I was an elected delegate to the Arizona Republican Convention.  It was a first for me and obviously it was interesting, but it was also disappointing.  Disappointing because Non Paul conservatives in the party couldn’t make the effort to actually participate in party activities and mount some competition for the Ron Paul activists.  That isn’t in any way a slam at the Ron Paul delegates; they were simply exercising their rights pretty effectively.  The result, however, was a convention that was marked by something more than just spirited debate over reasonable differences.  Although it may not have been true for all or even most of the Paul-supporting delegates, the objective for the Paul activists was clearly to elect a slate of delegates to the national convention who would vote for Ron Paul for President at the first possible opportunity.  Many of the rest of us weren’t aware at the time of what was happening.  (FYI:  Arizona’s Presidential Preference primary went for Romney by 47%.  Paul received 8%.  This will be a useful fact to remember in a few minutes.)

There was an account of the election in the Arizona Republic, headlined Paul supporters boo Romney’s son off stage.  Except that wasn’t true.  It didn’t happen that way, and it puzzles me that the “paper of record” in Arizona couldn’t get it right–there was some booing, yes, but not “off the stage.”

The good news is that fist fights didn’t break out on the floor or in the parking lot.  The bad news is the convention lasted hours longer than planned and ended without taking a final vote for our National Committeewoman (not because of disruptions by anybody but because of serious problems with the voting machines and balloting).  No final vote was taken because a quorum wasn’t present at the end.

A friend wrote in his blog that “Ron Paul supporters were clearly loathed and not welcome to the event.”  I disagreed with that, and responded to him.  But it caused me to give some thought as to why there does seem to be a division between Paul supporters and the rest of the party, one that keeps them from being able to commit to supporting our nominee, especially if it’s Mitt Romney.  My answer follows, including some commentary on the convention events, with some emphasis added:

I wouldn’t say that “Ron Paul supporters were clearly loathed.” That’s somewhat overstated. AFAIK, MOST of us delegates were of a mind to say “we’re all in this together.” The fellow walking around outside (and perhaps inside, I don’t know) shouting that “Only Ron Paul can win” was unique–that is, there weren’t any others on either side. I personally found that to be a bit grating, but not intolerable. I guess I was surprised that there weren’t more like him, though.

The Paul contingents have done a good job of exercising their rights. More power to them. The fact still remains that they don’t constitute a majority of anything, so they might be a little bit less sensitive about having their feelings hurt. Just because you THINK you have a monopoly on the conservative way doesn’t mean that you actually have it.

The fact is, you lost the primary election, and it appears to some people that you’re trying to get by fiat what you didn’t earn at the ballot box. I don’t think that’s the case for most of you. There isn’t a thing wrong with flexing the muscles you have to get concessions during the national convention. I think it’s exactly what you should do. But it’s asinine to spend the day, as SOME did, having tantrums about who you will vote for if Ron Paul loses the nomination.

The calls for unity were calls to get behind the nominee, WHOMEVER it is. (And yes, some might have said ‘Romney,’ but that wasn’t the point for me.) If roles were reversed, I’d cast my own vote and proceed to do whatever I could to help Candidate Paul win the Presidency. Some of us have a bit of a problem that that spirit isn’t reciprocated.

Those who are sane realize that there are reasons why Ron Paul hasn’t done better. There are reasons why his support didn’t skyrocket when Rick Santorum and then Newt Gingrich dropped out of the race, but rather most of their supporters switched to Romney. Those reasons do not significantly include his treatment by the press (generally fair, but not very much in quantity) or unfamiliarity of the public with his ideas and principles. He’s a known quantity. Whether they are VALID reasons or not (although many of them are) doesn’t matter. Most people just don’t want to vote for him.

IF, by some miracle, Ron Paul were able to win the nomination by getting enough delegates to control the convention, it would guarantee an Obama win. NOT because Paul wouldn’t make a better president than Obama, but because millions of Republicans across the nation would perceive the truth, that the convention process had been overturned by deft maneuvering by one group of dedicated supporters (does that remind anybody of the way Obamacare was passed?) to result in the nomination of a man who got a small minority of all the votes cast in the primaries; fewer votes, in fact, than some other candidates who dropped out before the race was over.

IOW, they would perceive that they had been done dirty by the very man who has campaigned on a platform of essentially “I will do the RIGHT thing!” His credibility would vanish, he would not win, and it would probably be the end of the Republican Party, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If that’s the objective, it can be achieved that way.

So you can see how booing, interruption, and vows to “never vote for Romney” would not be exactly welcome in a gathering of people who don’t agree completely with your objective, IF they think your objective is to thwart the will of the vast majority of the Republican voting public. But not loathed. And you were welcome to be there in the spirit of the event, a coming-together of Republicans to elect delegates to nominate an opponent to defeat Obama.

Personally, I didn’t find the booing and interruptions to be beyond the pale. Rude, yes, and probably counter-productive, but they were not excessive and not profane. In fact, I didn’t find any of it unacceptable. But that’s just me, and it’s because I believe that most of us really are united against Obama.

Maybe I’m too optimistic.  Maybe I’m too pessimistic.  But that’s my assessment of the situation after the convention.  One response to me was, “Half the states have not voted yet so you’re jumping the gun.”  I guess that was before Ron Paul announced he would cease campaigning, other than to try to get delegates for the convention.

My friend asked me if I thought that Republicans wouldn’t vote for Paul if he were nominated.  My answer was that if the circumstances were as I wrote above, many wouldn’t.  That might be rationalized to justify some Paulites non-support for Romney, but I don’t see the two as parallel situations.  Some of them feel much that way, however–their candidate has been unfairly disadvantaged by everything from the MSM to “rich bankers.”  Some were convinced that the problems at the convention, including intolerably long waits for ballots to be tallied, followed by incorrect results that had to be contested and corrected, were generated intentionally by the “establishment GOP” to the detriment of Ron Paul.

I do believe that Mitt Romney would be wise to incorporate as much of the Ron Paul agenda into his own as is possible.  Conceptually, much of it is worthwhile, and not counter to anything Romney has already said he supports.  Not that it would get all the Paul supporters in his corner–there are many who are invested in the idea that Ron Paul is the victim of a conspiracy of sorts, so to them concessions by Romney would just be another lie.  But where the ideas are good, use them.

So the Ron Paul convention strategy seems to be:  Get enough national delegates to have a significant effect on the party platform and Romney’s agenda if he’s the nominee, but also to take the nomination from him if he isn’t elected on the first ballot.  Their tactics seem to have been to elect enough state convention delegates to control the conventions or at least to elect slates of Paul delegates for the national.  Consideration of how Republicans voted in the primaries isn’t in the equation.  As long as Non Paul conservatives are complacently watching without participating, it could work.

Taking some time off from obsessing about the national security, political, and policy problems we face as we careen towards the abyss, I have a book review that might be helpful as you browse garage sales and bookstores this weekend.

The book is Killing Lincoln, 2011, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugas. Unlike many marketing descriptions, O’Reilly’s blurbs this time are very accurate–”With an unforgettable cast of characters, vivid historical detail, and page-turning action, Killing Lincoln is history that reads like a thriller. ”

Nothing like his recent best seller Pinheads and Patriots in either style or  substance, Killing Lincoln is truly a well-written, interesting and informative book. Although I can’t say that I couldn’t put it down, I can say that when I did I looked forward to picking it up again later. It’s told in an episodic style; the sixty-two chapters average less than five pages long, each one covering anywhere from a few hours to a few of the days between April 1 and July 7, 1865. In effect, it’s quite a bit like a written version of the old Walter Cronkite TV show, You Are There.

To be clear, it’s not a novel or a fictionalized account “based on history;” it’s a straight description of the events, pieced together from contemporary articles and personal eyewitness accounts, and “books, websites and other archived information,” supplemented by visits to the actual locations of the historic events. Although it isn’t footnoted, its sources are listed in “Notes” at the end of the book, and they seem to be extensive and detailed enough to satisfy even people who might be tempted to dismiss the book as a lightweight effort by a TV guy. An Index is also provided.

It’s not an exaggeration to say this book is entertaining and informative. The Prologue sets the stage by describing events of March 4: President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address (with John Wilkes Booth in attendance), and the simultaneously occurring siege of Petersburg, Virginia.

The body of the book is divided into four parts. Part One, Total War,  starts on April 1, the night of the final assault on Petersburg. From there, it counts down the days to the the end of the war at Appomattox Court House on Palm Sunday, April 9, describing the details of battles and pursuits, and even more interestingly, the consideration of the commanders for both the necessity of winning these battles and for the welfare of the men that were going to have to fight them.

The Ides of Death picks up on Monday, April 10, with post-war festivities, official meetings and speeches by Lincoln, and his belief in the need to begin the national healing immediately, starting with effectively no recriminations against Southern combatants. ”Post-war” does not describe the mood of Booth and his co-conspirators. What had been a plan to kidnap Lincoln during the war becomes a plot to murder the President now that a kidnapping would serve no purpose. Booth decides, like a modern terrorist, that he will make a statement and in the process go down in history as “the man who will end Abraham Lincoln’s life.” Preparations are made by President Lincoln for him to attend Ford’s theater on Friday with wife Mary and General and Mrs. Grant.

The Long Good Friday covers the day of April 14, Good Friday. Lincoln’s final day in office is described, and the plans and the activities of the conspirators are laid out in detail. Presidential plans are altered for the night’s entertainment–the Grants will not accompany the Lincolns, but another couple will. During a burst of laughter in the performance, Booth carries out his attack and escapes. A simultaneous attempt is made on the life of Secretary of State William Seward, an attempt that doesn’t succeed (because of a jammed revolver) but results in extremely serious injuries to four people. And there is more, including a planned attack against Vice President Andrew Johnson.

The Chase is as it sounds, ending with the trial and execution of Booth’s co-conspirators and facilitator Mary Surratt. Her July 7 hanging made Surratt “the first and only woman ever hanged by the United States government.”

The book has “extras,” starting with an Afterword with tidbits about the later lives of survivors, including son Robert Todd Lincoln. Notably, it was during the Johnson administration that Seward achieved the purchase of Alaska. Had the plot fully succeeded, who knows how that would have affected twentieth century history? A “re-creation” of the April 29, 1865, Harper’s Weekly article, “The Murder of the President,” wraps it up.

For anybody who, like me, suffers from a poor knowledge of history, Killing Lincoln could be especially informative.  I was only vaguely aware of the attack on Seward.  Booth’s motivation was obvious, but the depth and intensity of his obsession with Lincoln was unknown to me, as was the fact that he had essentially acted as a spy for the South during the war.  I highly recommend the book to everyone with any interest at all in American history.

Why do we believe the individual mandate is necessary to pay for “universal” health care?

The Administration has told us repeatedly that the mandate is necessary to help hold down the cost of health insurance. Nobody has objected yet; we should have.

The mandate is supposed to hold down costs by forcing everybody to buy health insurance whether they want to or not. Supposedly, fifty million (or ten or twenty or thirty or forty million) additional people added to the books of various insurance companies will carry a significant part of the health cost burden for the rest of “us,” but it really can’t work that way.

First, let’s consider what makes health insurance expensive.

It’s primarily the health care it pays for (a Homer Simpson moment there). In fact, the government has decreed that 80% to 85% of each premium dollar must be paid out in benefits. And of course health care itself is expensive because of all the facilities, time, equipment, education, training, research, and expertise it requires. That leaves 15% to 20% available to the insurance company for its fixed and variable costs, and for profit. (And don’t forget that the more covered benefits that are included in the insurance policy, the more it costs.)

Then consider the ten to fifty million people who will be forced to buy insurance.

Those who are healthy, strong, perhaps young, those people will definitely be helping to pay our bills. But how “fair” is that? Someone who doesn’t really need something is being forced to pay for it, just so our cost will be lowered. The obvious bet is that enough healthy people will be added to the rolls to significantly reduce the total cost of underwriting both them and the rest of us. There are about 255,000,000 of us who are already insured, and about 51 million more who are in the pool and considered to be “uninsured.”

That 51 million breaks down this way: About 4 million are the above referenced “young and healthy.” Seven million are “temporarily  uninsured,” that is, uninsured for less than a year, most likely between jobs. Another 10 million are non-citizens, and 17 million are already eligible for government sponsored insurance but have chosen to refuse it.

Who will be subsidized?

That leaves only about 13 million who are truly Americans in need of help buying health insurance. We are told that they want to buy insurance but can’t afford it or are uninsurable. They’ll be subsidized. So actually, their premiums will be paid by us, as taxes or as premium increases or surcharges, indirectly adding to our health care costs, and offsetting some or all of the savings provided by the “healthy” insured. While we’re at it, we might as well add the 10 million uninsured non-citizens back into this number, because it’s reasonable to expect that almost all of them will also be subsidized. So we will end up subsidizing or outright paying for the insurance of 23 million people, while forcing another 28 million to buy insurance they don’t want and maybe don’t really need.

