Delusions of Incumbency…..

By: J Robert Giles
@JRobertGiles

“Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”   - Sun Tzu

 

Yesterday, I read an article by Jana Neweley on her website. Jana writes from a perspective that is unfortunately quite unique but growing rapidly. In the article titled Note to Republicans: Pay No Attention to That Democrat Behind the Curtain; Jana does a fantastic job of explaining the democrat’s campaign strategy. D-D-D (Deflect Distract Deny)

(Excerpt from Jana’s Article)

In regards to the War on Religious Freedom, this is how it went on the Democrat’s side:

Phase One is DEFLECT = “This has nothing to do with religious freedom or the First Amendment. Republicans don’t want women to be healthy. They want women to suffer. They want women to die.”

Phase Two is DISTRACT = “Have you met Susan?” Introduction of a female college student, who uses birth control, in order to make their argument more convincing. “See, we told you so.”

Phase Three is DENY = Pay no attention to the “Democrat” behind the curtain. The continued denial that states the new HHS mandate has nothing to do with religious freedom. Nothing to do with the First Amendment. But then the Democrats, like Pelosi, go on to make it a national debate by declaring there’s a WAR ON WOMEN and it’s the Republicans who are to blame.

 
Jana goes on to explain the importance of honesty in defending ourselves against this type of attack. Everybody knows that “the truth will always find its way to the surface eventually.” That’s why it’s a cliché. Not only must we “tell” the truth, but we have to remind each other of what the truth is from time to time. Reality is going to be distorted over the coming months in ways none of us can currently imagine. His Barackness is going to manipulate facts, numbers, emotions, and opinions in his effort to obtain incumbency. It’s up to us to remain focused on the truth. His record will soon leave him unsure of what to defend and what to attack.  

The primaries seem to be all but over. Mitt Romney may or may not be the candidate you would have chosen on your own, but he’s most likely going to be the candidate facing off against Obama in November and the narrative has already begun. We must seize that narrative and maintain our ownership until we see Obama driving his brand new Chevy Volt off the White House parapet. It’s time to unite. It’s time to stop arguing about who would be a better candidate. That decision was made yesterday as Santorum dropped out of the race. Gingrich has terrific ideas and an even better passion, but he has no realistic shot at the nomination. Paul’s chances are even less likely, so put your personal differences aside and focus on the mission.

While defeating Barack Obama is certainly at the top of the priority list, I believe it is equally important to deliver a crushing blow to the ideology that has supported his Immaculate Ascension. We must systematically dismantle the very core of Obama’s belief system. The way to do that is to take the fight to them. Nothing is more demoralizing than to be beaten with your own weaponry. For example: Who doesn’t believe that Mark Sanchez will get hurt just before the inevitable Jets – Broncos playoff game next season? Tebow will step in, win the game dramatically…..give a sincere thanks to God, and then move on. Nothing against Peyton Manning but this story pretty much writes itself. We must use the weapons His Barackness is giving us. We must use those weapons to kick him and all of his little minions right in their Obamacles!

• S.L.A.P. – Stop Laugh Address Proceed
  · Stop – Don’t react immediately to accusations and lies.
• · Laugh – Take a moment to enjoy the humor in their fallacies.
• · Address – Distribute legitimate, easily proven facts; dismiss twisted version of reality quickly, efficiently, and convincingly.
• · Proceed –Direct the narrative immediately back to Obama’s record and the reality HE has created for this country. No more hope and change. He’s been reading us a children’s bedtime story but the kids fell asleep over three years ago. It’s time to read something a little more mature and nonfictional.

 

Predict what they’re going to throw at us. We’ve seen plenty of “film” of their “game plan.” Obama’s going to try to increase the level of pessimism in our country. He’ll fan the flames of the opinion that “nobody could do a good job with what’s left of our country so we might as well just leave it alone.” Jobs were lost because of natural disasters in Japan, not ineptitude…..”we’re drilling more than ever”…..”Bush raised the debt too”…..as Dick Morris so eloquently said yesterday in his daily message: By creating an atmosphere of pessimism, Obama “concedes the field of optimism to Romney.” We must seize that advantage and defend it with everything we’ve got. After all, it was optimism that put Obama in office. It was false optimism supported by fairy tales and pixie dust, held up by the efforts of other people, and constructed by outsourced labor, but it was optimism nonetheless. Optimism is the essential element of the American spirit and Obama has consistently ignored it. Optimism is what fuels free market innovation, entrepreneurial ambition, and success. Pessimism is the enemy of such things. Pessimism has never won a presidential election and we simply cannot allow Obama to take back the optimistic platform once he realizes pessimism is getting him nowhere.

