Entitlement Programs: Amerika’s Real World Soylent Green

…and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Critique of the Gotha Program – Karl Marx

It was 1875, and Germany was well on its way to breaking Marx’s wretched little heart by enacting just enough social welfare to pacify its proletariat and preventing idiots like Karl from making any important decisions. Marx wrote the on the Gotha Program in an effort to prevent his revolutionary ideas from becoming more co-opted than the DNC-sponsored anti-Iraq War Movement of 2006. He failed, but his motto remains the standard Twitterplate description of what Marxism is ultimately supposed to accomplish.

What Marx attempted to establish was thoroughly unworkable in a static or shrinking economy. That, in a sense was a saving grace. It had its own limiting factor, you ran out of other people’s money. What the United States has achieved through entitlements is worse.

Two of these programs, Social Security and Medicare, threaten to devour just about the entire Federal Budget in a few short years. The world gripes about the Spending “Death Spiral” of the F-35. What nobody mentions is that Medicare and Social Security added together comprise over twice as much spending as the entire US Defense Budget. Throw in other entitlements, and 58% of the government’s budget consists of transfer payments.

Nearly Three Times What We Spend on Defense

Clearly, this will not be a sustainable course of action. The size of these programs will grow. The demographics of our nation dictate that the number of people paying into them will decrease. We can do some simple mental calculus to demonstrate the approaching Big Government Chernobyl Event that will occur if this trend is left unchecked. The cost of entitlements is upward monotonic for an infinite period of time. The number and the wealth of the workers paying taxes grow infinitesimally small in comparison to the population of tax-eaters. These entitlement programs go out of business due the ridiculous balance of payments.

In order to prevent this Chernobyl Event from reducing our national balance sheet to molten plasma, I offer the modest proposal that we limit Medicare and Social Security in scope and population to the point where they would be merely as a large a drag on productive society as what Marx proscribed as optimal for Gotha. Let the tax revenues still come from those with appreciable wealth, but let’s limit the population receiving benefits to those who would otherwise die in misery and poverty.

People will balk. “But RMJ, we were pro-mised! The money is in a lock box with my name on it!”

Hmmm…How do I explain his nicely? I can’t explain his nicely. So why bother? About that lock-box, and those IOUs….SUCKA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, fair enough. That’s not a definitive analysis. After the IRS lays hands on FICA money it is that it is immediately deployed to The US General Fund. At that point, it is totally fungible with all of the money from any other tax, excise, tariff; fee or duty the USG successfully collects. From the day the taxes supporting Medicare or Social Security are collected, they just get dumped into a kitty.

So let’s stop lying to people. Let’s just admit that in a just world, Social Security and Medicare (if they continued to exist at all) would both be run in accordance with the principals of Marxism. At that point, we would have to hit them both with a nice, spiffy means test.

We then tell them the truth about FICA and the Medicare Tax. They are not investing in their own future. They are only being shaken down for a generational transfer payment. They are being shaken down for a generational transfer payment that will soon be taking money out of their paychecks to make sure people like Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens feel adequately provided for in their dotages.

So what gets salvaged if we succeed in this crazy scheme that breaks the generational compact and prevents the typical McDonalds Fry Cook from paying their fair share of Mitt Romney’s elderly health care expenses? Well, it will admittedly be nothing sexy. Here’s how I described the best possible end state when I blogged this idea before.

However, what can be salvaged here; is a decent old age insurance program for the working poor. It will be Communism for the not-quite compos-mentis. Here’s how that much can be flensed off this beached whale of a socialist boondoggle.

We rank potential recipients in inverse order of their net worth. Those who have worked a requisite number of years, say at least 12, qualify, at age 65, for Gubbermint Cheese. We pay the most broke qualifying payees first and pay everyone 1/12 of an amount that puts an individual 25% over the poverty line, in cash, each month. We pay this out until we disburse an amount equal to that budget year’s SS projected collections, and no more.

That’s the new Social Security. It sucks because it’s a Communist Plot. But unlike the current Social Security, it never runs a significant debt, it pays the most helpless working members of society first, and it sucks in all its honest glory, without the pretense associated with “national investments.”

And that, quite honestly, is the best I think we can possibly do with the poorly-designed and rapidly failing system of national entitlements. If we trim this Goliath down on a Procrustean bed until it actually is reduced to a manageable size, we can possibly make it work. Our nation realistically needs a safety net. Our nation will not survive if we continue buy votes by providing a safety hammock. Everyone yaps that this will be politically incorrect to tell average voters. I say that someone d— well better get out there and explain that Soylent Green is really people.

This is the second in a series of blogs on how the GOP must restore the republic. See Part I here.

Why We Need Great Republicans Not “Good” Ones.

Step forward, Senators McCain and Graham: we hear
That you are good men.

You cannot be bought,
But only because the McCain-Feingold Law prohibits those who would spend their money to inform the electoral process from speaking.

You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
Or do you even deign to address those who you consider to be silly, or hobbits?

You are honest, Senator Graham.
You say your opinion. Which opinion?
Which of your constituents do you consider to be bigots?
How will you make them shut up, Senator Graham?

You are brave, Senator Graham. Against whom?
Certainly not John Brennan or Eric Holder.

You are wise, Senator McCain.
For whom?
Certainly not the “Wacko birds” in your own party.

You do not consider personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
The citizens of the very country you self-righteously claim to put first?

Senator Graham; you are a good friend, of Senator McCain’s. Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then Senator Graham: we in the Libertarian and Conservative Grass Roots know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a good primary.

And how would your good friend Barack Obama treat you?
We know how he would use you to help him deal with Conservatism as an ideology.
Brecht explains below.

We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

And this is why we need to stop supporting and reelecting Good Republicans like Senators McCain and Graham. We need great Republicans like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz instead.

And since I ripped off poor Bertolt Brecht to a fare thee well for this blog post, here’s a link to “The Interrogation of The Good.”

It Can’t Happen Here

So just how do we construct a valid set that that contains poorly-regulated immigration, unemployment, The Golden Dawn, and Beppe Grillo? If we’re lucky, here in America, we probably cannot. So, as Cliff Eastwood famously asked. “Are you feeling lucky?”

Now given the nice, violent intro and the unresolved rhetorical queries above, I should explain this all a bit. I’ll endeavor below. The governments of what we typically refer to as The West are following a set of economic policies and a set of immigration policies that are accidentally making the rise of a politically influential fascist movement more likely in the Western World.

If things work out really badly over here, we could easily be on our way to having people gain power in America like Governor Huey Long. We once had a President who thanked and congratulated Filmmaker D.W Griffith on his pro – Ku Klux Klan historical fantasy “Birth of a Nation.”

So we’ve established that American electorates will vote for fascists if they are smart enough not to publically brand themselves as mass-murderers. Huey “The Kingfish” Long claimed to favor “Sharing the Wealth.” His populist slogan went “Every man a king, but nobody wears a crown.” Woodrow Wilson, while enjoying his pro-KKK movies, styled himself as Progressive.

But are Americans really dumb enough to just elect a crypto-fascist for novelty’s sake? Blessedly no. A lot has to go wrong first. People adapt the ideologies of fascism in response to what they view as existential threats. A common threat that empowers individuals with totalitarian desires involves the confluence between poor employment prospects and massive immigration.

People start out struggling to find work at all. They then see people who were not born in their country come in and find jobs. The fascist then tells the disgruntled person that these immigrants have somehow “stolen” this employment. This is made significantly more believable if native born workers are restricted from employment by minimum wage laws and union membership requiremnts and then they see recent immigrants doing precisely the same types of work they’ve been blocked from entering. Something then has to be done about these people before they breed and take over.

Margaret Sanger made a career as a political activist meeting this perceived need. She addressed The New History Society on January 17th, 1922. Some of Ms. Sanger’s Progressive Liberalism follow below.

…have Congress set up a special department for the study of population problems and appoint a Parliament of Population, the directors representing the various branches of science: this body to direct and control the population through birth rates and immigration. to keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race, such as feebleminded, idiots, morons, insane, syphilitic, epileptic, criminal, professional prostitutes, and others in this class barred by the immigration laws of 1924….. to apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.

