Sleepless in Midland

Barack Obama, wow, isn't he great? -- Tips for addressing your IRS auditor

With so many people and entities being audited these days one needs to remember that there's more to it than simply documenting income and expenses. There's a political element. The hearing this past week in which Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller got grilled by Congress about how the IRS targeted Obama's political opponents in order to help with the re-election drove that home. But the IRS is still standing, and they’re doing business as usual.

So if you get audited, herewith are some things you might think about saying to endear you to your auditor:

That Barack Obama, wow, isn't he great?

Did you see Michelle's outfit? She certainly does have good taste!

I wonder which of the two Obama children will be President first.

I'll be glad when Obamacare gets fully implemented so that responsible people like you can take over our medical information.

Historians will say Barack Obama is the greatest president ever!

I didn't like Obama at first, but after hearing him speak, I saw the light.

He sure showed that bin Laden, huh?

When Hillary takes office she'll be the greatest president ever! Aw, silly me, ha ha! She'll be the 2nd greatest president ever!

Just tying to be helpful.

How do you distract low information from all the scandals? Hey look, new apps to help with boycotts!

Punish conservatives, baby!  New apps to help you boycott Koch brothers, boycott Monsanto!

Why aren't there more conspiracy theories about Benghazi?

"Conspiracy theory" is an overused phrase favored by lefties when they try to disparage the opposition. (Alinski's Rule #5). A cursory search with the words Benghazi, conspiracy and theory give us nothing but lefties proclaiming that everything out of sync with the party line about Benghazi is a conspiracy theory. Here's an example from Chuck Todd:

“For this conspiracy theory that some people believe is out there — that the White House was trying to downplay a terrorist attack because of the election — then they did a really poor job of it.” he said. “Because within three or *four days, it was pretty clear to the entire world this was a terrorist attack from a group that had some sort of extremist Al Qaeda ties.”

Well, if it was so clear then one has to wonder why the administration and its media lackeys kept up the charade for so long. The hearing last week in which Gregory Hicks and others gave some very compelling testimony about what happened in Benghazi was sobering. And the testimony should have opened the eyes of everyone who isn't a committed member of the Barack Obama fan club. But now the club members are in defense mode trying to discredit Darrel Issa.

That aside, the unanswered question now is why President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been so insistent on their version of events in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. If they can't fess up then maybe they are even more narcissist than we thought. On the other hand, maybe there's something even bigger that they're trying to cover up. What could that be? Maybe they were water boarding Al Qaeda prisoners from Guantanamo or Coptic Christians from Egypt in that facility in Benghazi or something so embarrassing and hypocritical that even the lowest of the low information voters would eventually learn about it.

We need a conspiracy theory now more than ever.

*[Fact check: Susan Rice's infamous five show lie fest took place five days after the attack.]

What difference does it make, Hillary?

The testimony at the Benghazi hearings is jaw dropping. It's looking more and more like Hillary Clinton and President Obama dropped the ball big time.

But the way the main stream media have treated the whole scandal drives home the theory that if President Richard Nixon had been a Democrat then the public would have never heard about Watergate.

So Hillary asks "What difference does it make?" The answer depends on whether there was a Republican or a Democrat in charge. Since the Democrats were in charge, it makes no difference.

Lyle Rossiter on the liberal mind

We don't hear much these days about how conservatives are mentally disturbed or perhaps just dumb. That line of assault seems to have dissipated somewhat, perhaps because the target has shifted to fiscal conservatism as an ideology.

Nevertheless, turnabout is fair play, and it's refreshing to read an interview with Lyle Rossiter on the liberal mind. He's the clinical and forensic psychiatrist who wrote "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." The interview can be read at Part 1 and Part 2, and it's worth reading if you're frustrated with the path down which Democrats have taken the country and perhaps questioning why so many people find that desirable.

Liberals might find his words offensive, but sometimes the truth hurts. Here are some excerpts. To explain the appeal of liberalism, he says:

The left trades on a villain/victim/hero paradigm, on envy, on injustice collecting, on indulgence of primitive appetites for dependency and revenge, and on childlike longings to be excused from personal responsibility. The left appeals to the needy and potentially spoiled child in all of us, but not to the potentially competent adult in all of us.

The left thus incentivizes all of the wrong goals for a successful society, such as self-indulgence and moral and financial irresponsibility, and fails to incentivize the autonomy, initiative, industry, integrity and mutuality essential to a good life.