He will skillfully insure that racism is manufactured in instances where it simply wasn’t an original motive. His media legions will make sure that those unwilling to look beyond the sound-byte see Obama as the only one capable of ending the sudden outburst of racially motivated hate in this country. Knock that one out of the air, folks! The color of Obama’s skin has absolutely NOTHING to do with his record. There is no “pigmentation” column…..it’s just wins and losses. It’s not a skin color that I’m voting against; it’s the horrendous track record of an appallingly inept President.

His Barackness will release the likes of Jay Carney and Joe Biden, his two most trusted little handbag Chihuahuas, to spread his scent wherever he is personally unavailable. They will appear in front of union supported crowds, trying to convince us all that the mistakes we think he’s made were actually the fault of his predecessor. He will appear in front of throngs of swooning liberal women. (Yes, that image is what the doctor shows you if you’ve had an erection for more than four hours! Cures that problem IMMEDIATELY!) He’ll tell us that voting against him is the same as punching your own mother, sister, wife, or daughter in the face. Again, we must S.L.A.P. this nonsense right in its ugly little face. There is NO War on Women…..that’s a distraction. There is a War on The Constitution and that’s the war to which we must allocate our ‘troops.’

He will continue to try to paint himself as sympathetic yet powerless in our fight against absurdly high gas prices. He and his drones will recite heavily manipulated statistics and figures to imply that these too are somehow the fault of another president. Nope! We’re not buying it, you walking psych study.
He will do his best to convince us that ObamaCare, even if ruled unconstitutional by the one branch with the authority and duty to do so, is exactly what we all need. He will paint the Supreme Court, who was gloriously capable when dismissing claims against his Birth Certificate, as inept and “unelected.” We know they’re “unelected.” They’re appointed by Presidents. They’re appointed to uphold the ideology of the President who appoints them. If the majority was liberal, he’d be praising their efficiency, I assure you.

He will inflate his accomplishments just as he has done with the auto bailout. He claims victories in a process that actually was designed by his predecessor. The parts of the bailout that failed were the parts that Barack Hussein Obama added to the original plan. Bush didn’t agree to sell Chrysler to Italy. Bush didn’t agree to the exclusive creation of union jobs. Bush didn’t suggest government ownership. Tell the truth.
Obama will use his media legions to convince us that he’s winning a race in which we can find no genuine evidence of his advantage. They will tell us that he’s so far ahead we might as well stay home on November 6^th. I don’t plan to follow that advice…..do you?

Tell the truth. Tell it often and tell it loudly. Do not be afraid for you have much more support and backing than you can possibly imagine. Do not be swayed by clever wordplay or narcissistic charm. Do not be persuaded by manufactured commonalities and adjusted reality. Tell the truth. Remind yourself of the truth and compare it to what you are being told in the news, or from the mouth of your country’s elected leader President. Let the anger that follows fuel you until you cast your vote.

As always, thanks for playing!

J. Robert Giles
 

Obama puts nation at risk with CIA investigation

Commentary by James Shott


President Barack Obama has made another horrid decision, deciding not to put an immediate stop to the dangerous probe into activities of the CIA in working to protect the United States from terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder launched a preliminary investigation in August into some old cases that had already been reviewed by the Justice Department and determined to be without merit. The reviews were performed by career employees who are non-partisan and have no ideological or political motives.

In a letter to the president, seven past directors of the CIA – representing the administrations of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon – asked that the investigation be dropped, and, Mr. Obama’s own CIA chief, Leon Panetta, has also voiced opposition to the investigation.

“Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions,” the former director’s wrote. And they told the president that reopening these cases “creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy,” which will inhibit CIA officers in their efforts to thwart terrorist activities.

The investigation will make them less willing to take risks and will damage relationships with foreign intelligence agencies that assist US efforts, the former directors said. The investigation requires the CIA officers to obtain expensive legal counsel, and distracts them from their important work. Now, instead of working to prevent attacks by fanatics who want to kill Americans, they will be defending themselves against politically-motivated attacks from the government they have successfully defended from terrorism for the last eight years.

So how did the president respond to the former CIA directors request to put the kibosh on this reckless and partisan investigation? The White House said Mr. Obama – who didn’t hesitate to take over an auto company and some banks, and wants to take over your health care – doesn’t involve himself in these activities.

Perhaps President Obama and his followers believe the terrorist threat isn’t real. After all, 9-11 was eight whole years ago. Maybe they believe the terrorist threat and the entire War on Terror were cooked up by George Bush and Dick Cheney as an excuse to encroach on the freedoms of the American people, and to illegally imprison innocent Muslims in that hell-hole in Cuba where they must endure three square meals of special food, accommodation on religious issues, and American-quality health care. That is, however, a very dangerous position, given the recent discovery of three separate home-grown terrorist cells. The US is absolutely under attack by terrorists.

