As Moe and Erick noted below, “it happened.” Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced his intent to run for President of the United States.

Video streaming by Ustream

The first Redstate Gathering was in Atlanta in 2009, and now we’re on our third one. No matter what GOP candidate you support for the nomination, this 2011 Gathering is one for the history books. Thanks to Governor Perry, Governor Haley, Senator DeMint and all of the others who are there making the event the best ever!

(Updated with full video of Perry’s speech – bs)

Business people seem to have a particularly good grasp of what’s going wrong in Obamaland.  Amilya Antonetti articulates it well here.

“What should the President say on Monday?” “I apologize. I apologize because i did not lead this country to success”

If only that could fix the disaster that Barack Obama and his minions have foisted off on this nation.

(Consider this an open thread)

Back in the good old days, referring to a liberal as “tax and spend” was considered an insulting accusation – one that Democrats avoided, deflected and denied. All except poor Walter Mondale. Back in 1984, for some reason, Mondale thought that telling Americans that he was going to raise taxes would somehow be considered a good thing to do.

Of course we know the outcome:

Let’s fast-forward to today.  Today, Harry Reid released his inner Mondale:

“[Republicans] have to understand today, right now, the day that we passed the bill, that they will have no legislation coming out of that committee unless revenues are a part of the mix. It’s a fact of life,” Reid said on NPR’s “All Things Considered” radio program.

“In my private conversations with the Speaker [John Boehner] and with the Minority Leader [Mitch McConnell] over here, they assume and the legislation allows revenue will be part of the mix,” Reid said.

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Or at least that would be the response I would expect from the Left.

Yesterday the journal Psychological Science published a paper (abstract here, original here*) that demonstrates:

the mere sight of the American flag can subtly shift their political views… towards Republicanism.  It’s an effect that holds in both Democrats and Republicans, it affects actual votes, and it lasts for at least 8 months.

This is a fascinating finding in and of itself, but even more so considering the other recent study that showed

that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.

So apparently, patriotism is a Republican thing.  (Go ahead now, lefties, get all frothed up).

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If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population

- Ebeneezer Scrooge, “A Christmas Carol”

In 2008, there were over 1.2 million unborn children murdered by abortionists in the United States.  Of course these babies, unlike those who chose to abort, had no “choice”, and they would probably rather NOT have died.  I wonder if the social liberal pro-abortion types have considered all of the consequences of taking away so many lives from this nation – over 52 million lives lost since 1973?

Admittedly, it is a rather cold, callous path of logic to analyze abortion in terms of economics, but let’s go there for a few moments.  Back in 1998, the late Larry Burkett, a highly-regarded author on Christian personal financial topics wrote “The George Bailey Effect:  Abortion-on-Demand and the Implications for America’s Economic Future“.  Burkett examined abortion not from the moral perspective, but its impact on the economics of the United States.  He makes a profound point:

This growing parity between the old and the young is at the heart of the demographic challenges that face Medicare and Social Security. Incredible as it may seem,by the time the peak of the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, the number of abortions since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision will equal the number of births in the baby boom. “If only one-third of those who have been aborted were available to start work on their 18th birthday,” speculated USA Today, “the demise of Social Security would be put off for decades.”

Indeed, it is largely because of abortion-on-demand that by the year 2030 the ratio of workers to Social Security beneficiaries will be reduced to only 2-to-1, according to a projection from the Social Security Board of Trustees. In other words, two workers will be supporting one retiree. (When the program began in the 1930s, 42 workers supported each retiree.)

The murder of millions of babies since Roe has had a profound impact on the demographics of the United States.  As a result of removing that staggering number of lives, the population – and tax base – are far smaller.  If we assume a fairly steady rate of abortions since the last year of reporting (2008), then there have been almost 56M aborted babies in this country – nearly the population of California and Texas combined.  Given an average federal tax revenue of approximately $8500/citizen, and assuming that those aborted between 1975 and 1990 (approx 23,782,000 lives, based on Guttermacher estimates) would now be productive taxpayers, the U.S. economy is losing roughly $202 billion per year in tax payments as of 2012.

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Another day, another poll.  On Wednesday, the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll was released, and to no one’s surprise, President Barack Obama’s approval numbers have declined.  His post-Osama bounce has become a dead terrorist bounce…and the POTUS is back where he was back in April.