Who will pay?

Looking at those groups a bit differently, we have only four million who will actually help reduce insurance premium net benefit costs, because they’re the only ones who are likely to use a below-average amount of health care resources. All the rest can be reasonably expected to access health care at average or above-average frequencies and quantities, so we are apparently expected to believe that by forcing four million healthy people who presently self-insure to buy insurance, we will make insurance rates significantly lower for the other 302 million. It isn’t possible. (I say significantly because one doesn’t go through an upheaval like ObamaDon’tCare for a trivial improvement.)

As a prominent cable news network host likes to say, “Let’s look at the numbers” for the answer. For simplicity, let’s say that the average health insurance plan premiums will be $100 per year, even though we know it will be many times this amount; it’s just a way to make it easier to state as a percentage at the end. Now let’s assume that the four million healthy people who will be insured actually have only 10% of the risk that the rest of us have, meaning that their actuarially true premium should be $10, yet they will be paying $100. That leaves about $90 from each one of them to apply to our premiums.  So $90 times 4 million equals $360 million. Divide that by $100 (average premium cost), and that is enough money to pay for the insurance of 3.6 million others. From above, we need to subsidize or fully pay for insurance for 23 million people. That means we have to find the money for 19.4 million someplace else, and that means higher taxes or higher insurance premiums or surcharges for the rest of us.  That’s right.  We will all pay. I’ll show you. I’ll even suggest how much more it will be.

Putting taxes aside for a moment, a bill for $100 times 19.4 million is $1.94 billion. Divide that by everybody else, and it means $1,940,000,000 divided by (306,000,000-23,000,000), or $1,940 divided by 286, or $6.78 per person. Put another way, insurance premiums would have to go up about 7%, not down at all. (This is a rough approximation, of course, because it leaves out several factors that would add even more expenses, and it doesn’t adjust for those in the group who could pay for part or all of their own premiums.) And if we try to use taxes to pay the additional cost instead of putting a surcharge on each premium, it’s even more for each taxpayer because there are fewer taxpayers to share the total cost, which itself wouldn’t change.

So the mandate does not, in fact, make the Unaffordable Health Insurance Act affordable.

It makes health insurance more expensive. What else does it do? It guarantees health insurance companies 50 million new customers, and each of them will add to a company’s profits. Now, I am not an anti-business person, not even an anti-insurance person (as long as the customer is not forced to purchase), so don’t take this that way. I am a free market person, the freer the better, and I believe in profits. Even I can see that the mandate, rather than being a vehicle installed to eliminate “free riders” and make them pay their “fair share,” was in fact a vehicle to get the insurance companies on board with UHIA and convince them to forgo their Harry and Louise advertisements, the ones that demolished HillaryCare twenty years ago, by guaranteeing them more profits through more customers.

Other considerations in the UHIA.

We are told it eliminates the “free rider” problem–folks who use emergency services in place of standard palliative or preventive care. But we aren’t told how much that costs every year. Using the low numbers I used to estimate above, it would have to cost  (and be therefore available to be saved) 51 million times $100, or $5.1 billion for the new plan to be a net saving for the country as a whole, and my estimating number is probably only 10% or less of the real number.  So we’re really faced with the need for a present cost of $51 billion before ObamaDon’tCare even deserves consideration.

We are told, “everyone will be insured.” Only they won’t. There will still be those who self-insure but can’t pay for their own care, and there will still be those who just won’t participate. Even in Massachusetts, where almost everybody was already insured before the advent of MassCare, that has proven to be true. In the end, we’ve turned our health care system on its head to insure about 20 million more people, some of whom don’t even want it. Is the goal to insure those people, or to make their necessary health care affordable? Whichever it is, there are much better and less expensive ways to accomplish it than what we’ve done so far.

The new system is full of incentives for employers to terminate employee health insurance plans–high expenses on the horizon and a low penalty for non-compliance. Top-end plans are mandated; no low-budget plans are available because everybody must have the same coverage that the richest of us can pay for. This is a recipe for destruction of the private health insurance market, leading directly to a Medicare-like government controlled plan in which, eventually, little care is available. And it has already eliminated some customer-friendly, low-cost, Medicare Advantage plans in states like Arizona.

Built-in provider (doctor) reimbursement restrictions are counter-productive as well.  They tend to reduce the number of providers, yet universal coverage increases the need for more providers.

One type of health insurance that is true insurance, “Major Medical,” is severely restricted in the UHIA (I believe–I haven’t read the thing, either). Instead, we will be forced to buy what is really a health maintenance plan, which is sure to increase usage and demand, therefore putting even more strain on the system.

If the program were as good as the Administration claims, businesses would be petitioning to get into it, rather than get out of it.

What happened?

Even though the data behind this analysis weren’t available at the time, we knew all this before Obama was elected, anyway. When he said we could add 40 million people to the insurance rolls without paying “a single dime” more in premiums, we knew he wasn’t being truthful. At least, those of us who don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy Free Lunch Delivery Service knew it. Some closed their eyes to what they knew was wrong as they “hoped” it would magically become right. We the people made our decision based on several false premises that we chose not to examine closely.  We voted for hope but we got hype instead.

Congress failed to represent all the people in its effort to give special attention to some of the people. And the criticism for lack of curiosity and skepticism that I accuse the press of below doubly applies to the Republicans and honest Democrats in Congress in 2009 and 2010.

The free press failed to notice that it was being fed a fanciful story and was simply regurgitating it on the people instead of doing any real analysis. Or it intentionally withheld facts from the public in order to help Barack Obama win his election. I’m not an expert in the health care field by any means, and I was able to write this article within the span of less than a week, in my spare time. More than a few paid reporters should have conducted this same exercise (only with much more exacting research and in much more stringent detail) while ObamaDon’tCare was being debated, whether my conclusions are right or wrong. It’s a Constitutionally protected professional industry and has no reason to be in the pocket of any administration or party. It simply wasn’t done; the press became PR flacks for the Democrat President. The fact that the research still hasn’t been conducted is disgraceful.

What can be done?

No matter what the Supreme Court rules in June, the Obama Administration  and the Democrat Congress needs to be replaced in November, and the UHIA must be fully repealed. It does nothing that it claimed to do, and it gives the government power over many things that will be harmful in both the long and the short run. To leave any part of it in place would be a mistake.

Then, with calm deliberation and without hysterical claims that women and minorities will die in the streets if something isn’t passed NOW!, some changes to health care and health insurance law can be considered.  Multi-state policies can be expedited. Individual, stand-alone Major Medical policies can be authorized. Tort reform can be passed. Deregulation of what must and what simply may be covered by policies can be debated. Formation of groups to buy group insurance policies can be facilitated, similar to credit unions. Allow, but don’t mandate, extended coverage of adult children on parents’ policies with proper underwriting protocols. If coverage of pre-existing conditions is desired (although it isn’t really insurance, it’s welfare), provide a means whereby the insurance industry as a whole can cover the individual insurance company’s excess benefit costs that result, with government backup as a last resort if necessary.

Most importantly, any and all of these changes should be passed individually, in small, understandable laws, not as part of a gigantic tidal wave of health-related legislation that drowns the health care industry in red ink and paperwork and “must be passed in order to be read.”

‘Oyez, oyez, oyez, Decision Day on the Supreme Court of the United States Live! will come to order. I’m your host, Chuck Flannely.

The Court is sitting en banc today, to announce its decision in the Affordable Health Care Act dispute; Chief Justice John (WhiteBread) Roberts presiding. He’s a Harvard man, a Californian, the only Justice with extensive experience arguing cases before the Court himself; he’s the only non-ethnic Catholic on the Court, and he needs no further introduction. Chief Justice Roberts!

To his immediate right today (although many days he is on the left) will be Justice Anthony Kennedy. One of three “Anthonys” on the Court, he’s not as consistent in his decisions as the other two, but, like every good Kantian, his heart is in the right place. Attended Stanford. London School of Economics. Harvard Law School. On the plus side, he served a year in the California National Guard. Made his bones as “the head of the [Ninth Circuit] court’s conservative minority.” Famous quote: “…indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state’s hostility to it.” A respected jurist, representing the Irish-American faction of the citizenry, Justice Anthony Kennedy!

To his right is Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, the Italian Stallion of Trenton, New Jersey, and the favorite of right-to-lifers for “His… sole dissent in a 1991 decision overruling a Pennsylvania law which restricted abortion.” “Alito has been described by the Cato Institute as a conservative jurist with a libertarian streak.” A young up-and-comer, Sam is one of the Yalies on the Court. Justice Alito!

Next we have Justice Antonin Scalia, another Trentonite, who just celebrated his 76th birthday, making him the oldest male member of the Court. He’s also among the “most controversial,” although he denies both his and Alito’s Mafia connections. A Harvard Law grad, but he has flourished in spite of it. Welcome Don Scalia!

Moving further right, we now meet Justice Clarence Thomas. He’s famous for rarely asking questions during oral arguments before the Court. Another Yale Law grad, he was once considered to hold Thurgood Marshall’s “Black Chair” on the Court. He set the record straight by saying, “My chair is the same color as all the others.” Considered by “those in the know” as the most intelligent of the Justices. You’ve heard of Silent Calvin Coolidge. Welcome, Silent Clarence Thomas!

To the left of Justice Roberts today, as he is every day, will be Justice Stephen Breyer. Appointed by President Bill Clinton, he is “known for his pragmatic approach to constitutional law,” which tells you all you need to know about his judicial temperament and approach. Madame Ruth (you know, that Gypsy with the gold-capped tooth) could predict how he will rule on almost any case. Famous quote: “Here’s my decision; wake me when we’re done.” Claim to fame: Slightly better known than the next Justice. A big hand for Justice Stephen Breyer!

Next left is Justice David Souter, a President Warren Rudman/John Sununu/George H. W. Bush nomin–what? He retired? You sure? Oh, yes, now I remember. Here today is his successor, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another Yale graduate. She made her name in Yale Law School when “she filed a formal complaint against the established Washington, D.C., law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge for suggesting during a recruiting dinner that she was only at Yale via affirmative action,” and proved them wrong by winning the case and receiving an apology. She was named to replace Justice Souter when President Obama recognized the need for balance on the Court, giving her a seat to make sure that type 1 diabetics were properly represented. A big welcome for Justice Sonia “SoSo” Sotomayor!

To her left is another new Justice, Elena Kagan. As Solicitor General for President Obama, she must have been very familiar with the people who crafted the Affordable Health Care Act, and although this reference doesn’t mention any questions about it during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the same source says that during the hearing to confirm her as Solicitor General, she “indicated that she would defend the [Defense of Marriage] act if ‘there was any reasonable basis to do so.’” When the time came, she couldn’t find any, so we’ll find out today what she really thinks about the AHCA. We do know that, while she was the very successful and popular Dean of the Harvard Law School (whence she graduated), she wrote an email stating “I abhor the military’s discriminatory recruitment policy” because she was forced by a Supreme Court decision to allow military recruiters back on the Harvard Law campus. Justice Elena Kagan, a softball-playing, non-Catholic member of the Court!

We are now at the far left end of the bench, and where else would we find our final Associate Justice? Ruth Bader Ginsberg has been on the court since 1993, nominated by President Bill Clinton when she was found to be available. Her memorable statement is about a new Constitution for Egypt: “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa….” “Ginsburg has also been an advocate for using foreign law and norms to shape U.S. law in judicial opinions….” The only Justice in history whose weight might be less than her age (79), and who abandoned Harvard Law for Columbia Law, Ruth Bader Ginsberg!

(sotto voce)–And now the moment we have waited almost three months for (although it was final in March), Chief Justice Roberts will read the decision.’

Roberts: “In this matter, the Court finds first that the penalty is a penalty, not a tax, so the issue is ripe for adjudicating. (How ’bout that word, Barack? And we didn’t make a liar out of you. You said you wouldn’t raise taxes, and this wasn’t one.) The decision was 8-1. The “1″ side came up “Shorty.” Heh.