Much credit is due to the FBI in uncovering these terrorist activities on our own soil, but we must understand that it had help from folks like the CIA employees the attorney general wants to investigate. Ideally, we want to find the terrorists at work here in America before they kill people, and we want to find their support networks overseas, and for that to happen, the CIA has to be at the top of its game. By his equivocation on stopping the investigation, Barack Obama has insured that the CIA will not be at the top of its game, and that puts every American at increased risk of being a victim of terrorism.

At the root of this inquisition are political motives, an obsession with destroying George W. Bush, and a naïve view of war and how to win. This is the attitude that caused the United States to lose in Vietnam; we cannot afford to lose this one.

There are abundant quotes from famous people about the inhuman and evil nature of war. These ideas are certainly noble, and worthy of being held up as goals for mankind. But they ignore the reality that some people think differently and will eagerly indulge in violence to achieve their goals. Those are the sort who attacked us on September 11, 2001, and are determined still to bring us down.

When Aristotle said, “We make war that we may live in peace,” he was saying that when confronted by an enemy, if you want to survive, you have to defeat him.

We must defeat our terrorist enemies by capturing or killing them before they act and kill innocent Americans, and we will accomplish that through the intelligence work of the CIA. We cannot allow it to be shackled by goofy platitudes and high-minded but self-defeating policies that protect the enemy and put Americans at risk. And to do this we must have the assistance of foreign intelligence organizations, but if they are afraid to work with us because our president behaves stupidly and puts their lives in jeopardy through ill-advised and dangerous policies, we will lose their assistance.

Through his recent actions Mr. Obama appears to believe that our CIA presents a greater danger to the country than the terrorists the CIA is fighting. Can our country survive this type of leadership? Community organizing may be a useful skill set in our cities, but it is a poor substitute for the wisdom of warriors when you are in a war.

Cross-posted from Observations

Sensible policies, not cap and trade, are the key to our energy future

Commentary by James H. Shott

The price of oil hit its all-time high in July of 2008, but since then has dropped by nearly 75 percent. Oil prices are now rising again and are likely to continue to climb as the world economy recovers.

Oil man T. Boone Pickens believes that oil prices may reach $300 a barrel 10 years from now. History proves it, he said, and referred to the five OPEC revenue increases in the last five years.

Why did oil prices rise last year to historic highs? And why are they rising again this year? Oil speculators are a favorite villain, but evidence supporting speculators as a major factor in price change is lacking. Speculators get blamed because people really don’t understand what speculators do, and how speculation works.

Ben Lieberman and J. D. Foster of The Heritage Foundation have a good description of the role speculators play in the commodities markets: “Speculators are rewarded for accepting risk if they prove right, and they lose money if they get it wrong. When oil prices began to rise in 2008, some speculators bet that prices would rise further, and they made a bundle. Others bet that prices would rise less or fall, and they lost a bundle when prices jumped up rather than down.”

“Speculators are often easy targets,” Lieberman and Foster continue, “because they seem to make money without working for it, and sometimes they make a lot of money. But professional speculators typically succeed by their wits, the sum total of their research, training, and experience, not luck. In so doing, they perform a vital role in financial markets: Speculators accept risk that somebody else does not want.

“For example, airlines have enormous demand for fuel, but they do not want to bear the risk of higher oil prices. At the right price, the speculator will take that risk. So the speculator contracts with the airline to deliver an amount of oil (or jet fuel) at a certain place and time and for a fixed price. The speculator, of course, does not have the oil. Rather, at the appointed time, the speculator buys the oil on the spot market for delivery. If the spot price is then below the price contracted with the airline, the speculator makes money. If not, the speculator loses. Either way, the airline's future oil price is locked in today.”

The tried and true explanation for rising prices is a basic economic principle: supply and demand. When demand for oil goes up without the supply increasing, prices rise; people will pay what they must to get what they need. To control oil prices, or at least moderate the up-side price movement, the amount of oil on the market must increase; the more oil that is available, the lower the price.

So to keep prices low and at the same time reduce dependence on foreign oil, rather than further regulating oil speculators Congress and the administration ought to incentivize American oil and natural gas companies to increase domestic production by removing bans, red tape and costly permitting processes so that they can drill in the areas where oil and gas supplies are most likely to reside, most of which are currently off limits.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) believes that the massive new taxes and fees – totaling as much as $400 billion – that Congress is considering for the industry would reduce investment in new energy supplies when nearly two-thirds of Americans support developing domestic oil and natural gas resources, according to API’s Energy Tomorrow Web site. API believes this will cost thousands of jobs, cut into local, state and federal tax revenues, and further threaten our energy security.

