Current Events - August 13, 2013

 PK'S NOTE: I have this book on order. I think this is something Conservatives need to get behind. It's not advocating a (weak) candidate. It's protecting now and the future.

Conversation Begin

By David Limbaugh
In his new book, "The Liberty Amendments," my friend Mark Levin is offering a bold plan for the re-establishment of America's founding principles and a restoration of constitutional republicanism through a series of amendments to the Constitution.

I know of no one who has a greater reverence for our Constitution and for the scheme of limited government and personal liberties it established. Mark has been a student of America's founding and its constitutional history since he was a young boy, when he and his friends would visit Philadelphia, where it all started, and study the history.

I had many outstanding professors in both undergraduate and law school who were experts in the Constitution and constitutional law, and I know and read many constitutional scholars today. But I've never met anyone so steeped in this subject or so attuned to the minds of the Framers as Mark. He understands our system and the issues underlying its creation more intimately than anyone else.

Mark has written two books, "Liberty and Tyranny" and "Ameritopia," in which he expounds on our founding principles and the threat they are currently under from the forces of liberalism and statism. But in "The Liberty Amendments," he proposes an action plan.

Like Mark, I was originally skeptical of the idea that we should support the calling of a constitutional convention in an effort to rein in the federal government and restore the power of the states and our individual liberties. But that's because I hadn't fully explored what that process would entail.

In fact, Mark is not calling for a constitutional convention. He's suggesting we have a national dialogue with the goal of amending the Constitution under its Article 5. As he points out, Article 5 provides for two methods of amending the Constitution, but in neither case does this process provide for a constitutional convention.

One method is for Congress to pass a proposed amendment and then forward it to the state legislatures for ratification -- a process that has occurred 27 times. The other -- and the one Mark is proposing -- involves the direct application of two-thirds of the state legislatures for a convention for proposing amendments, which, if proposed, would also have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states. This method has been tried but never successfully in our history.

Perhaps my earlier confusion -- and the confusion of others about this process -- lay in the fact that the language includes the word "convention," but it's critical to understand that this is a convention not for some de novo constitution but for the proposal of specific and defined amendments.

Of course, there is some risk in opening up even this limited type of convention, but this risk is mitigated by several factors that Mark delineates and is warranted, in any event, by the urgency of our current state of affairs.

The most important check, to which I've already alluded, is that none of this can occur without the approval of three-fourths of the states. We also should derive some comfort from the fact that the Framers themselves included this amendment process because they knew that they could not anticipate every difficulty the republic would encounter and that only experience and history could serve that purpose.

Another important check against this process's turning into a playground for statists is, in the words of former law professor Robert G. Natelson, that "a convention for proposing amendments is a federal convention; it is a creature of the states or, more specifically, of the state legislatures. And it is a limited-purpose convention. It is not designed to set up an entirely new constitution or a new form of government."

Finally, the likelihood that this process could be hijacked by those hostile to our founding principles is greatly reduced because Congress' role in the state application process that Mark is proposing would be minimal and ministerial.

Most importantly, Mark is not calling for a new constitution or any kind of revision of our founding principles.He seeks to restore our timeless founding principles and shore up the constitutional edifice to preserve them.

But we must first acknowledge that the federal government is out of control, acting far outside its constitutional powers, and has become unmoored from its constitutional foundation -- as few patriots would dispute -- and that this condition is urgent and, if untreated, will result in the end of the American republic.

In addition to making a compelling case for the amendment process, Mark has proposed 10 specific amendments designed to restore and refurbish our founding principles, and all the ideas -- or some similar variation of them -- I dare say, would be enthusiastically embraced by the Framers.

He has done an incredible job of drafting these proposed amendments aimed at re-establishing the balance between the federal and state governments and restating the social contract between the governments and their citizens -- in such a way as to reinvigorate our individual liberties.

Mark modestly insists that these proposals are not set in stone and that he is trying to launch a national conversation to consider the amendment process and specific amendments.

In terms of the viability of our current system as originally crafted, we are in perilous times. Let our national conversation begin, and let us thank Mark Levin for initiating it.

http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2013/08/13/let-the-national-conversation-begin-n1662521/page/full

Does Obama's Muslim faith prevent him from flying with First dog Bo?

On Sunday, the Obama's dog,Bo, was flown to Martha's Vineyard in a U.S. Marine MV-22 Osprey, taking a separate flight from the rest of the First Family.

The Obama's have begun, yet another lavish vacation, at the expense of the American taxpayers.

Though the outrage over the Obama's extravagant lifestyle during such stark economic times may reach a fever pitch at the news of the 'First Dog' being given his own flight, it is not the first time this has happened.
In July 2010, Maine's Morning Sentinel reported:

Arriving in a small jet before the Obamas was the first dog, Bo, a Portuguese water dog given as a present by the late U.S. Sen Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; and the president’s personal aide Reggie Love, who chatted with Baldacci.

You see, a big part of Obama's success is the incredibly short memory of the American people.

While most will see these separate flights as yet another example of the disdain the Obamas have for the taxpayer, there may well be a more practical reason why Bo flies on his own.

Islam teaches that dogs are "unclean beasts" and Muslims are forbidden from traveling with them.

Abu Huraira, who traveled extensively with the Muslim prophet Muhammad, wrote thousands of Hadiths, one of which was: "Angels do not accompany the travelers who have with them a dog and a bell."

Of course, President Obama has claimed publicly that he is a Christian, but both his father and his step-father were practicing Muslims, and he attended a Muslim school while being raised in Indonesia.

It is rather absurd to believe that this, or any other man could simply deny the religion of his youth.

So, when you become infuriated with Obama’s insensitivity to the families of those killed by Muslim terrorists in the Fort Hood massacre and in the Benghazi attack, or over the fact that he is now arming those who deny Israel's right to exist, or because he may have sent one of those involved in the Boston Marathon bombing terror cell back to his powerful Saudi-terrorist family...don't forget to place that blame where it really belongs…with those who laughably call themselves "Democrats," who voted for this international man of mystery.

http://www.examiner.com/article/does-obama-s-muslim-faith-prevent-him-from-flying-with-first-dog-bo 

Obama rodeo clown sparks outrage from the left

A rodeo clown is in deep trouble with liberals for daring to make fun of Obama. All he did was wear an Obama mask during the rodeo and the left is reacting as if it was a crime against humanity. On radio, Glenn reminded the angry leftists that Obama is not God.

TheBlaze picked up on a liberal attendees outrage over the rodeo clown which was posted on Facebook:

Last night, Lily and I took a student from Taiwan to the rodeo at the Missouri State Fair. Just prior to the start of the bull riding event, one of the clowns came out dressed in [an Obama mask]. The announcer wanted to know if anyone would like to see Obama run down by a bull. The crowd went wild. He asked it again and again, louder each time, whipping the audience into a lather. One of the clowns ran up and started bobbling the lips on the mask and the people went crazy. Finally, a bull came close enough to him that he had to move, so he jumped up and ran away to the delight of the onlookers hooting and hollering from the stands. We then left quickly and quietly. Lily’s student is an inquisitive boy and asks a lot of questions about what he sees, and though he had never been to a rodeo he asked nothing about it, nor anything about America this time. We rode the sixty miles home in silence. In a way I’m glad. I had no answers for him.

A writer for The Daily Kos, a progressive blog, responded by saying: “Silence is not an appropriate response to this ‘entertainment’ on grounds owned by all Missourians. I can’t write anymore at how disgusting this is. All I want is some heads to roll.”

The Governor, the Lt. Governor, and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill from Missouri have all come out and condemned the incident.

In response to the incident, Glenn was left wondering when we reacted to cartoonish portrayals of the President with the same anger that radical Islamists have reacted to portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad. In the past, creators of cartoons that mocked Muhammad have been met with death threats, and some creators have been forced to censor their work for fear of violent retaliation and outrage. 

“You can have an opinion on this and you can write your opinion on this. Let me just address those in positions of power. You should read the United States Constitution. Since when did we begin to treat the president of the United States like frickin’ Mohammed! He’s not the Prophet Muhammad. He is not God, he is not Allah. He is not the Prophet Muhammad. Stop treating him as he is God. He is not God,” Glenn said.

“Did we hear anything about the Bush masks that people wore? Did we hear anything about the Nixon masks that people wore, the Ronald Reagan masks that people wore, the Ronald Reagan puppets and Muppets that they used you to make in the Eighties?”

Glenn said that progressives have used race as a firewall to stop people from criticizing President Obama.

“Just because he’s black,” Glenn said. “He is dismantling and reversing the Constitution of the United States. And don’t take my word for it. Take his word for it. He says he wants a charter of positive liberties, not a charter of negative liberties. Here is a scholar of the Constitution that wants to reverse what the Constitution is. He’s a danger to the Constitution. It has nothing to do with him being black. It has nothing to do with where he was born.”

http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/08/12/obama-rodeo-clown-sparks-outrage-from-the-left/

Benghazi and the Banality of Evil

Is it just me, or is the string of distractions that seem to pop up right on cue every time new light is about to be shed on the Benghazi story getting a little old?

Months late, CNN has gotten around to "breaking" a story that might help to complete the disturbing puzzle for the mainstream public, namely the allegation that Benghazi was the hub of a CIA weapons-running operation.  Within hours, this was washed from the headlines by the "chatter" indicating an imminent terror plot that required the United States to close numerous diplomatic facilities.  (Hurray, NSA!)  And then, within days, the mainstream media was "breaking" the news that the first charges had been laid in connection with the Benghazi attack.  (How convenient.) 