We don’t see this tendency gaining adherents in America at present. We have to look over to Europe instead. In Greece, where unemployment is over 20% and the nation is essentially bankrupt, an openly and militant fascist party called The Golden Dawn has seats in Parliament. They base a lot of their appeal on natavism. Here pay close attention to their proposal to reform the Greek Welfare System.

Opinion polls show support for Golden Dawn jumped from 6.9% to 11.5% soon after it entered parliament for the first time at last June’s general election. It has remained steady for several months. The party’s characteristics are violent racism (demonstrated by scores of attacks against immigrants), anti-semitic rhetoric and a “social action programme” for the needy (as long as they can produce a Greek identity card)

.

And in Italy, the economic scene is similar. Former Comedian and radical Leftist, Beppe Grillo, has emerged from the sidelines to form “The 5-Star Movement” and win 25% of the vote in last weekend’s Italian parliamentary elections. I wrote a partially favorable opinion of the man yesterday. Like Mordred and Benedict Arnold, he has a valid point. He probably feels genuinely aggrieved and outraged at what is happening to Italy. I’m sure Huey Long was legitimately peeved about The Great Depression as well.

Grillo, a former comedian, has some not-so-funny aspects to his act as well. He begins amassing power in a state that has effectively been forced to accept an outside “Technical Government” that placed them under servere austerity. Here is a description of conditions in Italy.

Government at all levels is corrupt. It’s the only way people can survive. Everybody is playing double games. People are doing two jobs and running their own businesses out of government offices. Everybody cheats on taxes. The mafia controls half the country. Survival depends on the black market, the black economy. The currency is kept artificially high, so exports crash.

So when Beppe Grillo goes on his blog and uses the old Red Army Slogans he learned growing up, it’s easy just to think the comedian is kidding. Some of the uglier parts of his agenda follow below. The ideals sync up nicely with Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive buddies D.W. Griffith and Margaret Sanger. It’s all about getting rid of the undesireables.

The Jews are a small, wandering minority of Arabs who stole the Holy Land from the others 2,500 years ago. They now run the world through the Illuminati, the Masonic Lodges, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. The Jews are responsible for Italy’s mess, because they own the banks that charge usurious interest rates. The Jews who run the world need to be “processed” en masse. Grillo supporters will not define “processed,” but they love the idea. Whatever it means. Beppe Grillo can save Italy by nationalizing the banks and cutting off trade to Europe. The fact that Italy is physically part of Europe is no impediment.

Before we all just laugh at the crazy Italians and crazy Greeks, we should keep in mind that similar ideas have been electorally successful in America. Planned Parenthood made its money helping get rid of undesirables. I’ve argued abortionist Kermit Gosnell did the same until his arrest. Fascist, eugenic thought makes the Freakonomics argument that abortion reduces crime a possibility.

So in conclusion, a society that fails to adequately solve its economic problems and fails to reasonably restrict the extent to which immigration changes the complexion of its society will trigger a violent and ignorant reaction. This reaction will take the form of an authoritarian and nativist political movement that will often seek to remove the “undesirables” from that society in a literal and bloodthirsty fashion.

America today has some of the problems that make fascism powerful. We do not have them to the extent that Southern Europe does. This is why there currently isn’t a powerful and well-represented Golden Dawn Party in the US. If we are lucky, we can continue what we are doing now and we may have nothing this bad actually happen. As I listen to GOP leadership justify a capitulation to the left on both immigration reform and on all matters economic, I have to ask the question: “Do we really feel that lucky?”

The Advantages of a Disarmed Citizenry

This time You People are gonna’ learn. Your betters have tolerated your quaint old-fashioned attitudes for longer than you deserve. But now they’ve grown tired of the (expletive)-dance. The Brilliant and Morally Superior Charles Blow tells you how serious serious can get in today’s NYT.

“The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration’s discussions.” According to The Post’s sources, this could include measures “that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors.”

This is obviously happening because Big Brother loves you. They want to protect you. This is because our government demands safe streets. It’s because, unlike evil gun makers, they care about the children.

Except that anyone reasonably familiar with crime news from St. Louis, MS, would know this was a line of BS. That’s because of a new fad, a new way of local kids being kids. Let me introduce you to the Good Old Game of Knock-Out King.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, too, knows of the violent ritual. “The ‘knockout game’ is played by a group of kids who, as outrageous as it sounds, go around with the goal of knocking people out, for apparently no reason,” says Chief Daniel Isom.

So obviously the authorities are getting Charles Blow Serious about putting the kibosh on this one. It threatens people’s safety. A group of school social workers in St. Louis showed just how much serious and morally superior people cared what was happening.

The social workers, Wallace reports, “are not interested in talking about it.” University City Police Department spokesman Mike Ransom says he has heard nothing of Knockout King and cautions, “We don’t want to give people any ideas.”

Now certainly a society of Thinking People would care deeply about the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl. It would be particularly troublesome if these thugs ranged in age all the way up to 27 years old. If there were 17 of them, it might just chap a few sensitive and caring (expletive)-holes. Maybe – unless these sensitive people wrote for the New York Times. Here’s how much the Times cares about the safety of 11-year-old girls when the issue doesn’t involve guns.

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” ….. Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said. “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

So we can reasonably ascertain that by and large society really doesn’t care about your individual safety. You can be randomly punched into next week if you have the audacity to walk the streets in St. Louis, Mo. Your daughter can be gang-raped in Houston, Tx. and The New York Times will all but shove a microphone up your nose and ask you why you trick her out like The Whore of Babylon.

The people who govern you could care less if you took a dirt nap tomorrow. As this diary at Redstate suggests, the AR-15 may well be the cure, not the cause of your personal safety problems. So why is there this sudden push to protect you from guns? It’s all about the control.

Attorney General Eric Holder is on record stating that “Gun Owners should cower in shame like smokers.” This is a man who has no problem with armed New Black Panthers patrolling the polls on Election Day in Philadelphia.

As Vice-President Biden prepares to meet with the NRA to tell them how he intends to “protect them” against their will, he talks about outlawing all unregulated gun sales in America. It will work about as well as Meth and Heroin control – meaning that it will do nothing to make you safer, but the government will gain precipitous power at the expense of your rights as a citizen. This, in the eyes of Huey “The Kingfish” Biden, will make any measure of gun control that gets enacted a smash-hit success. He could think of himself as a Knock-Out King.

Removing Society’s Guardrails Will Eventually Lead Us Here

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

– Hilaire Belloc.

There are days I find myself utterly convinced that Modern Secular Leftism is dedicated to the goal of returning the entire world to a state of primeval barbarism. The cultural and political Left seems to mount an interminable assault on the fundamental traditions and values. This is done through a variety of institutions such as academic research and movie-making. The end point of all of this nihilism can only be our ineffible destruction as a functional society.

We are offered the following logical reasoning by the proud authors of “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?”

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Fortunately for the Brave New World, post-birth abortion is not the only frontier in which we are all becoming more “realistic”, more attuned to post-modern sensitivities. Nick Casavettes questions the old-fashioned and dumb hang-us people have over incest. If Cersei Lannister could win The Game of Thrones, why be so stupid and old-fashioned? What type of Conservative square would get all upset over a little family bondage every now and then? A critic discusses Cassavetes’ delightful new movie “Yellow”. He describes how charmingly modern and open-minded it all is below.

From young and in love, to drug dealing on the road, to her father’s slow, painful death, from questions of love and incest to her older sister’s descent into insanity, the secret that destroyed Mary’s entire family reveals itself on her journey back home, along with her ultimate responsibility for it. Busby Berkeley, Cirque du Soleil, sideshow freaks and human livestock all make an appearance in this hallucinogenic tale of love and comeuppance.

All of this reminds me of Artistic Genius, Robinson Devor who made a movie entitled “Zoo.” This joyful celebration of moving pictures tells us the story of a man who committed accidental suicide by engorging an Arabian stallion and letting the horse then sodomize him. Nobody should be bothered by this in the least. It was recently a featured documentary at The Sundance Festival. A reviewer describes what a wholesome movie “Zoo” truly is.

Director Robinson Devor remarks that he “Aestheticized the sleaze right out of it”. Devor now says that he considers beastiality to be natural– “It happens, so it’s part of who we are.”

