Pew Research to Ornstein and Mann: “You’re fired!”

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Sanely Insane

In what is described by the Los Angeles Times writer, David Lauter, as a “major new study,” Pew Research (Pew Study) suggests that our political divide is deeper and our discourse sharper than in recent memory. (Note: Neither the L. A. Times nor Pew is considered “right-wing” by any sentient being.)

The most important conclusion is that the divide among voters is as intense, perhaps more so, than the divisions on Capitol Hill.  Norman Ornstein of the Americans Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, allegedly “neutral” political scholars and observers, in a new book flogged at The Washington Post, attributed  almost exclusively to Republican intransigence verging on lunacy, the anger manifested by the TEA Party movement and the current impasse in the Congress. Simply, they claim that all would be good in America’s future but for Republicans.  With their attempt to aid the Democrat Party and Mr. Obama, they spent all credibility.   In fact, the Pew study clearly shows that Congress reflects voter sentiment tempered only by the phony rhetorical device: “My honorable friend.”

In several angry discussions with Norm and Thom, they were challenged about the notion that Republicans and Conservatives are simply troglodytes and that if they’d merely be like Democrats, abandoning principles and ideals, all would be copacetic.  In fact, studies consistently show that Republicans and Conservatives are better informed than Democrats and Progressives (who want to “progress” 80 years back to The New Deal) and that this nation is notably more conservative than liberal, determined by self-identification.

It’s compromise that got us into this mess: “I want a billion for my project” “No, you can only have eight hundred million.” “OK, let’s compromise . . . nine hundred million!” “Deal. See you at the Monocle.”

One side or the other must claim outright victory, we can’t afford them suing for peace.

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Paul Krugman, Enron Advisor, Obama Advisor

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Sanely Insane

The elfin Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, has created the newest theme for the Obama / Progressive / Democrats in this election cycle.  It will last about as long as it is useful . . . in other words, not long at all for the simple reason that it’s so transparently silly.

First, the diminutive economist argues that government employment at all levels, federal, state, and local has declined since the expiration of the Stimulus bills.  Let’s assume that’s true. It then affirms the argument that anti-stimulus Conservatives and Republicans made during the debate over Porkulus – a temporary stimulus would only produce temporary jobs that would evaporate and the vaunted Congressional Budget Office now estimates the Conservatives were right. The cost?  $4,200,000 EACH for Lost Jobs!  It served one purpose: To fund public employee unions that fund Democrat politics.

Second, wee Paul sneers at Conservatives who he claims like Chicken Little sounded alarms that Mr. Obama’s reckless spending would produce meteoric inflation and catastrophic interest rates, which hasn’t happened . . . yet. But even a smart Keynesian economist – possibly an oxymoron given that John Maynard Keynes himself retreated from his seminal work later in life, claiming that his prescriptions were intended to be targeted discretely and short-term, versus politicians who had abused them and transformed them into ineffective “long-term strategies, would acknowledge that with the world economy moldering along, especially in our largest trading zones, and the ChiCom economy grinding to a halt, there is no instant pressure on the dollar or interest and inflation rates.  Be patient.

Imagine if and when the economies of the industrialized states improve and there is pressure on natural resources, commodities, food stuffs and capital. We’ll see hyper-inflation, hyper interest rates, and vast shortages of life’s necessities while Paul hyper-ventilates.

It’s entertaining to review puny Paul’s recent waxings.  To his credit, he no reservations about reversing course for transparent political gain.  And because he’s intellectually dishonest, he is not taken seriously in the academy or politics.

Now, if only he would return the fees he “earned” as he drove Enron to bankruptcy and shareholders and poor working stiffs to welfare.

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Axelrod vs. Holder, the Dream Matchup

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Sanely Insane

I’m reminded of the Iran / Iraq “War.” Can’t both sides win? Please!?

Or maybe Fred Sanford and Grady is a better analogy.

I can hear it now: “Hold me back!”

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They brought us Presidents Dole and McCain

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Sanely Insane

Watching Ed Gillespie and his colleagues, the campaign consultants charged with trumpeting Mitt Romney’s message, is, well . . . painful.  This morning on Fox News Sunday with Mike Wallace’s boy, the host, as the mainstream media routinely does, averred again the only salvation for the failing auto industry was the Obamacar plan; the one that stripped bondholders of their contractual rights; the one that rewarded the United Auto Workers with ownership of General Motors and Italian investors Chrysler; the one that shuttered more than 1,000 auto dealerships; and the one that gave us The Volt. The host declared that the alternative was “Chapter 7 liquidation and all the jobs lost.” (As if he knows how bankruptcy works.)

