This article was first published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, December 20th, 2013:
In his press release announcing the publication of his annual “Wastebook” summarizing 100 examples of egregious, wasteful, and outrageous government spending, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn tried to make himself appear “holier than thou” by
At the swearing-in ceremony at the White House on Thursday of Todd Jones as the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), President Obama’s point man on gun control, Vice President Joe Biden, announced that the ATF was issuing new rules concerning the re-importation of US military surplus weapons. Where such importation was previously allowed only with government approval, now all requests for such importation will be
Following the ghastly chemical attacks on civilians in the Ghouta region just east of Damascus early in the morning of Wednesday, August 21st, preparations for intervention by the US military have begun, urged on by predictable war hawks in Congress and the media.
Estimates of casualties from Doctors without Borders to the Free Syria Army (FSA) range from a few hundred to
Within days of Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama each strongly suggesting that “stand your ground” laws now enacted in more than 25 states be reconsidered, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain reiterated those same suggestions almost verbatim.
First, on Sunday McCain
This article first appeared at McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 19th, 2013:
After months of stalling and threats of a filibuster against Obama’s radical nominees to various agency posts, Senate Republicans have given up and are letting President Obama nominate the devil himself, if he chooses.
In a surprisingly underreported event, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won a major victory in the Senate by threatening to
Most obituaries about Hasting’s untimely death in a high-speed fiery single-car crash at 4:30AM on Tuesday morning in Los Angeles dwelled on his primary and most visible contribution to investigative journalism, his authorship of The Runaway General in Rolling Stone magazine which led almost immediately to the
In Gabrielle Giffords’ editorial in the New York Times on Wednesday about the failure of Senators to pass the so-called Toomey-Manchin compromise amendment that doomed Senate Bill 649, she expressed her frustration through vituperation without understanding why the amendment, and consequently the bill, failed to pass the Senate on Wednesday. She wrote:
With Senate Bill 649 likely to be the last chance Senate Majority Leader Harry will have to pass gun control legislation in this session, West Virginia Democrat John Manchin has been working hard to bring the National Rifle Association (NRA) into the discussion on how to
The one-two punch of separate pushbacks against any gun control legislation that involves a national database of gun owners has stalled in the Senate, perhaps permanently. First, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn told Fox News on Sunday that any legislation that includes a national registry will kill it. He said that there
Jim Inhofe, United States Senator photo portrait. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
With the so-called “defection” of four Senators and a House member from Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge“, it’s nice to see someone standing against the grain, and keeping his pledge: Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe. In an interview with Newsmax TV, he said:
I have not [conceded]. I made it very clear that I was not conceding at all. So long as we look weak on that, then they’ve won the battle.
We have to understand that our problem is spending too much, not taxing too little. Most of the people understand that. All of the Republicans did understand that [at one time], so I’m a little disappointed in some of the actions of my fellow Republicans.
That’s directed at Senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Bob Corker and Saxby Chambliss who have bailed on their pledge and now want to put higher taxes “on the negotiating table” with Obama, thus giving away their
U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, of Georgia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A defection on Thursday from Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” by Saxby Chambliss, the senior Republican Senator from Georgia, triggered similar defections over the weekend. It also triggered a strong response from Norquist.
Said Chambliss: “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old-pledge. If we do it his way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”
The pledge that Chambliss is breaking states:
One, [I will] oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
Two, [I will] oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.
This reflects the philosophy of Norquist and the organization he founded in 1985, Americans for Tax Reform, that “opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle.” Norquist explained why the pledge was
Honest Abe (Photo credit: jeff_golden)
In a public display of candor that illustrates their moral incapacity, some well-known Republicans are now breaking their promise made to taxpayers when they signed Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
First was Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. According to Wikipedia, Chambliss is a “conservative,” having been blessed by the Washington Post as one of the “gang of six” trying to craft some kind of way around the fiscal cliff impasse. When in doubt, I check the man’s Freedom Index rating (FI) to see how closely their actual voting record hews to the limits of the Constitution. With Chambliss, it appears to be: not very often, with a paltry rating of just 69. Translation, one-third of his votes are unconstitutional.