The reviewer of “Zoo” goes on to assure us that he wouldn’t pass judgment on this. He doesn’t have to. RMJ will. The cultural depredations of Modern Secular Leftism will not abate unless the American Right calls these people out for being the detestable freaks that they truly are. The Left and the media no longer care. If it bleeds, it leads, if it feels good just do it. The more secular and divorced from our traditional values we become, the more deracinated and creepy we are as a society. The more deracinated a society becomes, the more it hates the old rules that it no longer comprehends. The Democrats at Charlotte were honest in their booing of God who they personally hate and despise.

So I conclude the following from my musing on this fulsome and scurvy subject matter.

1) Post-birth Abortion is only “extreme” for the nonce. Our nation is poised to reelect a President who saw no problems with protecting the procedure while he served in The Illinois State Legislature. Why would Nancy Pelosi or Charlie Rangel bat an eyelash? Neither of them answers to anywhere near as demanding an electorate as a US President.

2) Destroying the Incest Taboo is a major blow to the coherence and trust of the family. Destroying the coherence and trust of the family is a vital goal of the statist. Why would people who would never consider homosexuality in their own sexual activities lobby so aggressively to normalize all forms of non-traditional marriage? It’s a means the end of delegitimizing the traditional nuclear family.

3) Thus, a vote for a leftwing candidate is not merely a vote for larger government and greater economic confiscation on a conjurer’s whim. A vote for the Modern American Left is the way the average American can reject the normal and boo God right along with delegates at the DNC.

4) We are therefore voting not just to determine the political fate of a mediocre president, but also the moral course of a society that has purposefully wronged itself by tearing out the moral guardrails that protected it from devolution into post-modern barbarism.

So watching the likes of Chris Matthews, Juan Williams and Chuck Todd try and fill the void is sort of akin to watching AA Ball after an evening of seeing the Yanks play live. But the effort and determination to demonize the GOP is still there! You and 99% of the rest of America probably aren’t watching, but these guys know exactly which lines The Minister of Propaganda want them to trumpet. Only the idiots who vandalized Mia Love’s Wikipedia page have played the Race-Card in a more laughable fashion.

To hear Chris Matthews discuss Welfare Reform as a racial issue is to hear the vast and unending contempt that Upper Middle Class White Liberals have for Working Class African Americans. He bloviates despicably below.

“When you start talking about work requirements,” he thundered at Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, “you know what game you’re playing, and everybody knows what game you’re playing: It’s a race card.”

Newt Gingrich went “Newklear” on him during a recent issue and asked him “Why do you assume food stamp refers to black? What kind of racist thinking do you have?” I’ll take that one Mr. Gingrich. Chris Matthews needs blacks to look down on, or he couldn’t look down on anyone at all.

Like Samuel L. Jackson** posting to Twitter, the execrably and repulsively smug David Chalian probably wishes Hurricane Isaac had killed more Republicans. However, he projects instead and claims that Mitt Romney will celebrate Hurricane Isaac by having a party when black people drown.

The oily Chuck Todd is far too much of a passive-aggressive slime to openly admit his hatred like Mr. Jackson. His bile is also unconstrained by any 140 character limit. He indulges in oblique and carefully-couched race-baiting that Mr. Chalian could only aspire to. He offers us the following critique of how he believes the GOP “stages” minority delegates.

NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Rachel, the point is this. Republicans have been criticized in conventions past for while having a diverse list of speakers, that the audience is not diverse. Well this time, every delegation that has any sort of diversity to it, they are getting much more, much better seating so that when the cameras catch the delegates reacting to speeches it is a more diverse — the delegation looks like America.”

Now there is a finite, non-zero probability that some of these minorities attending the RNC actually respire and move around in response to their own individual volition. But they aren’t behaving in the fashion that Chuck Todd’s handlers have hard-wired him to believe minorities are capable of behaving. Chuck Todd has to assume they are merely card-board cut-outs of minorities that devious GOP operatives move around and position for maximum camera time. It’s the only way he can manage to maintain the coherence of his delusional world-view.

As any impartial observer would expect, Juan Williams was the most likeable of the three. He, at least, wasn’t being bigoted against his own kind. He almost made Archie Bunker look feminist during his commentary on Ann Romney’s RNC Speech.

“Ann Romney … looked to me like a corporate wife,” he said. “The stories she told about struggles — eh! It’s hard for me to believe. I mean, she’s a very rich woman, and I know that, and America knows that.”
There was a distinct pause, and then host Bret Baier said, “Wow, OK.” Host Megyn Kelly asked, “What does that mean, ‘corporate wife?”
“It looks like a woman whose husband takes care of her, and she’s been very lucky and blessed in this life,” Williams replied. “…She did not convince me that, you know what? I understand the struggles of American women in general.”

The only silver lining in the dark and ineluctable jungle of this cycle’s cynical racial politics is that it reeks of fear and desperation. It also reveals the totalitarian hatred that lurks cowering behind the leftist façade of open-minded tolerance. MSNBC can cut away from the Republican National Convention every time a speaker approaches the podium who isn’t both white and male. Chris Matthews can imply his contempt for the intellect and drive of minority Americans. Chuck Todd can claim that all minorities who disagree with Barack Obama without his express, written permission are not legitimate human beings.

Juan Williams can expose his ignorance and idiocy to the public by bashing Ann Romney for choosing to stay at home and raise five children as if that were a privilege every woman would line up for. If it were real work, Barack Obama’s White House Staff would gladly underpay her for the effort. What these idiots cannot conceal is that it is they, not Mitt Romney, who have an indulged in a sick, cynical racism that will ultimately condemn the Democratic Party to a humiliating defeat.

*-How sad that he wasn’t just kidding.
**-Unlike Chuck Todd, Mr. Jackson wasn’t too arrogant to be sorry after the fact.

Perhaps we get more accurate information by studying per pupil expenditures. The US spends almost $8k/ per student rounded to the first digit. France, The UK, Australia, Canada and Finland all spend $6K. Several other 1st and 2nd world countries spend between $1.5K and $5K per pupil to educate their populations. So what does this buy the United States?

The good news involves literacy. Outside of isolated pockets such as Detroit, we successfully teach our people to read. According to the USC article linked above, 99% of Americans are literate after an expected value of 16 years/student in American schools. The Russians spend less than $2K/pupil, educate their young people for 2 fewer years than the United States, and get a slightly better result. Only Finland achieves virtually universal literacy. The United States spends too much, but manages to teach children how to read.

Our problems come with math and science education. We score lower than nations that spend ¼ the money per pupil. We score lower than nations who send their children to school two fewer years than the rest of the developed world. On a competitive international math exam, our students get less than 80% of it correct (474/600). On a competitive science exam we do only slightly better with 81.5% (489/600).

No, I didn’t promise that there wouldn’t be math, so we’ll look at one more set of numbers that hopefully puts all of this into mildly depressing perspective.

In Terms of Actual Learning The United States Is Far Less Efficient In How We Spend Money on Education

The graph above demonstrates three things.
1) The United States derives far less value per dollar expended than any other leading industrial nation. ($0.54).

2) The more ANY nation spends on educating its children; the lower the return on investment per dollar becomes.

3) Like any overgrown government program, educational spending has a declining marginal utility per dollar than can be modeled with a linear equation with a r^2 north of 90%.

The data used to derive this graph follows below.

The only thing that could straighten out the United States education system would be a renewed and relentless focus on actual education. This has to occur in the curriculum and in the administration. Every dollar spent on extra-curricular activities, school lunches, upper-echelon administrators and on luxuries is one fewer dollar that actually teaches Johnny how to read. This hard truth will have to be addressed.

America’s educators will have to make some choices as to whether our schools exist to provide day care as an assist to families where both parents work. Should our schools provide sustenance in absence of diligent parenting, or provide an education to prepare young people for the future? These alternatives will become increasingly mutually exclusive as money to overspend dries up. The data above shows that we clearly cannot successfully achieve all three. There are increasingly fewer dollars available to keep throwing at this problem.

The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47 percent of adults in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate, with staggering rates recorded in some of the suburbs as well: Southfield at 24 percent, Warren at 17 percent and both Inkster and Pontiac at 34 percent illiterate.

