.

Fundraising must put these people in the Zone, where things like principles, values, and statements recorded just the other afternoon fall by the wayside, and the world becomes shrouded in a green haze. With every cell in their bodies working in unison, focused like a prehistoric hunter on the life-giving gazelles grazing peacefully nearby, they flex their fundraising muscles, brandish their stone-tipped fundraising spears, and let fly.

The President of the United States is just such a prehistoric hunter. Watch closely as he circles in for the kill:

Michael –
Today is one of the most important fundraising deadlines of this campaign so far.
We might not outraise Mitt Romney.
But I am determined to keep the margin close enough that we can win this election the right way.
To do that I need your help today.
Please donate $3 or more before tonight’s deadline:
https://donate.barackobama.com/Tonight
The stakes in this election are real. Thanks for all your support so far.
Good week.
Barack

Obama must have bagged many Loot Gazelles with that one. He obviously put a lot of thought and effort into crafting that mighty spear of Fundraising, and because of that, we can learn a lot about him by examining it closely. First of all, he calls me by my first name. Apparently, the President and I are on a first-name basis, because he also signs the email with only his first name. I guess he and I go way back. Barack! Yo, B! my Choom-Chum! How’s it going, you old snake-in-the-grass? How’s that Hope and Change working out? That’s right; the President and I are on such informal terms that last names and titles derived from respect of the office aren’t even necessary. It’s all about me and B.O. My Homie.

Out of the Fundraising Zone, the relationship between the President and the people is just a little different, however.

In a surprising breach of etiquette, President Barack Obama’s Rose Garden remarks on Friday were interrupted by heckling from reporter Neil Munro of the website Daily Caller, whose editor-in-chief is conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.

Apparently, Mr. Munro didn’t get the same email I did, because the President called him “Sir,” and asking a question became a “surprising breach of etiquette”.

“In answer to your question, sir — and the next time I’d prefer you’d let me finish my statement before you ask that question — is this is the right thing to do for the American people,” Obama told Munro

If the first-name basis is the tip of the spear (or perhaps the shaft?) then the sharp, lethal edge of the spear, painstakingly chipped off one flake at a time, is the looming spectre of Mitt Romeny’s own Fundraising Spear, which the President believes may be sharper and larger than his own. With a bigger Fundraising Spear, Mitt Romney could assail the President from a distance, never getting too close to expose himself to danger. According to the President, this amounts to cheating, because he intends to keep the margin close so he can win in the “Right Way.”

The “Right Way” is spelled out in another fundraising email, this one from fellow money-hunter Jim Messina:

   –Of the various reasons listed for supporting this campaign, there was a clear standout: This election should be decided by everyday Americans, not by special-interest and PAC spending. (And we agree.)

So there you have it. The “Right Way” is to have everyday Americans fork over whatever hard-earned cash they have left after the government is done raking them over the coals, and use that money to put the President back in office. Mitt Romney is also trying to get people to fork over their money, and judging from the President’s email, is making some good progress. But he is going about it the Wrong Way.

Let’s see the Right Way in action:

The intimate dinner banked about $2 million, with 50 people paying $40,000 each. …Speaking in a dimly lighted, art-filled room, Obama told supporters they would play a critical role in an election that would determine a vision for the nation’s future.“You’re the tie-breaker,” he said. “You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.”

 

The President was in the Fundraising Zone, so we ought to excuse him for not checking with Mr. Messina (usually I call him Jimmy, or Jimbo, or J-Mess, but that’s more of a personal thing between him and me) about winning the election the Right Way. I know that the Private Sector is Doing Fine, but that doesn’t mean that the average Americans can afford the $40,000 necessary to join the ranks of Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney and become Ultimate Arbiters.