Next on the list of pledge-breakers is Lindsey Graham, senior Senator from South Carolina. His FI rating is scarcely better than Chambliss’, at 73. Then comes John McCain, senior Senator from Arizona, the ultimate establishment conservative, with a FI rating of 78. Finally, House member Peter King, from the 3rd Congressional District of New York, with a FI rating of a dismal 62. That’s awfully close to a
Obama and Romney wanted poster, Brooklyn, New York, USA (Photo credit: gruntzooki)
John Hawkins describes himself as a “professional blogger” which must mean that he gets paid for expressing his opinions. And his thoughts on the polls are interesting:
Which polls do you believe? Although there’s no way to be sure yet, I believe Gallup and Rasmussen. Not only do I think Mitt is going to win Ohio, I think he’s going to win by a large enough margin that Ohio doesn’t matter. Here’s why I say that:
- The Anecdotal Evidence: In 2008, Barack Obama was a challenger with no record, up against a non-incumbent. The Republican incumbent who was in office had an approval rating of 25% and a massive financial crash at the very end of his second term. Meanwhile, Obama had a 3-to-1 spending advantage, was drawing massive crowds, and was generating tremendous excitement while a lot of Republicans chose to stay home rather than vote for John McCain.
- Early Voting: In 2008, Barack Obama crushed John McCain in the early voting by a 55-40 margin. This was something his campaign was counting on doing again. Instead, both Pew and Gallup are finding that Mitt Romney is winning early voting by a 7 point margin. In state after state, like Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the evidence suggests that Obama’s numbers are way down. This is very significant because Republicans tend to outperform Democrats on Election Day. So, without that edge in the lead up to November 6, Democrats usually lose.
- The Flow of the Blow: At the end of the campaign, you’re starting to see Romney campaign in states that were considered givens for Obama a few months ago. Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20), and Wisconsin (10) are all in play and arguably, even Minnesota (10) and Oregon (7) aren’t out of reach for Romney if he were to make some big ad buys. Obama is now in the same situation McCain was in back in 2008 when he was desperately playing defense in states like North Carolina and Indiana that are generally considered to be gimmie states for Republicans.
- Independent Voters: Since Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly vote for their own side, Independents are obviously very important. In 2008, Barack Obama had an 8 point edge over John McCain with Independent voters. This time around, polls show that Mitt Romney has a big edge with Independents. Although the numbers vary from poll-to-poll, almost all of them have Romney winning Independents by somewhere between 7-20 points. Just to give you an idea of how significant that is, the last candidate to win Independents by double digits was George H.W. Bush, who won Indies by 10 en route to a 426-111 electoral victory. Romney isn’t capable of winning by that kind of margin, but if he takes Independents by 10 points or more, as a practical matter, it would be almost impossible for him to lose.
I just wish I could get more excited about Tuesday’s election. My problem is: I know too much. Back when I was a uninformed voter, I registered myself as a Republican. Now, however, no matter who wins on Tuesday, we lose.
Many years ago my dad asked me why I left the life insurance profession – the profession that helped him to become one of the top life insurance salesmen in the country – and I had to answer: I didn’t leave the insurance business. The insurance business left me. It had so drastically changed that I could no longer in good conscience ask my customers to buy what they were selling.
That’s how I feel about the Republican Party. After Tuesday, I’ll probably change my party affiliation to Independent.
Barack Obama (Photo credit: jamesomalley)
This is a brutal yet accurate assessment of what happened at the debate: Obama was out of answers.
This was the first debate in which Obama has had a record to defend. In 2000, he ran for Congress in a primary race against [communist Black Panther] Bobby Rush and attacked the incumbent. In 2004, he ran successfully for the U.S. Senate, offering all sorts of promises — but never ran for re-election on their fulfillment.
In 2008, a blank-slate Obama ran for president and won by lumping in challenger John McCain with unpopular incumbent president George W. Bush — while offering [communist slogans] like “hope and change” and “yes, we can!”
Victor Davis Hanson is right on the button. When confronted with irrefutable facts, Obama folds like a cheap suit:
(Photo credit: stevegarfield)
Rasmussen just posted its latest poll based on a three-day rolling average. It shows Romney ahead of Obama by 2 percentage points:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 49 percent of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns the vote from 47 percent. Two percent (2 percent) prefer some other candidate, and two percent (2 percent) are undecided.
The results are based upon nightly interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, Sunday’s update was the first based entirely upon interviews conducted after the first presidential debate last Wednesday night.
I have seen persuasive evidence that Rasmussen gets closer to
Obama vs. Romney 2012 (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)
A study by two University of Colorado professors released last month predicts that President Obama will win just 218 Electoral College votes in November, far short of the 270 that he needs for reelection. Said political science professor Kenneth Bickers: “Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble.”
Co-author Michael Berry added,
For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner.
The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.
The model looks at a number of elements, the most important of which are unemployment numbers and personal disposable income. According to the authors, voters hold Democrats more responsible for high unemployment rates while they hold Republicans more responsible for lower spendable incomes. Specifically, said Berry:
The apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate [while] holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent …
The incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama … is not great enough to offset [the] high rates of unemployment …
Their analysis also looks at each individual state and arrives at another conclusion which impacts the Electoral College vote: Obama will lose almost all of the “swing” states, including
There are 366 major metropolitan areas in the United States, and a comprehensive new study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks them on the basis of generosity—the percentage of income the median household in each city gives to charity. According to the Chronicle, the most generous city in America is Provo, Utah, where residents typically give away 13.9 percent of their discretionary income.