Second, The court finds by a majority of 5 to 4 that the “mandate” is an unConstitutional over-reach for even a 60-40 Democrat Senate. The Commerce clause was intended to regulate “Commerce;” business–not individual decisions to buy or not to buy commercial products. Furthermore, we find that Congress and the four Justices who voted to keep the mandate are “knuckleheads” under the Three Stooges Code of Conduct. All those who voted the wrong way will be sentenced to noogies and woo-woos administered by Curley and Moe. Those who have since resigned or were defeated in 2010 will be excused, except for former Congressman Bart Stupak, who should be hunted down like a dog and tickled into unconsciousness for exhibiting sheer stupidity. Additionally, there was nothing in any of the arguments presented by the Solicitor General and his Corps of Stammering Counselors that was even close to a cogent, persuasive argument that the mandate was Constitutional. Not even close! Maybe you should have kept the old S-G, although then you might have lost 6-3. Heh. You are all sentenced to go to Crawford, Texas, they way you used to, the next time the President takes a vacation. No Gay Paree for you guys! (That’s a WWI historical reference, for you history buffs, not a slur.)

Finally, severable, shmeverable. Scalia said it best–you expect us to read this pile of crapola and fix it for you? The 8th Amendment protects both us and our clerks. It ain’t our job to straighten up this mess. You may have inherited some problems, but you created this one and we aren’t about to let you hand it off to us. Get real! It’s your (Congress’s) job to “read the bill before you pass it.” How many of you did? If you don’t know what you’re passing, VOTE “NO,” DAMMIT! It’s really that simple! If you’d even thought about it a little bit, you’d have been able to tell that it couldn’t do what you were being told. Not “wouldn’t,” COULDN’T! WE could tell that, and we didn’t even read ALL of it. The law is struck down, 5-4.

Court is adjourned. Really. (Anthonys and Clarence, you’re dismissed. Justices on my left–my office–NOW. Time for the Constitution Class from Hillsdale College.)”

Chuck Flannely: “There you have it, folks. Tune in next time when we’ll be talking about the imposition of martial law and the suspension of elections in November, 2012!”

No matter how much we spend, it doesn’t help if we spend it on the wrong things, and we don’t know which things are right.

Ground rules:  This isn’t about President Obama. Nothing he or his Energy Secretary has said or done is really about finding an alternative to Middle East oil.

This is about concepts, not details, so there may be some generalities that are not precisely correct.

Alternative energy (AE) means “a source of energy that is an alternative to whatever is used today.” Natural gas is not an alternative energy for home heating, because it’s already used that way on a large scale. It is alternative energy when used to power vehicles. That may be as specific as I get.

OK.  To start with, the current dialogue, or perhaps monologue, about AE comes from a direction that turns it into nonsense on more than one level.

First Level

The two distinct issues of the question are being conflated in recent weeks because of the runup in gasoline prices. The most important of those issues is the economic and national security benefits of having a significant supply of energy that comes from within the United States. The second issue is the cost of energy in the United States, primarily the cost of gasoline. We have been talking about both the supply of energy and the cost to buy it as if it were a single issue.

Second Level

The discussion has devolved into one about gasoline for vehicles and how to replace that, without giving enough thought to how we got to where we are today. We see the need for transportation and we’re casting about, looking for an AE source that will do for us what gasoline does, the same way, in the same vehicles.

Let’s dispense with the first level right now. The only real issue is the first one. We need to insure a source of energy that can’t be cut off. The cost of domestic, consumer transportation fuel is important on a personal level, but it will take care of itself once the supply is assured. Contrary to the opinions of some famous TV pundits, supply and demand eventually rule. It will always fluctuate, but that’s life, isn’t it? I know that can’t be spoken as a national energy policy, but it’s the truth.

So what do we do to insure a secure source of home-grown energy? No alternatives need apply. We need to use the petroleum resources that are plentiful on the North American continent and elsewhere under our control. We need to change regulations to address only industry safety standards and real environmental hazards, then get out of the way. While those resources are being developed, we continue to buy foreign oil. And if history is a guide, it will begin to cost less as soon as our foreign suppliers recognize that we’re serious about competing with them. Problem solved without finding any AE.

That was too easy. That’s why I say it is nonsense. It is in Level Two that it gets complicated, so let’s uncomplicate it by looking at history.

Electricity had been observed and recorded as far back as 2750 BC. It was studied along with magnetism by William Gilbert in 1600, and the forces of electricity and magnetism were observed by James Maxwell to be fundamentally related in 1873. Thomas Edison opened his Menlo Park laboratory in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received the first patent for an electric telephone the same year, and the first telephone switchboard was invented later the same year.

Why go into all that? Because what came first was the energy source, and an early application for it quickly followed. In this case, the energy source had been known to exist for centuries, but how to use it was a mystery. When that mystery was solved, inventions came close behind.

We could go through the same process with the steam engine. An improved one was developed by James Watt around 1770, but it was many years before a steam engine was small enough to power personal transportation, and by then the gasoline engine was better suited. But the steam engine was successfully used for years to power large vehicles–steamboats, steamships, and locomotives.

Without belaboring the point, it wasn’t until the small-enough, powerful-enough, gasoline internal combustion engine met up with the assembly line and a plentiful supply of raw material that a cost-effective replacement for the horse as personal transportation and work-multiplier was “discovered.”

In all cases, the energy/power source was developed first, then applications to use it were devised. And they were innovative, not replicative. Early auto makers didn’t try to build a mechanical horse, they built something that would do the same work with what they had available. They didn’t delay rollout of their first models while they looked around for shock absorbers and better tires. You will note that although electric cars were among the early ones, as were steam powered cars, it was the gasoline engine that prevailed.

Today, our leaders are spending huge sums of money to find out what we already know–energy sources other than gasoline just don’t work efficiently or economically to power personal transportation and commercial trucks. Still, they keep pounding on that square peg, trying to force it into a round hole.

There is as yet no Alternative Energy that will do what they want.  Current AE sources don’t even eliminate hydrocarbon emissions, because every single one of them ultimately relies on burning a carbon-based fuel to release the energy that powers the vehicle (either directly or stored in a battery), with the exception of hydroelectric power, which is only available in specific regions and must be accessed via batteries that themselves create hydrocarbon emissions in their manufacture.

That doesn’t mean an effective AE doesn’t exist, but we’re trying to find it the wrong way, at least from a public policy standpoint.  For some reason, the government has decided that solar batteries and windmill farms are where we should concentrate our resources, and to put it charitably it is wasting billions of dollars that way, while it ignores more likely sources. It is hung up on electricity, which is great for running a computer (never would have been invented if we didn’t know how to use electricity) but terrible for running a heavy load over even smooth ground for more than a short distance.

We should instead be making it easy for inventors and scientists to conduct the basic research we need to develop the best eventual replacement for petro-fuels. While we do that, we should give them some time to be successful, by developing our own known, existing sources of fossil fuels, which by current estimates would give us one to two hundred years to make that breakthrough. Maybe one of them will replace not only the gasoline engine, but the automobile as well, by inventing something better.

President Obama seemed to have stepped in something earlier this week. The news hit the street that the Department of Health and Human Services (whose very existence is supposedly validated by the goal in the preamble of the Constitution to “promote the general welfare”) had decided that the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Affordable Health Care Act, aka ObamaCare, empowered them to rule that Catholic (and all other) hospitals and charities and other subsidiary businesses must (had to, were required to, had no choice but to) provide their employees with “health” insurance policies that would pay for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and abortion procedures as well.

It didn’t matter to HHS that all three of those “health care benefits” were prohibited by Catholic Church doctrine, and that all three are Catholic mortal sins. It didn’t matter to the Secretary, ostensibly Catholic herself, that a Catholic could not in good conscience facilitate other Catholics (or even non-Catholics) in their attempt to obtain or use  such “benefits.” And it certainly didn’t matter to the President that he had (although not in writing and not in words that he could be pinned down on) promised Bishop (soon to be Cardinal) Timothy Dolan in November that Dolan would get “most of what you want; the next time we speak you’re going to be very happy.”[paraphrased] And the promises to then Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan (promises that the resulting legislation would not authorize or pay for abortions; promises made to get the final deciding vote to enable the passage of the O/R/P AHCA) had been tossed aside long ago. All that didn’t matter. HHS had spoken (through its Oracle-Secretary Kathleen Sebelius), and its holy word was now its bond.

Somehow, it did matter to officials of the Catholic Church and practicing Catholic laymen. Their concerns were passed up to our national ombudsman, President Obama; he consulted his astrological charts (known as voting demographics) and soon the word was changed, this time directly from His Highness. No longer would those institutions have to provide insurance to cover destruction of the inconvenient results of human interactions. If they objected on religious grounds, he decreed that the insurance companies would have to foot the bill, gratis, without compensation, co-pay or deductible. My goodness, now no Catholic would be paying for or providing mortal sin material (msm) to others. (Unless, of course, he was an insurance company executive, but we all know they are barely human, right?) After his announcement, the Prez could be seen shaking his foot as he walked away. (Note:  He has made a concerted effort to restrict his comments and rationalizations to “women’s health” and “contraceptives,” preferring to center the debate there rather than on the weightier matters of abortion and Constitutional over-reach.)

What is wrong with the story behind this narrative?

First, the law behind these shenanigans was passed by using dishonest means. Not necessarily illegal, perhaps within the rules of the Congress, but definitely dishonest and, by the time it was forced through the Reid/Pelosi meat grinder, against the wishes of about 60% of the American public. Things go downhill from there.

Second, the decree by HHS is pretty clearly a “law” “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion; such laws are prohibited by the very first amendment to the Constitution. But even if it weren’t, just exactly where does Congress get the authority to write a law that specifies in detail what benefits an employer must provide for his workers? And how can a law without valid authority be enforced? I know they’ve done it before, but does that make it Constitutional?

Third, the transfer of the cost of msm from hospitals to insurance companies is a distinction without a difference, as was stated Friday by Rick Santorum in answer to a question from a FoxNooz host. It’s clear that by providing the insurance policy in the first place the hospital will be providing the means to obtain the msm. Esoteric considerations of “who will really pay” are unnecessary.

Fourth, neither the President nor HHS has the authority to require a company to give up its assets without probable cause. The fourth amendment states “The right of the people to be secure in their… effects, against… unreasonable… seizures, shall not be violated….”  And it makes it clear that any seizure shall be preceded by a warrant swearing to probable cause and describing the thing to be seized, which further implies a warrant for at least each case. This, I admit, is a conclusion reached by someone who is Not a Constitutional Law Professor.

Fifth, the President’s modification of the HHS order would create a “taking” under the definitions of the fifth amendment, whether there is any religious aspect involved or not. This objection might be answered by the agreement of the federal government to pay for the benefit provided, but the President knows there is no money to pay for it and no chance that Congress would approve it. And even then, it’s questionable that one person can be required to give up his property to another person, even with a royal decree in hand.

Finally, he hasn’t gotten rid of the problem he stepped in. He’s just moved it around.

It all boils down to a President who wants to be King, and in fact a pre-Magna Carta King. To him, the Constitution is just a bunch of technical objections to what he wants to do, not the Supreme Law of the Land, and he feels comfortable with violating or skirting three of its most important clauses for this one particular favorite program. The Congress should be mere lackeys, carrying around their little rubber stamps that say either “yes” or “heck yes.” And the public is a gaggle of children who don’t know what’s good for them.

So, how does this help the Supreme Court? They are considering the fate of the “individual mandate” to purchase health insurance that’s contained in the O/R/P AHCA, and without which the act is even less affordable than it is with it. In fact, without the mandate the act is meaningless. Given that last item, the Court might come down on the side of the Administration.

But assuming that the Justices of the Court do read the papers, they might now also consider the new, publicly proposed transgressions against the intent and words of the Constitution, and that might help them decide that it’s time to make like Barney Fife and “nip it in the bud.”

Bret Baier on Fox News Channel’s  Special Report reported today that

 ”Congressional Budget Office figures indicate the deficit is increasing at a slower pace.  The CBO says the federal government accumulated a budget deficit of 349 billion dollars in the first four months of the fiscal year 2012.  That is 70 billion less than the shortfall reported for the same period last year.  The deficit for the year is still predicted to be almost 1.1 trillion dollars.”

At that point, he threw the page he was reading over his shoulder and declared, “I’m sick and tired of reading c**p like this.  Give me a break!  We’re reporting about rearranging g*dd*m deck chairs while the f***ing Titanic is in full dive mode.  What the h**l difference does it make that we’re going over the cliff at 99 mph instead of 100?  The splatter will be just as big.  Instead of worrying about the speed of our demise, ladies and gentlemen, you better be worrying about just who is driving the bus.  The guy driving it now needs to learn that the steering wheel turns right as well as left.  If he’d do that just a little, maybe we’d avoid the cliff.  But it looks to me like we need a new driver; he doesn’t have a clue where we’re headed, what the brake is for, or how to use it.  He’s driving on cruise control with his legs crossed at the ankles, listening to his own speeches on his iPod, f’gawd’s sake.

My sincere apologies for the mixed metaphors.”