In fairness to the President, he has more than one Fundraising Spear in the arsenal. Consider this email, sent on his behalf by his adoring wife:

Michael –
Our family has spent more than a few days on the campaign trail.
We’ve had lots of card games, laughs, and fun family moments on that campaign bus.
Barack is hitting the road again next week, and he’s saving two seats on the bus for a supporter and their guest. We’ll pick the lucky winner in just a few hours.
So make a donation before the big fundraising deadline tonight, and you’ll be automatically entered to join Barack on the road.
The girls and I miss Barack when we’re not on the road with him. But I know he’s looking forward to hanging out with you — so I’ll let you take my seat this time.
Pitch in what you can before tonight’s critical fundraising deadline to be automatically entered to spend some time with Barack on the road:
https://donate.barackobama.com/Tonight
Thanks, and good luck.

This is the Right Way in action. Give the regular people a chance to pretend they’re Ultimate Arbiters for a few minutes, in exchange for a small donation. Let’s say a person donates 3 bucks (the suggested donation for the “Dinner with Barack” promotion) for a chance to try out one of those Ultimate Arbiter hats. Unfortunately, he is not Sarah Jessica Parker, and the odds are stacked against him. He probably won’t get a chance to ride around on the President’s bus. It could be because there are only so many seats on the bus, and so many people who want to ride there, that someone will have to get left out. Or it could be that Mrs. Broderick outspent  the poor guy by a margin of $13,333 to $1.

So I suppose that even if  you do it the Right Way, the way Jim Messina wants to do it,  access still costs money.

I’d tell the President that myself, but I can’t seem to scrounge up three bucks.

The title alone is proof positive that the occasional liberal viewpoint appears on Fox News. A quick read of the article confirms what most RedStaters probably surmised before getting through the first paragraph-that the author has trotted out the same tired, inaccurate slop that attempts to equate “government” with “government overreach.”

From her introduction:

When I hear conservative critics of government getting in the way of business, I always think about a trucking executive I know who shared the same complaints — until I pointed out that he made his fortunate running rigs across the government highway system.

Now, according to the Constitution, the Federal Government is actually responsible for creating roads. Part of Congress’s enumerated power is the creation of Post Offices and Post Roads. Of course, the federal highway system we have in place today would be considered overkill if it were merely designed for the movement of mail. Nevertheless, there is a constitutional basis for federal involvement in road-building. But Sally Kohn’s point was that the shipping executive’s complaints about government overreach were invalid because he made his living (or “fortune”, as Kohn called it) utilizing public roads. I fail to see how creating roads, an actual function of government, is an activity that gets in the way of business. Roads are a great way to encourage commerce, so I doubt the shipping executive included roads in his complaints. Unfortunately, Sally Kohn neglects to mention any of the shipping executives specific complaints, possibly because those complaints are much more difficult to attack. It’s much easier to simply toss up a straw man in an orange vest leaning on a shovel somewhere along interstate 95.

Kohn’s bio says that she is the Chief Education Officer of a “grassroots think tank”, which might be why she decided to use the fact that 90 percent of American children attend public schools.  For generosity’s sake, let’s assume that she was thinking deep, very important thoughts when she trotted out public schools as an example of the myriad ways government benefits our lives. These deep, very important thoughts she was thinking must have had nothing to do with schools; most likely she was contemplating string theory as a way to unify Quantum Theory and Relativity, or perhaps musing on the many obstacles one faces when trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. Whatever she was thinking, she didn’t pause to contemplate the dismal state of American public schools, or the fact that, as with many government-citizen interactions, the citizens have very little choice in the matter. Public schools are funded primarily with property taxes, which people have to pay whether or not they have children in the local school system. For the most part, parents have very little choice over which public school their children attend, and attempts to give parents choices are often met with outright hostility. Compulsory education, limited school choice, and teachers who can’t be fired without the Finger of God piercing the heavens and nudging them out the door all combine to create horrible educational outcomes for those “served” by public schools.