True to pattern, a mainstream media outlet will get its "honest journalism" points, lifting the lid on the facts just long enough to release a little pressure before the pot explodes, but guaranteeing that by Sunday morning Benghazi will once again have been buried by supposedly more urgent issues.

As many of us have been observing since the fall of 2012, the Benghazi outrage -- an attack that, due to the Obama administration's aggressive passivity, became a massacre -- is the "scandal" that will never go away.  And yet the story never achieves the fever pitch of many past, far lesser abuses of power, because the administration, in cahoots with its propaganda wing in the American news media, always finds a way to tamp down the big questions at the very moment those questions threaten to break loose in the American consciousness.

After their initial issuance of official lies regarding a nonexistent spontaneous protest over a video no one in Libya cared about, the two leads in this drama treated the world to a remarkable performance of "The Pair That Wasn't There."  First, we had Hillary Clinton, the incredible disappearing woman, whose opening trick was to concede her first big scene, the sweep of Sunday political shows in the first days of the story, to her understudy, Susan Rice.  Rice's scripted litany of lies was subsequently defended by the president on the grounds that poor Ms. Rice didn't know what she was talking about.  (So why was she chosen to deliver the administration's first official sit-down interview accounts of the attack?)  Clinton followed this auspicious opening by turning down a cordial invite to Congress in favor of an urgent State Department trip to...Australia.  And then, to top it all off, she went to bed and bumped her head and couldn't get up for several weeks, or at least not up to Capitol Hill. 

When at last she testified before Congress, four months after the attack, and two months after she was asked to testify, her only memorable line was "What difference -- at this point -- does it make?," thus punctuating her disappearing act with a classic "They'll never catch me!" flourish for the audience.  As I have previously contended, the key words in Clinton's famous argument for ignorance were "at this point."  That was her big "oops" moment, when her words and exasperated intonation revealed far more than was prudent.  What she revealed was that her own, and the entire administration's, manner of addressing Benghazi was built on a strategy of delay: say anything, leave the country, maneuver around all direct questions, claim to be conducting one's own internal investigation, all in the hope that the fog of time will obscure the most horrendous details of this affair, or at least prevent those details from gathering into a complete and coherent picture in the public's mind.  Her indignant qualification -- "at this point" -- suggested a woman flustered at being pressed on matters she could not answer directly without destroying her own career, and perhaps bringing down an entire corrupt administration, but who genuinely believed that she had stalled long enough to dull such pointed interrogation.

And then there is her partner in "scandal," President Obama, who makes plain old Clintonesque hiding and lying look like a cheap stunt.  He has taken obfuscation and dissembling to a whole new, delightfully unforeseen level: he can hide the truth even from himself.  For weeks, in a variety of formats, from nationally televised presidential debates to TV interviews, he recited an absurdist script that evoked a man whose essence had become so detached from his existence that we were left to wonder whether he even knew he was the one telling the lies.  Obama has become a perfect microcosm of the Western democratic political establishment in its hundred-year leftward trajectory: a one-man kabuki performance which presents its falseness so consistently and committedly that it begins to displace reality in the minds of the enthralled/enslaved public.

On Benghazi, Obama's carefully memorized recitation, from which he never strayed, and which he never dared to embellish, was this:

As soon as we found out the Benghazi consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team, and I gave them three instructions: Number one, beef up our security and procedures, not just in Libya, but in every embassy and consulate in the region.  Number two, investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us.  ... And number three, we are going to find out who did this and we are going to hunt them down.

We now know that Obama was informed of the attack almost immediately, and that he discussed it at a previously scheduled meeting with Leon Panetta during the early moments, after which he never made a single follow-up phone call to inquire about the status of the violence.  And yet his public self-defense was that while American government representatives were under deadly attack, he gave three completely generic instructions, all of them focused on long-term bureaucratic action, and none of them intended to address the murderous assault currently underway.  It must never be forgotten that this list of absurdly inappropriate responses was meticulously scripted after the fact by handlers who presumably calculated that it was the best light in which Obama's inaction could be framed. 

And now another dark facet of Benghazi, long discussed in the non-American media, as well as in the American alternative media, has made its way into the U.S. mainstream.  In citing reports that the CIA has been using intimidation tactics to scare agents out of telling all they know, CNN notes that the many CIA agents in Benghazi on September 11 may have been part of a weapons-running operation intended to deliver arms to Muslim rebels in Syria.  (The news here, of course, is not the weapons-running operation, which has been discussed in detail for ten months, but the fact that a U.S. government propaganda tool mentioned it.)  The full import of this possibility must not be overlooked, or allowed to remain in a separate compartment of our minds, detached from the Obama-Clinton cover-up efforts.  Putting the two parts of this story together may clarify even further the level of immorality that has been, and continues to be, perpetrated by the central players in this atrocious drama.

We know there were requests for extra security in Libya in the months prior to the attack, and that these requests were turned down.  We know Clinton and Obama spoke once while the Benghazi massacre was ongoing, but not until several hours after it began.  We know that long before speaking with Obama, Clinton contacted then-CIA director David Petraeus, "to confer and coordinate," as she told the Senate hearing, "given the presence of his facility, which of course was not well-known but was something that we knew and wanted to make sure we were closely latched up together."  "Coordinate" and "latch up" in what sense?  Getting their stories straight before being questioned?  (Remember, this coordinating and latching up was taking place while their employees were under deadly assault.)  We also know that none of these top-level decision-makers took any steps to activate U.S. resources in an attempt to rescue the besieged Americans during the seven-and-a-half-hour attack.  Quite the contrary.

It is here that we must drag the facts out of their separate compartments, and bring them together into a coherent picture of the decision-making process that led to the deaths of several Americans, the injury of others, and an elaborate cover-up operation.

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis delivered uranium to be used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb, and was then torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, sinking in minutes.  Most of the 1,196 crewmen survived the sinking of the ship, but several hundred died in the ocean over the next few days, many by shark attack.  (This disaster was famously memorialized through actor Robert Shaw's fictional reminiscence in Steven Spielberg's Jaws.)  Upon being hit, the Indianapolis sent distress signals, which were ignored.  For a long time, however, the U.S. government claimed that the men were not rescued because no distress signal was ever sent, on account of the secrecy of the mission.  The purpose of this false official story was perhaps to hide the gross failure in the chain of command which led to the single greatest loss of life in U.S. Navy history.

Benghazi represents the evil sister of the Indianapolis story.  In this case, we know for a fact that numerous "distress signals" were sent.  We also know that those urgent messages were not trapped in the lower reaches of the chain of command due to drunken intermediaries or skeptical officers.  The truth of this disaster made it to the top of the hierarchy very quickly, while there was still time to act.  And yet Obama, and the administration official most closely associated with the situation, Clinton, did not act.  They walked away.  They stopped talking.  They lied, hid, and spit bullets at anyone who dared to doubt their veracity.  (Remember Obama's threatening glare at Romney during the second presidential debate as he warned his rival not to question his concern for his underlings?  It worked: Romney effectively ceased to question Obama on Benghazi from that moment on.)

What can be said with certainty is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton demonstrated the moral frigidity of tyrants during and after the Benghazi attack.  This is true regardless of how the attack occurred, particularly in light of the fact that there was never any evidence whatsoever for the one and only story to which the administration tried to cling until contradictory evidence forced them to abandon their hopes of having any official story at all. 

The remaining question for an honest and rational observer is whether the whole truth could be even uglier than the partial picture we have been sickened by since last fall.  If the gun-running scenario is verified, the answer to that question will be yes.  For then we will have a president and secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth finding out that their covert effort to smuggle arms to Muslim rebels has been hijacked by Muslim terrorists, and deciding that protecting themselves from exposure to a major scandal is a more urgent priority than defending the lives of their countrymen.  Those who still have a conscience have been asking how Obama and Clinton could have responded so soullessly, so inhumanely.  This alleged CIA operation may provide the missing piece that solves the puzzle, and in so doing demonstrate the logic of the self-obsessed progressive power monger to a degree that is as clear as it is revolting.

The timing of the attack, and the fact that the attackers had to have known that the ambassador would be in Benghazi that day, would -- especially if one knew that Benghazi was the center of a U.S.-led weapons-running operation -- make a carefully planned assault, rather than random mob violence, the obvious default assumption, even "before all the facts were in."  Their twisted stratagems in the Middle East apparently having been torpedoed by terrorists, Obama and Clinton froze in their tracks -- because they were suddenly faced with the inescapable reality that those tracks could no longer be covered -- and determined that in the name of preserving their own power, the drowning men ought to be left to the sharks.  They chose to allow the lives of their representatives to go to waste, if necessary, rather than draw the spotlight onto themselves by "getting involved."  Time was spent cobbling together a semi-plausible cover story in those hours before Clinton and Obama made their first public statements -- time that might have been spent planning and ordering a rescue effort. 

The decision was not logical; it was the confused calculation of people whose only urgent concern was to avoid getting caught in bright lights that would expose their dirty hands.  They buried their heads under the pillows and tried to wish their exposure away.  They behaved like poorly raised children, prepared to sacrifice anyone or anything to save themselves from punishment.  (Such behavior falls within a consistent pattern for both Clinton and Obama.)  They behaved, in other words, like leading progressives.  And in the aftermath of a disaster they helped to enable, and did not try to mitigate, they have done everything in their power to avoid having the unvarnished facts revealed in a timely fashion, thus spitting on the graves of the men whose deaths might have been avoided in the first place, if only the most powerful man and woman in the world had been in possession of even a fragment of the moral substance with which we have to assume they were born. 