As for the root cause, he says this:

Yes, the radical liberal is an angry, envious, needy and spiteful person who acts out his neurosis in the theaters of global politics. He has these problems because he was deprived, neglected or abused as a child, or in some cases indoctrinated by collectivist parents or caretakers, a form of abuse in itself.

The radical liberal rejects freedom because lack of control over others frightens him.

Oh man, that rings so true. I've often speculated in private that many of today's liberals are lashing out at the people they see as the extended versions of the kids in school who out scored them, bullied them, or who otherwise enjoyed more of the social rewards that that our future liberal did not have the skills to get.

Thwarting online radicalization

The United States should do more to stem the radicalization that seems to be happening via the internet. That's according to the Bipartisan Policy Center which published an article titled In Wake of Bombings, Strategy to Counter Online Radicalization in the Spotlight. They wisely counsel against restricting freedom of speech or removing content. But instead they say the extremists online communications should be exploited for intelligence purposes, all within the letter of the law, of course.

Here's an excerpt:

Government should accelerate the establishment of informal partnerships to assist large Internet companies in understanding national security threats as well as trends and patterns in terrorist communications so companies become more conscious of emerging threats, key individuals and organizations, and find it easier to align their takedown efforts with national security priorities.

One is tempted to ask, isn't this being done already?

If there's a lesson we've learned from the Presidential election of 2012 it's that when the brightest psychologists, technology experts and data analysts in the country are in the tank for a candidate, and they apply those skills to all the data available about each individual internet user, they can manipulate the minds of the masses to get a person elected President.

The challenge for us is to get those wizards as motivated about protecting Americans as they were about winning the election.

The scariest article I've read so far this week -- yes it's about Obama

[Actually, it was last week, but the Boston bombings bumped this story into this week.]

It was written by Wayne Allyn Root and can be found at Redstate.com and Humanevents.com.  Here's the first paragraph:

President Obama and I were college classmate at Columbia University, class of ’83. I know all too well how mindlessly liberal the students and faculty of that institution can be, and Barack Obama is certainly no exception. My time at Columbia made it crystal clear: liberals always believe they are morally superior. While they publicly state that their mission is to save the world from prejudice, patriotism, racism, greed, and inequality, they are, in fact, hostile and resentful towards anyone who has achieved self-made success through American values. It is in this cesspool of intolerance that Obama and his Marxist cronies hatched a secret plan to destroy our country. ...

Root says there are two things we need to know about Obama and his days at Columbia. The first was that Obama and Root had the same major, yet remarkably, Root never met nor heard of Obama while they were both there. He continues with this:

But, it’s the second thing you really need to know about Obama at Columbia. He says he graduated Class of ’83. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Well then Obama had to attend the same Political Science classes as me and I can tell you, almost to a man, my classmates in the Class of ’83 proudly called themselves Marxist, communist or socialist. They bragged of being radical like a badge of honor. They openly hated America- calling it racist. They hated capitalism- and vowed to bring “the system down.”

He goes on to tell how his classmates cheered when news broke that President Reagan had been shot because they thought he had been assassinated. And he described a program crafted by "two former Columbia professors named Cloward & Piven to bring down “the system,” destroy capitalism, and turn America into a socialist state." And this:

Lo and behold, one of my classmates was elected as President and it’s clear as a bell that he is using that plan to destroy America, capitalism, and the U.S. economy right in front of our eyes. It’s the exact plan hatched at Columbia University in our college days. Exact in every way.

What's really frightening is that on two separate occasions American voters put him in the White House.

National Volunteer Week

This is National Volunteer Week to honor all those people who donate their time to help advance some worthwhile effort. Hats off to everyone who pulls together to get something done. The bystanders' response at the recent Boston bombings gives us a good example of what can be done. And those people deserve all the accolades they get.

President Obama has gotten in on the act by issuing a Proclamation declaring April 21 through April 27, 2013, as National Volunteer Week. His edict:

I call upon all Americans to observe this week by volunteering in service projects across our country and pledging to make service a part of their daily lives.

Workers of the world unite! And work for free!

With high levels of unemployment that's one way to get people back to work.