The proper response was not Gillespie’s, “That’s one opinion.” The proper response is of course, “airlines!” Each legacy carrier has taxied into Chapter 11 and flown out without Mr. Obama’s assistance. They used Chapter 11 as prescribed by Congress, and in which all of the participants have knowledge of their rights and privileges. It works. And cars are no different in principle that say, the steel industry,  a better example indeed. Much of it is now owned by foreign companies, just as Mr Obama arranged for Chrysler. And we still have steel and we have steelworkers.

 

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Maureen Dowd is confoozed . . .

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Sanely Insane

Our friend Mo Dowd (Dissing Barry Obama) dissects some glaring recent errors in Mr. Obama’s re-pursuit of the Presidency; notes some character flaws that illuminate why Barry seems unengaged; and displays some serious confusion of her own.

Mo believes that Barry’s party took a whuppin’ in 2010 because, “The administration lost the communications war with disastrous consequences that played out on Election Day 2010,” according to ‘Slick Eddie’ Rendell.  Her conclusion? “Obama never got credit for the two pieces of legislation where he reached for greatness.” How silly. Is there anyone in our universe who isn’t familiar with the failed Porkulus package and the looming colossus called Affordable Care?

The Progressives routinely cite their inability to communicate as their fundamental problem. Never do they question that they may be communicating too well what they truly believe. The irony? She cites ‘Slick Eddie’ again (she’s apparently sweet on the “slickster” when Billary’s unavailable) who in his book, “A Nation of Wusses,” wonders how “the best communicator in campaign history” lost his touch. Say WHAT? “The best?” If he were the “best” how is ‘failure to communicate’ the root of their problem?  Simply, had Mo and her fellow-travelers asked simple questions, challenged Barry’s relationships with Bill Ayers, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky, among others, and turned down the John Lennon bumper rotation, we might have avoided this embarrassing Narcissist and the enormous costs to our children for his ego-gratifying excesses.

The left is becoming disillusioned and on the one hand blames us for not accepting His greatness while blaming themselves for not communicating to us better His greatness.

OK. I take it back. He’s great Who’s the guy in the tights:

 

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John Edwards is Loathsome and not a Criminal

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Sanely Insane

There is little to like about the preening, transparently transparent John Edwards, a “man” distinguished  for bringing disrepute to politicians! But, however badly he treated his late wife, his children – who inexplicably stood by in support – and his unfortunate pigeons, er, followers, he did not break the campaign finance laws.

He lured friends into financing the cover-up of a tawdry affair with money they couldn’t, and notably didn’t lawfully contribute to his campaign, the end.

Well, not exactly, the end. He also managed to expose the Eric Holder Justice Department for its feckless assault on the law and common sense.  While Mr. Holder fails to prosecute  New Black Panther miscreants, and does prosecute Sheriff Joe and the State of Arizona for enforcing the law, he recklessly chose to bring the weight of the government and it huge legal apparatus to punish Mr. Edwards for a “crime” that hurt no taxpayer, doesn’t in any way threaten civil society, and frankly, isn’t a crime. A better case might be made against Rielle Hunter for really bad taste in men.

Finally, this should be a warning to civil libertarians from the right, the left and in-between:  Congress makes laws without proscribing their limits or prescribing their reach. Executive branch bureaucrats then run amok and we get back to them making John Edwards looking sympathetic in front of the bar of justice. Egad!

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Walker Will Win Wisconsin Waterloo

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Sanely Insane

Much has been written about the “real” causes driving the Union thuggery on display in Wisconsin. Next Tuesday Governor Scott Walker faces recall, a democratic and peaceful resolution to a debacle that began with a cowardly escape from duty by the Wisconsin Senate Democrats; the “occupation” of the Capitol by public employees; and many millions of dollars and hours directed at his removal.   To paraphrase our President: They lose; He wins.

Supposedly his initiative to strip state employees of their collective bargaining rights (untrue) or imposition of a small cost for retirement or health benefits or his hidden agenda of “punishing” his political “enemies” has caused the Unions to display their animal passions.