(HT: Detroit Regional Workforce Fund)

I was just kidding with the provocative subtitle. The South should not rise again. It’s hot down here in August and getting up would require me to expend effort while putting down my ice-cold mint julep. I blog these things because I’m Conservative, mean, and…a Southerner. This is completely and totally different from the kind, noble and enlightened reasons that inspire people such as Thomas Geoghegan to write in the Wall Street Journal that Boeing’s decision to move work to a plant in Charleston, SC was a threat to American enterprise.

The noble and learned Toothless Tuesday Canon recently grew still larger in both volume and perspicacity. Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession is Chuck Thompson’s kindly and avuncular attempt to explain to all us folks down Huntsville Way that ain’t done none of that-thar book-larnin’ why we should just take our hookworm-ridden feet and hit the highway. His love song to the land of magnolia trees and kudzu begins as follows. He poses the following quandary which I can only assume is rhetorical.

On the first page, the author wonders why the American electoral system must be “held hostage by a coalition of bought-and-paid-for political swamp scum from the most uneducated, morbidly obese, racist, morally indigent, xenophobic, socially stunted, and generally ass-backwards part of the country.”

Well shuuux, that’s a tough one, Chuckles. I’d consult Congressman Conyers from Detroit. Once he’s done talking you through that famous “Good and Welfare Clause” you can find right there in the US Constitution, I’m certain it will be as clear to you as a typical sample of Vice President Joe Biden’s verbal diarrhea.

Perhaps we don’t measure up to the ethical standards of Robert Torricelli or Jon Corzine. Maybe it’s our failure to show the fiscal wisdom of the State of Rhode Island. Or for that matter, our charitable giving doesn’t even compare to the New England Region as a whole as you can see on the chart below.

American Chrity By State As A Percentage of Individual Income

But we can’t secede. These Northerners in The Mist such as Thomas Geoghegan and Chuck Thompson are just too much fun to feed an occasional grub. So we’ll be nice and recognize that all 57 states are in this together. It would be unpatriotic to abandon our proud American brethren up in Oiho.

Thus, just because we care, we’ll continue working hard to make sure The South isn’t indicative of a decline in American Enterprise. As J.E Dyer patiently explains, the State of South Carolina will continue production in all of the following industries plus several more.

South Carolina also has a BMW plant, a Honda plant, a Bosch plant, a Caterpillar plant, an American LaFrance plant (fire engines and ambulances), and a Daimler plant, all employing highly-skilled labor to manufacture big, intricate stuff that has to work. That’s in addition to the Milliken, BASF, GE, Core, Bose, BP, DAK, DuPont, Eastman, Mitsubishi, Albemarle, MeadWestvaco, PhilChem, Roche, Mount Vernon Mills, Invista, Metromont, Johns Manville, Alcoa, Kimberly-Clark, Shaw, Jarrett, Mohawk, Anderson, AccuTrex, Sonoco, and Cox Industries plants..

The South will rise again. But it won’t happen through violence (such as what we see daily in Chicago) or stupidity Chuck Thompson, bless his heart, needs to be more charitable. The nut-job in Texas needs to stand down and perhaps finish off my julep for me so he can relax.

We are one people in the United States. We are one people whether we particularly like one another or not. When the South rises again, it will be a rising tide that lifts all boats. God bless America. God bless each and every part of America. Unity. That is all.

Dr. Mann is Not The Sandusky of Climate Science - He's The Eric Cartman

There are certain oxymoronic clichés that get trotted out de tiempo a tiempo to tepid applause and politely forced laughter. Military Intelligence, honor among whores and rank among Civil Servants are an indicative subset. We can now add credibility among climate scientists to the burgeoning list. Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University’s proud and illustrious faculty was made livid by the acerbic and satirical needling he received from Mark Steyn. So livid that he had his law firm Cozen O’Conner draft a letter threatening to sue NRO for defamation.

It seems that Dr. Mann demands that the Mark Steyn retract a recent blog entry of his entitled “Football and Hockey” and immediately apologize. He may afterwards expect the entire NRO staff to kiss his tree rings while kneeling devoutly in the snow of Happy Valley.

Steyn egregiously tells the truth about Mann as a professional and a human being and doesn’t shy away from quoting other authors who compare Dr. Mann with certain infamous people who are no longer fixtures among the bucolic campus grounds. Steyn goes inveighing below.

Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann….Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

The metaphor is a stretch. No data set, however roughly violated, can be emotionally scarred for life. I could certainly understand if Dr. Mann and Mr. Steyn won’t be exchanging hortatory greeting cards during the winter holidays. The lawsuit threat, however, is troglodytic thug behavior with which NRO deals with exceptionally well.

NRO had their people (Baker Hostetler) tell Dr. Mann’s people where exactly he can go sheath the hockey stick. They kindly advised him that their discovery process would involve an in depth technical review of his research. (if Dr. Mann persues the matter he and his research would be subjected to a very extensive discovery of materials…) Yet this wasn’t even the most delightful part of the communiqué.

I was personally partial to the section that cited Dr. Mann’s own accusations against Congressmen Issa and Sensenbrenner. These individuals were out to get climate science if Dr. Mann is to be believed. Once you’ve called elected officials inquisitors under the auspices of your 1st Amendment Rights, the standards by which something can be judged as legally defamatory become far more rigorous than the peer review Dr. Mann and his colleagues ever faced from the UN IPCC.

The icing atop the cake was when NRO’s legal squad cited Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell as a legal precedent by which a conservative media outlet could pretty much write anything it pleased about a liberal public figure. Once the courts have established “humorous parodies” that involve someone you ideologically don’t like having sex with their mother in an outhouse are coarse but acceptable, Jerry Sandusky jokes are pretty much sauce for the goose being ladled onto the gander. This a classic and condign case of a litigious lefty being hoist on his own petard.

In telling Dr. Mann to get lost, NRO Editor Rich Lowry provides a condign response to an slimy smear merchant who has never stopped for a moment in his efforts to defame his scientific and ideological opponents. Dr. Mann has gone far further than he deserved on gall, chutzpah and brazen dishonesty. If he can’t take a punch, he should exit the ring. As Rich Lowry so aptly put it – Get Lost!

Only The Mouth-Zipper Prevents Him From Being The Democratic Choice In The GOP Primary

Nobody in their right mind would vote for (fill in the blank). Gray Davis, Patrick Leahy, or Claire McCaskill pretty much fit that description. All three are (or were) useless intestinal parasites on the bowels of state. But what if they ran for re-election against The Gimp? Or at least an opponent who held held delusional beliefs in something called a “legitimate rape.” This is what Senator McCaskill and the Democrats have accomplished in the State of Missouri by spending $1.5Million to help nominate their GOP opponent Todd Akin.

In real life, even I’d poll well against the Gimp. The zipper across the mouth of his leather mask gives him an advantage Joe Biden and Todd Akin both lack. Other than that; he’s not your ideal candidate. So how does a useless rotter of an incumbent go about getting the other side to nominate the poor guy who never made further than a bit part in Pulp Fiction? In the sad cases of Davis, Leahy and MacCaskill, the magical elixir was money and organization – lots of it.

During the 1998 Vermont GOP Primary, Senator Leahy’s backers sensed an opportunity. A semi-retired Dairy Farmer had recently acted in a film entitled “Man With a Plan” about a farmer who runs as outsider and makes it to Congress. Vermont has an open primary system which the Dems gamed by pushing Fred Tuttle on to the GOP as a nominee. This enabled Senator Leahy to run against an opponent who 1) endorsed him for re-election, 2) appeared with him at campaign stops and reiterated the endorsement, and 3) vowed to spend no more than $16 on his campaign. Leahy managed to win a squeaker. He remains in Washington and remains exactly what Dick Cheney said he is.

The Democrats also successfully executed the Bring out the Gimp Strategy when unpopular California Governor, Gray Davis was prepping to run for his second term in 2002. When local media started referring to Davis as “Governor Lowbeam” for how he handled being swindled by The Enron Corporation on electrical power, he was an incumbent in serious trouble.

Yet Davis had a pretty awesome ace in the hole. He had spent his early years as governor furiously raising money and had $27Million in the bank. He used this money when he saw himself polling well behind GOP candidate Richard Riordan. Davis helped select his electoral victim the way the Harlem Globetrotters go out of their way to schedule games against The Washington Generals. CNN described Davis’ GOP Primary advertising strategy below.