(Simple thought experiment: Imagine yourself in their respective positions, in the late afternoon of September 11, 2012, hearing early reports of an ongoing attack on your diplomats and agents in Libya.  How would you feel?  How often would you demand updates?  Would you order your civilian and military experts to come up with response options immediately?  Or would you go home and effectively take the phone off the hook, or call your fellow bigwigs to "coordinate" and "latch up" the public statements you'll have to give in the morning?)

The decision-making process I have described above is admittedly a speculation based on available evidence.  In defense of this speculation, however, it seems to me to be the most generous light in which we can frame the actions of Obama and Clinton regarding Benghazi.  The truth regarding their motives and responses cannot be any better than this; it may, however, turn out to be worse. 

The question is, will mainstream America ever start to care enough to do something about it?  In this regard, Benghazi is a symbol of the current predicament of Western civilization.  The fact that Obama was re-elected president of the United States while this story was still fresh, and that Clinton is casually presumed to be the presidential frontrunner for 2016, elevates Hannah Arendt's famous concept, the banality of evil, almost to the point of being definitive of this final stage of modernity's decay.  Millions of ordinary people close their eyes and walk "forward" on demand -- without evil intent, perhaps, but without the reason and judgment that men must possess if they are to discern and avoid evil outcomes. 

In such an era, evil outcomes are guaranteed.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/benghazi_and_the_banality_of_evil.html#ixzz2bs1kZUVm

Democrat James Clyburn admits they rigged Obamacare to help in 2014

House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Sunday that Democrats deliberately structured Obamacare to use as an issue in the 2014 election.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” host Candy Crowley noted that many of the law’s more popular items (coverage for pre-existing conditions, for example) kick in in 2014, while the part requiring all employers to provide health insurance, for instance, was delayed until after the 2014 election.

“The fact of the matter is, we will be running on Obamacare in 2014. In fact, we set it up to run on it in 2014,” Clyburn said. “All that you’re talking about right now kicks in as of January 1, 2014. We will start doing the exchanges on October 1, 2013.

http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/08/11/democrat-james-clyburn-admits-they-rigged-obamacare-to-help-in-2014/

Classic Obama charade: Appoint a crony to investigate himself

Big headlines last Friday, as President Obama planned, for his news conference announcement.

He was naming "a high-level group of outside experts" to probe the nation's entire intelligence apparatus for abuses to boost transparency and reassure Americans worried about their civil freedoms in a new era of vast government surveillance technology.

Obama said he himself was absolutely confident no abuses exist. But fears had been stoked by the Snowden leaks and revelations of the immense scope of NSA snooping on civilian society in the name of fighting terrorism.

"It’s not enough for me, as President, to have confidence in these programs," Obama reasonably told a nationwide TV audience. "The American people need to have confidence in them as well."

He's absolutely right. Sounds good too, like Obama's 2008 promise to sign on his first day as president an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within one year? True to his word, less than 24 hours in the Oval Office the Democrat signed that order.

To note that 1,665 days later Guantanamo is still going strong is a racist criticism. So, we'll note instead that just three days after his dramatic news conference anti-surveillance abuse promise last Friday, the administration moved to create the group.

It is a group of "outside experts" if by outside you mean people who have been outdoors at some point in recent weeks.

Here's how Obama's "high-level group of outside experts" will work:

James Clapper, Obama's Director of National Intelligence who integrates and oversees all national intelligence, will run the group examining what all national intelligence does. James Clapper, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, will name the group examining what all national intelligence does.

James Clapper, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, will digest his groups' findings on what national intelligence has been doing under James Clapper and James Clapper will report them to his boss Obama, who's already said publicly there are no abuses.

We're going way out on a mid-summer limb today to predict that Clapper will absolve Clapper and his community of any abuses and Obama will agree. Completely. Probably sometime during the holiday season when, like now, fewer people are paying attention.

Obama will then cite his self-exoneration anytime the subject comes up in the future. Hey, run the same play until they stop it.

It is Obama's classic Chicago Way. Remember just before Obama took office, many published reports that Obama team members had been dealing with now-imprisoned Gov. Rod Blagojevich on naming Obama's Senate replacement?

http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/081313-667306-james-clapper-obama-intelligence-review-probe.htm#ixzz2brMlHnqy

Alaska’s harbor of waste: Federal port project behind schedule, badly over budget

What happens when your project drags on eight years after its deadline and costs nearly five times its original budget? If you’re the Transportation Department's Maritime Administration (MARAD), you get rewarded with more projects.

Federal investigators said Tuesday that they have uncovered evidence of poor planning and oversight in MARAD’s supervision of a modernization project for the Port of Anchorage in Alaska, which was begun in 2003 and supposed to be finished in 2005. But the project is still unfinished and has ballooned in cost from its original $211 million tab to more than $1 billion.

“There have been significant setbacks, including construction problems and schedule delays,” the Transportation Department’s inspector general wrote in a report.

Now, the department’s internal watchdog is worried that similar problems could plague two other MARAD projects: ports in Hawaii and Guam. The Hawaii project was awarded in 2005 as Anchorage was slipping behind schedule and Guam was approved in 2008, long after Alaska’s deadline had passed.

“Until MARAD strengthens its planning, oversight and contracting processes, ongoing and future port projects will continue to be at risk of cost overruns and schedule delays,” the inspector general said.

The problem, investigators say, is that MARAD largely washed its hands of the construction, relying instead on local authorities to complete the work. For instance, MARAD officials at the Anchorage project didn’t have a method to track ongoing work and spending, and were unable to tell investigators just how much money had been given to contractors.

The lead contractor for the project, Integrated Concepts and Research Corp., wound up suing the government for delayed work and shifting contract requirements. MARAD settled the case, costing taxpayers $11.3 million more.

Paul Jaenichen, the acting maritime administrator, agreed with the inspector general’s findings and said there were problems with the port’s modernization. But, he said, the agency is making major changes to make sure such waste doesn’t happen again.

“MARAD no longer operates in this manner,” he wrote in response to the investigative report. “This administration has taken action to increase oversight, assign dedicated project and program staff, and increase its level of engagement with local partners.”

The new Port Infrastructure Development Program will address many of the inspector general’s concerns and provide a robust system for oversight and project management, Mr. Jaenichen said.

A former Navy captain, Mr. Jaenichen is relatively new to the agency, having served as deputy maritime administrator since July 2012 and acting administrator since June.

Investigators agreed that MARAD was starting to change and implementing new practices, but said that until port infrastructure program is in place, the potential for waste remains high.

The inspector general noted that it took the agency seven years to develop a risk-management approach to the Anchorage port, a common business practice to plan for the unforeseen and to mitigate emergencies. Meanwhile, the project in Hawaii, started in 2005, still doesn’t have a risk-management plan.

Other stakeholders that would benefit from the port, such as the state of Alaska, were also expected to pitch in funds for the port, but MARAD officials failed to get written agreements from them, the inspector general said. The stakeholders did pay, but investigators said a lack of written agreements was an unnecessary risk.
Now attention has shifted to whether similar mismanagement will occur at the agency’s other projects in Hawaii and Guam. The $117 port modernization in Guam is considered especially important because of a planned relocation of U.S. Marine Corps forces from Japan to the island territory.

Delegate Madeleine Bordallo, Guam’s nonvoting representative in Congress, said the inspector general’s report raises “significant issues” about MARAD’s infrastructure development programs, but she is glad the agency is working to address the issues.

“I appreciate that MARAD took a cautious approach and has addressed many issues with the infrastructure program as they implemented the Guam Port modernization effort,” she said. “MARAD, working with the Port Authority of Guam and other local leaders, is making significant progress on improving the port to support and sustain economic development and goods during the military build-up.”

MARAD was created in 1950 with a mission “to improve and strengthen the U.S. marine transportation system to meet the economic, environmental and security needs of the Nation,” according to the agency’s website.

The president’s budget proposal for the 2014 fiscal year is requesting $365 million for MARAD. The office also oversaw more than $100 million in Recovery Act funds to help improve the nation’s infrastructure and create jobs. It also receives some money from its fellow federal agencies.

“To date, MARAD has received over $263 million in federal funding for port infrastructure development projects from agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Federal Transit Administration and the Federal Highway Administration,” the inspector general noted.

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/6/alaskas-harbor-of-waste-federal-port-project-behin/?page=1#ixzz2brYyfxhz

Sen. Rubio, ‘You Know Nothing About Our Border’: Arizona Sheriff Hammers Immigration Bill Supporters and Offers Revealing Picture of the Border

 Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels doesn’t mince words. He’s angry that local law enforcement and the citizens who call the Southwest border home have been left out of the decision making process when it comes to security and immigration reform.

Dannels has lived along the border since 1984. He remembers when the dangers from smugglers circumventing the rocky, mountainous terrain were few and far between. Now, he says, a different breed of narcotics traffickers has amassed weapons, technology and small armies of death; threatening not only the stability of Mexico but U.S. national security as well. He works closely with DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement but the system is not perfect.

Sitting at a local eatery under the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains, he questioned how much time, if any, the law makers who drafted SB 774 –  known as the ”Gang of Eight” bill — had actually spent on the border. Dannels, along with residents living on the Southwest border and local senior law enforcement officials told TheBlaze on a recent trip to Arizona that they were left out of the decision making process on border security.  They say the Gang of Eight bill just isn’t good enough when it comes to addressing the complex security issues they deal with every day.