For example, the 2008 and  NECAP results in Rhode Island show that 68 percent of Rhode Island students were proficient in reading, while 53 percent were proficient in math. I couldn’t find more recent data readily available, but if there is some drastic change, I never read about it.  If you happen to be in that 68 or 53 percent, good for you! You’re the proud recipient of government help! Sally Kohn has a special place in her heart for you. I can only guess what Sally Kohn thinks about the unacceptable amount of kids who weren’t proficient, because she was thinking deep and important thoughts about other things, while those kids are forced to attend the same schools that “help” them with our tax money. I imagine that Sally Kohn’s rebuttal would include large amounts of stammering, peppered with phrases like “inadequate funding” and “uncontrollable socioeconomic factors”.

Refusing to rest on her laurels, Kohn goes on to point out that 89 percent of Americans receive their water from public utilities. I’m in the 11 percent who do not, but from what I understand, most people receive a bill each month for the water that the government so generously provided for them. Sally Kohn was still in the middle of thinking her deep thoughts, because she failed to mention that most of these public utilities are locally run, and that most conservatives really don’t have any problem at all with locally-run public utilities providing water and power.  For that matter, fire and police departments are also under local control, and most people are fine with that as well. When one is busy thinkin’ tryin’ to be another Lincoln, such oversight is excusable.

Do you own a home and benefit from favorable mortgage interest deductions? At least 60% of Americans who do also don’t think they get government help.

Since when is keeping your own money “government help”? Helping themselves to less of my hard-earned cash is nice, but it hardly constitutes action on their part. In a strange way, Sally Kohn is actually agreeing with conservatives, though I doubt it’s what she intended to do. Yes, keeping Uncle Sam’s sticky fingers out of my wallet is quite helpful, but wasn’t it my money to begin with? Should I thank the schoolyard bully who agrees to take only half of my lunch money in exchange for not drowning me in the toilet? Sally Kohn seems to think so.

Even 44% of Social Security recipients, 39% of Medicare recipients, and a whopping 27% of welfare recipients — the mother of all government social programs that conservatives love to hate — don’t believe they are beneficiaries of government social spending.

Actually, I think Social Security and Medicare are the Conjoined Twin Mothers of all social programs. Neither of these programs give people any choice. If  you can fog a mirror, you’re in, and good luck trying to get by without a Social Security Number, or even better, decide that having a Social Security Number is too big a risk to your privacy, and opt out. If Sally Kohn could bring her staggering intellect back from the cognitive gymnasium that her Think Tank must be, she might see that these programs will soon be paying out much, much more money than they are taking in, and in fact will one day consume the entire federal budget. That doesn’t sound particularly helpful.

After all of this deep thinking, it’s remarkable that Sally Kohn has anything left in the tank. But she calls up all her reserve dendrites and axons and aligns her synapses just right, and produces this:

Chances are your kids will not become one of the 400 very, very wealthy millionaires and billionaires in America but one of the 307,000,000 of the rest of us who serve them. If that’s your idea of success, then by all means support conservative anti-government rhetoric that denies your children the government stepping stools on which big business and the rich so heavily depended.

I had a look at my pay stub, just to see which millionaires and billionaires were forcibly removing money from it. I was hoping to perhaps see a monthly deduction for Red Sox season tickets, or perhaps a Playstation 3 entitlement program, but apparently that one was voted down in the Senate. I looked closely, but on my check, the only people who have decided that they are more qualified than I am to spend my money were the ones Sally Kohn says are “helping” me. Their idea of  “help”  is taking money that I earned and giving it to other people.

With the leftovers, I get to choose which products and services best suit my needs. This is where the millionaires and billionaires come in. Their companies compete with each other to offer me the best goods and services at the lowest prices.  Contrast the amazing improvement in quality, versatility and price of the home computer with the quality of a Rhode Island public school education, and consider, why on earth anyone would want the kind of “help” Sally Kohn’s government miracle workers are busy providing.