He was helped by Davis, who spent more than $10 million on an ad campaign targeting Riordan, a move the former mayor blasted as an effort by the governor to handpick the weaker candidate for the general election.

As we all know, it worked. Davis was re-elected by 7% despite the fact he was heartily detested. In state without a recall initiative, he would have served four more years. He didn’t have to be likeable. He just had to be more likeable than The Gimp.

Thus, in the wake of Missouri GOP Senate Nominee, Todd Akin’s disastrous “legitimate rape” gaffe, I’m not shocked in the slightest to learn that Claire McCaskill had a guiding hand in Mr. Akin’s success. The Washington Examiner describes the $1.5 Million advertising strategy that the Democrats employed in the Missouri GOP Primary below.

There’s a reason why Democrats spent over $1.5 million trying to help Akin win his three-way primary. He was the most conservative candidate in the field — and the most unpredictable one. He shook up his campaign staff late last year. He recently released a head-scratching and jumbled campaign ad. And Democrats have already launched a microsite highlighting his controversial statements that won’t play well with moderates. (“America has got the equivalent of the stage III cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in,” Akin once said.)

So Claire McCaskill has invested wisely in the less intelligent members of the GOP electorate. Maybe she should send them a flower basket or thank them in a tangible way by voting like less of a Left-Keynesian the next time a healthcare overhaul comes before the Senate. She won’t. She has no reason to. As long as she can buy the GOP Primary and select her own opponents at will, she’s like Don King arranging the Tyson vs. McNeely Title Bout.

So what do we all learn from this fiasco? To me, the lesson here is bloody well obvious. If the Dems are buying advertisements to help a GOP contender it would behoove any thinking Conservative to figure out why. In this case, it’s obvious. Nothing could save the odious and unpopular Claire McCaskill. She was the ultimate piece of plastic about to be chucked in the recycle bin. But that won’t happen with Todd Akin still in the race. When given The Gimp as an opponent the good voters of Missouri will hold their noses and vote for Claire Force One.

The Face of White Privalege In Barack Obama's America

Hey, I’ve got good news and bad news this fine and wonderful morning. The good news is that there may well be a new investment opportunity for those of us eager to improve our financial means. The bad news is that it consists of a hedge fund run by none other than Jon “I simply do not know where the money is” Corzine.

If this were not Barack Obama’s Wall Street money guy, the only thing Corzine would be hedging against would be repeated anal penetration in a Federal Prison. But he has friends and that particular risk is well under control. With that unfortunate unpleasantness suitably dealt with, Corzine is bored and wants more client funds to play with.

Sadly, others seem willing to acquiesce. When not busy sticking metallic objects into a nearby electrical socket, Anthony Scaramuchi offered up the following deep thoughts on his friend and former supervisor Jon Corzine.

YES. I trust Jon Corzine and think if he starts a fund he will make money and be very successful. We closed our seeding business so I couldn’t seed him, but he is a person that I would have no problem being partners with. We have different politics, but that would make it even more interesting.

I also have no doubts about Corzine’s eventual success. Jon Corzine always succeeds. It’s his associates and anyone else reliant upon his good judgments that need to stand in a nearby corner with one hand over their wallets and the other between his foot and their manhood. To understand this admonishment, one simply has to examine Corzine’s prior career.

Corzine originally earned his reputation as a young gun while trading for Goldman Sachs. He made large sums of money and was elevated to the position of CEO by 1994. The firm promptly lost $1.8Bn in earnings. (They declined from $2.3Bn in 1993 to $0.5 Bn in 1994). Corzine blamed this on his predecessor and sought to make up the difference by taking GS public.

Things were happy and remunerative for the next three years. Then Corzine grew itchy and felt like playing with Russian Rubles. He enjoyed considerably less success in currency gambling than George Soros had with the Thai Baht. GS lost $1Bn on the deal and decided Corzine should explore new career horizons in 1999.

Corzine took $400 million out of the firm along and used $62 million of this to LBO a New Jersey Senate Seat for himself and the Democratic Party. Rueters describes what a pleasure Corzine was to have in power.

Corzine later lost out to Paulson in a power struggle, though, and by May 1999, as the IPO went forward and made Goldman’s partners millionaires many times over, he resigned and soon turned to politics. Deploying $62 million of his IPO bounty, he campaigned as a Democrat dark-horse candidate in primary and general elections for a U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey. Despite refusing to release his income tax records and gaffes such as when he joked about Italians who make “cement shoes” and were defended by Jewish lawyers, he won the election..

Corzine ascended the Cursus Honorem to Governor of New Jersey in 2005. He spent the next four years raising taxes, getting in car wrecks involving more than just his marriage, and running New Jersey’s public finances into the ground. In 2009 New Jersey’s voters decided that Goldman Sachs had a point in showing Corzine the door.

Unlike normal human beings who receive a pink slip when they are fired, Jon Corzine was given MF Global to play with as a consolation prize. To understand the personal angst in Corzine’s life it’s best to hear from someone else who knows what it is like to be publically cashiered for his personal failings as a human being. The always morally upstanding Robert G. Torricelli explains how sad it all is to see Jon Corzine suffer below.

“That’s part of the tragedy here,” said Robert G. Torricelli, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey whose political career was also cut short. “Jon is very proud and this must be exceedingly difficult. You can lose an election and not take it as personally because it’s a reflection on issues and trends. But this is obviously different: all eyes are on him. It’s one thing to make financial misjudgments and to pay the price yourself. But it’s another when institutions are damaged.”

With the rise of Barack Obama, Corzine was once again a man of power and influence. Joe Biden (wouldn’t you just know it) sought out his advice on the economy. “Literally, the first guy I called was Jon Corzine. It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke. First of all, he’s the smartest guy I know in terms of the economy and on finance, and I really mean that.”

Even after his success in launching Chris Christie into political stardom, most experts felt that the fix was still in on behalf of Jon Corzine. Sander O’Niell Partners issued a research paper that summed up Corzine’s presumed niche. “We suspect that his contacts in Washington could prove useful as MF Global navigates a shifting regulatory environment.”

Corzine serves the Obama Administration well. He has nervous backers out there like Warren Buffett, George Soros and Andrew Lewis who some days wonder if President Obama really means it when he criticizes the nefarious impact of White Privilege on Modern America. You can relax in the Tides Foundation Boardroom. The continued failure to incarcerate Mr. Corzine shows us all that this one issue where the former community organizer doesn’t even come close to believing his own bull****.

But that’s understandable. After all Nino Brown described Barack Obama’s true commitment to social equality better than anyone in the modern media. “Money talks, and bull**** runs a marathon. So, see ya and I wouldn’t want to be ya.” The true face of “hope and change” in Obama’s America is Jon Corzine.

Except that Rex Grossman really did QB a Super Bowl and Joe Biden is our Vice President. Peter Principal and Dunning-Kruger Effect aside, we know Joe Biden is awful and beneath the bluff exterior; Joe Biden has to look at the mirror some days and truly understand that he does in fact suck. So what I wonder about Joe Biden is this: How exactly could Wesley Mouch exist in life life?

Some attribute Biden’s career to fortunate (or unfortunate) happenstance merged with a jugular instinct when it comes to self-advancement. He came out of Harvard Law just in time to run as a Democrat right after Watergate. He inhabited the US Senate for over two decades. He then began to set his sights on The Presidency with an oblivious lack of self-doubt. Like Bob Uecker, Joe Biden was convinced that he must be headed to the front row. Despite his professional incompetence, personal nastiness, complete lack of empathy and class all merged with racial insensitivity that would have publically embarrassed Nathan Bedford Forrest, he’s one stray moment of regrettable happenstance from actually getting that front row seat.* It’s storybook.**

A man with that set of characteristics should get trounced at the polls and unelect anyone even remotely willing to associate with him. Geoffrey Fieger and Alvin Green should have been more likely to win elected office than Joe Biden. And yet people actually have positive things to say about Joe Biden.

Despite his call for “hard-headed diplomacy” with Iran, and the three-way partition of Iraq, he’s considered a foreign policy expert. Despite his plagiarism of a speech from British Labour Party Member, Neil Kinnock, Vice President Biden is considered by some to be a loquacious Public Speaker. Maybe they would feel the same about Buddy Hackett.