In fact, the application of Occam’s Razor provides the true reason for the Union’s all too common, ugly behavior. It is simply that when employees, or “workers” as Democrat politicians and Karl Marx prefer, are given the chance to voluntarily pay exorbitant dues, they don’t!  When the Union Bosses can’t extract involuntarily said dues and direct them to Democrat politicians, they get cranky.  Here are the numbers:

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers—fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme’s  figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was right. Granting “collective bargaining” powers to public employees is a prescription for precisely what we’ve seen happen in Madison.

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Marion Barry, Barack Obama, one and the same?

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Sanely Insane

In another profound display of ignorance (or is it stupidity?) Barack Hussein Obama has insulted the honorable Polish people, or, as his friends, Marion Barry and and Archie Bunker call them – The Polacks.

While honoring the courageous Polish war hero, the late Jan Karski, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Mr. Obama remarked:

“[Jan Karski] served as a courier for the Polish resistance during the darkest days of World War II. Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself. Jan took that information to President Franklin Roosevelt, giving one of the first accounts of the Holocaust and imploring to the world to take action.”

Charitably, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski called it a matter of “ignorance and incompetence.” It is, of course, stupidity.

Can’t Mr. Obama settle for insulting Navy medics, or corpse-men as he prefers; or leave geographers scrambling to find the 51st through 58th states – he’s visited 57; or complete his task of ending the rise of the oceans? Must he insult our friends during challenging times?

Sadly, he simply doesn’t know better. After-all, he was “educated” at Punahou, Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law – a failed “affirmative action” project.

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Referendum or Choice?

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Sanely Insane

The Obamamiacs are vigorously arguing that this election is not a referendum on Mr. Obama’s past performance but instead a choice about a vision of the future of America. Does it matter? Nope.

If 2012 is a referendum as we had in 2010, Mr. Obama will get a serious spanking. It’s clear that the very conditions that propelled historic losses in Congress and across state and local governments are little improved. It is no wonder Mr. Obama wants to reframe the question to ignore the past and imagine a future.

But, the future he inspires is full of ever greater government intrusion, regulation, taxation and the consequent strangulation of America’s unique qualities and initiative. The economy we “enjoy” today is our future under Mr. Obama’s scheme . . . and perhaps precisely what Mr. Obama meant when he, in  2007, declared his hope to “transform” America and later Osawatamie, Kansas opined that America as created by our founders, “has never worked.”

So, bring it on. Even the Romney campaign may stumble into the obvious – run against both Mr. Obama’s past and his future.  As the aphorism that graces the entrance to the National Archives declares: The Past is Prologue.

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Must Democrats lie to win office?

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Sanely Insane

Must Democrats lie to win office? Do chickens have breasts?  Well, yes.

It is a logical fallacy to argue from the specific to the general, a “fallacy of composition” which suggest that if one member of an institution displays a certain characteristic it speaks for the entire institution.

For example, Joe Donnelly, Democrat Congressman from South Bend, Indiana is self-identified “pro-life.” Beyond being important, this is especially useful in his district, the home of his alma mater, Notre Dame University where he also received his law degree. Yet, although allegedly anti-abortion, Mr. Donnelly, along with other pro-life Democrats – Bart Stupak and Harry Reid jump immediately to mind – voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as “Obamacare.” Donnelly and his fellow-travelers based their vote on an assurance from President Obama to America that he would respect the First Amendment and impose no burdens on the religious community in violation of religious freedom and doctrine. He extended his promise not just to abortion, but all tenets of faith-based institutions, including contraception opposed by Catholicism.

Clearly the President lied. Obamacare demands that the Catholic Church and all institutions of faith engage in commerce that violates their teachings and beliefs. First, the President prescribed that religious institutions purchase contraception, sterilization and abortion services directly. When many protested, even some in the Progressive community Mr. Obama then re-wrote his script to have third-party payers – the dreaded health insurers – provide the services “free” in a display of ignorance – He missed “fungible” at the august Harvard law School.

Now, along comes the Catholic Church to sue Mr. Obama and preserve its First Amendment rights.  Mr. Donnelly, who has led his district’s citizens to believe he was a “good” Catholic, is now a candidate for senate and it turns out that he was lying . . . he refuses to take a position for fear of offending some voters versus others.

Mr. Donnelly is typical of Democrat politicians – he runs as a conservative and votes with former Speaker Pelosi, Senate Leader Reid and President Obama, with confidence that the mainstream media will not shine light on his duplicity.

In a great many races around the country, this will be the pattern, Democrats running right in hopes of governing left. It happens only with the cover afforded by “journalism” today.

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