“Look at (Sen. Marco) Rubio out of Florida — have you been down here, Rubio?” he said, noting that drug cartels had just replaced a radio relay station on the mountain that the sheriff’s team had taken down less than three weeks earlier.

The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug organizations, uses the ”receiver/transmitter to extend their communication footprint between Mexico and the Huachuca mountains,” a U.S. Intelligence official, familiar with the terrain, told TheBlaze. It’s how they stay ahead of law enforcement and keep track of their contraband, the official added.

Home invasions, burglary, theft, destruction of private property — and a constant fear that it’s only going to get worse — is something Cochise County border residents live with daily.

“I say to myself, ‘Rubio, you’re making decisions for me, for my state, for my county, my city when you haven’t even been here – what an insult,  what do you know about our border?  You know nothing about our border. Yet you’re making those decisions without even speaking to us.’”

Rubio’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The Senate’s Gang of Eight bill, drafted this year by a bipartisan group of well-known lawmakers, was supposed to be the answer to the nation’s 11 million plus illegal immigrants. Or at least that’s what these senators hoped. Instead, it has left many lawmakers, local law enforcement officers and American residents living along the nearly 2,000 mile Southwest border scratching their heads.

A majority of House Republicans say it is nothing more than amnesty for illegal residents, worsens entitlement spending, overrides the more than 4 million people trying to enter the U.S. legally. Critics say the border measures in the bill do not provide any guarantees for the billions of dollars allocated for security and give enormous power to the Department of Homeland Security.

Ranchers and law enforcement agents in Arizona told TheBlaze they don’t trust that anyone in Washington understands how serious the security issues are, especially with the growing power of Mexican drug cartels operating on the border. 

‘It’s very frustrating…we can’t stop the cartels’ 
In 1984, Cochise County had 50 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents working along it’s 83 mile border. Today, it’s increased to 1,300 agents and 200 Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement officers.

The Gang of Eight bill will add 20,000 more Border Patrol agents and an additional 700 miles of border fence.

“The men and women working for the federal government have a very dangerous job out there which I respect,” Dannels said. “They do the best with what they’ve been given…It’s very frustrating. Even with 1500 federal agents and I have only  83 miles of Southwest border – we can ‘t stop the (cartels) the drugs and human trafficking.”

During the 1990s, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol implemented Operation Gatekeeper, whereby agents built a strong three-tier line of defense to stop the flow of contraband and people, in urban Southwest border cities. Dannels said that policy helped the big cities but “sent the bad guys ballooning to use crossings in rural communities like Cochise County.”

He said the Gang of Eight bill doesn’t deal with the real problem. Along with Rubio, the other seven members who drafted the new immigration bill are Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Chuck Schemer (D-N.Y.); Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); Dick Durbin (D-Ill.); Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.); Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

The bill passed 68 to 32 in the Senate with 14 Republicans onboard. It has been rejected by some House Republicans openly and others have avoided it all-together. Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, promised that he would not bring the bill to a vote on the floor because much of his party opposes it.

“You can understand why the citizens of Cochise county are upset, they detoured the drug cartels right into their backyards,” Dannels said.  ”I say it everyday…on the federal side- you created it, you solve it. You need to redefine your plan of the 90s, and don’t put a maintenance key on border security until that’s done and I stand strongly on that.”

Dannels isn’t giving up on the federal government. He and nearly a dozen other border sheriff’s held several conference calls over the past month with Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) regarding different border security legislation he’s drafted. 

‘Border Security is not one size fits all’ 

Late night “cat and mouse” car chases between Dannel’s officers and drug runners have become more common and more dangerous.

His officers don’t need to be left in the dark in Washington as well, he said.

Not all hope is lost.

The border sheriffs say some of their concerns are being addressed in the House bill. It gives local law enforcement a stake in what happens in their communities.

“Border security is not one-size-fits-all and the border sheriffs know perhaps better than anyone the unique challenges in their jurisdictions and what resources are needed to meet those challenges,” McCaul told TheBlaze. “When I met with several border sheriffs this week, the one thing I kept hearing is ‘finally, someone is listening to us.’”

The bipartisan bill, called the Border Security Results Act of 2013, authored by McCaul, and co-authored by Texas Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry Cuellar, and Republicans Ted Poe, Pete Olson, Blake Farenthold and and Kevin Brady makes more sense than the Gang of Eight bill, Dannels said.

It would require state governors to work closely with  Homeland Security officials, assessing the individual needs of the states in regards to security and immigration. It would also require the Government Accountability Office to issue reports on the progress of those measures. 

‘No Faith in the federal government’

John Ladd, a rancher who has a close relationship with Sheriff Dannel’s office, says he doesn’t have time for Washington politics and he has very little faith the federal government.

He’s not alone.

Other ranchers that spoke with TheBlaze on condition of anonymity, out of fear of retaliation from the cartels, said lawmakers use the border issue for their own political purposes but rarely follow through with their promises.

Like many of the residents in the area, Ladd, a third generation Cochise rancher,  lamented the days when drug cartels didn’t threaten his way of life. His ranch runs 10 miles along the south border and to the north it sits on state route 92. Ladd estimates that 32 trucks have illegally crossed from Mexico through his property since January.

He counts the tire tracks. Ladd’s also come face to face with the trucks on his ranch and watched as they made their way to route 92. He says the calls to  federal law enforcement fall on deaf ears and they rarely if ever show up to check out his claims.

“We don’t even know what or who was in those semis that crossed my property,” said Ladd. “Homeland Security is the most inept federal bureaucracy. They lie when they tell the American people the border is more secure today than it ever has been.”

A DHS Official, who works along the Southwest border, said “it’s difficult to do the job you need to do when administration officials tie your hands.”

“It’s a shell game – you think something is happening but it’s all theater,” the official said. “Ladd is speaking for a lot of us.”

Http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/13/sen-rubio-you-know-nothing-about-our-border-arizona-sheriff-hammers-immigration-bill-supporters-and-offers-revealing-picture-of-the-border/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=Share%20Buttons

Bono: “Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid”

Our Research Fellow George Ayittey met the Irish rock star Bono in July 2007 during a TED conference. Professor Ayittey was speaking and in knowing that Bono would be in the audience, he explains that “I made a special effort to rip into the foreign aid establishment. . . . Later, Bono said he liked my speech but did not agree with me that foreign aid is not effective in ending poverty. So I gave him a copy of my book, Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Development.”

 Bono (nee Paul David Hewson) is the lead singer in the rock group U2, one of the most successful rock groups in history. Bono also became a major proponent of greatly expanded U.S. foreign aid and other government programs (including debt cancellation) to alleviate the dire plight in the world of HIV/AIDS, malaria, abject poverty, and other issues.

Bono has further been Co-Founder and Managing Director with the venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, and he may well be the world’s wealthiest musician after his investment in the Facebook IPO, which made over $1.5 billion for the firm.

Bono is also a Christian (see here, here, and here). He is an admirer of the work of C.S. Lewis and used Lewis’s book The Screwtape Letters in a music video for the song “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” the theme song for the film, Batman Forever. More recently, he has indicated in an interview with Jim Daly at Focus on the Family that Lewis might inspire the next U2 album:

Bono: It’s very annoying following this Person of Christ around [chuckling], because He’s very demanding of your life.

Daly: It’s very hard.

Bono: And it’s hopeless … trying to keep up with it.

Daly: In fact, Bono, C. S. Lewis has a great quote which I love: “When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that’s left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.” That is powerful, isn’t it?

Bono: Yeah, it might … that could turn up on the next U2 album, but I won’t give him or you any credit.

Just recently drawing upon his Christian faith (and possibly the economics influence of Professor Ayittey?), in a speech at Georgetown University, Bono altered his economic and political views and declared that only capitalism can end poverty.

“Aid is just a stopgap,” he said. “Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.”

Bono encouraged students to think of what they can do to support those in Africa and other developing nations that are in need of justice and comfort.

He compared the effort to how St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, made his commitment to serve others.

“That’s what I’m hoping happens here at Georgetown with you,” he said. “Because when you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed, you see something that you can’t un-see.”

C.S. Lewis well understood the fallacy and indeed evil of statism in addressing the pains and suffering of our world, and we welcome Bono’s new insights into the matter. And Professor Ayittey’s incisive work can also be found in the Independent Institute book, Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development, edited by Benjamin Powell.

http://blog.independent.org/2013/08/12/bono-capitalism-takes-more-people-out-of-poverty-than-aid/ 

Not for the Children

The education lobby has a history of punishing those who actually help minority students

By Thomas Sowell
Two recent events — one on the east coast and one on the west coast — raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children.

One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19 to begin “an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building.”

The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record of high academic achievements for generations of black students, despite the inadequacies of the building and the inadequacies of the financial support that the school received.

By contrast, today’s Dunbar High School is just another ghetto school with abysmal standards, despite Washington’s record of having some of the country’s highest levels of money spent per pupil — and some of the lowest test-score results.

Housing an educational disaster in an expensive new building is all too typical of what political incentives produce. We pay a lot of lip service to educational excellence. But too many institutions and individuals that have produced good educational results for minority students have not only failed to get support, but have even been undermined.

A recent example on the west coast is a charter-school operation in Oakland called the American Indian Model Schools. The high-school part of this operation has been ranked among the best high schools in the nation. Its students’ test scores rank first in its district and fourth in the state of California.