But the thing that struck me in this poll, and in CNN’s summary story, was the coverage of Obama’s so-called “personal appeal”

According to the survey Obama’s strength remains his personal appeal: Three-quarters of all Americans say they approve of him personally, including a plurality of Republicans. But positive views of the president’s personality may be trumped by economic jitters.

Yeah.  Americans will probably, at some point, hopefully, become more interested in Obama’s actual accomplishments, rather than his personality and “cool.”  But I find it a bit odd that Obama is still considered appealing and likable, considering his recent descent into surliness.

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In the Holy Bible, calls for prayer and fasting are frequent responses to dire situations.  Yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry emulated those Biblical prophets such as Joel in calling for prayer to help address our national crisis.  Perry’s call for prayer is being directed to a specific event, “The Response,” which is to be held in Houston on August 6th.

The web site for The Response explains why this event is needed:

America is in the midst of a historic crisis. We have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. The youth of America are in grave peril economically, socially, and, most of all, morally. There are threats emerging within our nation and beyond our borders beyond our power to solve.

…

In Joel chapter two, an ancient Hebrew prophet speaks to a nation in crisis and gives her God’s solution: gather together, repent of their sins, and pray to God to intervene on their behalf. In that day the command was for everyone to stop what they were doing and gather for a sacred assembly to turn to God with all their hearts, “with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12).

(bold is mine)

The event is being funded by the American Family Association, so it is not a burden on the citizens of the state of Texas.  Of course this is causing a snit from the gay advocacy groups, who are not fans of the AFA.

Governor Perry’s “Response” to this nation’s ills – particularly the moral breakdown that is well underway – is precisely what one would expect of a Christian who sees God as the ultimate authority over our world.  The believer seeks God for guidance and goes to him in prayer, not just when he is in need, but at all times.  But as the book of Joel illustrates, in especially dire times such as these, special appeals through prayer and fasting are appropriate.  Governor Perry is promoting exactly what he should be during times of trouble: a plea to God to save his people and have mercy.

Unsurprisingly, those who do not acknowledge God as authority don’t think much of the Governor’s strategy.

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Well, maybe not “officially”, but as close as you can get.  Several news sources (and a couple of Redstate diarists) are reporting that Daniels has contacted his supporters to make the announcement:

In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one,” Mr. Daniels wrote. “The interests and wishes of my family is the most important consideration of all. If I have disappointed you, I will always be sorry.

Questions about events surrounding Daniels’ marriage, divorce and remarriage have swirled about since talk emerged of him as a potential candidate, and this may have played a part in this decision.  Since the standard operating procedure of the media these days is to dismantle every aspect of a candidate’s past (except with the notable exception of then-candidate Barack Obama), I’m sure Daniels and his family were anticipating the media microscope.

I personally am not shedding tears over this decision.  Daniels’ trucer talk turned me off of him months ago.  But I’m sure others here will see this as the decision that tanks the GOP’s odds of winning in 2012.  This is nonsense.  Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain and even Sarah Palin are well-capable of providing a GOP victory against Obama, an extremely weak Democrat incumbent.  Cain’s announcement yesterday drew a huge audience, and combined with his smashing success at the SC debate, Mr. Cain is making big inroads in the name recognition challenge.  Pawlenty is expected to announce his candidacy on Monday, and Daniels’ decision is likely to boost T-Paw’s chances of winning the nomination.  Palin’s entrance into the race is still very much in question, and speculation about her potential candidacy varies wildly (and rumors have emerged that she’s considering a 2012 run for Jon Kyl’s AZ senate seat)

I’m sure this announcement will fuel widespread micro-analysis in the days to come.  I will refrain and simply say: it’s getting interesting.

You may have guessed that the Redstate contributing editors have had a few discussions about the selection of 2012 POTUS candidates from the GOP.  Interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly), few of us have strong opinions on any particular candidate.  I believe there’s a reason for that: the field of candidates seems weak, and no one candidate stands out from the rest.  And as Gallup points out, this is a rather unusual situation.  Right now it doesn’t look like things are likely to improve, and if the Gallup article is correct, a late-bloomer candidate likely will not appear.

What do we need in a good candidate?  There are some who say that executive experience is key to a candidate’s viability.  Others believe that a strong conservative record is the most important attribute.  And others think that “toughness”, a “fighting spirit” and a “confrontational manner” is what we need in the White House, in order to beat up the Left, promote the conservative cause and bring the nation back out of the ditch.  Problem is: the current GOP field seems to be devoid of candidates that simultaneously possess all of the key attributes.