Yet Vice President Biden may not find all the praise he is receiving right now beneficial. When David Axelrod was asked if President Obama intended to drop Joe Biden from his ticket, Mr. Axelrod said the following.

“Listen, I have a great affection and respect for Joe Biden,” Axelrod said, according to a rush transcript. “I think he’s been a great vice president. He’s taken on a lot of tough assignments for our administration. … from administering the recovery act — and he did it very, very well — through being the point person on the Iraq war and getting our troops home and doing that — the politics of that over there. he’s done a great job for us.”

Great job or not, it may well be that Joe Biden is finally done. Rudy Giuliani openly questioned if Biden was still mentally fit to hold office. This was kinder than I would have been. My question would be whether Joe Biden was ever mentally fit to hold office. Even if today is the day President Obama does for Joe Biden what he has done for 8.3% of the US workforce, it will be a while before Joe Biden is forgotten. There is something bizarre and fascinating about somebody who manages to be that bad and yet still do so well.

UPDATE: As of 13:05 (CST)- Joe Biden (Like Rex Grossman) still remains employed.

Correction: I’m no Harvard fan, but what I’ve done today is grievously wrong and unfair. In a bid to restore my own blogging credibility, I humbly apologize to the Crimson Men of Harvard for falsely impugning thier fine university by inaccurately stating that they would admit Joe Biden to their law school. Mea culpa.
*- That may not any longer be the case. He’s been called to the Principal’s Office to explain how his cranial-rectal inversion problems can be resolved without sabotaging The Obama re-election effort.
** – If you enjoy Franz Kafka.

This is What Keeps People In Chains, Mr. Biden.

Whether they work for Goldman Sachs, or the United States Government, the people who wield power in Modern America have less and less respect for you as a human being and a citizen with each passing year. Former GS boss-turned-whistleblower Greg Smith offers us the following description of how the venerable firm viewed its clientele.

“It makes me ill how callously people [at Goldman Sachs] talk about ripping their clients off. “Over the last 12 months, I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets’, sometimes over internal email.”

(HT: Charles Hugh Smith)

And this attitude prevails beyond Wall Street. Even our Vice President, Huey “The Kingfish” Biden, seems to believe America’s Electorate is intellectually challenged to the point of current-event illiteracy. He offers up his disdain and contempt for his audience in Danville, VA*.

Ya’ll hear that, right? A man who has helped preside over $3 Trillion/Year in authoritarian governmental bloat is now accusing his opponents of putting people back in chains. And what has this ramping up of the leviathan provided in exchange? What are we eating our seed corn and bartering our freedoms away in return for? An economic recovery that is less robust than Japan’s during its infamous lost decade.

Shawn Ritneour describes how America has fought our economic doldrums to date.

Since the beginning of the recession, the Federal Reserveincreased the money supply over 64 percent—by $3.4 trillion. Annual federal government spending increased by over $875 billion or 32 percent. Our national debt increased $5.8 trillion from 2007 through 2011. These stimulus efforts have provided little in the way of sustainable economic progress.

Like the chains binding Jacob Marley’s Ghost, this ever-growing deficit weighs down America’s future. Like The Yellowstone Caldera, all of this debt builds up pressure against which the Federal Reserve must constantly fight by artificially keeping short-term interest rates at or near zero percent. And all of this “investment” in economic “Stimulus” has yielded virtually nothing. Ritenour describes our current state of play.

A full three years into the so-called recovery, official unemployment remains stuck above 8 percent. The employment situation is not even as good as the official rate indicates. Monthly job creation during the second quarter of 2012 averaged only 75,000 per month—less than half of what it was a year ago.

A major reason for this money not improving any of our lives is that it doesn’t ever actually reach the people it was purportedly spent to help save from “The Bush Economy.” So where did it go instead? Here’s one example of how that money was set on fire and burned.

The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That’s 15 percent higher than its previous forecast. In a monthly report sent to Congress on Friday, the Obama administration boosted its forecast of expected losses by more than $3.3 billion to almost $25.1 billion, up from $21.7 billion in the last quarterly update.

Perhaps this is why Mitt Romney’s selection of Congressman Ryan to join his ticket has resonated so favorably across America. People are tired of arrogant, solipsistic elitists treating them like Muppets.

Joe Biden and Barack Obama look into the mirror every morning and see pure genius. Americans have watched these two in action for the past 3 and ½ years and see Dunning-Krueger Effect.

It angers the American people to be talked down by these two intellectual low-pressure systems that we foolishly elected to operate the Executive Branch. It sickens our good and decent citizenry to have a government that treats us with the respect and dignity with which Goldman Sachs treats its victim/customers. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan can win an overwhelming and smashing victory this November. Let us all come together and work to make it happen.

* – I point out which of the 57 states VP Biden was in when he espoused his racism for the sake of Mr. Biden’s educational improvement.

At the core of the manifold paradoxes swirling around American governance is the harsh reality that we just can’t keep running our (stuff) the way it has evolved to run. Neither candidate for president is honest enough to spell this out and indeed both act as though easy work-arounds exist for sustaining the unsustainable.

– (James Howard Kunstler)

Mr. Kuntsler’s description of the two candidates quoted above was accurate until Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as a Vice-Presidential Candidate in 2012. In Choosing Paul Ryan as a running mate he has now assumed ownership of the budget crisis as a signature issue. In an impressive feat of political Jujitsu, Mitt Romney has made himself the Progressive candidate and Barack Obama the champion of a defeatist and unworkable status quo. Mr. Romney now has the plan to repair things wrong with America. Mr. Obama is now attempting to put duct tape on a machine that just won’t fly.

The election of 2012 was always going to be a choice election. But until this weekend, Mitt Romney has not brought the choice we need to make into stark, visible relief. “Believe in America” was much more nebulous than “Stop Spending America into Perdition.”

This is a risky strategy for Mitt Romney to follow. The Status Quo Alternative starts any comparative analysis with the advantage of familiarity. Yet the current status quo in America has a deadline beyond which it can no longer function. If we insist on doing it the way we are doing it now, we will go bankrupt. When Romney chose Congressman Ryan as his VP, he endorsed this line of reasoning by choosing the man who has a plan to alter this course.

This sticks Obama with a role to play. He can become the safe choice; preferred by puppies and media hacks everywhere. Walter Russell Meade describes President Obama’s position in the weeks before the Democratic and GOP conventions.

On the one hand, President Obama and Vice President Biden stand foursquare for the growth of what I’ve been calling the blue social model. In terms of government policy, they want to continue to grow the mix of interventions, guarantees, entitlements and programs that FDR launched in the New Deal, that Lyndon Johnson extended in the Great Society, and that various presidents (of both parties — think of Nixon and the EPA and W and the prescription drug benefit) have extended since.

Barack Obama becomes the candidate who wants to take the risk out of everything. He becomes the person who guarantees a minimum below which you will never decline.

For Obama and Biden, that kind of America is what Frank Fukuyama called the end of history: a relatively egalitarian income distribution, a stable employment picture, defined benefit pension programs for more and more workers, a gradually rising standard of living, more kids spending more years in school from generation to generation and a government of Keynesian macro-economists who keep the economy on an even keel. For the Obamians, this is the ideal form of society.

Thus America becomes a society that discriminates against those who take risk. This comes at a cost to any possible innovation. Following Obama’s lead locks us into a culture that maintains what it has instead of trying or developing anything new. In fact, to really make his case, President Obama has to argue that innovation and original thought are not possible without Big Brother’s assistance. He turns America into the “You Didn’t Build That!” Society. He becomes the servant and hostage of the institutions he is attempting to preserve. James Howard Kunstler offers an example of this below.

In the case of Mr. Obama, it’s paying limitless TBTF ransom money to overgrown banks to avoid the constant threats of collapse that they whisper in his ear – essentially a hostage racket. A policy of managed contraction is probably the only way to avoid unmanaged and uncontrollable collapse, and would include dismantling all the TBTF banks, but Mr. Obama won’t acknowledge the imperative of contraction and the difficulties it represents.

What the unabashedly Leftist Kunstler disregards is that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is as close as anyone in America has come to attempting to manage the contraction of anything anywhere. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have failed to produce an organized budget that could pass either house of Congress since 2009. This is despite the fact that they held overwhelming advantages in both houses of Congress until the 2010 midterms. That is, they had a 19-seat ideological majority in The US Senate; yet still failed to pass a 2010 budget. That is the record that Democrats would run on if they operated a factually-based, logical re-election effort.