But the California State Board of Education announced plans to shut down this charter school — immediately. Its students would have had to attend inferior public schools this September, except that a challenge in court stopped this sudden shutdown.

Why such a hurry to take drastic action? Because of a claim of financial improprieties against the charter schools’ founder and former head, Ben Chavis.

Ben Chavis has not been found guilty of anything in a court of law. Nor has he even been brought to trial, though that would seem to be the normal thing to do if the charges were serious. More important, the children have not been accused of anything. Nor is there any reason for urgency in immediately depriving them of an excellent education they are not likely to get in their local public schools.

What Ben Chavis and the American Indian Model Schools are really guilty of is creating academic excellence that shows up the public-school system, both by this school’s achievements and by the methods used to create those achievements, which go against the educational dogmas prevailing in the failing public schools.

If it seems strange that there would be a vendetta against an educator who has defied the education establishment and thereby improved the education of minority students, the fact is that Ben Chavis is only the latest in a long line of educators who have done just that — and aroused animosity, and even vindictiveness, as a result.

Washington’s former public-school head, Michelle Rhee, raised test scores in that city’s school system and was demonized by the education establishment and politicians. She has left.

Years ago, high-school math teacher Jaime Escalante, whose success in teaching Mexican American students was celebrated in the movie Stand and Deliver, was eventually hounded out of Garfield High School in Los Angeles. Yet, while he was there, about one-fourth of all Mexican American students — in the entire country — who passed Advanced Placement Calculus came from that one school.

Marva Collins, who established a very successful private school for black children in Chicago, doing so on a shoestring, was likewise the target of hostility when she was a dedicated teacher in the public schools.

Other examples could be cited of educators who produced outstanding results for minority students — in New York, Houston, and other places — and faced the wrath of the education establishment, which sees schools as places to provide jobs for teachers rather than education for students, and which will not tolerate challenges to its politically correct dogmas.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355616/not-children-thomas-sowell

Who Benefits from the Public Schools?

What if we look at public schools as profit-making ventures?

Public schools in the United States, particularly in “blue” cities like New York and Washington,D.C., seem to be an ongoing slow-motion train wreck. Recently the state of the New York City schools came to the top of the recurring-news pile. While Mayor (for life) Michael Bloomberg pursued his various important concerns, CBS News reported that 80 percent of New York City high school graduates required remedial classes in reading, arithmetic, or both, before they were prepared for classroom work in New York’s own community colleges.

The report was originally headlined “80 percent illiterate” because not being prepared for college work is not the same as being actually illiterate. But then it’s appropriate to point out that the New York City schools have a graduation rate of only around 65 percent, and we can also assume that students applying for admission to the community colleges are to some extent self-selected as well. If only 20 percent of that selected population are prepared for a community college curriculum, what about the others?

The automatic recommendation when school systems are performing badly is higher funding and more teachers, and when you first look at the New York schools, it seems plausible. After all, the schools in NYC have been reduced to holding bake sales to buy school supplies, and asking parents to bring toilet paper to the schools.

But then we look at the actual school budgets. According to an article in the Huffington Post, New York City reports spending about $18,600 per student per year. A Cato Institute study examines the accounting, which understates or eliminates some costs, and arrives at $26,900 per student per year.

Five years ago I wrote a piece for PJM called “A One-Room Schools for the 21st Century.” I also wrote an extended piece on the same topic called “Cosmopolitan One-Room Schools: A Modest Proposal,” which was picked up and circulated widely. (Bootlegged, to be honest. Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and me. Who knew?)

The basic idea was to go back to basics, and examine a modern one-room school in Manhattan commercial office space. Without going through the whole discussion again, we can sketch an income statement for such a school. These income statements assume the reported cost per student (for both reports), and assume office rents of $50 a square foot a year, along with rather lavish technology and supply budgets of $3000 and $1000 per student per year, respectively. These income statements exclude the cost of a teacher, for reasons which will become clear shortly.

Revenues		HuffPo	Cato
Gross revenues		446,400	624,000
Expenses
	Rent @ $50/ft^2	31,250	31,250
	Tech @ $3000/student	72,000	72,000
	Supplies @ $1000/student	24,000	24,000
TOTAL EXPENSES		127,250	127,250
NET INCOME		319,150	496,750

Based on these figures, we now have a net income of $319,150,  or $496,750 per 24-student classroom in midtown New York commercial office space, depending on which figures we use for per-student spending.

We exclude the teacher’s salary because my original article made the assumption that these were essentially entrepreneurial schools: net income became the “wages” of the teacher.

So let’s look a little further. New York teachers’ salaries, according to their website, start out at about $45,000 a year ($52,000 with a master’s degree) and max out at just over $100,000 a year. If we assume that these one-room schools attract the highest-paid teachers, that leaves between approximately $200,000 and $400,000 in net income per classroom per year, or $8,000 to $17,000 dollars per student per year.

Which is to say, the gross profit percentage is near 50 percent.

As an aside, if New York wants to start one of these schools, I’ll volunteer to run it. I’ll throw in an annual two-week summer tour of Europe for all the students and six adults as chaperones. Back of the envelope, that’s about a $30,000 expense, and I get a tour of Europe in the bargain — and still make $350,000 a year!

Cui bono? –Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla

Imagine, if you will, that we were running a for-profit company in the same environment as a public school system: providing an essential service, with a near-total monopoly, in that even potential customers who choose not to buy are still charged full price. It would be massively profitable, until they caught us; the stockholders would make a real killing. Even more so if the quality of the product could be reduced with little impact on revenues.

A for-profit company would also be expected to distribute any profits that aren’t retained to the stockholders. As we know, the New York City schools aren’t awash in excess cash, so like a for-profit company, they must be distributing the profits somehow. If we find out who is getting the profits, we know who the effective stockholders are.

“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” — Attributed to Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers

Okay, I admit it: I’m giving away the punchline. Who benefits? It’s not New York City schoolteachers: remember that a teacher with a 20 student class is still bringing in more that $400,000 in revenue for a nine-month semester, whether they’re paid $45,000 a year or the maximum, and they basically don’t get any more (or any less) based on anything but seniority. Numbers for New York City schools have been hard to find, but in New York state, school spending has increased, teachers’ pay has increased, but non-teaching professionals’ pay has increased faster. In Nassau County, just outside New York City, the first 30 school employees listed on the RocDocs site make more that $250,000 a year, with the highest salary being that of the superintendent, at $567,248.00. (And I’d love to show you actual New York City statistics, but they are hard to find. Curiously so.)

I’ve got one more rule that serves me well. I assume that every human institution optimizes its behavior to maximize rewards, and while money isn’t everything, when you’re looking at reward it’s the way to bet. I think we must conclude that New York schools — and this analysis can be replicated in nearly every big-city school system — are being run to benefit not the teachers and, with 80 percent near-illiteracy rates, not the students. The school systems are a very successful, profit-making institution that distributes their profits to the “stockholders” — the non-teaching professional staff.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/who-benefits-from-the-public-schools/?singlepage=true

Were 5th graders forced to recite “We learn more with common core!” poem?

According to a radio listener in North Carolina, a group of 80 5th grade students were allegedly forced to recite an indoctrination poem that hammered home just how wonderful Common Core really is. “We learn more with Common Core. Text genre, features and theme to explore, we learned more with Common Core.” Unfortunately the earliest test scores coming in are proving the opposite. Glenn had more on radio today in the clip above.

Below is the poem the listener sent in:

WE LEARNED MORE WITH COMMON CORE
Text genre, features & theme to explore
We learned more with common core.
Fractions, decimals, journal prompts galore We learned more with common core.
RUNNER & CUBES are strategies for
Learning more with common core.
Vocab words like (clouds, organs, force), & omnivore We learned more with common core
Economy, government, Revolutionary war
We learned more with common core.
So many new concepts to explore
We learned more with common core.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/08/09/were-5th-graders-forced-to-recite-we-learn-more-with-common-core-poem/

The Confused and Misguided Youth

 Brainwashed, dumbed downed, Led astray, Education, Common Core, Main Stream Media

Dr. Thomas Sowell, Economics professor, economist, writer, and sage, encapsulated brilliantly what ails our youth. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

And the culprits are the American public education, an ever growing lack of religious education, and the indifferent parenting that does not question what children learn or do not learn in school.Young people in any generation tend to be naïve, idealistic, and gullible; it is easy to sell them anything because they confuse feelings with rational thought. They are told so often and so early in life that they are special that they form a distorted view of themselves. 

Undeserved praise is layered at every opportunity, even when Johnny walks across the stage without tripping. We can’t possibly hurt his self-esteem. Competition is evil, it is bourgeois, everybody knows we are “equal,” nobody is special in any way; we are all born with the same IQ, same abilities, mental capacity, intelligence, talent, no genetic irregularities whatsoever. Why even try to learn, compete, be the best that you can be and achieve excellence? Those are capitalist values.

Can we all be Mozarts, Beethovens, Olympic-caliber athletes, Hemingways, Shakespeares, Einsteins? 

Apparently so, if you listen to liberals, we are all equally special, talented, and brilliant. Test scores tell a different story though, particularly the latest test results from New York public schools, among the first to implement the new and feel-good- about- wrong- answers Common Core nationalized education standards. Worse yet, GED, and college entrance exams, SAT and ACT, will be revised in line with Common Core standards.
Terrible public school teachers with personal agendas fail the young minds and society by using their influence and power to inculcate socialism and revisionist history onto the unchartered and unmapped brains of their students. Such teachers diminish and denigrate our common Christian roots while glorifying Islam.  In time, reality strikes young people in aha moments and wakes them up, shocks them, and perhaps transforms some into productive Americans.