At this point, the camera started shaking (as if the cameraman had lost control) and Charles Krauthammer could be seen rolling in with a hypodermic needle in his hand.  The show went to break, and when it came back Geraldo Rivera was sitting in the host chair, muttering something about “(I thought that weed I gave him was the GOOD stuff.  Sorry, Bret.  Maybe not the best time to get in touch with your inner Howard Beale.)  [aloud]  Speedy recovery, Buddy.  And to the rest of you, Welcome now to Geraldo’s World, LIVE FROM LAS VEGAS!”

My apologies to any who are offended by Bret’s language; it’s just so not like him, but I did clean it up, after all.

The news report that he read was real.  The rest of this is just wishful thinking.

Or perhaps their timidity, or their stupidity.

I’m not a big fan of Greta van Susteren of Fox News Channel, but Thursday night she was right on target.  She interviewed Iowa’s Representative Steve King, the only Congressional questioner who was prepared to ask Attorney General Eric Holder the key question, “Who was the DOJ official who authorized Fast and Furious?”

vS:  “…no one will tell us who the one is with such flawed judgement.”

K:  “That’s right.  The individual, the highest up the ladder that would have authorized Fast and Furious, if Eric Holder will not identify that person or answer that question, you have to wonder if Eric Holder isn’t the person.”

Sounds like a pretty important question, doesn’t it?

Rep. King said he had sent a letter to Holder two days ago and told him he wanted the answer to that question; come [prepared] to answer that question.  Yet, says King, “The gavel fell on me just as I was prepared to ask….”

Van Susteren then interrupted him by asking, incredulously, “But what about your colleagues?  …Don’t your colleagues want…  To me, that’s the most important question….  If you didn’t get a chance to ask it, why didn’t somebody else ask it?”

King:  “…Maybe I could have gotten it done if I would have written it out and walked down the line and found somebody; they all had their own agenda, but I will follow up.  I will follow up with a written request to get an answer to that question, some weeks or months, the last time was May third, we got the answers to our questions on October thirty-first, so it takes a long time to get answers out of this attorney general.”

And Steve King is one of the GOOD guys.

At that point I suspect more than a few other viewers were screaming along with me at the TV, “You PINHEADS!  You have the guy under oath and you don’t ask him the most obvious, the most pertinent question of all, WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?”  That is such an important question because it can have only two tenable answers–a name, which can be followed up with “Why has he not been fired or demoted so that he can’t make any more terrible decisions like this?” or the other answer, “We don’t know,” which tells us that the entire DOJ is either too incompetent to investigate one gigantic SNAFU, or that somebody (Holder) is covering something up.  Even King recognized that there is no reason for Holder to try to protect an unknown (as yet) underling who is responsible for the decision.  “Why would Eric Holder not [identify] that individual unless that line leads to him or the President?  That’s my question.”  But Rep. King and the other incompetents of the GOP failed to even ASK the question.

Now, let’s move on to other Republican leadership.  Which of the geniuses on the House Agriculture Committee decided to hold the hearings for John Corzine on the SAME DAY as that of Eric Holder?  I realize that Holder probably had some control over what day he appeared, but couldn’t the Corzine hearing have been postponed until next Monday?  By holding both hearings today, the news coverage was split between the two, and it’ll die out faster than if only one of them were in the spotlight at a time.  More importantly, the Corzine hearing diluted the coverage of Holder’s evasive appearance today.

It makes one wonder if the Republicans are even serious.  They don’t even put up a good fight when they’re IN THE MAJORITY.

This is truly a time to prepare for the future, to set the stage.  Maybe not this month or even this year, but this election at this point in history.  Special people come along only occasionally, yet they seem to be created by fate just when they can make the necessary difference.  Think of our founding fathers, of Lincoln, of Churchill, of Truman, and of Martin Luther King and Ronald Reagan.  Few of them were predicted to become “great,” but when we needed their talents, they came through for us.

While Marco Rubio hasn’t yet reached their stature, he’s the right man at the right time.  He would help any of our candidates defeat President Obama, and historians may look back later and call this election the one that saved (or lost) the Republic.  And he would then be in position to move to the top of the ticket in eight or even four years, after having provided sound conservative advice and counsel to the President.  Even if he accomplishes nothing else, he will have done a great service for our country.  And even if Obama wins, by running for Vice President Rubio won’t have hurt himself regarding the 2016 election, when after a full Senate term he’d be appropriate for the top of the ticket if he wished.

Contrary to current ruling class opinion, the August, 2011, crop of Republican presidential candidates is not second class, the junior varsity, radicals or extremists–together, they represent a broad swath of the American public’s outlook on many issues.  Individually, they have positive characteristics that would serve them well as President, but they all have some general election shortcomings, and don’t forget, it is essential, the first order of business, that WWW/XXX be elected in 2012.

The most sure and controllable way to secure that goal is for “Rubio” to take the place of “XXX,” because pairing any of them with Rubio overcomes those shortcomings.  It could be nearly as important as the name that replaces WWW.  (After the election, their positive characteristics make most of the remaining candidates perfect fits for various positions within a WWW/Rubio administration.)

This is true primarily because Rubio compellingly articulates the conservative perspective as well as anybody and far better than most; if we want to win a battle of ideas, those are essential skills for at least one of our top two candidates.  A compelling spokesman creates interest in our message powerfully and irresistibly, turning a mere audience into listeners.  And to be articulate means, after all, to be able to convey ideas clearly, so that those listeners not only hear, but understand.  Used the right way by a competent campaigner, Rubio delivers on both counts, and he does it with a minimum of negative tics.

Of course there are others who can say the words, who know them and even believe them.  Some of those people are credible and truly inspiring, like Michael Williams of Texas (who in my opinion is a close second to Rubio on this front).  Others, including some of the front-line candidates standing up at the Republican debates, not so much.  Of the available VP possibilities of the right age and situation, Marco Rubio is far and away the best.

If we were facing Bill Clinton this time, I’d be less concerned.  Not that we’d easily win–realistically, I figure that Bill Clinton, given his personality and MSM support, could defeat most of us while standing on his head and smoking a cigar–but a loss would only be a loss, not the second installment of the beginning of the end of the post-Reagan booming economy and our Constitutional government.  Clinton may not be a good person, but he wasn’t a bad President once he got a Republican Congress to give him some guidance.  If that were the case with Obama, we could afford to wait while Rubio received four years of seasoning in a Republican Senate–he will surely be our next Presidential candidate, barring the disclosure of some incompletely-expunged adolescent sex crime conviction on his record–but because the situation tells us we must win this time, we can’t hold back.  We must use our best weapon.

If what I wrote above is true, where does that leave us, logically?  It leaves us with WWW/Rubio as the obvious ticket for 2012, in all likelihood to be followed by Rubio/YYY in 2020, and (assuming YYY is chosen carefully) YYY/ZZZ in 2028.  All very long-range, I admit, but when we look at the young conservatives currently getting experience in the House and Senate, it’s not all that farfetched.  All those folks for whom people like Ann Coulter pine to jump into this election actually fit much better in the picture as supporting members (at whatever level or position, inside or outside the administration) of a coming conservative wave and future candidates for President than as Presidential or VP candidates this time.  Think Rubio/Ryan-2020 followed by Ryan/Cruz, just for a quick, easy to come up with example.  By then the names will have changed, but the conservatism won’t, if we do it right this time.

Often, the selection of a VP is not such a big deal.  Sure, Sarah Palin undoubtedly helped John L. McCain exceed expectations in 2008, but that pick had more effect on HER life than it did on the election (due to his mismanagement of the campaign, not because of anything she did or didn’t do).  She might still be a little-known former Governor of Alaska had he not picked her, and because he picked her too early, she is still trying to find the right place to ripen.

Although it’s always dangerous to say “It’s different this time,” I really think that it is.  Marco Rubio is just so obvious a choice for both today and for tomorrow that I fervently hope he is picked for VP by our Presidential nominee, and that he accepts.   It isn’t too early for him to run for Vice President, because of his demeanor, his intelligence, his knowledge and his history.  He is at least as experienced as was Barack Obama when he became President, so the accusation of “inexperienced” won’t be effective against him as Vice President, even among the MSM.  His personal story is an inspiring one, and he seems to have excellent political instincts.

He will become an important force in the Senate if he stays there, but he can do a lot more for the country if he can move up now.  Marco, if your country calls, please pick up the phone.  And Mr. WWW, whoever you turn out to be, please place the call.

Today’s events have created a huge opening for the Republican Presidential candidate who is ready to show his leadership mettle.

President Obama has the “bully pulpit,” but the first candidate to come out in direct contradiction to his latest polemics with a logical, complete, and detailed response, pointing out the errors of the President’s statements and positions, whether after consulting with John Boehner or not, can grab the imagination of the 65% of the public who are not in the thrall of the President, and force the CNN’s of the world to cover him/her more-or-less impartially.

Congressional Republican leadership, including Boehner and Mitch McConnell, aren’t in a position to do it.  They still need to be able to negotiate with him, and they really shouldn’t muddy the water even though the President apparently sees no need to remain above the fray.  John Boehner will speak in a moment, but Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, or Rick Perry should have a very different perspective on the issue.

The “Pulitzer prize-winning” website PolitiFact made news this weekend by being quoted on several Sunday game quiz news interview shows as the hosts talked with Michelle Bachmann.  The gist of all of these segments was that TPPWWPF had scrutinized for truthfulness statements Bachmann had recently made, and they found she came up wanting more often than not, most of her statements being rated either “Barely True” or receiving the dreaded “Pants on Fire” rating.  The numbers differed among shows, but the reports were that out of twenty-plus statements, she had smoking undies on six or seven of them, with fewer still that were rated simply “True” or “Mostly True.”

Given that Michelle Bachmann is a politician, intelligent, conservative, and female, a combination that “middle-of-the-road” news media like TPPWWPF generally don’t believe exists or should exist, it didn’t surprise me to hear that report, but it did tweak my curiosity.  What were all those lies she was telling, for after all, if she isn’t telling the truth, doesn’t that mean she’s lying?  So I looked up the report on her Face the Nation appearance, followed by a search for some of President Obama’s grades.  Here’s a summary of what I found.

PolitiFact’s even-handedness?  “Barely Discernable.”

What they said about–

–Spending

Bachmann:

I’ll tell you one thing that should be on the table, under Barack Obama the last two years, the number of federal limousines for bureaucrats has increased 73 percent, in two years.

TPPWWPF:

The claim is based on a May 31, 2011, story from iWatchNews.org, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, which ran under the headline, “Limousine liberals? Number of government-owned limos has soared under Obama.”

…The statistic is based on annual fleet reports provided by the U.S. General Services Administration….the GSA itself is not standing behind the numbers. Because of a loose definition of “limousines,” GSA spokeswoman Sara Merriam told iWatch News that GSA “cannot say that its report accurately reflects the number of limousines.”

…Bachmann’s claim that “under Barack Obama the last two years the number of federal limousines for bureaucrats has increased 73 percent,” is based on squishy figures from the GSA (according to the GSA itself). And it’s also impossible to tell from the numbers exactly how many of the new “limousines” were ordered by the Obama administration, and how many were ordered by his predecessor. Given those qualifiers, we rate it Barely True.

So.  Although Bachmann is accurately quoting a figure reported by a respected non-partisan news source which disclosed the basis of its story came in turn from GSA reports, the verdict is Barely True essentially because it wasn’t complete and detailed.  That is, she didn’t quote the whole article, just one fact from it.  I wonder if they were all GM vehicles.

–Energy Policy

Bachmann:

It’s ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve because the president doesn’t have an energy policy.

TPPWWPF:

(paraphrase)  The official announcement from U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was that (quote) “the U.S. will release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is currently at a historically high level with 727 million barrels.”

So the release of 30 million barrels accounts for just over 4 percent of the current holdings in the reserve — nowhere near “all” of it.

It’s possible Bachmann meant to say, “the president released oil” or “some oil” from the reserve, in which case she would have been accurate….

…In any event, we give significant weight to the actual words a speaker says — and viewers watching the interview would have been led to believe that Obama had released all the oil in the reserve. We rate Bachmann’s statement False.  [My emphasis added, so you won't forget]

OK.  Because she said “all” rather than “some,” her statement was False. I get that, but the point of her statement wasn’t how much of the oil was released, it was that Obama was using oil from the Strategic Oil Reserve for non-emergency purposes, reducing the available supply, and that “…the president of the United States has failed to give the American people an energy policy. Here’s the good news that a lot of Americans don’t even realize. We are the No. 1 energy resource-rich nation in the world according to the Congressional Research Service. But the president of the United States has unfortunately put American energy resources off limits.”

–Unemployment and Obamacare

Bachmann (via TPPWWPF):

On FTN–

Bachmann said one of the problems with the economy is that business felt there was too much uncertainty to hire. One of the problems, she said, was the health care law that Obama signed into law last year.