When Sally Kohn writes about government “stools” I don’t think the word means what she thinks it means.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/12/government-helps-whether-like-it-or-not/

“I don’t think we should live our lives in relationships based off old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”

Where I disagree with Dr. Albow is with this statement:

“And, make no mistake about it, marriage that includes cohabitation is a really tough environment in which to preserve such passion. The vast, vast majority of men and women, in fact, are no longer physically attracted to their spouses after five or ten years (that’s being kind), if they have seen one another most of that time. Human beings just are not built to desire one another once we have flossed in the same room a hundred times and shared a laundry basket for thousands of days.”

Sex is certainly a part of marriage, but it isn’t the only part. I think Dr. Albow has unwittingly hit on the root of the problem, which can claim failing marriages as a symptom. Modern technology has helped us create a culture of instant gratification. There’s an underlying assumption in modern society that since we can do a certain thing, we should. Since we can watch movies on our phones, we should, and if we’re deprived of it for some reason, it’s a problem that needs to be solved. The same can be said for sex. Since drugs and other methods allow us to, for the most part, determine when a women conceives, we can partake without undue risk of pregnancy. However, just because we can do something does not mean we should.  Marriage based solely on sexual gratification (what he calls “passion”) is almost certainly doomed to failure. Strangely enough, studies have shown that happily married people live longer, healthier lives. Apparently, these strange people must be doing something right.

Dr. Ablow ends with marriage’s death sentence:

It’s only a matter of time now. Marriage will fade away. We should be thinking about what might replace it. We should come up with something that improves the quality of our lives and those of our children.

Dr. Ablow’s solution is a sad one. It consists of just accepting a lower standard for personal behavior, of conceding victory to the most destructive forces arrayed against our civil society, and equating pleasure and gratification with real happiness and fulfillment.

I guess I’ll just enjoy my abnormal closeness with my wife and hope that Dr. Ablow doesn’t find out about me and commission some sort of study about my “condition”.

“One of the more comical features of the budget debate is to watch the ways in which Republicans refuse to engage on the issue of economic fairness.”

The column can be found here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-budget-debates-gop-runs-afoul-of-fairness/2011/04/14/AFJezmeD_story.html

Mr. Pearlstein goes on to describe the cruel and heartless Republicans ignoring the plight of malnourished mothers and all the other downtrodden, helpless folks who would be bereft of all sustenance were it not for the benevolent fairness of federal assistance programs. He writes:

“If it’s legitimate to decry the immorality of leaving our grandchildren a legacy of crushing debt, which Ryan and the Republicans do ad nauseam, then it is no less legitimate to talk about the immorality of reducing deficits by cutting nutritional support for pregnant women and infants rather than raising taxes on millionaires.”

Mr. Pearlstein is wrong when he accuses the Republicans of refusing to engage in the issue of Economic Fairness. Certainly his overly generalized blather about the finanical wherewithal of small business owners is ridiculous on his face, as is the violin-in-the-background lament about the plight of the dusty, huddled masses of government dependent children. However, there is a deeper misconception that Mr. Pearlstein exploits in his column, which is the very thing at the core of everything wrong with statist thought. He is wrong because the issue of Economic Fairness isn’t an issue at all. “Economic Fairness” is a pleasant way of describing the forced redistribution of wealth based on the whims of a small, powerful group of people. “Economic Fairness”, as Mr. Pearlstein describes it, might sound like a noble and worthy goal, if you don’t mind having some politically connected desk-jockey deciding who wins and who loses, in the name of “fairness.”

What is missing from Mr. Pearlstein’s logic is conveniently located in the Preamble to the Constitution: We The People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice…

Justice. Not fairness. Justice. It’s a simple word, one that requires no modifier in order to be understood. The word has several definitions, most of which include words such as “honest”, “rightful” “impartial”, but there are two that stand out when viewed in the context of government. Justice, according to Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary, is the use of authority and power to uphold what is right. In the second, and even more important definition, justice is the administration of law.