Rand Paul told a good story at Howard University - spoiler alert - it has a surprise ending

The percentage of qualified voters in the audience who voted for Obama last November was probably higher than 93%, the percent of African American votes Obama got overall. So when Rand Paul addressed them on April 10, 2013, they listened politely.

They sat mostly silent as he tried to open with a little humor. But the more he talked, the more of an impact he had. The speech along with the Q&As can be found at this C-Span link. It's worth a listen.

But if you only have a few minutes to spare, skip to the 17:45 mark and listen to the story he told. Partial transcript by me:

Republicans are often miscast as uncaring and condemning kids who make bad choices. I for one plan to change that. We're working with Democratic Senators to make sure that kids who have made bad decisions, such as non-violent possession of drugs are not imprisoned for lengthy sentences. I'm working to see that first time offenders are put into counseling and not imprisoned with hardened criminals. We should not take away anyone's future over one mistake.

Let me tell you the story of two young men. Both of them made mistakes. Both of them were said to have used illegal drugs. One of them was white from a privileged background. He had important friends, an important father and an important grandfather. You know, the kind of family universities name dorms after. This family had more money than you could count. Drugs or no drugs, his family could buy justice if he needed it.

The other man also used illegal drugs, but he was of mixed race and from a single parent household. With little money. He didn't have important friends or a wealthy father.

Now you may think I'm gonna tell you a story about racism in American with the rich white kid gets off and the black kid goes to jail. It could be, and often is. But that's not this story. In this story both young men were extraordinarily lucky. Both young men were not caught using illegal drugs, and they weren't imprisoned. Instead they went on to become presidents of the United States.

Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky.

A story with a surprise ending. That got a big laugh. More:

We should not have laws that ruin the lives of young men and women who have committed no violence. That's why I've introduced a bill to repeal mandatory minimum sentences.

That got applause.

He went on to explain that the history of African American repression, like Jim Crow laws, arose from government sanctioned racism. He reiterated that big oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom and encouraged the audience members to embrace the Republican message.

Maybe some of them will. Click here to watch/listen to the whole thing.

Will Hillary go for the low information voter?

Most of us were shocked and awed by reports that President Obama won last November because of a concentration on getting the uninformed voter's vote. One would think that would be a tiny bit embarrassing, but he didn't seem to have any shame about it, though.

But what about some of the high-brow Dems? Don't they feel a little queasy about relying on the dumb guy vote?

This is from The Onion, but there could be some truth to it: I'm Weighing Whether Or Not I Want To Go Through The Hell Of Appealing To You Idiotic, Uninformed Oafs, by Hillary Clinton. Excerpt:

Because when it comes right down to it, I have two choices: Either I spend the next three years of my life investing an enormous amount of time and energy into appealing to the lowest common denominator, or I preserve my dignity, move on with my life, and continue serving the public without completely degrading myself day in and day out for millions of ignorant slobs.

Meanwhile, in an effort to help the low information voter whose shelves are no doubt lined with participation trophies, Sleepless in Midland would like to alert them to a club for those who are too dumb for the smart-people clubs. It's notMensa. Take the test to see if you qualify. Good luck.

Hats off to Steve Pearce - NM Dist 2 Representative

Representative Pearce has gotten a lot of attention due to his being a Republican elected as U.S. Representative in a blue state, New Mexico, in a district that's only 34% Republican. While some look to him as a guide for other Republicans, he's more pragmatic.

He was on C-Span's Washington Journal last month, and he presented himself very well. Click to watch it. He's an old white guy, which according to lefty commentary is a turn-off unless he happened to be a Democrat. But he's smart and well spoken. And he has that rare talent of being able to articulate a complex topic in a way that anyone can understand.

So he's a good spokesperson for fiscally conservative ideas. As for the proposition that Republicans need to woe Hispanics, he explained that he got reelected by doing old fashioned campaigning, talking to folks, finding areas of agreement, and driving 100,000 miles a year to cover his district.

Immigration was on the minds of several of the Washington Journal callers. The "pathway to citizenship" that some are suggesting for illegal immigrants is an insult to those who came legally, he says. However, the path to immigration shouldn't be so difficult. If someone wants to come here to work, that's understable.  Let them come work. After all, there's a shortage of workers in parts of New Mexico.

But citizenship is another matter all together. A secure border is the key. The reason people are frustrated is because the government has not done anything to make the system work in an orderly way. The government says the border is secure. But people along the border say otherwise. Rep. Pearce has a simple test for it: The price of illegal drugs. If the prices skyrocket, then that's good evidence the borders are secure. Illegal drug prices have been stable for a long time, so one has to be suspicious of the government reports that the border is secure.