Since it is not yet sensible to shift to the so-called “green” energy sources, it only makes sense to maximize harvesting our own oil and gas supplies, thereby increasing the amount of oil and gas on the world market, and holding prices relatively steady, or perhaps lowering them.

And, instead of restricting access to domestic oil supplies, bills like the American Energy Innovation Act (H.R. 2828), the No Cost Stimulus Act (S. 570 and H.R. 1431) and the American Energy Act (H.R. 2846) must be passed. These measures seek to increase domestic production by expanding and expediting offshore leasing and opening up promising onshore sites such as Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where it is believed 10 billion barrels of oil reside.

We simply must abandon the ideological mania that puts the US in an ever more vulnerable position with regard to foreign oil suppliers, and do everything possible to utilize our own resources to solve these problems.

And if we insist on obsessing on the role of speculation, the speculation we need to worry about is what our elected representatives in Washington are doing, risking our freedom, our economic well-being and our future by flirting with high-minded but impractical ideas, such as an forcing a transformation to infant technologies that are incapable of meeting the challenge, and may never be.

The problem with the Democrat leadership in Washington is that while their ideals seem wonderful in the abstract, they are abject failures in reality.

Cross-posted from Observations

Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill an important topic at the Coal Summit

By James H. Shott

Someone said that the country is never in greater danger than when Congress is in session. Perhaps the converse is also true: the country is relatively safe when Congress is on vacation.

So the American people can breathe a sigh of relief if the traditional August recess is observed and members head home to check in with voters. While there, they will undoubtedly get an earful of the stuff they have been told in opinion polls, but have ignored. Recent news reports show this process is already taking place in town hall meetings.

The health care reform bill and the cap-and-trade bill now working their way through the Congress are the most dangerous legislative measures in memory. Alone, either of them spells big trouble, together, they spell catastrophe.

Are we about to see the greatest country in the world – the country with the greatest degree of personal freedom; the country established in opposition to the heavy hand of government; the country that has been the leader of the world for so many years – be transformed into a nation just like all of those that have followed along behind us, just one more nation that depends upon government to solve all its problems?

The odious Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill has as its underlying goal to move the US from burning pollution producing fossil fuels for their energy needs to a nation using non-polluting, renewable energy. Few will argue that we should not integrate “green” energy as soon as it’s practical. But we can’t do that for many years, because neither the nation’s infrastructure nor the technologies themselves are ready, and what’s more important, the environmental situation does not require measures nearly so drastic as the cap-and-trade bill will impose. Forcing this transformation will cause serious damage to our economy and our way of life.

Yet that is the goal of the energy initiative being pushed by the administration and the Congress, led by Waxman-Markey, and that was the focus of the Coal Summit held last week in the midst of the two Virginia’s coal country.

The economy of West Virginia and the southwest region of Virginia rely heavily on coal, with thousands of jobs depending upon the industry, either directly or indirectly.

Myron Ebell is Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and was one of the speakers at the Coal Summit. He reminded the audience of the realities of the US energy industry: eighty-five percent of its energy comes from coal, oil and natural gas; 50 percent of its electricity comes from coal, 20 percent from gas; and virtually all its transportation fuels come from petroleum.

Waxman-Markey requires that the US reduce its fossil fuel emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020, and continue reductions so that by 2050 emissions will be just 83 percent of 2005 levels, he said.

Yet again liberals are mired in stage-one thinking, consumed by ideology and ignoring the practical obstacles that make what they want to do impossible in the short term, and difficult in the longer term.

One of those obstacles is the fact that alternatives aren’t close to being ready to supplant fossil fuels, and another is the spectacular inefficiencies of government. Mr. Ebell referred to news accounts of how surprised solar project backers have been at the delays in getting their project through the permitting process. Even projects that have the government’s blessing can’t move through the bureaucracy without encountering crippling amounts of red tape, one more reason to seriously doubt government’s ability to create workable solutions.

The current regulatory environment makes it difficult for coal companies to keep up with demand, he told the audience, and if it were not for the recession, with demand down as one result, parts of the US would be experiencing blackouts this summer. “That’s because the policies that created California’s blackouts are being exported to the rest of the country, and the culmination of that is the Waxman-Markey bill,” he said. One of the bill’s sponsors, Henry Waxman, is from Beverly Hills, and chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, and the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer, is from Marin County. “They are exporting the policies that made California bankrupt to the rest of us.”

He painted a picture of attempts by the bill’s supporters to patch up the flaws and make deals to counter objections to the bill so that reluctant Congressmen would support it. He believes that Virginia 9th District Congressman Rick Boucher was involved in such a deal. The result is that instead of just the original bad bill, we now have a bad bill with pieces dangling from it held on with chewing gum and bailing wire.