So Barack Obama has been steadily been attempting to run against The Boogeyman instead of Mitt Romney. He understands that he owns the last four years the way homeowners in Phoenix tenuously own homes with an underwater mortgage. He can’t defend the real thing, so he defends a vision of what he believes we want it to be. He does so while at the same time he demonizes any viable alternative.

Mitt Romney made a VP choice that called President Obama out on that particular line of bull-feke. The incumbent is now exposed as the candidate of the undependable, failed status quo. He is now a relic of the past instead of the man of tomorrow. It is now Mitt Romney’s task to educate America’s electorate to an important point. Contra Francis Fukuyama: history doesn’t end – it just ends those who fail to adapt.

Ann Coulter describes unsealing private records as Obama’s signature move. She does this based upon his use of other people’s divorce records to discredit them as political opponents. In his 2004 Senatorial Primary against Blair Hull, Obama trailed until he got his hands on Mr. Hull’s divorce records. Details follow below.

One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. But then the Chicago Tribune leaked the claim that Hull’s second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings. Those records were under seal, but as The New York Times noted: “The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had ‘worked aggressively behind the scenes’ to push the story.” Many people said Axelrod had “an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story.”

He then used the same tactic to get rid of his original GOP opponent in the 2004 Senate race, Jack Ryan.

Ryan would have walloped Obama in the Senate race. But at the request of — again — the Chicago Tribune, California Judge Robert Schnider unsealed the custody papers in Ryan’s divorce five years earlier from Hollywood starlet Jeri Lynn Ryan, the bombshell Borg on “Star Trek: Voyager.”… Amid the 400 pages of filings from the custody case, Jack Ryan claimed that his wife had had an affair, and she counterclaimed with the allegation that he had taken her to “sex clubs” in Paris, New York and New Orleans, which drove her to fall in love with another man.

The dishonest Joe Soptic ad is just Barack Obama behaving like Barack Obama. This is why the Onion Parody of an Obama political commercial alleging that Mitt Romney is the killer of Jon Benet Ramsey makes such a good skit. After laughing, I felt like emailing the site to tell them to stop giving Team Obama new ideas. Alas, I may be too late. The Onion continues.

According to sources at Obama’s Chicago headquarters, the “He Did It” commercial is just the first in a new series of attack ads that accuses Romney of drowning actress Natalie Wood in 1981, convincing cult leader David Koresh to burn down the Branch Davidian ranch in Waco, TX, and causing the Challenger disaster.

Obama’s conduct has become so predictably despicable that even stalwart Democrats such as Former New York Mayor, Ed Koch, have found that Obama’s odious bile induces nausea. He talked about the ads in a recent interview.

Referring to the TV spot, in which steelworker Joe Soptic says his wife did not go to the doctor until it was too late as he had lost his health insurance when Bain closed the plant where he worked, Koch added, “That ad doesn’t appear to be accurate.” He also said Senate Majority Leader Reid doesn’t appear to have the information that he says he has concerning Romney’s tax returns. “Nobody in the country believes that Romney took advantage of tax laws illegally,” Koch continued. “The laws are there.”

Will that change the Obama campaign’s strategy? I doubt it. Why should he change? Congressman John Lewis comparing John McCain and Sarah Palin to Governor George Wallace was just a typical day in any political campaign being run by David Axelrod. Barack Obama’s slimy and detestable dishonesty will continue until he is penalized badly. Mitt Romney has attempted to inflict some damage on Obama for the disingenuous “Romney Causes Cancer” advertisement.

“The Obama campaign has now admitted that it lied to the media and the American people in a disgraceful attempt to conceal their connection to this shameful [cancer-death] smear,” said a statement from Ryan Williams, a Romney spokesman. “Americans deserve better — they deserve a president who’s willing to run an honest campaign and be honest about his own record,” he said.

Time will tell whether the majority of Americans are wise enough to be sickened by the man they elected to The Presidency in 2008. His corruption, his deceit, and his complete lack of respect for conventions of decency are cheapening what it means to be a US President. But where Patrick J. Buchanan gets it wrong is his assumption that somehow Barack Obama could be any further cheapened as a human being. He believes to his core in the political version of Gresham’s Law. In Barack Obama’s world; bad humanity always drives decent humanity out of office. In Barack Obama’s Amerika possessing a code of honor is a massive liability.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Daffyd cites this as a framework to discuss voter fraud. The story provides an even better departure point to discuss the problems that both Liberals and Conservatives have noticed afflicting younger Americans. Perspicacious observers on both ends of the political spectrum have noticed the blindingly obvious. Children graduating from our schools now are frequently less well educated than the cohorts of Americans that have grown up in the previous 40 years.

The Left does what it always does and assumes that all problems under the sun are caused by the Iniquitous GOP and their fleet of black helicopters flying missions from a Death Star equipped with E-Coli Rays. It’s always a case where the Konservatives just won’t let government spend money because they want the rich to keep it all buried in Mason jars in Sheldon Anderson’s backyard. The fact that government spending has been almost constantly skyrocketing since 1960 (over the same period of time that young Americans have suffered a tragic reversal of fortunes) is flushed down some Orwellian memory hole.

A more compelling look at what ails American Youth would examine what happens when a society allows its standards of excellence and conduct to die in a bonfire. Heather MacDonald describes the impact of this death of standards by examining the experiences of one teacher in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The teacher, Mr. Benner, taught fifth graders and describes the following set of policies and activities initiated by his school district.

Like districts across the county, the St. Paul public school system has been on a mission to lower the black suspension rate, following complaints by local activists and black parents. A highly regarded principal lost his job because his school had “too many” suspensions of black second- and fourth-graders. The school system has sent its staff to $350,000 worth of “cultural-proficiency” training, where they learned to “examine the presence and role of ‘Whiteness.’ ” The district spent another $2 million or so to implement an anti-suspension behavioral-modification program embraced by the Obama administration.

Benner despises the impact this policy has had on his students. He describes his concerns over the impact youths have suffered from George W. Bush once termed “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Benner sees the consequences of this anti-discipline push nearly every day in the worsening behavior of students. He overheard a fifth-grade boy tell a girl: “B****, I’ll f*** you and s*** you.” (“I wanted to throw him against the locker,” Benner recalls.) The boy’s teacher told Benner that she felt powerless to punish the misbehavior.

The students being patronized quickly realize the cowardice of modern authority. They smell blood and go for the kill. When teachers feel powerless to enforce discipline, school becomes nothing more than a jail to keep children out of other people’s hair for a few hours every day.

Allen Zollman, a middle school remedial teacher in Pennsylvania, told an eighth-grade girl who would not stop talking over him: “You have two choices: either stop talking, or I will have you removed.” Her response: “I’m going to torture you. I’m doing this because I can’t be removed.”

The end result of these policies is the very equality that liberals quest for. Nobody is any better than anyone else. Attempting to learn in a classroom where bored young boys can walk up to any girl in the class an announce “B****, I’ll f*** you and s*** you.” is obviously impossible.

The modern American School becomes a place where the absolute worst people in the room can say “I’m going to torture you. I’m doing this because I can’t be removed.” And nothing will ever happen to them. At that point, the children are incarcerated instead of educated. The experience becomes a worthless exercise in wasting the youth of America’s children at the expense of their families via local taxation. But that’s just fine with the American Left because true equality can only occur at absolute zero.

The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But when Mitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel’s economic performance and the Palestinians’ — “Culture makes all the difference,” he said in Israel — the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious. Predictably, Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, denounced the statement as “racist.” It was, of course, just the opposite.

(HT:Richard Cohen)

Now some will say Cohen is just a part of the Vast White Wing Conspiracy. That is until they are reminded of the lovely editorial that he wrote comparing Sarah Palin to Caligula’s horse. Richard Cohen would like to see Mitt Romney go die in a bonfire. He just set aside his personal malice because what Mitt Romney said was undeniably true.

Mitt Romney simply identified the obvious. It’s truth is proven abundantly and even tacitly acknowledged by people who live in modern Muslim cultures. The birth rate in Islamic cultures drops below replacement as soon as the vast majority of women learn how to read. Recent demographic trends bear this out.