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We saw it coming, didn’t we?

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama explained. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody ! I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Of course that was then-candidate Barack Obama, in response to Joe “The Plumber” Wurzlebacher’s question “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?”.  Obama’s response was widely recognized (and condemned) as a “tell” of Obama’s love for socialism.  But that was just the beginning.  That love for socialism was one of the few “campaign promises” that he actually fulfilled, as he and his Democrat cronies rammed through a leftist ideology-fest of spending that bloated the government – and our national debt – to previously unheard-of heights.

“Soak the rich” is a time-tested philosophy for the Democrats.  And the idea lives on, now embodied by the “income inequality” socialists.  Inciting class warfare in the name of “equality” or “fairness” is one of the Left’s favorite tactics.  In the March 2nd NYT, Robert Frank invokes the spectre of inequality, this time in the guise of a so-called “toil index”.  The interesting (and silly) aspect of Frank’s assertions is the idea of using “family goals” as an indicator of the “cost” of inequality.

The index rejects the standard economic assumption that well-being depends primarily on absolute consumption. Instead, it assumes that the context of that consumption is often far more important. Context matters because the brain requires a frame of reference to make any evaluative judgment.

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Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Opposite“, where George decides that in order to succeed, he must do the opposite of every instinct he ever had.  For years now, just like George Castanza, Claire McCaskill has said one thing and done the opposite.  Missouri GOP executive director Lloyd Smith notes:

“Time after time, Missourians have watched as Claire McCaskill says one thing and does the opposite. McCaskill complained about excessive government spending—then she voted for the failed stimulus bill, Obamacare, and bailout after bailout. She criticized cap-and-trade legislation—then she voted to allow the EPA to impose draconian regulations on carbon dioxide. She condemned extravagant taxpayer-funded travel by members of Congress—then she billed taxpayers for her own travel on her husband’s private plane. Although she pretends to be different, Claire McCaskill is exactly the kind of double-speaking Washington politician that Missourians are sick and tired of. “

But now Claire has a problem.  After trumpeting a message of “common sense reform” to congressional travel practices, Ms. Castanza McCaskill has apparently been doing exactly the opposite: flying around the country in a private plane owned by her own husband and charging the expenses to the taxpayers.  This story broke last week, when Politico reported that she had billed us for over $76,000 spent on at least 89 different trips.  And this isn’t the first time Claire has been caught with her hands in the aviation cookie jar.  During the 2006 Senate campaign, she and her millionaire husband were nailed for using a $3M plane that was registered in Delaware, a state that, unlike Missouri, has no personal property tax on private planes.

Apparently Claire and her husband didn’t learn that lesson about personal property taxes back in 2006.  Today McCaskill admitted that they have not paid those taxes on their plane for the last four years.  Grand total of four years of “avoided” personal property taxes on this $3M plane:  $287,273. (And yes, this is apparently the same plane that was questioned in 2006, so it’s not like they haven’t heard this before.)  Pleading ignorance isn’t an acceptable excuse either:  Mr. Shepard paid over $1000 in taxes on their two vehicles in 2010, and (at least in my county) personal property tax declaration forms are issued every year – forms that clearly document the types of property that must be declared.  To McCaskill’s credit, she will be paying back the money she bilked out of taxpayers and the dodged taxes – to the tune of over $300,000.  How nice that she’s able to write a check that big…unsurprising for one of Washington’s wealthiest politicians – she and her husband were worth an estimated $15.5M in 2009.

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Or so posits Karl Rove.  Despite the fact that the GOP is unlikely to get to 60 votes in the Senate, where there’s a will, there’s a way:

The Budget Act of 1974 established the reconciliation process. The House and Senate Budget Committees can direct other committees to make changes in mandatory spending (like ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies) and the tax code (such as ObamaCare’s levies on insurance policies, hospitals and drug companies) to make spending and revenue conform with the goals set by the annual budget resolution.

For example, under reconciliation the Senate Budget Committee could instruct the Senate Finance Committee to reduce mandatory spending on insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These two items make up more than 90% of spending in ObamaCare. All the changes from all the committees are then bundled into one measure and voted upon. Because reconciliation is protected by the rules of the budget process, it doesn’t take 60 votes to bring it up and it requires only a simple majority to pass.