The real issues though, are the debt and deficit. These are areas where Democrats and Republicans shouldn't have that much difference. Rep. Pearce told a caller that printing money to solve the deficit just isn't working. See Argentina and Cyprus, for example.

The residents in his district should be proud to have a representative like Steve Pearce. Makes a Texan want to move there.

Public policy poll and the lizard people

This poll got the attention of Daily Caller because of the response to the question about lizard people, i.e., 4% believe that "shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies."

Well, that's strange enough, but the results of question numbers 21 and 22 when looked at together are just as bizarre:

Q21 In the last presidential election, did you vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
50% Barack Obama
44% Mitt Romney
6% Someone else/Don't remember

Half of the responders voted for Obama. OK. But then there's this:

Q22 Would you describe yourself as very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, or very conservative?
11% Very liberal
16% Somewhat liberal
31% Moderate
23% Somewhat conservative
19% Very conservative

Half of all the responders voted for Obama, the most liberal president since Franklin Roosevelt. Yet only 27% claimed to be liberal. It just adds to the theory that the election was won with the votes of an uninformed electorate.

As for the lizards, everybody knows all they do is sell car insurance on TV.

Links: Public Policy Polling article and poll results.

Newspaper keeps incumbents coming back

The morning paper contained an editorial today criticizing efforts to bring term limits to state offices. See it on the right.

The paper is always carrying puff pieces about elected politicians. For example, just other day there was a front page article about a city councilman's business activities in another city. My favorite was a article last year in which the U.S. Representative held forth about a local accident involving a train and a parade float. Was that necessary?  See it on the left.

Although those articles don't supply readers with much real news, they do serve at least three other purposes. They keeps the politician’s name recognition at a high level, a service not provided for challengers. It keeps the politician happy with the newspaper coverage so he might be available someday for a real story. And it provides something to fill the space between newspaper advertisements. The newspaper and the politicians keep each other happy. And the result is that it's almost impossible for a challenger to defeat an incumbent.

But then why does the newspaper editorial come out against term limits? They are already doing their part in keeping incumbents in office. To criticize term limits seems like over kill.

It might be the same insecurity gun owners feel about efforts to register guns or ban shooting accessories. It's just the first step. It's the camel's nose under the tent. Let one get through, then they're on to the next target. Likewise, the tea party supporters wanted term limits on politicians. So if they get that, then they'll just move on to their next objective. Before you know it, the newspaper people will have to suck up to a whole new set of politicians, some of whom might have gotten elected in spite of, not because of, the press coverage.

Hey, I criticize the old rag, but I love it just the same. It really is the best place to get local news. It's like an old relative. We can love her and disagree with her at the same time.

It's OK for them to oppose term limits if they want. But it would be nice if they threw a bone to the taxpayers every once in a while. For example, wouldn't it be remarkable if they came out in favor of a law prohibiting the naming of taxpayer built structures or roads after career politicians? That would be a blow for press freedom.

The political power of disgust

This explains so much. In The Gun Debate Is a Culture Debate Trevor Burrus explains that the anti-gun groups are powered more by emotional disgust than by common sense.

Excerpt:

One cultural tradition believes government is a necessary evil, best kept small, contained, and subordinate to the people.

The other tradition views government as a force for good that can often do better with fewer restraints.

One tradition views private gun ownership as important for resisting tyranny; the other views guns as, at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, something we should discard to become a fully civilized society. ...

Gun disgust is also one of the primary reasons gun-control advocates promote laws that have little to no effect on reducing gun violence. On many questions, the debate over the effects of gun-control laws on crime is surprisingly uncontroversial.

But it's very difficult to acquiesce to views of people one holds in disgust.  This explains so much. Republicans, libertarians, and fiscal conservatives in general have felt the power of this disgust for quite some time. Too bad so many Democrats lack the ability to tolerate opposing ideas.

Conforming to please the majority - psychological test

We've all seen the optical illusion with two lines where we're asked which is longer. It's been around so long most of us have seen it numerous times before.  Here it is again:

The two lines are the same length, but many people get it wrong the first time.