Under the best of circumstances, energy prices and the price of everything associated with them will rise, and that will affect every American. Under the worst of circumstances we will experience economic catastrophe. “I don’t think the economy or coal can survive” this bill, Mr. Ebell said. Waxman-Markey cannot be successfully amended, he said, it must be defeated.

Each of us should contact our Representative and Senators, and tell them to vote down this bill.

Cross-posted from Observations

Send In The Clowns

Cross-posted from Observations

Supreme Court nomination among a list of interesting issues this summer

This summer will be very interesting. General Motors has a new president who says he doesn't know anything about making cars. Barack Obama wants the government to decide how much executives should be paid. The president's crazy-uncle pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is claiming the Jews are keeping him from meeting with the president.

Mr. Obama is proposing cuts in Medicare reimbursement, a system that already doesn’t pay its fair share, and the Democrats are trying to nationalize healthcare. North Korea’s Dear Leader is working overtime to develop nuclear weapons and a rocket to deliver them. Iran’s election has created violence in the streets.

And there is the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, which deserves very careful study.

The justice system of the United States operates under the theory that the law should be viewed objectively with the determination of innocence, guilt, liability or whatever made without bias or prejudice: Blind Justice, symbolized by the blindfolded statue of Lady Justice. It is the idea behind the United States Supreme Court motto “Equal Justice Under Law” which is the symbol of the judiciary.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is President Obama’s first nominee for the United States Supreme Court. She has been on the federal Circuit Court bench for a long time, and much has been made of the fact that if confirmed she will be the first Hispanic to serve on the nation’s highest court. Administration officials and supporters say Judge Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

However, some colleagues and law clerks who have worked with her have reservations about her, raising questions about her temperament, judicial craftsmanship, and her intellectual ability, issues which should not be ignored. But the far more serious questions arise over whether she can fairly and dispassionately apply blind justice.

Judge Sotomayor has raised eyebrows with some public comments, one of which was an admission that higher level courts have become the place where policy is made, a concept at odds with the idea of a judiciary that interprets the law and leaves policy making to the Congress and the administration. This is troublesome because of another comment: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said.

Are wise Latina women with a richness of experience somehow better at impartially applying the law than white males whose experiences are different, and presumably less rich?

It’s true that policy is formed as a by-product of the process; when laws are applied to a real world situation, guidelines for future situations are created. But creating policy is not a primary purpose of the process. In other words, impartial application of the law creates policy, de facto, but ruling a certain way in order to create a particular policy is improper.

The United States Supreme Court is a venue for applying laws neutrally to reach a just conclusion, not a place to manipulate the law to correct some social imbalance, real or imagined.

This is a point our Founders understood, even if many judges and politicians do not. Thomas Jefferson said "the instability of our laws is really an immense evil." Alexander Hamilton and James Madison warned of the evils of laws that "undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow."

In many ways judges are not so different from baseball umpires. Umpires have rules that direct them in their work, judges have the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land, and it is not within the authority of either to change the rules in the middle of the game, based upon who is at bat or in front of the court.

Imagine if when calling balls and strikes the home plate umpire empathized with the batter instead of objectively calling pitches, or took into consideration the race or economic circumstances of the batter, and decided that since ol’ Vinny was a good guy who rose up from a bad home life, maybe he’d give him a walk instead of a strikeout? Or that Team A really needs a run worse than Team B needs an out, since Team A hasn’t won a game all season? Is this what the rule of law and the concept of justice are all about?

Unlike baseball, the law is not a game. It is a deadly serious matter that affects the lives and property of citizens of the United States, and that’s why the law must be stable and free from the vagaries of judges’ social philosophies. There are places where social inequalities can be addressed and rectified. The courtroom is not one of them.

Judge Sotomayor has said publicly and openly that factors other than legal ones should enter into the judicial process, indicating that she will remove the blindfold from Lady Justice and substitute her own personal biased views for the neutral consideration of the law. That is not acceptable.

California Dreamin’: Nation can’t afford to follow California’s example

Ah, California. That magical land that is the nation’s trend-setter, home of Disneyland and the Hollywood film industry, and so many other things, good and bad, beautiful and ugly.

California is in big trouble. Its tax revenues were down $1.9 billion in April, normally the largest month for collections, and its budget deficit could swell to $24 billion by the end of the fiscal year in June.

The state’s government has spent itself into a hole.

According to the San Jose Mercury News website, the programs “that received most of that money are priorities that Californians broadly support or have demanded at the ballot box: tougher prison sentences for criminals, health care for uninsured children and an aging population, and a cut in the ‘car tax’ that they pay every year to register their vehicles.” All those are worthy things, but except for the car tax, they aren’t free; they cost money.