Will this 51-vote strategy work? One long-time GOP budget whiz, embarrassed he hadn’t thought of this, told me it would. …

The Democrats were prepared to use reconciliation to shove it down our throats, and so should we be with repeal.

But: there’s still that small matter of taking the White House…

(The year should really be 2013, but who’s counting?)

The word truce is defined as “a suspension of hostilities for a specified period of time by mutual agreement of the warring parties; cease-fire; armistice.”  In recent months, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has turned this word “truce” into a rallying cry for libertarians and a curse word for social conservatives by calling for the next president to forge a “truce” with social conservatives on the pursuit of social issues.

And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,” until the economic issues are resolved.

But you see, there were no “hostilities” to begin with.  The social conservatives were minding their own business, and Daniels sucker-punched them.  And that was just the start.

In November a group of “gay conservatives,” GOProud, and a mish-mash of other libertarian-leaning “Tea Party activists” joined in the fun with their own letter, asking Republicans to “resist the urge to run down any social issue rabbit holes in order to appease the special interests.”

And on Wednesday, Daniels, apparently not sufficiently stung by the storm of criticism that followed his original “truce talk,” decided to double down on his previous gaffe by stating:

“I would like to think that fixing [the debt] and saving our kids’ future could be a unifying moment for our country and we wouldn’t stop our disagreements or our passionate belief in these other questions, we just sort of mute them for a little while, while we try to come together on the thing that menaces us all”

Truce? “Rabbit holes?” “Mute button?” Ladies and gentlemen, if there weren’t hostilities before, there certainly are now.

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Following the tragedy in Tucson, the leftist media has been pushing the meme that “toxic rhetoric” in politics needs to be toned down.  I (dis)respectfully disagree.  Conservatives will not be silenced by radicals who would love nothing more than for opposition to be muzzled to allow the Left to continue their march to socialism, unabated and uninterrupted.

During my morning pass through Twitter, I caught two key pieces on this topic from the American Spectator.  In “Defending Toxic Rhetoric“, Justin Paulette catches the point:

Those insisting that right-wing rhetoric is to blame for this, or future, atrocities have two goals: to generally disparage conservatives and to silence political opposition to liberal policies. The former is the typical politicking customary to baser characters in every party. The second, however, bears on a fundamental aspect of American democracy: free speech.

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This past week, the President again made the mistake of speaking without consulting his handlers – this time on the topic of Michael Vick.  In this particular case, his comments came in a call to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, who subsequently shared Obama’s comments on Vick and the Eagles with the news media.  According to the WaPo:

The president has not spoken publicly about the call, though aides acknowledged that it took place. But Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie told Peter King of Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports that during their conversation Obama was passionate about Vick’s comeback.

“He said, ‘So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance,’ ” said Lurie, who did not indicate when the call occurred. “He said, ‘It’s never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail.’ And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.”

Predictably (although apparently not by Obama), reaction to this has been swift and pretty negative, especially by organizations such as PETA.

Until today, I haven’t spent any time at all paying attention to this whole episode with Vick, Obama, etc. because I disliked Vick even before it became known that he was a dog killer.  But I found this particular reaction from Tucker Carlson to be more than a wee bit ridiculous:

“I’m a Christian, I’ve made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”

Tucker, come on.  “Executed“?  Jeez, I like puppies and I even have one.  But I would hardly advocate the  death penalty for killing them.  (Perhaps Tucker is simply channeling Lethal Weapon 3′s Martin Riggs:  “We can’t shoot a dog. People? Okay, but not dogs.“)

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Here at Redstate, we take pride in helping assist and inform you about pressing issues and concerns.  The Christmas season is one of those times when we are stressed with indecision about what to get as gifts for our loved ones.  So as a public service to you, our cherished readers, we bring you this fantastic collection of gift ideas*.  For example, what says “Merry Christmas” better than your own container of uranium ore?

But if all else fails, the Three Wolf Moon shirt is always a sure winner.

Happy shopping, and Merry Christmas!

Oh, and this is today’s open thread….