“They know that Obamacare is coming down the pike. The Congressional Budget Office estimated Obamacare will cost the economy 800,000 jobs,” she said.

In the second Republican Debate–

“The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office has said that Obamacare will kill 800,000 jobs….”

TPPWWPF:

Here’s how the CBO puts it:

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount—roughly half a percent—primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply….”

The CBO doesn’t use the 800,000 jobs number in its report; critics of the law have extrapolated that number by calculating what half a percent of the workforce equals.  But CBO director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed that number in testimony before Congress back in February….

Bachmann said the health care law “will kill 800,000 jobs.” We find that’s an exaggeration of what CBO said. There could be the equivalent of 800,000 fewer workers thanks to the federal health care law, according to the CBO, but not because employers wouldn’t hire them.  It’s primarily because workers wouldn’t have to work because the new law expands health care coverage. That means people working most for health insurance would either reduce their hours or leave the job market altogether. There could also be more economic productivity because of the health care law.  Bachmann’s statement leaves out so many qualifiers that it becomes misleading. We rate it Barely True.

So.  Although her statement was based on sworn testimony provided by the CBO director, it’s only Barely True because it doesn’t provide enough disclaimers, qualifiers and weasel-words to satisfy the weasel-word-watchers at TPPWWPF.  I can’t resist pointing out that what they apparently want is for her to speculate on what might happen that could negate her proposition.  There is no recognition that their own argument is that people will quit work because the rest of us will work to pay taxes to buy health insurance for them. How else do they plan to pay for it?  What are the implications of that?

–Drill, Baby, Drill

In the interest of completeness, I include this one from FTN:

TPPWWPF:

Schieffer also asked her about a previous misstatement on oil, that the Obama administration has only issued one new drilling permit in all the time Obama has been in office. We rated that Pants on Fire, the actual number is well over 200….

[At the link]  Perhaps she meant not permits, but exploration plans. The first exploration plan since the oil spill was approved last week.

Perhaps.

But that’s not what she said.

She said: “One. That’s the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office.” It’s not even close, and the claim is ridiculously false. Pants-On-Fire.  [Again, my emphasis added so you won't forget]

Seems like a big discrepancy to me.  Maybe she was just wrong.  Maybe she was talking about something else.  TPPWWPF suggest that possibility, but didn’t get a clarification from Bachmann, they say.

–Unemployment, Stimulus, and ObamaSpeak

One last Bachmann quote:

[From PolitiFact]  In her Tea Party Express-sponsored rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., repeated an oft-used attack on the economic stimulus — that the White House promised it would keep unemployment under 8 percent (and failed).

“Unfortunately, the president’s strategy for recovery was to spend a trillion dollars on a failed stimulus program, fueled by borrowed money,” Bachmann said. “The White House promised us that all the spending would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Not only did that plan fail to deliver, but within three months, the national jobless rate spiked to 9.4 percent. It hasn’t been lower for 20 straight months. While the government grew, we lost more than 2 million jobs.”

TPPWWPF:

The claim that the White House “promised” the stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent has been a popular attack line….

…But we could find no instance of anyone in the administration making a public pledge along the lines of  “if we pass the stimulus, we promise unemployment will stay below 8 percent.”

Rather, the claim has its roots in a Jan. 9, 2009, report called “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” from Christina Romer….

But what we saw from the administration in January 2009 was a projection, not a promise. And it was a projection that came with heavy disclaimers…..

There’s also a footnote that goes with the chart that states: “Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially. Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action.”

The administration has acknowledged its projections were wrong.

…

In short, it was an economic projection with warnings of a high margin for error, not a take-it-to-the-bank pledge of an upper limit on unemployment.

So we find Bachmann’s claim Barely True.

So.  Fine.  It wasn’t a promise.  But it was a projection that Congress used to justify a spending bill that added almost a trillion dollars to our deficit in just one year.  Isn’t that a bit more important than parsing the difference between a promise and a projection?  That projection was presented to Congress as, “This is what is going to happen, and if you don’t give us the money, the collapse of the economy will be your fault.  If you appropriate the Stimulus money, unemployment will stay below 8%.”  It was certainly an implied promise.

And in their defense of Obama, TPPWWPF quoted him as saying,  “Now, every economist who has looked at it has said that the recovery did its job, …So people kind of say, yeah, but unemployment is still at 9.6. Yes, but it’s not 12 or 13, or 15,”  followed closely by their disclaimer,

Obama is correct that many independent economists agree that the stimulus has created more than a million jobs and kept the unemployment rate from going even higher than it has (though in fairness, not every economist agrees with that).

By their own Bachmann rules, his statement is False. He said, “all,” not “some,” and if you’re a conservative woman the two words aren’t synonymous.  Nor should they be for a liberal male.   But TPPWWPF seems to be selective about who must be exactly, absolutely, perfectly correct, and who can skate by on a smile and a chuckle.  It does give Obama a True and truly great campaign slogan, “It Could Have Been Worse.  Let’s Try Again.”

As things have turned out, one could argue reasonably that had nothing been done, the economy would be better today than it now is.

How they evaluate ObamaSpeak.–

–Border Security

There is a feature of TPPWWPF called “Barack Obama’s File,” containing a graph that is linked to statements by Obama, sorted from True to Pants on Fire. Of course, it only rates statements they’ve taken the time to research; of those, only 142 are True or Mostly True, while 163 are Half True down to Pants on Fire.  I’d rather have a President whose statements were more often True than anything and everything else, wouldn’t you?

If you check them out, many, many, many of the less-than-true statements are misquotes of opponents words, intentions, plans, or are other flat-out misleading statements like “The (border) fence is now basically complete,” to which TPPWWPF comments, “Depends on your definition of fence.”  I guess it does.  They say that is a Barely True statement, and they point out that

DHS reports that there is now fencing for 649 of the 652 miles described in the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But the vast majority of the requirement was met with vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fence. The original act specifically called for double-layer fencing, and only 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing currently exist. However, the act was later amended to allow Border Security the discretion to determine which type of fencing was appropriate for different areas.

That is perilously close to False, especially when combined with the outrageous slander by our President that “Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they [Republicans] want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied.”

–Health Insurance Coverage

What they deem a True statement is

“First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said. “Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

But by the standards they applied to Bachmann, this one is misleading enough to qualify for Barely True.  The plan may not have required health insurance plans to change, but it created an environment where changing plans was inevitable for economic reasons.  They even acknowledge it in their rating statement–

Given what we know about reform, it seems likely that at least some people will have employers who decide to change plans when insurers alter their offerings under the new regulations. This would be most likely for any small businesses that currently offer health insurance. They will be allowed to use a national exchange where insurers compete to offer insurance, and prices are expected to be lower.

Obama’s statement from the speech is more carefully phrased than his earlier statement. In his speech, he said that if you are “already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” That is true, there is nothing in the plan that proactively forces these kinds of changes, and the bills clearly intend to leave much of the current health care system in place. We rate Obama’s statement True.

Riiiight.  I think they need a new grade, Technically True if you squint, depending on what the meaning of “is” is.

IMHO, the PolitiFact analysts are very much inclined to grade statements to the advantage of liberals and the detriment of conservatives by picking and choosing which cases require words to be taken literally, and which cases allow words to be more broadly interpreted.Thus, “all” means “ALL” for Michelle Bachmann, but it can mean “many” or “most” or “some” when it comes from the mouth of Obama.  Yes, some of her comments are cringe-worthy, but so are some of the President’s comments.  TPPWWPF isn’t Media Matters, but the double standard used in evaluating comments seems evident.

In the end, we can’t trust a newspaper service to grade the truthfulness of politicians for us.  The grades turn on the political bias of the paper, and you can imagine where that is.  We can’t simply believe claims that they’re non-partisan; we must make them prove it by what they write, then do our own evaluation anyway, based on whether what they say makes sense or not.

The conundrum is that the potential candidates whom we would have the most confidence in in office, the “true conservatives,” are perhaps generally conceded to be the least experienced (not least qualified) and furthest right in the group, making them perhaps the least “electable,” because experience is what the independent swing vote is likely to deem most important, more important than consistent ideology or philosophy or how somebody voted on healthcare or energy tax policy, and it’s the swing vote that decides elections.  We have a dichotomy between what our heads tell us and what our hearts want.

The candidates whom our heads tell us are most experienced and most able to handle the majority of routine Presidential business well and maybe even get taxes and economics right, and are most likely to displace the current occupant of the Oval Office, are also the ones that our guts tell us would be most likely to commit an unacceptable swerve to the left in order to “get this bill through Congress” or fill a Supreme Court vacancy without too much fuss.  Our hearts want someone who knows that government-mandated health insurance must not be implemented further, that curly fry lightbulbs need no subsidies or mandates (and were in fact worth vetoing the bill that contained them as an add-on), that 40% income tax rates are immoral, and that a Secretary of the Treasury should not be a tax cheat.  This tension between our hearts and minds has resulted in a wide-open race, and I think it’s at the root of the frequent pleas to Chris Cristie, Paul Ryan, Rick Parry, et al, to get into it–simply put, we’re still looking for a white knight who combines all the characteristics we want in our President.  In reality, no such knight exists, nor ever will, but it’s also true that this time few of the hopefuls come very close.  We’re leery of the electability of our favorites and unsure of the conservative bona fides of those we consider most electable.

In the past, we voters have taken the word of candidates about what they believed about issues; sometimes they’ve been truthful and sometimes they’ve lied and sometimes they’ve felt they had to change their minds because circumstances had changed–”Read my lips, no new taxes (unless the Democrats in Congress tell me the world will end if I don’t sign)”–comes to mind, as does “All this additional health insurance coverage won’t cost us one thin dime more than we spend now.”  Even Ronaldus Magnus fell for a Democrat trick and raised income tax rates, but that was in the olden days when there were still some Democrats who had the best interests of the country at heart, even though their ideas were wrong, as always, but Reagan at least had some reason to believe them.

Now, no such reason exists, and conservatives fear the prospect of electing a Republican President who doesn’t have the grounding he needs to successfully stand up to the left.  Dealing with Democrats is necessary, but deal with them on our turf, not theirs.  In the current (potential) Republican field, there are only two or three who I would confidently predict would stand up for right over expediency EVERY time, who really understand the importance of conservative ideology.  There are a few others who would seem to understand what I just wrote, and several others who would dismiss it as too rigidly ideological.  Today, I can’t even guess which group contains our eventual winner.

What I can say is that if it comes from the latter group, we will need more than ever to do our best to make the Congress a RINO-free zone.  If we elect a Republican President who can’t bring himself to cut taxes, or withhold money from the remaining government mandated health insurance rollout, or cut spending deeply, or fire all those czars, we will need to protect the Party from him and the damage his Democrat-lite ideas will do.  A conservative Republican Congress can help with this.

So my hope is that the political media will question all the convention hopefuls about all these issues and many more and get some specific answers to indicate just what the candidate would do if faced with a cap-and-trade bill, or a bill to amend rather than repeal the current mandatory health insurance law.  Will s/he lay off federal workers, or freeze new hiring, or attempt reduction by attrition?  Push for Reagan tax rates?  Submit a 2008-level budget for 2013?  Support government buy-up of corporate stock?  Eliminate all subsidies, or just some?  Repeal labyrinthine regulatory laws that protect very few except the industries they supposedly regulate?  Define the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a critically important government entity, worthy of borrowing money to support, or call it an expendable luxury, able to survive on its own?  What criteria would s/he use to determine which federal programs to cut or keep?  Does the Constitution mean anything?  What about Iraq?  Afghanistan?  Libya?  How should we be fighting those wars?  Why are we fighting those wars?  What about Iran’s nuclear ambitions; how does what were already doing in the middle east help or hurt our defense against that?  Don’t forget border security–will the lawsuit against Arizona be dropped?  Will our borders be made truly secure, or will lip-security continue?

{The press actually did this fairly well with candidate Barack Obama.  He made many definitive statements about what he would do, how he would do it, and how much it would cost.  We know that because we are very aware of which of those promises he has kept (few) and those which he has failed to keep (many).  We now know for sure which times he was telling the truth and which times he wasn’t, too.  He sounded so good when he made those incredible promises that 52% suspended disbelief and voted for him.}

I may be very wrong, but I think the candidate who has the most reasonable, concrete, definable, defensible and affordable answers to those questions has the best chance of any to win the White House next year.  (And of course, s/he will have to be able to get the attention of both the press and the public.)  That candidate will be able to convince true independents and Reagan Democrats that ideas are important, that our ideas are best.  But one more thing–s/he must be ready to refute all the Obamic lies that the Democrats and their supporters of all kinds will put out, doing so in a way that is credible, not open to spin, leaving no doubt which side is right and which side is simply saying what they think voters want to hear.  That person will be our white knight for 2012.