The state auditor blames both political parties for shirking their responsibility for the last 10 years. “Like homeowners paying off one credit card with another,” the Mercury News said, “they used accounting gimmicks and more debt, rather than raising taxes or cutting spending, to balance the books.”

But having high enough taxes doesn’t seem to be the problem: California has the eighth highest corporate income taxes in the U.S., as well as the nation’s most progressive income tax scheme, and the 13th highest state and local sales tax burden in the nation. The Tax Foundation says that Californians face the nation’s 6th highest tax burden.

U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, said the problem is that the bureaucracy has grown too large and powerful, pays workers too much, and it is difficult to fire government workers when needed. He said many government functions should be outsourced to private firms. “We’ve got to put our wardens back in charge of prisons, and principals back in charge of teachers, and introduce competitive pressures back into those systems,” he said.

Californians have earned much of the misery their state now experiences, by electing a liberal legislature that has created a system of high taxes and high spending. It is a heavily one-party state, voting for Barack Obama 61 to 37 percent. Things are just as lopsided in the state Legislature, with the State Senate 62.5 percent Democrat, and the State Assembly 63.75 percent Democrat. Its Congressional delegation is also heavily Democrat, with that party holding 62.26 percent of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives, and both seats in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats love high taxes, high spending, and big government, but the last three governors, two of them Republicans, have contributed to the out-of-control spending. According to Adam Summers of the Reason Foundation, California’s government spending explosion began “when Gov. Pete Wilson [R] took office in 1991, and the state budget was $51.4 billion. When he left eight years later, it was $75.3 billion. After five years of Gov. [Gray] Davis’s [D] administration, the budget had jumped to $104.2, and after another five years under the stewardship of Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger [R], it has continued to increase significantly to its present level of $144.5 billion. In just the last 10 years state spending has nearly doubled, increasing approximately 92 percent.”

California now is forced to do what it ought to voluntarily have done years ago: cut spending and reduce government.

An Associated Press story reported that Gov. Schwarzenegger plans cutbacks to counter the budget deficit that could include ending the state’s main welfare program for the poor, eliminating health coverage for about 1.5 million poor children, halting cash grants for about 77,000 college students, shortening the school year by seven days, laying off thousands of state workers and teachers, slashing money for state parks and releasing thousands of prisoners before their sentences are finished.

“I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives,” Gov. Schwarzenegger said. “This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington — we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have.” He also has advocated selling state assets to raise cash, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and San Quentin State Prison.

The Democrats who control the Legislature do not want major spending cuts, but so far they don’t have another plan for narrowing the deficit. And if their solution is higher taxes and more borrowing, they will only compound the situation.

The message everyone ought to take from this sad story is that high taxes, high spending and a large bureaucracy are a prescription for disaster. And we also had better take note of the similarity to what our federal government is doing.

Philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” California’s self-imposed predicament is a graphic illustration of what happens when politicians put political goals ahead of sound fiscal policy. We must not fail to take note.

The federal government has been doing this for years, but until now its political excesses and fiscal irresponsibility haven’t threatened the nation with disaster.

Cross-posted from Observations

Sotomayor nomination a move to weaken the rule of law

The reaction to Judge Sonia Sotomayor as President Barack Obama’s first nominee for the United States Supreme Court has been interesting.

Predictably, the moment the nomination was announced, indeed, even before it was officially announced, the critics were out in force, and defenders of the nomination responded that a lot of the criticisms were petty and designed to focus attention away from Judge Sotomayor’s actual qualifications. She has been on the Circuit Court bench for a long time, and much has been made of the fact that she is the first Hispanic to be nominated to the highest court in the land. Administration officials and other supporters say Judge Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years, a comment perhaps designed to shift focus away from her actual weaknesses.

There is the expectation that President Obama’s first pick will be confirmed regardless of, or perhaps in spite of, whatever the critics produce. We have a tendency in this country in recent years to bestow special deference to certain people based upon nothing more relevant than their race, gender, or other circumstances that are not relevant to the situation in question. If you are a minority, or have accomplished a good deal despite long odds, both of which describe Judge Sotomayor, that buys you a lot of favorable consideration, as well as the protection of a political correctness shield: criticize this woman, no matter how substantive the criticism, and you are a cad, a racist or a bigot.

"I think this is a bold and fairly masterful political stroke by President Obama," strategist Phil Musser told ABCNews.com. "This is not a pick that necessarily can be good politics for Republican senators. I mean, having older white senators up there grilling the first Hispanic – up-from-the-boot-straps, Hispanic Supreme Court nominee – that's a tough one for us OK, let's just be honest about that."

However, we cannot refuse to look into Judge Sotomayor just because she is a Hispanic, just because she overcame adversity, or just because she is a she.