The MSM markets socialism “seductively,” cleverly and constantly

The MSM markets socialism “seductively,” cleverly and constantly. President Obama was highly successful in selling socialism to Americans under the guise of “Hope and Change” and the promise of “free stuff”; rent, cars, kitchens (Who can resist Santa Claus?), college degrees, a better future, a better life, things that Americans already had more than anybody else on the planet. It was an empty promise.  While the free stuff came in the form of welfare, he made life much tougher and more expensive for hard-working, tax-paying Americans. He sold socialism as “fairness, social justice, and equality for all.” It was young people who believed this hallow promise and helped him get elected. And now, many are unemployed, blaming everyone else but the obvious, wondering what happened to the guaranteed utopia.

My own former students would arrive late to class, with flushed faces, filled with excitement, barely containing their happiness for having campaigned the entire day for the wonderful black man who will be president, “he is just so cool and fascinating and has a nice family.”  Once elected, they were sure, America would rid itself of racism.” Did it?

Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) is quoted as saying, ““The entire English language was created by slave owners as a means of oppression. You can’t just say that one word is a racist code word or another. The whole language, every single word, letter and apostrophe in it is racist. It’s a fact. If you speak English, you’re a racist.”  It is sad that young people look up to this kind of authority.

If young people had known true history and had learned from it, they would have understood that all socialist paradises around the globe were dismal economic failures and tyrannies that suppressed the human spirit, robbed people of their freedoms, and sent many to early graves for their anti-government beliefs. Under socialism/communism people were equal - equally miserable, equally poor, equally hungry, equally cold, equally mistreated, equally deprived, and equally imprisoned or killed for their thoughts.

Now that the economy is in such dire straits and college graduates unemployment is sky high, is it still Bush’s fault? Young people are living with their parents or moving back in with their parents, default on college loans, postpone marriage, having children, buying a home, buying a car, or living a comfortable American middle class life under capitalism.

Young college graduates have voted for their own demise with the ardor and dedication that only a young person can muster. Nobody is holding Presidents and Congress accountable for the “mess they’ve created.” 

The unemployment, the constant manufactured crises, the wasted bailouts, the manipulation of BLS statistics in order to make the President look good and give Americans a false sense of economic security and reality, the ballooning welfare, food stamps, the massive spending, amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who are taking low paying jobs from Americans, have not convinced the lost generation that their collective future looks bleak and they must change their blind allegiance to politicians’ esoterical rhetoric. 

Lacking a solid economic education, young people are easily sold on the President’s assertion that giving amnesty to 11million illegal aliens would actually boost GDP by trillions of dollars when in reality, illegals, who are already living now in our economy, are and will be a tremendous drag on the economy, receiving more welfare benefits, Social Security, Obamacare subsidies, earned income tax credits, housing allowance, WIC, EBT, and SNAP cards than they pay in taxes. 

Young people believe the President’s claim that amnesty will boost housing, a fallacy that was evident during the mortgage crisis of 2008 when a percentage of bank repossessed homes belonged to illegals who did not qualify for loans but received them anyway thanks to the Community Reinvestment Act.

Young people cheered when NASA’s space shuttle mission was scrapped. The President said that it would be cheaper to buy astronaut seats on Russian space crafts, one trip at a time. The initial quoted price was just tripled. Why wouldn’t it? The Russians have a monopoly now; they can charge anything they want.
Young people have been indoctrinated in schools to glorify other cultures, multiculturalism, and other religions to the detriment of their own “inferior” culture and religion. Yet it is our culture and Christian religion that have created Mozart, classical music, surgery, medicine, technology, space exploration, car industry, oil extraction, and pretty much anything else that brought humanity into the 21st century.  

It is surprising that Sharia Law and Gulen schools are making their way so fast across the United States while the vocal feminists and liberals are so silent. More and more young women and men are buying into the false rhetoric of the “religion of peace,” willingly adopting a 7th century lifestyle and laws that contradict our Constitution and judicial system. Women become instantly half of a person in a court of law and lose their Constitutional rights and freedoms when marrying into such a political and religious theocracy. What will happen to feminism and to the depraved Hollywood lifestyle of” anything goes that feels good” of our western culture once Americans become second class citizen in the dhimmitude of Islam?

The media indoctrinate the young that they should worry that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash following a terrorist attack that kills Americans in the name of Allah. Who can argue with such twisted logic?
Young Californians have become so dumbed down and calloused by our education system that are willingly signing street petitions to kill babies two months after they are born and to kill seniors in order to save money on Obamacare. Their faces do not show an ounce of hesitation or rational thought. It is shocking to witness the absence of humanity and care.

Young people are the easiest swayed in the direction of environmentalism and global warming although science and historical facts suggest strongly that environmentalist predictions of the past were wrong and that climate change alarmists have falsified data in recent years to match their newest claims.

Young people changed into Wall Street Occupiers on a dime without having a solid foundation why they were there and who actually creates wealth and jobs in this country, and without any notion that they were harming the hard-working middle class.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd demanded the investigation of oil companies for obscene profits (incidentally the profit margin is low) yet nobody questioned companies like GE or GM or college endowments worth billions.

Young people turn into destructive flash mobs in malls and convenience stores because they have nothing better to do, are unemployed, have an evil and destructive streak, or are trying to make a misguided statement, prompted by clever Alinskyite street manipulators and community organizers who want to disrupt the economy and overwhelm the system.

Brainwashed youth raise their voices in support of the “poor” who pay no taxes and yet have the gall to claim that the rich, who pay 86% of the taxes, do not pay their “fair share.”

Young people are told at nauseam by the alphabet soup channels that Americans who believe in balancing the budget and following our country’s Constitution are “extremists;” following the legal immigration laws of the land is “racist and bigoted;” questioning the government is outright treasonous.

Do young people question the out-of-control spending that is destroying their future? Do they object to paying the lion’s share of Obamacare costs while Congress gets 75% subsidies for their premiums, illegal aliens get fully subsidized under the undeserved amnesty plan, and Muslims get free healthcare because it is against their religion to pay monthly premiums? The answer is no. They are too preoccupied with the manufactured “war on women,” and their ability to get free contraceptives and abortions. Will they get quality health care once the unaffordable Affordable Care Act is fully implemented? No, but that is thinking too far ahead for most young people.

America’s youth finds no problem with making 4.5 million people who want to become American citizens wait in their countries for 10-19 years, pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, yet does not bat an eye at the idea of letting anyone who crosses our border illegally become American citizens overnight via Congressional amnesty. Poor illegals/undocumented Americans who broke the border laws, they live in the shadows, we cannot allow that to happen, we are compassionate Americans after all.

Young people keep repeating that we are unfair and discriminate against black Americans yet we have Affirmative Action, a black President, a black Attorney General, hundreds of thousands of black people in prominent positions of power, and almost 18% of the federal workforce is black when the black population represents 12% of the U.S. population. 

May I remind the lost generation that life is never fair, nothing is equal, and nothing is free, there is an opportunity cost for everything, somebody else is paying for your free lunch?  Next time you feel the need to march for a liberal cause that you joined for no apparent reason or logic other than that it is “cool” or popular with your age group, put what you are doing in proper perspective, you might burn a bridge behind you which you may have to cross sometime in the future.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57156

  Our Postmodern Angst

In our unheroic age, victimhood has replaced valiant struggle.

By Victor Davis Hanson
In the globally connected and affluent world of the 21st century, we thankfully have evolved a long way from the elemental poverty, hunger, and ethnic, religious, and racial hatred that were mostly the norm of the world until the last century.

Yet who would know of such progress — and the great sacrifices made to achieve it — from the howls of our postmodern oppressed? In fact, the better life has become, the more victimized modern affluent Westerners seem to act.

Over ten women have come forward to charge Bob Filner, the current mayor of San Diego, with harassment — the liberal bookend to the political return in New York of former representative Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner and former governor Eliot “Client #9” Spitzer. Filner did not really deny that he has groped, grabbed, kissed, or verbally harassed lots of females; instead, he checked himself into some sort of sexual-therapy program. In the old days, Filner would have resigned in shame — suffering the stigma accorded a pervert, and terrified that an angry boyfriend or husband might surface to settle up with fisticuffs.

Now, in our more progressive, enlightened days, the mayor need not fear much of anything. His lawyers have suggested that the city of San Diego was at fault because it did not ensure that its hormonally overcharged mayor took his required dose of sexual-harassment training. Ostensibly, Filner was victimized by not having his social meds. Without them, he was soon overwhelmed by animalistic passions and Neanderthal urges. In short, Filner seeks to be as much a victim as the women he offended.

The late-19th-century industrialization that ensured a vastly better American material existence also took a terrible toll on the American landscape. Conservation movements of the mid-20th century struggled with the monumental task of cleaning up a century’s worth of polluted rivers, toxic waste, and dirty air. The battle for a cleaner environment must continue, but given its astounding successes, it now lacks the drama of past existential challenges.

If our grandparents once agitated to ensure that San Francisco Bay would not shrink in half because of landfills, or that there would still be stands of virgin redwoods along the California coast, our generation continues the heroic green struggle by bonding with a three-inch-long bait fish in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The efforts to divert irrigation water for the poor delta smelt not only were based on fuzzy science, but took thousands of acres of prime farmland out of production — and threw thousands of struggling farmworkers out of a job. Giants used to save bald eagles; their progeny stop important projects in order to investigate the livelihood of a local species of rat or toad.