Replying to Erick Erickson’s column, Barack Obama Is Directly To Blame For the S&P Downgrade, I found myself thinking about just what Republicans, in control of only “one-half of one-third of the government,” can really do to stave off the ugly future that S&P says has a 33% chance of coming to pass.

Don’t expect the Democrats to be any help in solving this truly national problem. As Senator Jim DeMint pointed out recently during an interview with Greta van Susteren, they simply can’t help because they are wedded to the idea of more and more spending to satisfy their constituency’s demands. The work of setting the country upright again will fall entirely to the Republican ants; Democrat grasshoppers will only be engaged in providing fiddle music to work by.

The Republican Party must become the Party of America, because the policies promulgated by the Democrats are not only unworkable, but detrimental to a stable society. While everybody was watching but nobody was seeing, the Republican Party has become the Big Tent Party we were calling for in recent years. The real policy debates are going on WITHIN the Republican Party, between the fiscal hawks and the political pragmatists, who, to give them their due, are right to recognize that if a goal is to pass viable fiscal legislation, it must get not only Democrat votes in the Senate but Obama’s vote in the White House.  If.  And when.

The strategic choices being resolved now are whether the goal should be to go that far, or perhaps to just get a bill to the President, where his veto would put him on the spot; whether it should be to just put our strongest plans out there, forcing the Senate to vote them down; or whether we must swallow our best ideas and accept a below-market Continuing Resolution and a similar swallow of an increased debt ceiling “for the good of the country.”  To be clear, what follows is not about either the AWOL 2011 budget or the debt ceiling.

Given the makeup of the White House and the Senate, there is no chance that our ideal budget legislation can be passed in the next two years. If we accept that it is irresponsible to avoid passing 2012 and 2013 budgets, then we must also accept that said budgets will contain items that we don’t agree with. Our mission should be to present the budget in such a way that we can also explain WHY we are either willing to or have been forced to accept those items, and also WHAT we would do if we had the ability (given a Republican House, Senate, and White House). And both Tea Partiers and RINOS need to come to an agreement to back each other in the fight, rather than to undercut the effort by backbiting. A unified front, formed from the entire spectrum of the Republican Party, will be needed to prove to those on the outside looking in that we’re serious in our desire to do right by the country, not just reaching for political gain. The comparison to any plans put forth by Democrats will be stark, and the unified front will help us get more of what we want.

A decision to accommodate the Democrats isn’t based solely on the politics of the situation, but it can still be used to advance our policy preferences.  A decision to confront the Democrats is a political one, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one.

To take the confrontational side first, a decision to put a budget in front of the Senate that we are sure the President would veto is strictly one that’s made to set out our position, to force them to declare their position, and to make the difference clear. Since the end result would be no enacted law but some contrasting positions revealed, the process would be completely political. There is nothing wrong with that.  It would strengthen the Republican position among many of its members, and it would appeal as well to independents who have a desire for fiscal responsibility “no matter what.” It’s also a principled position.  Others would disagree, of course.

On the other hand, if the Republican House decides to put forth a fiscal package that they think is flawed but still better than no legislation at all, one which His Majesty would probably deign to accept, that would be both a political- and a Congressional responsibility-based decision. Politically, it could be seen as a responsible attempt to achieve comity, to make compromise possible, and to “keep the government open.” The people, including some Republicans, who are afraid of the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling or of the “threat” of closing national parks would applaud such a budget, as would many independents (again) who favor any government operations and subsidies more than a balanced budget. And of course, the independents who are farther to the left on the social scale would also approve on the face of it. (It’s unlikely these folks would ever provide ongoing support to Republican candidates or policies, but the idea is that they might stick with us for two years if we can show that it is Obama who is unreasonable.)  If they did this right off the bat, it would also be a signal of Republican weakness.

You may note the asymmetrical nature of the dilemma. There are two separate issues that promote the accommodative approach–the political appeal of cooperation, and the further appeal of our accepting Congressional responsibility to “behave like grownups”–while there is only the politics of the question that advises us to follow a confrontational approach.

While it’s nice to predict that His Highness will capitulate if faced with a strong House and a tough decision, it also means that we are convinced that he will regard what reaches him as a “tough decision,” and it further requires that we are, if not sanguine, at least willing to accept the consequences of his veto, both politically and as it affects the operations of government and the financial markets. Given his temperament and beliefs, he might feel the decision isn’t tough at all.  IMHO, the idea won’t even come up, because a really strong statement requiring a “tough decision” will never get past the current Senate.  If we make one, it’s the Senate that will hear it.  So eliminate the question of “What will Obama do?” from consideration.

My opinion is we should therefore first send a VERY strong budget statement to the Senate, one that will force them to explain themselves in rational terms as they reject it.   We should NOT be timid. The first pass at a 2012 budget should be one that contains everything we want, one that is “dead on arrival” at the Senate, but we must make them justify all the reasons why it is DOA, and we must answer them.  If we are right on our positions and principles, we will then accrue the support we need from the people to help us get every concession possible from the Senate, resulting in an package acceptable to most of us. This may require several iterations, which is why it’s an inappropriate strategy for a CR or the debt ceiling. It wouldn’t work on a short-term time-limited issue.

Our fight will be with the Senate Democrats, not with the President.  His method of operation is to let others do the work up front while he takes credit in the end.  He will almost certainly sign whatever is passed by the Senate.  I don’t see him vetoing a budget that his Democrat Senate has approved. Our job is to make sure it is also what we want.  That will require Republican unity and being in front of the curve.

This still leaves open the questions of what to do about the next CR and the debt ceiling.  Again, time constraints enter into these issues.  Whatever we do, we can’t afford to give the impression we can be “had,” that we are the ones who will fold.  We need to lead the way with bills that are reasonable and that we know will be agreed to by the Senate.  And whatever else happens, it’s time for those of us on the Tea Party side to quit arguing about the $100 billion or $38 billion or $350 million in cuts, at least in terms of “you broke your promise.”  It was worth the fight, but it’s minor compared to the next budget.

The debt ceiling issue should be attacked as a logical, fiscal issue, not an ideological one.  If we can make the case to the American people that we don’t need to raise the limit, we should do so.  We have enough time to try, but I don’t hear our leaders doing so.  If we can’t convince them, raise the limit and lead the way on this, too.  After all, the amount has to be decided upon.

With both of these issues out of the way, we’ll be in the best position to get much of what we want in the 2012 budget and show America why we need their help in November 2012 to get things right for the future.  It’s the only way we’ll avoid the S&P’s depressing future.  Democrat policies just make things worse.

Hah!  Only kidding.  Of course NPR should not.  Still, today’s edition of NPR’s On the Media provides a simple example of why I think not.  As they say on one non-government-subsidized media channel, you decide.

In a segment titled “Labor’s Image Problem,” Brooke Gladstone played an RNC ad which criticized both President Obama and “union bosses” for interfering with Wisconsin’s attempt to right its own financial ship.  Here I was, not even aware that the issue in Wisconsin was Labor’s image.  I thought it had to do with balancing budgets, crybaby Democrat legislators, and shifting the balance of bargaining power back toward the state government.  If you think that bit of enlightenment means NPR is earning its subsidy, think again.  Brooke discussed none of those issues with U Cal Santa Barbara History Professor Nelson Lichtenstein.

That embed thing didn’t work, so listen here.

As I wrote to OTM,

This was a semi-interesting segment, in that it only went half-way into the subject.  You covered the use of the term “union bosses” without noticing the obvious–that it not only connoted what you commented on, but it also served the more important function of specifying that the ad’s criticism was aimed at union leadership, not the general membership.

Since you purport to be a program about media coverage rather than about the underlying news itself, wouldn’t a more appropriate target for your commentary be the “local and even national coverage [that] has been sympathetic to the public employees”?  Should news coverage be sympathetic to anyone?  Shouldn’t it be reporting facts rather than conveying sympathies?

I continued, writing to the proverbial brick wall,

Quoting Pew studies from 1981 and today for comparison would tell us more if we were sure that the methodology for both studies was equivalently valid.  Reports from news agencies that don’t depend on government for subsidies tell us that the recent Pew poll was skewed heavily towards union families and Democrats, even though neither group is as prevalent in the general population as are their non-union, non-Democrat counterparts.  When the sample is adjusted to remove the pro-union bias, it no longer favors the union bosses; it favors the Governor, who was elected in November to do what he is trying to do.

Mr. Lichtenstein claimed there hasn’t been a strike in Wisconsin, yet many teachers left their jobs to disrupt state business while they claimed to be sick.  That sick-out amounted to a strike.

As for the crowds being “telegenic,” neither Brooke nor Lichtenstein has apparently actually looked carefully at the horde of bused-in union surrogates who have been screaming union slogans, calling Governor Walker a cross between Hitler, Stalin, and Mubarik, and trashing the state capitol building for the last week.  Incidentally, Lichtenstein’s romanticized description of the protesters could equally have been used to describe the Tea Partiers of 2009 and 2010, except he forgot to say “almost exclusively White.”

Then, Lichtenstein went on to obliquely compare the Republican critics to Gadhafi because they used the term “union bosses” and therefore must believe that “the uprising[!?] is purely a product of a conspiracy of [their] enemies.”  Oh, the incivility!  Does he really think rank and file union members got together and chartered the buses to bring those demonstrators in from out of town and out of state?  My opinion says that “union bosses” paid for them.  But will the unions pay for the clean up?  $7 million and counting, I believe.  Of course, that’s at union wage rates.  Not encouraged by “union bosses”?  Tell me that as I watch AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka insert himself into the fray.  Lichtenstein also apparently never heard of Dave Beck or Jimmy Hoffa; perhaps not even the Teamsters Union.

As a university professor, Lichtenstein is probably a member of the American Association of University Professors, which has come out against the Wisconsin legislation.  Is he actually a participant in this issue, not just an observer?  When Brooke asked him, “Would you say you’re objective on the issue of unions?” he avoided answering the question, which was obviously OK with Brooke.

My final opinion:  Mr. Lichtenstein is not credible, and the segment is pro-union spin.

Incidentally, last week Lawrence O’Donnell took the “union bosses” phrase DEEP to left field as he claimed it made the ad racist.  You know, Obama’s black, it said he has bosses, therefore he’s a slave, which is of course a racial slur.  QED.  (Lawrence has a closet full of tinfoil hats he’d be thrilled to share with you.)  But that was on MSNBC, which is not to be confused with NPR except in the way they both lean.  Left, not forward.  Still, had Gladstone and Lichtenstein addressed O’Donnell’s unique take on the situation, at least that would have been commentary “on the media.”

There are no caps in that title.  No exclamation point.  None was present in the president’s State of the Union speech as he delivered those lines last week.

President Obama is supposed to be The Great Orator, but lately he seems to be missing the mark.  Why in the name of William Jennings Bryan did he wind up his address with a reference to the heroic story of Brandon Fisher and his “small business,” Center Rock?

To remind you, Fisher and his company envisioned, designed, manufactured, delivered, and operated the equipment that rescued 33 miners trapped in Chile last year.

President Obama quoted a Center Rock employee,

…”We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.”

We do big things.

We are a nation that says….

We do big things.

In doing so, he missed the irony of using that story to support his idea that the US Government “does big things.”  He didn’t specifically say that–he used the royal “We” to recognize the American people–but it was clear from what went before and by his use of “We are a nation…” that he meant “We, the government.”

But Fisher’s is a story of personal enterprise and individual effort; it has nothing to do with government programs and if anything it illustrates what can be accomplished if government gets out of the way.  Had the incident been a different kind of emergency, one that required the effort of any industry that is highly regulated, perhaps the rescue would never have been completed.

Consider the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.  Rules and regulations did not prevent the accident but federal government regulation then prevented the states from protecting their own beaches, prevented European allies from helping mitigate the damage with their ships and sailors who were already experienced in and equipped for that kind of situation, and prevented American entrepreneurs just like Center Rock from applying their talents to speed the cleanup.  Instead of doing big things, the Obama administration did every nit-picking little thing it could do to prevent ingenuity from winning the battle.  To this day, it leaves in place a court-rejected moratorium on offshore drilling, or the threat of one, that keeps American oil companies from full recovery.

What “big things” lie ahead?

He asks Harvard to allow the return of ROTC to campus.

He has traveled around the world, and he’ll do so again to make more speeches, and to stand with “those who take responsibility.”  He’ll insist that Iran meets its responsibilities, and “that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.”

He’ll reduce troop strength in Iraq.