A couple of remarks were made within ear-shot of recording devices that are on the record and must be discussed. One was an admission that higher level courts have become the place where policy is made, a concept at odds with the concept of a judiciary that interprets the law, leaving policy making to the Congress and the administration, and something critics jumped on. One law professor, however, defends this statement as a matter of rather unspectacular fact. Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said Judge Sotomayor’s comment "seems to be nothing more than an observation that, as a practical matter, many policy disputes are resolved in the federal courts of appeals. This is an indisputably true observation.”

Leaving aside for the moment Prof. Adler’s defense of the judge’s comment as nothing surprising or out of the ordinary, another of her comments is far more troublesome. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said. Are wise Latina women with a richness of experience somehow better at applying the laws than white males whose experiences are less rich? Judge Sotomayor now says she chose her words poorly.

However, this comment seems to reflect the thinking of the president in choosing her for the position. In comments criticizing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts back in 2007, then-Senator Obama said that "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."

"I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, business and government," Judge Sotomayor told those gathered at the White House for the nomination announcement.

But in many ways judges are pretty much black and white people, not so different from baseball umpires. Umpires have a set of rules which directs them in their work, judges have the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land, and it is not within the authority of either to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Imagine if when calling balls and strikes, or close plays at the plate the home plate umpire empathized with the batter or runner instead of objectively calling pitches, or took into consideration the race or economic class of the player, and decided that since ol’ Vinny was a good guy who rose up from a bad home life, maybe he’d give him a walk instead of a strikeout? Or that Team A really needs a run worse than Team B needs an out, since Team A hasn’t won a game all season? Is this what the rule of law and the concept of justice are all about?

“But,” you may be saying, “baseball and the law are not the same thing. Baseball is just a game” That’s right, and the law is far more important, and is not a game. It is a deadly serious matter, and that’s why the law must be stable and free from the whims of judges.

Like viewing the U.S. Constitution as a so-called living document, the meaning of which changes with the tides, judges who inject empathy and other non-judicial elements into legal proceedings destroy the stability of our laws, destroying justice along the way.

Cross-posted from Observations

Measures will prolong the recession and fundamentally change America

Our government is on the wrong track in its efforts to stabilize the economy. It has chosen the wrong mechanism to fix it, and the repercussions from the measures it proposes as solutions are downright dangerous.

Until very recently President Barack Obama was unnecessarily negative about the economy, as he attempted to lower expectations for his performance as President. His constant negativity raised the anxiety of Americans at a time they needed reassurance and leadership from their President, and adversely influenced their economic behavior, worsening the problem.

Spending in the private economy is the way to improve things, and the federal government needs to shore up the banking industry and make it possible for people to spend their own money on the things they need and want. The way to enable people to spend their own money is to make sure they have as much of it as possible to spend by suspending income and payroll taxes for a time.

Two of the principals upon which our nation was founded are individual freedom and limited government, and applying them to the current situation means that people, not the government, are the mechanism to turn the economy around. As Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

But the government that the Founders so wisely created and which has served us so well for so long is being dramatically changed right before our eyes from a government of, by and for the people, to a government increasingly controlled by elected officials who seem unconcerned with government’s proper role, and who actively work to increase its authority over the people from whom its power is derived.

This is not a new development; we have been moving in that direction for decades, as Congresses and Presidents added to the growing list of authority our government exercises, but to which it is not constitutionally entitled. It is difficult to look at the events of the last few months and not be astounded at how our government is attempting to usurp control from, or increase its control over, its citizens in so many areas.

What we see today is our elected leaders in the White House and the Congress moving rapidly and decisively to increase government’s involvement in the day-to-day functioning of our society, more aggressively than at any time in the nation’s history. Although the Obama presidency is in its infancy, there have already been several such steps taken and there are plans for more government intervention in education, healthcare and the relationship between employers and workers.

For example, the Card Check mechanism that favors labor unions over employers is supported by both the Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration, and would take away the secret ballot method of voting for or against union representation.

And, among the education initiatives are one to make college affordable to all Americans through a new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 in exchange for community service, and an early childhood education plan that will provide support for children and their parents.

These things have repercussions that must be recognized and understood, but the most ominous and most important aspect is the degree to which they will erode the ability of individual citizens to act in their own best interest, and to determine their own course in life, which is the very foundation of the American ideal.

Some say the administration is simply trying to do too much too soon, as it takes full advantage of the economic crisis to push through its leftist programs. But the reality is that there is never a time when these proposals will be acceptable. I challenge readers to find for me that part of the Constitution of the United States that empowers either the Congress or the President to control education or to affect the relationship between employers and workers.