In the context of government, justice cannot exist without impartial law. To abide by laws that were created by representatives of the people upon whom those laws will be applied is the foundation of a just and civil society. Justice demands that these laws be applied equally to all people, regardless of their race, their gender, or any other arbitrary classification used to separate one group of people from another. If, as Jefferson boldly wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”, then the only manner this fundamental truth can be honored is by enacting laws that apply equally to all. To enact and abide by such laws would constitute the establishment of justice described in the Preamble.

Mr. Pearlstein’s idea of “Economic Fairness” tosses the idea of justice out the window in favor of an arbitrary system that punishes some and rewards others based on a set of criteria that shifts much more quickly than the ponderous bureaucratic machine can respond. For example, there is a natural inclination among those on the left to raise taxes on a certain, group of Americans known as “the rich”. However, the constantly changing value of fiat currency means that it is impossible to define who is rich and who is not, and so anyone classified as rich and taxed a greater proportion of his wealth is the victim of arbitrary government. By the same token, the purchasing power of a dollar changes almost daily, as well as varying according to where one resides, and so determining how much money will provide adequate nourishment for pregnant women and infants must also be the work of arbitrary government.

F.A. Hayek sums it up far better than I can:

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefor not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.” (Taken from “Broke” by Glenn Beck, page 235)

Mr. Pearlstein’s notion of “Economic Fairness” is either woefully naive or intentionally misleading. Bandying about moral falsehoods like “Economic Fairness” distracts us from the real pursuit of justice, such as securing tax reform that requires each citizen to contribute the same proportion of their earnings, and a Balanced Budget Amendment, to protect those citizens from the depredations of an unrestrained government.

Mr. Pearlstein would better serve his readers by calling things by their proper names, instead of covering up the obvious holes in his logic with band-aids made from “Economic Justice”.

Here’s the quote from the email:

CPAC 2011 demonstrated clearly that our numbers are growing and young people are rising up in great numbers to support of our principled message.

As one pundit at the conference put it, “Looking around at CPAC, seeing the students here and watching the excitement, it’s clear to me that the youth coming up today have their own hero, and his name is Ron Paul.”

The quote comes from “CPAC: Reagan, Gingrich, and Paul” by Neil Stevens. If one were to read this without knowing the context in which it was first presented by Mr. Stevens, one might think that Mr. Stevens was a Ron Paul supporter, or at the very least, an unobjective observer who happened to note Mr. Paul’s popularity. I find this use of Mr. Stevens’ words very dishonest, as the diary itself does not in any way promote Ron Paul as a positive force. Another excerpt from Mr. Stevens’ diary says quite the opposite of what the C4L email seems to suggest:

“To the young people wearing Campaign for Liberty stickers, Ron Paul isn’t the porker who hasn’t accomplished anything in his long DC career but to spin conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve. He is the idea of small government, respect for the Constitution, and a stable economy. It doesn’t matter that his monetary ideas would be a disaster for every American with a mortgage – not just all Americans who got in over their heads, but all Americans with debt – because that doesn’t matter yet to college kids. The details don’t matter; it’s the spirit that counts.”

By taking Mr. Stevens’ remarks out of context, C4L resorts to the same underhanded, dishonest tactics that propelled Michael Moore to his darling-of-the-left status. Moore got rich by distorting the facts, taking quotes out of context, ambushing people, conducting interviews under false pretenses, all the while calling himself a “documentary filmmaker” who was fighting for the “little guy”. And just as Moore used these tactics to squeeze money out of unsuspecting rubes, the C4L email attempts to get people to donate to some new training program.
An organization professing to stand in the name of liberty has no business using the same tactics as Michael Moore to achieve its ends. Its unfortunate that the work of a RedState contributor was hijacked to serve a purpose he never intended. It’s clear that over at C4L, the ends justify the means. Liberty is predicated on principles of righteousness and personal responsibility and when we abandon those principles, we abandon the cause for freedom. C4L’s shameless distortion of Mr. Stevens’ diary exposes them as just another lobbying group, one willing to sacrifice truth in pursuit of cash.