(* – Some links/content at this site may be borderline NSFW)

I’m no economist, nor do I play one on TV. However, the argument about Keynesian vs. supply-side economic stimulus has fascinated me since the Good Ship Obama sailed in January. To free-marketeers and small-government adherents like myself, it seems intuitively obvious that reducing the taxes be handed over the government, allowing Americans to keep more of their own money, and reducing the amount that DC bureaucrats have to waste would be far more likely to stimulate the economy than growing an already-bloated government bureaucracy and incurring more unnecessary spending.

And…according to some new research data, we would be right.  In yesterday’s WSJ, Michael J Boskin writes:

In a dynamic economy, many parts are moving simultaneously and it is difficult to disentangle cause and effect. Taxes may be cut and spending increased at the same time and those may coincide with natural business cycle dynamics and monetary policy shifts.

Using powerful statistical methods to separate these effects in U.S. data, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago conclude that the small initial spending multiplier turns negative by the start of the second year. In a new cross-national time series study, Ethan Ilzetzki of the London School of Economics and Enrique Mendoza and Carlos Vegh of the University of Maryland conclude that in open economies with flexible exchange rates, “a fiscal expansion leads to no significant output gains.”

My colleagues John Cogan and John Taylor, with Volker Wieland and Tobias Cwik, demonstrate that government purchases have a GDP impact far smaller in New Keynesian than Old Keynesian models and quickly crowd out the private sector. They estimate the effect of the February 2009 stimulus at a puny 0.2% of GDP by now.

By contrast, the last two major tax cuts—President Reagan’s in 1981-83 and President George W. Bush’s in 2003—boosted growth. They lowered marginal tax rates and were longer lasting, both keys to success. In a survey of fiscal policy changes in the OECD over the past four decades, Harvard’s Albert Alesina and Silvia Ardagna conclude that tax cuts have been far more likely to increase growth than has more spending.

(emphasis mine)

Boskin also reports that the a 2007 study by Christina and David Romer on tax-reduction-driven stimulus actually had it wrong:

Messrs. Mountford and Uhlig show that substantial tax cuts had a far larger impact on output and employment than spending increases, with a multiplier up to 5.0.

That’s $5 GDP growth for every $1 in tax cuts.

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Yes, folks, the moment you’ve been waiting for … the annual “WKRP Turkey Drop Open Thread”

“With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. Enjoy the day, and give thanks to God today for the many blessings in your lives.

(Oh, and this is an open thread. Talk amongst yourselves…)

It’s been a good week to be a Republican in Missouri.  Senator-elect Roy Blunt soundly defeated MO Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, beating her by 13 percentage points statewide, and winning every county in Missouri except St. Louis (city and county) and Jackson (Kansas City).  Republican candidates scored wins in most parts of the state except the Democrat strongholds mentioned above, where incumbents such as Congressmen Emanuel Cleaver and Lacy Clay won easily.  Even long-time Congressman Ike Skelton finally fell in deep-red west-central Missouri.

The one race that did not go the GOP’s way was MO-3, where Robin Carnahan’s brother Russ won a very close race against GOP challenger Ed Martin.  Martin lost by just around 4500 votes…and the Constitution and Libertarian party candidates pulled approximately 8800 votes combined.  Unfortunate (and while I’m tempted to go off on the possibility that 3rd parties were at least partially behind this GOP loss, I’ll leave that argument for another day)

But will Russ keep his seat?

In the 2010 census, Missouri may have had a big enough population decline (or poor response, at least) to lose a Congressional seat. Results will not be released until the end of December.  However, strategizing has already begun to determine which seat might be lost.  The GOP dominates the Missouri legislature, but Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is a Democrat – and can veto any redistricting plans he doesn’t like.  So what does that have to do with Russ Carnahan?

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Two years into the Obama presidency, and this kind of thing really shouldn’t be a surprise.

Obama told the several dozen donors that he was offering them his “view from the Oval Office.” He faulted the economic downturn for Americans’ inability to “think clearly” and said the burden is on Democrats “to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling.”

The President believes that we are not “thinking clearly,” and that our attitudes and behavior stem from “fear and frustration”.  It is one thing for Obama to think that, but it is yet another for the President of the United States to say it out loud – about his own nation’s citizens.

But this is no surprise, is it?  This is the same man who accused those who disagreed with him of being hyper-religious, violent xenophobes:

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Yes, we remember that one well, don’t we?

A quick Google search reveals the extent of Obama’s condescension problem.  Article after article document his snooty, patronizing attitudes about those around him.

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