Some may point to the “general welfare clause” in Section I, Article 8, but that argument falls far short of the mark. Using the general welfare clause to try to justify these initiatives requires an interpretation so broad that no serious person would assert that such an interpretation was what the brilliant men who wrote our Constitution had in mind. But that is not to suggest that such absurdly broad interpretations and twisted rationalizations of language have not occurred previously. However, honest people do not attempt to justify one mistake by citing another.

More to the point, the general welfare of all the people of the United States is not advanced through the special treatment of labor unions, young children or those of college age. The general welfare is advanced, however, from a strong defense of our country and its borders, and a government that does not control the lives of its citizens.

If we are not very careful we will allow the Congress and the administration to make material changes to our form of government from which we may not be able to recover, and our form of government, designed with the blood and courage of our forebears, will be lost forever.

Cross-posted from Observations

Reckless Energy Policy Will Cost Americans Money and Jobs

With the Obama administration’s oft stated preference for alternative energy sources, what will happen to the industries built around conventional energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas?

The whitehouse.gov Web site proclaims the following in The Agenda - Energy & Environment: “President Obama and Vice President Biden have a comprehensive plan to invest in alternative and renewable energy, end our addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs.” Notice the only mention of any of the current major forms of energy was getting less oil from foreign sources, and the “millions of new jobs” apparently will not come from expanding the search for domestic oil and gas supplies.

It goes on: “The energy challenges our country faces are severe and have gone unaddressed for far too long. Our addiction to foreign oil doesn't just undermine our national security and wreak havoc on our environment – it cripples our economy and strains the budgets of working families all across America.”

Once you get past the exaggeration, there is a little bit of truth in that statement.

Here is what the administration proposes:

* Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
* Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
* Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars – cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon – on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
* Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
* Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

President Obama’s very ambitious energy policy implies that coal, oil and natural gas, staples of American energy production, will simply be phased out. But this plan begs the question “how can we reduce the use of foreign oil as quickly as proposed without increasing domestic oil production?”

Gary Luquett, President of Chevron North America Exploration and Production Company, told the House Committee on Natural Resources recently that “even with the most aggressive development of renewables and alternatives, every major study of our energy future underscores the critical importance of oil and gas in meeting America’s energy needs for decades to come.”

No sensible energy policy can ignore the fact that alternative sources are inadequately developed to make a significant contribution any time soon, and they are expensive, to boot.

We’ve known for years that we must end dependence on foreign oil; the US cannot continue to rely for so much of our energy needs from countries that don’t like us. But on this issue we have been our own worst enemy: the primary reason we still are under the thumb of foreign oil producers is that Congress has blocked the oil and gas industry from drilling in the places where enormous oil and gas supplies are most likely to exist. Therefore, the best way to reduce dependence on foreign oil is to open offshore areas to new exploration, and increase our own oil supplies. We can then continue at a normal pace to develop alternative sources to a point where they are efficient and affordable enough to begin to replace fossil fuels.

But looking to new, undeveloped, unproven energy sources to replace existing, abundant and proven energy sources that already have the infrastructure in place for accessing and using them is foolish and short-sighted.

Reading the administration’s itemized list of goals makes it obvious that the President opposes using fossil fuels because of the wildly popular idea that burning coal, oil and natural gas damages the environment. It is by no means certain that pollution from these abundant fuels is actually harmful to the environment, however, and to use that criterion to determine that national energy policy needs a radical change is unjustified and would unnecessarily subject Americans to economic penalties.

Trying to force under-developed, expensive and unproven new energy technologies on the American people at a time of economic stress is ill-advised and would negate the benefits of the tax breaks of which Mr. Obama is so proud.

Furthermore, the cap-and-trade scheme can be expected to raise the cost of electricity and gasoline, as fossil fuel burning businesses implement costly measures to reduce carbon emissions, buy another business’ excess carbon credits, or pay fines for exceeding their caps. And the more aggressive the reduction in allowable emissions, the higher the costs businesses will encounter and pass on to consumers. Higher energy prices will cost jobs as economic activity slows and manufacturing is forced overseas where energy costs are lower.

Even though burning fossil fuels has been shown to not increase pollution to dangerous levels, it makes sense to move to less polluting technologies. What doesn’t make sense is to rush into alternative energy sources before they are adequately developed, and heap higher electricity and fuel costs, and job losses on the country for no better reason than somebody wants this goal met in a hurry.

Cross-posted from Observations

Blogging and Political Activism Poll

Theatrical producer Hal Prince has criticized this generation for lulling themselves into blogging each other rather than engaging in political activism. Do you agree? Take the poll to the right. The Poll is active until next Sunday.

Today’s Best Reads:

Thank God for the One’s who’ve kept us free. (Right Truth Exclusive for Veterans Day) at Right Truth

Make This Veteran’s Day Different at MoreWhat

Will Spitzer Leave Hillary Hanging in the Wind? at Wake up America


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