“In most of the Islamic world it’s amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened,” Hania Zlotnik, head of the United Nations’ population research branch, told the New York Times in 2009. [2] As early as 2008, a study by the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis concluded, “A first analysis of the Iran 2006 census results shows a sensationally low fertility level of 1.9 for the whole country and only 1.5 for the Tehran area (which has about 8 million people) … A decline in the TFR [total fertility rate] of more than 5.0 in roughly two decades is a world record in fertility decline.”

(HT: David Goldman)

Here is a graph of what happens to the Islamic world as a whole when female literacy expands.

Population Growth Vs. Literacy In Islamic Countries

So what makes people reticent to have children in these cultures? Some argue that modernity destroys religious and cultural norms and thereby renders the existence of the average person pointless. Who would bring a child into the sort of vulgar world envisioned by Lady Gaga or the Marquis de Sade? This point has some merit, but doesn’t completely justify such an implicit act of self-hatred. Many Western Societies such as Spain and Italy also have low birth-rates. Thus, the death of the traditional Muslim faith and tradition at the hands of basic literacy is not a complete explanation for dropping birth rates.

Cohen’s editorial suggests a powerful Materialist explanation as to why The Palestinians are literally a century behind Israel in social and economic development. They Muslim world simply produces no legitimate science or engineering.

In his new book, “The Future of the Jews,” Stuart E. Eizenstat provides an example: “Between 1980 and 2000, 7,652 patents were registered by Israelis in the United States.” The figure for the entire Arab world? 367.

Another statistical claim states that Spain publishes more scientific papers annually than all the nations claiming Islam as an official religion have published since The French Revolution. If that would get fewer than two Pinocchios from a Washington Post fact check, then the Islamic World is dealing with something akin to what Hispanic Culture had to compete with after the writings on De Las Casas were morphed into “The Black Legend.”

The true proof of what Romney was saying can be seen by looking at the fortunes of people from the Middle East who enter Western Society. Mohamed El-Erian is one among many examples that puts lie to the argument that Mitt Romney’s statement was a racist commentary against Arabic peoples. When people from The Middle East are given the opportunities not available in most Islamic Cultures, they perform as well as their non-Islamic counterparts.

Pointing out the weaknesses of a failing culture is not identical to making a racist attack on the people who suffer under that particular failed culture. Of course nobody in our modern, PC era wants to admit this truth. The lazy way out is to behead Mitt Romney for delivering controversial truth. Romney may have politically erred by saying what he said so bluntly, but only because he gave his audience more credit than they perhaps deserved. We live in a sad and pathetic age if telling the obvious truth to the public gets you branded as a racist.

So who here believes the media spin that The Tea Party is done for and kaput? Anyone? If such is the case, you can relax. Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst is going to dispatch State Solicitor General Ted Cruz in the Texas Senatorial Primary this Tuesday. The Good Old Boys have this one well in hand.

Dewhurst even offers up polling that supports that contention. He released an internal poll to National Journal that had him clinging (perhaps bitterly) to a 48-43 lead. He further claims to hold an advantage in early voting that will overwhelm any late burst of enthusiasm on behalf of Mr. Cruz.

Like much of Dewhurst’s messaging, this has a pointed edge and a sense of opportunistic expediency about it. He wants people to ignore Cruz’s final weekend of campaigning because SG Cruz has pretty much brought in the Tea Party All-Star Team to help him finish things off. National Journal details the artillery barrage Cruz unleashed Saturday and Sunday.

However, what Cruz has lacked in finances he will probably make up for in star power. Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Glenn Beck and Rick Santorum will all be campaigning on Cruz’s behalf this weekend.

Yet not all the signs out there agree with the story being put out there by the active and aggressive Dewhurst messaging team. RealClearPolitics keeps historical tabs on polling results for races over time. They tracked head-to-head numbers on Cruz v. Dewhurst since late May. They show Cruz having totally turned the race around.

PPP’s polling results for May v. July indicate a 30 point decline for Dewhurst in just 2 months. He’s gone from +25 to -5 in a head-to-head against Cruz. Mr. Dewhurst has failed to win frineds and influence people.

And just to make sure they had it right, PPP executed one more poll…

PPP’s final poll of the Republican Senate runoff in Texas finds Ted Cruz opening up a 52-42 lead, an increase from our survey two weeks ago that found him ahead 49-44. Cruz’s victory is driven by 4 things: the Tea Party, the enthusiasm of his supporters, a generational divide within the Texas Republican ranks, and the lack of regard the party base currently holds for Rick Perry.

So who here still thinks the GOP establishment can pick the nominees for any position in a low-lit, smoky room? I guess we’ll all find out this Tuesday. If Mr. Dewhurst’s concession speech is as classy as his campaign to date, be sure to have your beer and popcorn ready.

North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-un is amazing! He is their dear and respected leader! It seems King Kim III just saved 60 flood victims from death. The N. Korean News Agency reminds us of MSNBC’s balanced coverage of President Barack Obama in the report filed below.

“Isolated incommunicado, they did not find a way out, in panic at rising water. At that time a helicopter appeared,” it said. “After receiving an urgent report, the dear respected Kim Jong-un issued an emergency sortie order to a unit of the Air Force of the Korean People’s Army.”

More importantly, when he isn’t saving flood victims or marrying comrade Ri Sol Ju; the lady who gave us that thrilling rendition of “Footsteps Of Soldiers” in the YouTube atop the post, Kim Jong-un may be trying to modernize North Korea. He has been far more visible than his father was and has at least hinted that he wants a more modern and at least somewhat more capitalistic future for North Korea. In a piece optimistically entitled Glasnost in North Korea?, John Delury reports on some of Kim’s recent hints at possible reform.

From the sudden dismissal of his top military leader, on grounds of “illness,” to a pop music show featuring American icons Mickey Mouse and Rocky Balboa, to a novel guest- worker program allowing North Koreans to earn hard currency in China, Kim Jong-un is taking a firm grip on power even as he loosens strictures and tells officials to try new things.

He recently toured a derelict Pyongyang Amusement Park* and chewed out several local officials during a highly publicized “guidance visit.” Delury describes the fireworks below:

Fixing the park, Kim said, “should be made an occasion of removing outdated ideological point of view from the heads of officials and ending their old work-style.” Kim then tapped the cabinet premier and a senior military figure to personally supervise the renovations. The park is now a demonstration project for Kim’s demand that officials be “creative and enterprising.”

Of course China still holds N. Korea on a leash. But, King Kim openly admitted one of his rocket tests failed and even claimed to be concerned that too many people in his isolated nation go hungry. He excoriates some bureaus of his government for selling his nation’s resources off to the Chinese in return for kickbacks. He went so far as mentioning the need to cut back on military spending to redirect assets to “The People’s Economy.”

These are baby steps, but they are legitimate. This willingness to actually tell the unpleasant truths about how things are in N. Korea may well explain his recent troubles with hardliner members of The North Korean Army. The recent firing of General Ri Yong-ho may have been over an issue similar to Julius Ceasar’s crossing of The Rubicon River.**

North Korea’s Army chief Ri Yong-ho may have been ousted for defying orders and moving troops near Pyongyang during a military exercise, South Korean intelligence sources told a major South Korean news agency. The troop move drew the ire of Ri’s main rivals Jang Song-taek, the uncle and guardian of leader Kim Jong-un, and Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, Chosun.com reported.

Whether this is an actual attempt to climb down remains to be seen. North Korea still supplies the Yakuza with narcotics and makes some of the most undetectable counterfeit dollars and Euros in circulation. North Korea could certainly open its markets while still threatening the South Koreans and remaining “The Soprano State” in the near term.

Yet opening to the world could also incapacitate much of the threat posed by North Korea. They could depend upon others enough to not want to see the rest of the world burn. Their people could demand more of what the rest of the world has to offer. The Kim Monarchy, like The Russian Politburo under Gorbachev, could discover that opening only partially to the rest of the world cannot be done in a controlled manner. Then Kim Jung-un could go down in history as a praiseworthy man for authoring his own demise.

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*- We now have an oxymoron to rival liberal tolerance, mandatory fun and Democratic Party.
** – Unlike Pompey and the Optimates, King Kim apparently doesn’t play that.