He’s going to give us a “21st century government that’s open” and “a government that’s more competent and efficient.”  He seemed to say that he’d do something so that government could regulate salmon better, whether it’s in fresh water, salt water, or a nice fume.  But he wasn’t specific about just what that was.  And he says that “[v]eterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse.”  Efficient!  His “administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government.” That is big, but hardly new.

And he’ll

pick projects based on what’s best for the economy, not politicians.

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.

Yes, he really had those two sentences back to back.

Enough, already.  Most of these are small-ball items, either essentially insignificant in a grand view of the world, or little white-lie gifts to the cockeyed optimists among us who still believe that a government the size of the combined moons of Jupiter can be made open, competent, and efficient, and that multi-billion-dollar projects can be paid for by eliminating the same waste, corruption and loopholes that paid for the last twenty unwanted government boondoggles.

“Big” in this context does not equal “expensive,” it equals “very important and good for America.”  And to be fair, he did have a few items that might qualify, but he didn’t seem to realize it.  He merely mentioned them and continued on, or qualified them to such an extent that it guarantees failure.  Examples:  fix Social Security, reduce spending, simplify the tax code, eliminate loopholes and tax preferences, and reduce tax rates.  It’s clear that he either didn’t really mean what he said, or that he intends to stay back and follow while somebody else leads the way, letting them take the arrows from HIS party while doing so.  He has no intention of leading us anywhere.

But he could, if he really wanted to “do big things.”  Some suggestions:

Cut spending.

“Big” would be to accept the Republican challenge to return to the 2008 budget and go them two better.  Propose the 2006 budget.

Bipartisan effort and openness.

Recognize that the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional, and that while it is indeed “big,” the law is NOT self-financing, and that a big part of our deficit problem is the result of the fact and the manner it was forced upon us, creating huge fear among businesses that their employee health benefits are no longer under their control.  Join with Republicans and call for its repeal, to be replaced with several smaller, manageable laws covering a lot less ground but hashed out in open session in Congress.  Smaller in size, but bigger in importance.

Cut the deficit and amend the tax code.

Refer to the true results of the Reagan tax cuts–Huge increases in tax revenues, exceeded by huge increases in spending.  Start with one of the deficit reduction commission’s income tax plans.  By following a lower-spending budget (2006) the deficit will quickly start to shrink.

Illegal immigration.

Don’t just talk about it.  Do it.  Work with both parties as he said in his speech.  But don’t insist that every foot of border fence come with concessions to the illegal immigrant lobby.

Social Security.

Lead.  Don’t follow.  And don’t lay down conditions that guarantee failure, because Social Security is a problem that CAN be solved.  With a split Congress, he could actually do something BIG!

I’m sure you can read the speech and come up with more suggestions that are far “bigger” than his.

We Do Big Things!

See.  It’s better in bold, with caps and the right punctuation.  He should have delivered it that way and backed it up with proposals that were BIG.  Instead, he followed it with clumsy aphorisms and glittering generalities.  He came darned close to saying “the future lies ahead of us.”

If President Obama were a truly great orator, that phrase would be household words by now.  It would have joined “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” because it would have been followed by important new ideas, and not preceded by everyday boilerplate.  Instead, it’s been forgotten, as his speech will be.

He might as well have closed with, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Whether the stimulus package didn’t work, or worked, is still working, worked but then quit working, was too little, too big, needs a second phase, or was juuuust right, is again becoming a matter of discussion among the ruling class.  No, I must amend that.  They are sure that at some level it worked.  For them the only question is how much to expand it and they don’t care much about those other questions.

For us in the country class the questions are more important, because we like to know if and why something works or doesn’t.  You know, so we can decide whether to do it again or not.

I’d like to offer a few ideas and ask some questions about The Stimulus.

What was the stimulus supposed to do?

Jump start the economy, or at least rev it up a little, and “save” jobs and create jobs.

It did none of that very well.  After the appropriation of over $800 billion, with the Administration demanding that it be passed immediately because the situation was dire, official unemployment rates are still at almost ten percent.  A good chunk of it (more than $300 billion) isn’t even in the economy, having not yet been spent for anything.  Forecast economic growth has just been adjusted downward by the Federal Reserve, from over 3% for 2011 to 2.7%.  That estimate is probably optimistic.  But enough of the numbers.

The real point is that a stimulus by definition is a short-term remedy.  It is supposed to work NOW, not next year.  It’s supposed to be, no, it has to be temporary.  If it’s to save jobs, it has to save them NOW.  It can’t be strung out over 2, 3, or 4 years.  Otherwise, it’s just another way for the government to overspend for the Administration’s own pet projects.  Yet, that’s the way the money in this stimulus package has been spent.

There are some requirements for success.

Any stimulus must come from borrowed funds.

No stimulus can work if it has to be paid for by collecting taxes at the same time to replace it.  That is just a game of taking money from one pocket (the taxpayer’s) and putting it in another one (the pockets of favored interests), with a good bit of it taken off the top to pay the bureaucracy.  So a successful stimulus has to be from borrowed funds. Remember this for later.  The idea is that we are borrowing from the future to avert catastrophe now, and we will pay it back after things are stabilized.  We are creating jobs now that will contribute to the growth of GDP now, which helps to repay the borrowed money in the future.  If that isn’t what happens, it doesn’t make sense to borrow the money and pay interest on it.  And the idea of paying for the stimulus by cutting some other program doesn’t make much sense either, even if it moves the spending up from the end of the year to the front.  It’s still moving money between pockets.

Stimulus funds must be spent quickly.

No stimulus can work if the funds that are supposed to be spent are not spent.  In fact, unspent appropriations work against a recovery by creating negative expectations.  They become part of the anticipated debt without contributing to any increase in economic activity.  Public expectation of higher government debt without realization of greater economic activity leads to anticipation of higher future tax collections and/or inflation, which depresses the current economy.

Governments make bad decisions regarding how to spend stimulus money.

They have already prioritized what they thought our taxes were going to be spent on.  Now they’ve appropriated billions of dollar more and they have to decide where to spend it.  The answer ALWAYS is to spend it on the administration’s and Congress’s pet projects:  Green energy projects.  Subsidies paid to individual states to prop up their payrolls, which amounts to subsidies to state employee union members.  Payments to states to cover expenses they can no longer afford, which delays their attempt to solve the underlying problem–excessive spending.  Payments to cities to hire more police or fire or garbage men.  Moving forward purchases of goods and capital improvements that had been planned for later years.  (That one isn’t too bad.  At least we would have something to show for the expenditures.)  The money NEVER goes where a consumer would spend it.

The trouble with these ideas and the others they come up with is that once the stimulus money is gone, they aren’t self-sustaining.  The states and cities still don’t have balanced budgets, corrective changes haven’t been made, and now they have even higher expenses (larger payrolls) and greater deferred obligations (pensions).  Now IF the economy has turned around in a year maybe that’s not too bad, but if it hasn’t it just makes things worse, and the economy is in a downward spiral.

Trusting the country class is the answer.

IF there is a true need to boost the economy, we should keep in mind that we have a consumer economy.  It’s driven by 300 million consumers, and those millions of consumers have more effect on the economy than any one-year infusion of even $600 billion by the government into specific industries, states, or companies.  $600 billion is only $2000 times our 300 million population.  Of course they haven’t even spent $600 billion yet.  Maybe just barely $400 billion.

But–had our government simply given rebates to taxpayers that come to a total of a few hundred billion dollars, the people would have been able to decide where that money would be spent.  It would have stimulated the businesses that the consumers wanted, and ignored the ones they didn’t.  There would be no false support for profligate state or city governments–they’d have to get their own spending under control.  Government worker and teacher unions would face the right questions–do they accept change, or do they accept unemployment?  Cutting edge technology companies would have to convince investors that they were developing a good product, one that people would want to buy.

What’s the theory behind a stimulus?

The theory is that a short-term infusion of a large amount of additional money into our economic system can sustain it past a temporary crisis caused by an anomaly:  The sub-prime mortgage crisis, made either better or worse by TARP funds, leading to the near-collapse of the world financial system and several US financial entities, rising unemployment, the government takeover of two bankrupt car companies primarily at the expense of their creditors, government direction oversight of those financial entities, doubling of the previous annual deficit leading to a runaway increase in the national debt.  Only all that’s clearly not an anomaly.  It’s a whole bagful of mistakes, most of them instigated by government intervention in the economy.  Still, it might be controllable, IF it were just a one-time event.  However, the government’s insertion of itself into the health care industry has guaranteed that deficits will be astronomical by historical standards for the foreseeable future.  Although true-believers might argue that point, sensible people will not.

Our national debt has just reached $13 trillion, while our GDP is in the $14 trillion range.  Debt will soon exceed GDP, perhaps by the end of this year.  For comparison, national debt was less than half that at the end of 2002, and it was less than 60% of GDP.  More interestingly, just one month before the elections in 2008 debt was a full $3 trillion less than it is now.  Debt increased by $4 trillion from January 1, 2003 to October 2008;  it increased almost as much from October 2008 to August 2010–70 months compared to 22 months.  It’s predicted by the Administration to hit $20 trillion within ten years, and it may not take that long.

At this point, anything that increases government debt that isn’t absolutely necessary makes the recovery more remote, the situation worse.  Much worse.  The effect of galloping deficits and mushrooming debt is to destroy confidence in both the government and the economy.  When consumers and producers and employers lose confidence in the economy, they quit buying, cut production, and cease hiring if they aren’t firing.  The only solutions for such deficits and debt levels are Draconian taxes at levels that will kill economic growth, or worse; high inflation as the government monetizes its debt; and/or massive cuts in government spending.  Since massive cuts in spending have never happened in recent history, private expectations are for either or both of the first two alternatives.

Off topic?

Not really.  A stimulus package cannot possibly counter all those negative factors.  The only thing that can is to restore confidence.  In the environment I just described, the single biggest boost to confidence would be delivered by the cancellation of ObamaCare, which won’t happen until Obama leaves office (another boost).  In the meantime, defunding it  would help.  Cut the budget and we cut the need for higher tax receipts.  A good beginning would be to return the unspent stimulus funds back to the Treasury.  Freeze the size of the civilian government workforce, and freeze government pay schedules in place.

If we do that, the future will look better and confidence will start to improve because the government will be displaying fiscal restraint.  The deficit will shrink.  GDP will grow, shrinking it faster.  Eventual inflation will start to look manageable.

And remember what I wrote above–to even have a chance for success a stimulus package must be paid for with borrowed funds.  In this environment, more borrowing would be counterproductive.  The next-to-last thing we need now is for unnecessary expenditures that add to the deficit.  The last thing we need is tax increases that take money out of consumers’ and producers’ pockets for redistribution by bureaucrats.  So no, we don’t need no stinkin’ stimulus.

Inexplicable prior decisions by AG Eric Holder have destroyed trust in his judgment and motives.  As a result, the motives behind every new decision will be reasonably doubted.

Breaking News:

“…the Russian Federation has agreed to release four individuals who are incarcerated in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies” in return for the release of 10 Russian spies arrested in America.

____

“Through this historic investigation and prosecution, we have achieved justice on an international scale that has enhanced the national security of the United States of America.”–Preet Bharara, United States Attorney

This was a ten-year long sleeper cell.  They were arrested earlier this week.  They pled guilty today.  They were sentenced to time served and deported.  After clearing it with President Obama, the DOJ agreed.  That is all.

Questions:  Did we believe they wouldn’t tell us more if we asked more questions over a period of time?  They were here for ten years, under surveillance?  Not under surveillance?  Which?  Who are their contacts?  Do we know?  Why were we in such a hurry to release them?

These are not earthshaking questions.  Maybe the trade needed to be made quickly.  But…

The questions should be given much more weight because of previous questionable decisions and actions by AG Eric Holder and President Obama.

Guantanamo will be closed (someday).

Kaleed Sheik Mohammed will be tried in New York City.  (Or not)

Arizona will be sued.

Black Panther poll terrorists will not be punished.

Christmas bomber and briefs bomber rights should be read immediately.

And not to be forgotten, Marc Rich deserves a pardon.

Now, ten Russian spies are to be deported with only a few hours of questioning.

All these decisions are questionable when taken singly.  As a group, they form a giant red (maybe even Red) flag.  Mr. Attorney General, why were these prisoners released so quickly?  Become transparent.  Tell us.  Why?  Or maybe it’s time for you to go.

Pilgrim recently sharpened his quill and delivered a very interesting diary titled, No Country for Old Men.  Extra interesting because it didn’t mention immigration, Al Gore’s body, or Deepwater Horizon and BP.  His thesis was that we should have age-based term limits, and the country would benefit because it would spare us the agony of listening to the final few years of quavering voices as about eleven still-living and future nonagenarian wannabes string out their swan songs through election after election.  The comments all too quickly (would you believe comment #2?) made a sharp turn into the topic of old fashioned term limits–the kind based on number of terms, not the incumbent’s age.  Maybe it was because everybody agreed with pilgrim but still wanted to argue about something.