Boston, by contrast, ranks No. 358: In New England‘s leading city, the median household donates just 2.9 percent of its income to charity.
Beggar (Photo credit: alexstaubo)
I’ve thought about this. I’ve just thought it was hypocrisy on the part of liberals. They want to be generous, but with other peoples’ money, not their own.
The data from the Chronicle of Philanthropy simply confirms what other studies over the years have shown: “Americans who lean to the left politically tend to be much less charitable than those who tilt rightward.”
Jacoby notes a study going back as far as 1996 when it was learned that conservatives give away four times as much to charity as do liberals. “Liberal generosity” is an oxymoron.
It appears to be cultural:
The Chronicle’s new study, which is based on IRS records from 2008 (the most recent available), accounts for regional differences in the cost of living. It calculates charitable giving only from discretionary income—the dollars left over after paying for taxes, housing, and food.
But the economic differences are not nearly as significant as cultural differences. In parts of the country where conservative values dominate, charity tends to be high. Where liberalism holds sway, charity falls. “Red states are more generous than blue states,” the Chronicle concludes. The eight states that ranked the highest in charitable giving all voted for John McCain in 2008. The seven lowest-ranking states supported Barack Obama.
What is Jacoby’s conclusion: it’s the liberal philosophy that it’s the government’s job to be charitable and so they don’t have to be: “Where people are encouraged to think that solving society’s ills is primarily a job for government, charity tends to evaporate.”
Does that mean that if you’re a liberal, you’re also selfish? Just asking.
Last week, conservative political commentator and the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008 Wayne Allyn Root reiterated his prediction from last December: Republican front-runner Mitt Romney will beat incumbent Barack Obama in a landslide in November.
Before hosting his own radio show, W.A.R: The Wayne Allyn Root Show in New York City, Root was a professional sports handicapper in Las Vegas. Root says he is “a well-known Vegas odds maker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races.” But neither Romney nor Obama is his favorite. Said Root:
Neither Obama nor Romney are my horses in this race. I believe both Republicans and Democrats have destroyed the U.S. economy and [have] brought us to the edge of economic disaster….
But as an odds maker with a pretty remarkable record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them.
Root predicted back in December that Romney, behind in most polls at the time, would win the Republican nomination in Tampa in August. He also predicted then that Romney would beat Obama in November and has found no good reason since then to change his mind: “Today I am even more convinced of
Despite an increasingly noisy chorus of resistance to many of its provisions, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House, 248-168, on April 26. Passage in the House was assured with more than 70 percent of those supported by the Tea Party voting for it. It moved to an uncertain future in the Senate.
That opposition noted that the bill’s many flaws included precious little “protection” for rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, especially those guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In the zeal to “protect” the country against “cybersecurity threats,” Internet providers and other communications companies would be allowed to share their customers’ private information with agencies of the federal government, and vice versa. As Techdirt’s Leigh Breadon explained,
[The] government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime.”
Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all.
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said virtually the same thing in his opposition to CISPA:
CISPA permits both the federal government and private companies to view your private online communications without judicial oversight [as required by the Fourth Amendment] provided that they do so of course in the name of cybersecurity.
The bill is another heavy-handed effort to expand government’s surveillance of private citizens’ communications without restraint. By using words such as “may” instead of “must” and “cybersecurity” without defining the term, the bill creates just the sort of opening through the Fourth Amendment that has, until now, largely
Eric Fehrnstrom joined Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2002 when he was running for governor of Massachusetts. Today he is not only the most experienced member of Romney’s current staff, he is also the one closest to the candidate.
Fehrnstrom is usually referred to as a “Romney spokesman” or “strategist” while Romney himself refers to him as his “communications director,” but those close to the campaign call him Romney’s “consigliere”—an intimate counselor or advisor—whose job is not only to give advice and counsel to his patron, but to shield him from attacks and present him as something different than what he is: a mild-mannered patient man with little experience or interest in street fighting. That’s where Fehrnstrom comes in.
Before getting the call from Romney in 2002 Fehrnstrom was a reporter working the police beat for the yellow journal paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Boston Herald. When he showed some talent for going for the jugular in local politics, he moved into political reporting where, as his mentor at the paper Howie Car put it: “The Herald was like the schoolyard bully. We were all about finding people and kicking them when they were down. And then we’d laugh about it.”
Ben Coes, Romney’s campaign manager in 2002 said:
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