Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Blog Comment Quote of the Day
Obama: "So, my fellow (occupy wall street) Americans: 'Ask what other taxpayers can do for you, and not what you can do for your country" - MayaAyala
Political Potpourri
- SE Cupp, "Herman Cain Is Not a Victim": Thumbs UP! In my view, Herman Cain's candidacy died, not because of the troubling womanizing allegations, but in a fateful interview when he had a brain freeze in formulating a stand on the Obama Administration's foreign policy on Libya. To some extent, one might be willing to give Cain benefit of a doubt for forgetting details of encounters a dozen years ago, but Cain was a Presidential candidate at the time of the Libyan uprising this past spring. I do understand any candidate would be wary of gotcha or ambush interviews, but I do expect a candidate to have a basic framework of international relations and be able to coherently discuss well-covered stories, like the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. This weekend's decision to suspend his campaign was anticlimactic; the fickle non-Romney conservative voters had already swung towards Gingrich. My personal opinion is that Herman Cain lost a lot of credibility by playing the victim card; Cain certainly knew about sex scandals in politics and had to realize that past allegations, regardless of merit, could surface. This was a risk he took in mounting a national campaign. (I should note that SE Cupp mentions the allegations but really doesn't take a position other than to subordinate their importance in terms of the more salient issues of due preparation for the White House, but these allegations are important to social conservatives.) The time for Cain to worry about the revelation of these complaints and the effect on his family (and supporters) was before he decided to run for President.
- Weird Rasmussen Polls. I think the recent Rasmussen poll showing Gingrich with a breakaway plurality lead, 38% to Romney's second-place 17% is highly questionable. I do agree that Gingrich had been steadily surging in the polls in an improbable McCain-like fashion, but it reminds me of that preposterous poll that showed then Congressman Mike Castle getting no more than 5% of the vote in the general election after Christine O'Donnell narrowly upset him in last year's Delaware GOP US Senate primary. Already Gingrich has been caught suggesting the inevitability of his nomination. It does seem that Romney has lost a little ground; the only interim event I can think of is his testy exchange with FNC news anchor Bret Baier. I'm not happy with how the Romney campaign is being run, but I think that the nomination of Gingrich is potentially catastrophic, given Gingrich's long-term issues with independents and moderates. So here's some unsolicited campaign advice: (1) Gingrich is a career politician; Romney needs to borrow a page from Obama's 2008 campaign and run against Washington DC with a clear change message; (2) Romney needs to have an alliance with the social conservatives, particularly calling to attention Gingrich's multiple marriages and House ethics rebuke; in particular, an endorsement from a strong social conservative like Mike Huckabee; (3) Romney should make more of an attempt to connect with the Tea Party: the Gingrich who consulted/lobbied for Freddie Mac, infamously posed with Nancy Pelosi in a TV spot, and threw Paul Ryan's budget plan under the bus by referencing "extreme right wing engineering" is fundamentally at odds with the Tea Party; (4) Romney needs to simplify his message, show more of that feisty nature we've occasionally seen on the campaign trail, and show more of what GHW Bush called that "vision thing". Romney should contrast a vision based on an unapologetic, strong America based on traditional values, individual virtue and self-reliance against Obama's elitist, technocratic, unaccountable, spendthrift, unsustainable, divisive, class warfare America.
Any regular reader of this blog knows that the TSA has been a frequent target of my criticism. The vast number of American travelers do not fall within any reasonable risk profile. I've pointed out that a a majority of test audits show failure to diagnose violations. I've often talked about young children and 80-year-old great-grandmothers being unnecessarily examined.
In this case, we have a 4'11" 85-year-old grandmother from New York whom begged off the full-body scan image for fears of interfering with her medical device. She found herself, instead of being patted down, subjected to a humiliating strip search; she claimed that that a walker incident during the process banged against her leg causing a bloody wound. TSA, as usual, was in a state of denial and disputed aspects of the woman's story.
Why am I singling out the TSA? It is probably the prototypical example of Big Government run amok. We have seen a vast government bureaucracy developed over the past decade with unaccountable rules and regulations, with effectively every traveler assumed a possible terrorist unless screened otherwise.
Coburn (R-OK), "Subsidies of the Rich and Famous": Thumbs UP!
Apparently there is such a thing as a "free lunch". Consider the following quote from Senator Coburn's report:
“Everybody can have a free lunch,” explains Howard Leikert, supervisor of school nutrition programs for the Michigan Department of Education, where a new federal program is providing all students, regardless of their families’ incomes, free school meals in select areas.Coburn knows, of course, that federally sponsored "free lunch" programs are NOT free. He is pointing out something I've been pointing out for some time in this blog: scope creep of eligibility. I think that's a form of Democratic poison pill strategy, figuring once middle-income families are addicted to federal boondoggles, the Republicans can't touch it. We do not help the legitimate poor beneficiaries of a social net program by creating an unsustainable general admission government program.
Coburn notes that the problem goes beyond scope creep to the middle class:
These billions of dollars for millionaires include $74 million of unemployment checks, $316 million in farm subsidies, $89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion of retirement checks, $75.6 million in residential energy tax credits, and $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. All and all, over $9.5 billion in government benefits have been paid to millionaires since 2003. Millionaires also borrowed $16 million in government backed education loans to attend college. On average, each year, this report found that millionaires enjoy benefits from tax giveaways and federal grant programs totaling $30 billion. As a result, almost 1,500 millionaires paid no federal income tax in 2009.Coburn has noticed that large landowners in New Jersey include famous rock starts (Bon Jovi and Springsteen) whom have received lucrative farm subsidies and/or paid nominal property taxes on huge holdings. It's bad enough that the federal government perverts the free market system with protectionist subsidies: why are the rich and famous getting their "fair share"?
Musical Interlude: Nostalgic/Instrumental Christmas
Gene Autry, "Up on the House/Roof Top". I haven't heard this song since elementary school... There's an interesting twist here, because it appears the song lyrics alternately phrase "house top" with "roof top". I learned "roof top", but Autry sings "house top".