Anyway, kowalski proposed that congressional terms should be limited to a maximum of only one, not based on age, and the floodgates opened.  I started to enter into the fray, then decided I wanted to pontificate more than a comment would allow.  NTTAWWT.  I just felt that too many consequences were being overlooked, although Art Chance briefly hit one of them pretty good.  I’ll try to expand a bit on it.  I know I won’t touch on all of them.  Please feel free to add your own.

One unintended consequence of one-term limits would be a resurgence of power wielded by the states.  They would probably NOT term-limit their offices, which would then become more in demand among politically ambitious people.  It might also reduce the cost of running a national campaign, as the congressional seats might be in less demand.  I recognize that this is pure blue sky I’m selling.  After all, it’s never been tried.  (If it has, I’m sure you’ll tell me.)

Because of the “I’m new here” factor for every one in Congress, the federal government would tend to become less intrusive and more responsive to the people, as those elected wouldn’t have much time to be seduced by the wonders of DC.  They would themselves have recently been one of “the people,” and they soon would be again.  They also might be more interested in protecting the Constitution and less interested in extending their own power.

The country might turn back into a more representative Republic, rather than an all-powerful central government that treats its sovereign states as mere subdivisions of itself, which they were never intended to be.  It might also become a lot less efficient in the things that it does (probably a good thing), which might make it tend to concentrate on the tasks and roles assigned to it by the Constitution rather than taking so much time and resources attempting to find new ways to control the people and the states with over-reaching legal maneuvers.

There would also be even more movement between political “jobs” than there is today.  Congressmen would fight to become senators, senators would fight to become governors, governors would fight to become President.  The only thing new is that there will be a much larger supply of ex-incumbents and other aspirants to choose from, and we should be able to tell the bad ones from the good fairly easily.  Someone who is in it only for himself behaves differently from someone who is in it for the good of the country.  “By their deeds ye shall know them.”

And of course many would stick around to become part of the bureaucracy or of subsequent congressional or senatorial staffs.  That’s where some limited continuity would come from.  As Art pointed out, “few Members could actually pour pee out of a boot with instructions on the heel, so they just mouth what staffers tell them even when the Member has been around awhile.”  That seems to tell us that there wouldn’t be much difference between a one-term limit and the current situation.

Part of our greater problem today is that too few people are involved in government at all, and too many people are so involved for so long that they have become government.  Representative government needs representatives who understand what those represented are facing.  Single terms would help with that, I think.

A basic principle of democracy is that many (educated) minds together will make better decisions than just a few, and it’s true to a point that fits the discussion here.  (It’s partly why a market-based economy runs rings around a centrally-directed one.) Thus, the House has 435 members rather than forty.  The tricky part is that some of them have been there so long that they wield disproportionate power.  The same for the 100 senators, only worse.  And the pervasiveness of groupthink is abundantly obvious to anybody who listens to any congressman of any kind speak about any subject.  They may not all agree, but they all frame the issues the same way.  Yet if you read the comments on Redstate, you will see that it isn’t part of the human condition, it’s only part of the DC condition.

Many of them are also lawyers.  And doctors.  Some college professors.  But how many are CPA’s?  Bakers?  Barbers?  Businessmen?  Many fewer, I think.  Decide for yourself why that is.  But the result is a skewed outlook on the world.  Not necessarily a wrong one, but one that makes the Congress less imaginative than it needs to be when seeking solutions to problems that it should be trying to solve, and all too quick to apply a legalistic hammer to all those societal nails that it sees.

Of all these, to me the biggest advantage of greatly restricted congressional terms is the possibility of restoring power to the states as originally intended.

But there are drawbacks too, of course.  Restricted terms may mean that, instead of running for office themselves, powerful, rich, connected people will instead cultivate a rotating stable of young sycophants to run for these offices.  They’ll find them among office-holders at local and state levels, or lecturing at law schools, or working in community action groups.  Not that it doesn’t happen now, but on the good side, they will be harder to recruit if only one term can be promised.  Only the very ambitious will be tempted.

The Congress would become less powerful compared to the President, but they could mitigate this by enacting disabling legislation.  This might be considered a serious problem, but the current Congress isn’t doing much to rein in the current President, partly because they want to be reelected.  Maybe a Congress full of spit and vinegar would actually do better.  A weaker President and Congress would also turn us back towards a Constitutionally-regulated government.

At the same time, political parties should become more important, in different ways, than they are today.  Party platforms will finally mean more than talking points, because party platforms will be what tie one Congress to the next.  It will be the parties which provide continuity, rather than the congressmen.

And finally, we have a real-life example of the benefits of one particular two-term limit.  You fill in the rest.

Attention Mike Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, CEO’s of Disney, Marriott, and Boeing, and US Senators including McCain, Kyl, McConnell, Brown, and Graham:

COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM IS A NON-STARTER.

We, the great unwashed, may be dumb ourselves, but we aren’t “Stuck on Stupid.”  We observe.  We experience.  We learn.  We know that any bill that passes the President’s desk that includes elements of what you call “comprehensive reform” will be a bill light on border security and heavy on compassion and amnesty.  So don’t waste your time and money pushing one; you’ll find that you’re up against an implacable group of united citizens.

If you really want a plan to be passed that addresses the unknown millions of illegal gate-crashers in our midst, then you have a very simple chore–PASS AND IMPLEMENT A CREDIBLE BORDER SECURITY LAW FIRST.  One that ONLY addresses the problem of keeping gate-crashers out and that does NOT mention anything about the millions of gate-crashers who are alreadY attending the party.  One that includes physical fences, big ones that are better than the idiotic ones we see in the news clips, the ones with the illegals climbing and crossing them easily.  Regarding those fences, where is the concertina wire, the barbed wire, the hot wire at the top?  Gimme a break.

In fact, a new law may not be necessary.  Funding of the 2007 Border Fence law, including installation of a credible fence (see above), along with upgraded Border Patrol equipment and manpower might do the job.

Supplement that with high-tech methods where necessary and appropriate, but if a fence can be built anyplace on the border, BUILD IT.

Don’t just pass it and fund it, PUT THE FENCE IN PLACE AND ENFORCE THE IMMIGRATION LAWS.  Then watch it work for about five years.

That’s all there is to it.  Do all that, and you will have majority support for almost anything you want to do with the illegals living here.  They can become Disney park workers, or FoxNewsCorp. executives; nobody will care, because WE WILL KNOW THEY WON’T BE FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER WAVE IN A FEW YEARS.  Do less than that and you’ll get no help with your dreams of cheap labor and captive voters from us.

If you MUST do “something” during that five year period, separately enact a law changing the “Stuck on Stupid” rule that says US-born babies of illegal gate-crashers automatically become US citizens.  Canada (I’m told) is the only other country in the world that has such a rule, and our rule is based on a possible misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment.  If not a law, then pass an Amendment.  It makes no sense as it’s applied today, and the privilege of “free” citizenship is a strong motivation to illegal gate-crashers.

If you try to tell us in legislation that the border will be secured while the status of illegals is being adjusted, we aren’t going to buy it.  Again, WE AREN’T GOING TO BUY IT.  Because we aren’t “Stuck on Stupid.”  You are, however, if you try to run that pig by us again.  The secure border must be proven to us first, then we’ll talk again.

ps.  President Obama:  If you think some of us are upset with you now, we are calm compared to what will happen if you try to “legalize” illegals by executive order.  Can you imagine approval ratings under twenty percent?  Under ten percent?  Remember, 80% were against the failed comprehensive plan of 2007, and it was being put forward according to Constitutional protocols.  Who knows how many more would turn against you if you try to sneak it past us as a fait accompli?

pps.  As you may have guessed, the capital letters indicate ideas that are very important, but also very simple.  If you still don’t understand that we don’t trust you, READ IT AGAIN.

One thing we might all agree on:  He’s doing the best he can.

Now that we’ve dispensed with that–why are we in the mess we’re in today?  Doing the best he can at what? I think the answer lies somewhere along a continuum.

A. He’s incompetent and clueless.  That is, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know what to do about it.

B. He’s just incompetent.  He’s trying to solve all these problems, he knows something must be done, he just doesn’t know how to do it.

C. He is very competent, but events and the Republicans have conspired against him to make everything he does turn out wrong.  None of his mistakes are his fault–they aren’t really mistakes, they’re good ideas that just haven’t worked because he had to follow eight years of Bush’s failed policies, and he’s stuck with a Congress full of and directed by Democrats who don’t know their should-be-kicked-a**es from leaking oil wells in the Gulf and are no help whatsoever.  Even John McCain isn’t reaching across the aisle these days.  And there are so many disasters happening all at once.  Nobody could keep his attention on more than one at a time.  It’d be like asking a President to both walk and chew gum at the same time.

D. He’s not too concerned about these incidents and developments because he has bigger fish to fry.  He’d prefer that these things didn’t happen, but they’re not that important to him.  He is occupied with a desire to centralize our economy and nationalize key industries.  Or, as Maxine Waters said for him, “socializing” America.

E. He feels serendipity all around him.  Every one of these incidents gives him an opportunity to move the US closer to a centrally-directed economy, and he’s done so.

F. Not only are they serendipitous, he wants to make them last.  Again, he’s been very competent at doing so.  And he’s had help and direction from very powerful, very rich people.

Now, an ordinary optimist would wish that C were the right answer, or if not C, it’s A or B.  In all those cases, things can still be turned around in 2012, and mainly the voters are to blame.  A hard-core optimistic socialist would hope that the answer is D, E, or F, and those would also be the answers given by an average, ordinary pessimist.

But what of us, the great unwashed public, trying to make sense of him without letting our optimism or pessimism take over?

Although A looks like a strong contender, nobody could be that far out in left field, could he?  This is the choice for those who like Obama personally, but can’t stand any of his policies.  It’s actually a pity choice.

B is a possibility, but we must ask ourselves about the probabilities of his making the wrong decision (for the People) every time.  The odds against that must be astronomical.  But this seems to be the answer selected by Vassar Bushmills in his excellent column, Why can’t Barack Obama Govern? I don’t think Vassar considered the odds when he made his choice.  And his predictions later seem to indicate that he truly believed the answer is elsewhere.

C seems to be what Obama wants us to think.  It’s the least objectionable of all the choices, filled as it is with “politics as usual” and “ObamaCompetency.” And it’s the answer that the MSM keeps whispering to us, “Pick C, pick C, C is it,” liberal optimists that they are.

D, E, and F are just the spectrum of the darker side of the Obama presidency.  (THAT IS NOT A RAAAACIST COMMENT!)  People who think he’s a well-meaning socialist vote for D.  They know that what’s really important are the ends, not the means.

E is the “Rahm Emanuel answer.”  Obama is just making sure each crisis doesn’t go to waste.  Vassar’s prediction that in the wake of a Republican avalanche in November, “Obama will unilaterally attempt to seize control of as much of the government as he can, by executive order, and pass it over to the bureaucracy….” fits nicely here, or even with answer F.

F is the favorite of the conspiracy theorists.  They say, the only way anybody could be that cold would be on purpose, or if George Soros had his boxers in a vise, ready to apply the world’s biggest wedgie if Barack were to stumble.

In case you didn’t notice, A, B, and C are practically benign compared to the sinister implications of D, E, and F.  Unfortunately, the first three are the least likely answers, given the circumstances and the position involved. Could a clueless dunce be elected President?  Maybe, but highly unlikely unless an element of answer F were also involved.  Again, could anybody graduate from Harvard Law School and come out so pathetically incompetent?  Even if he could, wouldn’t happenstance cause him to choose at least a few good policies?  That’s the problem with B.  As noted, C is the Obama choice, but how likely is it that everybody is conspiring against him?  How likely is it that even our maverick Republican Congresscritters wouldn’t reach across the aisle to help him if they thought one of his policies were at least salvageable?  The appeal of the first three choices is that in all of them, the President is occupied with doing the Peoples’ business for their benefit.  He isn’t trying to advance his own agenda.

That leaves D, E, and F, and all three of them are pretty scary.  That scariness is why so few non-conservatives (and not even very many conservatives) are willing to commit themselves to these propositions.  They all imply that our President cares more about his own ideological agenda than he cares about being a President of all the people, more than he cares about taking care of the Peoples’ business.  That would make him a Congressionally enabled Dictator rather than a President.  Who wants to believe that?

So, you make the choice.  Will you believe your heart (choices A, B, or C) or your own lyin’ eyes (D, E, or F)?  Remember it in November.