If John Muir and his followers saved Half Dome and El Capitan, his present adherents wish to blow up the dam that created the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, killing a crucial supply of drinking water, hydroelectric power, flood control, and irrigation. For decades, the historic stone bridges over the flood-prone Merced River have enhanced an idyllic Yosemite Valley. Today environmentalists want them destroyed to ensure that the river can occasionally expand into “wetlands.”

Multimillionaire rapper Jay-Z recently warned that class warfare in the streets may be looming, given the growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots. But contemporary Americans are not quite John Steinbeck’s Joads. And Jay-Z is no straitlaced Eugene Debs, the ex–locomotive fireman and socialist firebrand who sought a revolution in the society of early-20th-century America.

Today, obesity, not malnutrition, is America’s epidemic. Our youth’s education is hindered by too many cell phones, not access to too few books. Misogynistic and obscene lyrics may have enriched Jay-Z, but they reflect the sort of values that lead millions to remain in poverty, rather than becoming disciplined cadres organizing for social justice.

Are we to imagine that Jay-Z and Beyoncé, in the manner of their recent promenading among the impoverished of socialist Cuba, will hit the streets to storm the American Bastille — accompanied by their retinue of hairdressers, chauffeurs, investment advisers, and bodyguards?

Much has been written about Rachel Jeantel, routinely described as the prosecution’s “star witness” in the George Zimmerman trial, almost as if she were some sort of new-generation civil-rights icon. Jeantel has been variously praised by liberals for her street smarts, and lamented by conservatives as emblematic of the tragic detours of the Great Society. Both agree that in some sense she is a victim of the social forces that for decades now have been forging an underclass.

Perhaps — but from her testimony and her post-trial interviews for hire, we learned that Ms. Jeantel was confident and savvy about using electronic media while at the same time apparently illiterate, given that she could not read “cursive.” Yet whose fault is it that she preferred to post obscenities rather than scroll over to a book? Jeantel’s worldview appears anti-liberal to the core. She admitted that her original testimony under oath was not fully accurate: Trayvon Martin, we now learn, wanted to “whoop ass” and so threw the first blow against Zimmerman. Yet Jeantel did not say that at the trial; she was quite willing to see the defendant convicted on false testimony.

Jeantel was unapologetic about her use of “retarded” as a putdown, her preposterous homophobic accusations that George Zimmerman could have been some sort of crazed gay rapist, and her casual use of slurs like “bitch,” “nigga,” and “crazy ass cracker.” True, Jeantel is impoverished and no doubt “underserved” by a host of government agencies entrusted with providing support to the less well off. Yet by both past American and present global standards, she is not victimized in the sense of suffering hunger, unaddressed health problems, or lack of access to technology.

In today’s topsy-turvy world, we are to emphasize the untruth that Ms. Jeantel is poor in the Dickensian sense, while ignoring the truth that her matter-of-fact worldview is by contemporary liberal benchmarks homophobic, racist, and misogynistic — and entirely contrary to the race-blind meritocracy that a much poorer, much more heroic generation of civil-rights leaders once sacrificed for.

From 1619 to 1865, African-Americans in a large region of North America were enslaved. For the century following the Civil War, they were deprived in the South of civil rights that were supposed to be accorded citizens of the United States, and elsewhere were often subjected to insidious racism. In the last half-century, a vast private effort has sought to change the American psyche while a vast public one has used government resources to attempt to redress racist legacies. These are elemental issues of good and evil that are at the heart of the human experience and must continue to be addressed — but not in the manner of our era of psychodramatic trivialization.

Recently, ten former contestants on the hit show American Idol sued, alleging that they lost the competition because of the supposedly racist and prejudicial practice of taking competitors’ prior records of arrest into account. That injustice prompted the failed contestants to sue for $25 million in damages — on the grounds that they had been subjected to “cruel and inhuman treatment.”

A prior age sought to ensure civil rights for all; our era assumes that not winning millions from a game show is proof of literal torture — for each “victim” worth $25 million in compensation. But then again, we live in an age when the word “brown bag” is considered racist diction. Miffed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, after his tussle with the Cambridge police, donated his plastic handcuffs to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. Perhaps Gates’s plastic cuffs will be displayed alongside the rusty iron chains of chattel slaves.

Our generation does what it can, but in this time of unbridled wealth and leisure, it can be an unheroic task. The historically ignorant Oprah Winfrey exemplified such psychodrama when she compared Travyon Martin to the lynched and mutilated Emmett Till — and by extension George Zimmerman to the acquitted racist murderers of Till. Oprah must have thought that false simile up while jetting back to her Montecito estate.

Since Barack Obama took office in 2009, 15 million Americans have been added to the food-stamp rolls — on top of the over 14 million who were added during President Bush’s eight years in office. Recipients now include almost one in six Americans. Yet apparently to suggest that this vast increase in subsidies is a result of vast relaxation in standards, or that the increase does not mean that another 15 million Americans were suddenly in elemental need, is, in the words of former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, tantamount to “taking food out of the mouths of babies.”

We are all worried about the diet of those on government assistance, but in my community the dangers to youth are the results not of an absence of calories, but rather of the uneconomical and habitual consumption of fast-food meals, sugar-laden soft drinks, and processed desserts, coupled with a lack of exercise — and the commensurate epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and kidney ailments that threatens to institutionalize poor health and ensure abbreviated lives. If nearly 50 million people on food stamps in a society suffering record levels of obesity is supposed to indicate too little rather than too much government help, why not ensure that 70 or 80 or 100 million have similar access to assistance?

Our entire society is experiencing the sort of cultural devolution associated with the further decline from modernism to postmodernism. If a skilled modern artist like Picasso became famous by ignoring canons of classical representation, then postmodern hack successors were left with nothing much to rebel against, and so gave us crucifixes in urine bottles and excrement thrown onto pictures of Christ. If brilliant moderns like T. S. Eliot often abandoned strict rules of metrics, rhyme, and poetic diction that they had themselves mastered, postmodern mediocrities who could not distinguish an hexameter from a metaphor write out banal phrases, randomly slice and dice the lines, and call it poetry.

In the same way, our modern social critics suffer and agonize when the war to save redwoods becomes a battle over the possible decline of a bait fish, and iron chains hang next to plastic handcuffs.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355622/our-postmodern-angst-victor-davis-hanson

11 Liberal Rules for Racism in America

When America was a racist country, Democrats were primarily the ones engaged in racism. However, now that racism has been largely relegated to the fringes of American society (the KKK, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, La Raza, MEChA, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, American Nazi Party, etc.), the Democrats are constantly wagging their fingers about it. Of course naturally, given the racist history of the Democrat Party, liberals have managed to rig the rules in order to benefit themselves and hurt their political opponents. That's a pretty neat albeit despicable trick that they've managed to pull off.


1) Liberals aren't held to the same rules as Republicans: When liberals say racist things, it's just excused out of hand as if it's no big deal. If Dick Cheney had said, "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man" instead of Joe Biden, you'd read about it every time he criticized Barack Obama. When Christopher Dodd said, “I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation,” it was shrugged off. On the other hand, Trent Lott ended up resigning from the GOP leadership for making very similar comments about Strom Thurmond. 

2) Minority racism must be ignored:According to Rasmussen polling, "Thirty-seven percent (37%) of American Adults think most black Americans are racist, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 15% consider most white Americans racist, while 18% say the same of most Hispanic Americans." This isn't coming out of the ether. Black Americans voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton because he was black. If George Zimmerman had been black and Trayvon Martin had been Hispanic, most black Americans would have been indifferent to the case or would have supported Zimmerman. This is one of the great ironies of the liberal obsession with racism. While they can turn practically anything into evidence of Republican racism, the most grotesque examples of racism from minorities are just shrugged off. 

3) You pay no penalty for falsely accusing people of racism: False accusations of racism can do just as much damage as actual racism. People can be ostracized for it, lose endorsement deals or even lose their jobs over being falsely accused of racism. Yet, the only reason you've heard of people like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Touré, and Melissa Harris-Perry is because they're willing to accuse people of being racists on the flimsiest of pretexts. It's tempting to compare these race-hustling poverty pimps to the KKK, but the more appropriate analogy is the Spanish Inquisition. The attitude is, "So what if we unjustly accuse a lot of people as long as we get a few heretics in the process?" 

4) Outrage matters more than facts: It doesn't matter what Bush actually did in New Orleans or that the local government failed the people of the city; it matters how people FEEL about it. It doesn't matter that Democrats have run Detroit since 1962; it matters that people FEEL Republicans are responsible. It doesn't matter that Trayvon Martin wasn't really a twelve year old kid and that he was slamming George Zimmerman's head into the pavement; it matters that Zimmerman's acquittal FEELS symbolic of law-abiding black Americans being profiled because so many other black Americans are criminals. Once an accusation of racism is made, facts are treated as if they're of secondary importance to FEELINGS. 

5) It's okay to discriminate against white Americans: It's unbelievable that in 2013, we still have race-based discrimination in America and liberals are perfectly fine with it. The rationale for what should be an incredible violation of the equal protection clause in the Constitution? It's that whites are doing better than blacks are as a group. That's probably a cold comfort to the son of a white single mother making minimum wage whose son loses out to one of Obama's daughters because he happened to be Caucasian. 

6) It's always the fifties and sixties: Comparing the United States of 2013, when we have a black President of the United States to a time when black Americans couldn't drink from the same water fountains as whites is so ridiculous that to do so should practically be considered a sign of mental illness. Yet, it happens all the time and it's not immediately met with laughter and eye rolls. It should be. The reason that it happens is because it benefits liberals politically to pretend that racism is still everywhere. After all, what else does the Democrat Party have to offer minorities in America other than protection from mostly non-existent racism? Crime-ridden neighborhoods? Joblessness? Poverty? Fighting mostly non-existent racism the Democrat Party can handle just fine, but actually helping people improve their lives is apparently way too tough to manage. 

7) Past evidence must be ignored: Ironically, saying you have "black friends" is now considered to be something that a racist would say. That says much more about the sort of witch hunt allegations of racism have become in this country than the people who say it. Judge Charles Pickering put his life on the line to prosecute the Grand Dragon of the KKK in Mississippi in the early sixties; yet liberals falsely branded him a racist to stop his nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. George Zimmerman tutored black children and fought to get justice for a black homeless man beaten by police and even voted for Obama, but he was still falsely portrayed as a racist. This can happen only because determining if someone is a racist has become a political tool that is completely disconnected from whether the person in question actually dislikes people because of the color of their skin. 

8) Republicans secretly want to do things Democrats used to do: Conservative, moderate, and liberal Democrats were behind slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the Tuskegee Experiment, lynchings and every other racist horror inflicted on black Americans in this country. Republicans stood against the Democrats while they were doing all of those terrible things and while we congratulate them on now agreeing with us that they were wrong, it's disgusting to try to blame Democrat sins on the Republican Party. God willing, a hundred years from now Democrats will be wagging their fingers about the horrors of murdering children via abortion and claiming Republicans secretly want to abort children. If so, it would be the same sort of step forward we've seen from the Democrats on racism. 

9) Minorities shouldn't be held to the same standards as whites:Walter Williams once said, "During the first Reagan administration, I participated in a number of press conferences on either a book or article I’d written or as a panelist in a discussion of White House public policy. On occasion, when the question-and-answer session began, I’d tell the press, 'You can treat me like a white person. Ask hard, penetrating questions.' The remark often brought uncomfortable laughter, but I was dead serious. If there is one general characteristic of white liberals, it’s their condescending and demeaning attitude toward blacks." The soft bigotry of low expectations that liberals bring to the table encourages mediocrity, undercuts excellence and generally helps to hold minorities in America back. 

10) When a white non-liberal disagrees with a liberal minority, it's probably because of racism: Republicans absolutely detested Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; so what kind of moron would assume that their intense dislike of Barack Obama must be driven by race? Tea Partiers love black conservatives that agree with them, like Herman Cain and Allen West; so could there be a reason that they detest Barack Obama other than race? Do we really need the Scooby Gang to figure out why a group that's all about small government, low taxes, and cutting spending would dislike a socialist who's all about big government, higher taxes and increasing spending?'

11) Only liberals get to decide what's racist: We've set up a system where the world's most easily offended people get to decide what's offensive and what's not and coincidentally, crying "racism" often helps them fund raise or hurts their political opponents. It's like starting up the Salem Witch Trials again and then giving Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP $10,000 every time they find a "witch" to burn. If we did that, what do you think the chances are they'd be finding witches EVERYWHERE? EXACTLY. 

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/08/13/11-liberal-rules-for-racism-in-america-n1662791/page/full

 PK'S NOTE: In the beginning it's a little dry, but Conservatives, we need to read this and start strategizing. We can't take any more Liberals/Progressives in power. 

Electoral Discrepancies

There is a frustrating disconnect between different facets of American public opinion and voting behavior: the inconsistency between public opinion about a wide range of topics and Americans' identification with the two major political parties and especially their voting behavior in presidential elections. (I don't focus on off-year elections, since their electorates -- roughly 20 percentage points smaller than in presidential contests -- don't always act on the same kinds of stimuli.) 

Polls indicate that public opinion leans to the right on many issues. 

When pollsters tap party allegiance, however, Democrats outnumber Republicans. A late July poll for the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, for example, found that 48% of the public identified with or leaned to the Democrats, 37% identified with or leaned to the GOP, and the remainder were Independents or did not answer. 

This is important, because party identification is the most important determinant of how most people vote in presidential elections. 

It is not surprising, then, that Democrats fared better at the polls in 2012 than Republicans did. Not only did Barack Obama win 50.8% of the popular vote for president, but Democrats picked up two Senate seats. 

The GOP retained a majority in the House of Representatives, but they lost seats and garnered only 48% of the popular vote. Rasmussen polls show that, when "likely voters" are asked to choose between hypothetical Democrat and Republican House candidates, the former almost always narrowly win. Moreover, polls indicate that, if the 2016 election were held today, Hillary Clinton will probably be the Democrat nominee, and she could be the next president.

We need to understand why this discrepancy is happening if we are to end it.

Let us consider polls showing that, over a wide range of issues, public opinion leans to the right. 

I focus first on the public's views of the economy, since economic issues are allegedly upper-most in people's minds when they vote. 

Public opinion analysts focus on one indicator of public opinion about the U.S. economy over several decades: the Gallup "Economic Confidence Index" (ECI), which is built from how people rate economic conditions in the country and whether they believe the nation's economy is getting better or worse. The ECI ranges from +100 to -100, with negative scores indicating lack of public confidence in the nation's economy.

The latest Gallup poll tapping the ECI (August 6, 2013), has a value of -12. Gallup polls during July have witnessed the lowest level of public confidence in the U.S. economy since early April. (Rasmussen daily polls show essentially the same thing.) Indeed, every poll tapping the ECI in 2013 has had a negative value. The lowest score was -22 in early March; the highest was -3 in early June. The average for the year has been -12.

At that, economic confidence in 2013 has been higher than it was in 2011 and 2012.
So what? At least since Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy in 1957 students of American elections have believed that a lack of public confidence in the economy boded ill for an incumbent president seeking re-election. (Think Jimmy Carter [1980] and George H. W. Bush [1992].) 

That is why Mitt Romney and his advisors confidently approached the 2012 election; they were allegedly shocked by its outcome. Jerome Corsi's What Went Wrong analyzes the GOP's "debacle" last year, and suggests how it can be avoided. 

Corsi believes that a combination of superior technical know-how plus Democrats' advantage over the GOP in identity politics enabled Obama to win. A hostile mainstream media (MSM), which amplified the Obamians' negative campaign, and Romney's inability to connect with potential GOP voters, were also important.

Nonetheless, many facets of public opinion should have favored Republicans.

Polls from several polling organizations, utilizing different questions, lead to the same conclusion: whether the topic be government regulation of business, Obamacare, government spending and the national debt, the welfare state, government control of Americans' daily lives, or trust in the federal government, larger percentages of the public express "conservative" opinions.

A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in late September, 2012, for example, asked respondents, "[i]f you had to choose, would you rather have a smaller government providing fewer services or a bigger government providing more services." Fifty-one percent of the respondents opted for a smaller government while 40% chose a bigger government, and the rest said "it depends" or did not answer. 

Finally, polls routinely show that the percentage of the public saying their political views are conservative is larger than the proportion claiming to be liberal. Six Pew Research Center polls in 2013, for instance, found that an average of 38% of the public said their political views were "very conservative" or "conservative," 21% said their opinions were "very liberal" or "liberal," 37% indicated they were moderates, and the rest had no opinion.
So why don't these political dispositions which seem to favor the GOP pay off at the polls? At least three reasons appear to be responsible for recent Democrat successes in presidential elections. 

First, forget any hope that Americans' seeming preference for conservatism has palpable political consequences. Most Americans don't know what "liberalism" and "conservatism" mean, and less than 10% of the citizenry assess presidential candidates and political parties in ideological terms.

Second, recall that party affiliation is the strongest single determinant of how most people vote in presidential elections. The balance of partisanship has generally favored the Democrats since the 1930s.

Corsi highlights the third reason: Democrats are willing to do anything, including lying, to minimize their political weaknesses, and they "change the subject" to focus attention on GOP weaknesses. They are aided by a pliant MSM. 

As examples, think of how the Obamians touted Republicans' "war on women" in 2012, and how, in the second presidential debate, Candy Crowley badly distorted Obama's comments about Benghazi. (Why Romney let her get away with it is another matter.)

No simplistic strategy will usher in a "brave new world" of electoral politics. Moreover, space limitations preclude detailed recommendations. Still, a few points should be made.

First, end "Me-Too" Republican presidential nominees who are retreads from previous campaigns. They have too much baggage.

Second, learn from the other guy's successes. Study how the Obamians' campaign methods worked, and adopt those Corsi describes. Yesterday's campaign methods aren't sufficient any longer. What this will likely mean, for future presidential nominees is finding "young guns" and giving them leeway to do their thing.

Third, from the campaign's first day, be aggressive. Identify Democrats' weaknesses, and keep focused on them. Stop worrying when left-wingers and their MSM mouthpieces scream "mean-spirited partisanship!" When they drag out that old saw, ridicule them. (They should be reminded of what Harry Truman said about heat in the kitchen.)

Fourth, when the Democrats resort to old playbook tactics, such as class warfare and/or wails about "wars on women," etc., call 'em on it. (Cockroaches eschew daylight, and so do leftists.)

Others have good ideas. I look forward to reading them. Distill the good ones into a new GOP playbook.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/electoral_disceprancies.html#ixzz2brzTk98A