The article titled Are These Lines The Same Height? Your Answer Depends On Where You're From contains an interesting excerpt from a book by Adam Alter titled Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave.  Via Presurfer

Apparently, individuals in some African bush tribes aren't fooled by the illusion. Scientists explain that it's because their environment doesn't have many straight lines or right angles, so they aren't conditioned to put things into the same perspective as someone accustomed to the architecture prevalent in Westerner countries.

While that one is interesting, the next one is a knock out. Which of the three lines in the box below is the same length as the line in the target box?

If you said line "C," you're right. However, this experiment was staged in a room in which all but one individual had been previously instructed to pick one of the wrong lines. The test was to see if the individual would go along with the crowd or stick to his guns.

Everyone reading this post would probably have stuck to his/her guns. However, rather amazingly, 30% of Americans who took this test gave up on the right answer and went along with the others. Excerpt:

Across hundreds of trials, Asch found that roughly 30 percent of all American participants conformed, responding with the same manifestly incorrect “Line B” response that the others in the room delivered, one after another. This result is powerful because it shows that although Americans generally place a premium on the individualistic values of uniqueness and self-reliance, they still succumb to the pressures of social influence.

There's a good lesson there. Politicians instinctively know this group-think phenomenon and use it quite successfully. For example, most of us know that getting into debt over our heads is a bad thing. However, there are otherwise smart people who say that a nation can take on as much debt as it wants because the nation can print money. That's wrong, and most people know it. However, if enough people conform to this group-think then we're headed for trouble.

The one redeeming aspect of the results of that experiment is that at least Americans didn't seek conformity to as great an extent as people living in collectivist societies.

A city of two tales -- socially conservative, fiscally liberal

The city of Midland, Texas, is unique. It's a city out in the middle of nowhere and somewhat like the rural community it once was.  But it's also a lot like the larger urban cities.

Around 75% of voters vote for Republicans in national elections, however the city government elected officials don't have to declare a party. And what we've ended up with is a progressive local government. Add in the socially conservative constituency, and we have a unique home brew of fiscal liberals and social conservatives.

How could that happen?

In The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic, Emily Badger speculates that urban dwellers are fiscal liberals because residents being stacked on top of one another makes them appreciate money being spent on the common good. Maybe.

In Midland's case it's a matter of spend-it-while-ya-got-it. With unemployment low, incomes high, and housing in short supply, residents are complacent about the rising taxes. And they seem to be looking to government for relief from the housing shortage. Elected officials are eager to comply, especially those seeking reelection or a higher office. Mix in the intoxicating effect of coffers overflowing with ad valorem, sales and motel tax revenue. The only problem they contemplate is how to spend it all before the good times end.

So we see news reports about how the city is going to buy the old county courthouse and the land it sits on and give it to a developer to build a sky scraper. It looked good to the council on paper, and the city has cash burning a hole in its pocket. So they splurge. It's all for the common good, you see.

It's too bad there's no politician on the local political horizon who wants to give the money back to the people from whom it was taken.

It takes a war threat to get Dems on board with missile defense

Seems like every time the subject of missile defense came up during a Republican administration Democrats criticized it to no end.

It started during the Reagan administration – critics called it “Star Wars” as a way to ridicule it as far out science fiction. And its mere presence, they speculated, might spark a preemptive attack from the USSR before their nuclear warheads became useless.

Democrats were against a device that could actually save lives. And Barack Obama was one of them.

It was always so much easier for them to take pot shots at Republicans when they were out of power. But that's changed. And sometimes something can be so obvious that it pierces through ideology. And recent acts and words from North Korea caused a like a light to go off in Obama's head as he now seems to think missile defense isn't such a bad idea after all.

Better late than never.

The also-rans in the presidential election of 2012

I was glancing over the FEC's reported election results for the 2012 presidential election and noted some the things that have been reported already, such as the facts that Obama got fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008, Romney got more voted in 2012 than McCain got in 2008, and that overall there were fewer votes cast in 2012 than in 2008. See the tables for 2008 here and for 2012 here.

But note all the also-rans in the 2012 election. There were a total of 29 candidates including Obama, Romney, and “None of These Candidates.” The biggest winners among the also-rans were these:

Stewart Alexander, Socialist Party, who got 43,011 votes;
Roseanne Barr, Peace and Freedom Party, who got 67,278 votes;
Virgil H. Goode, Jr., Constitution Party and Independent, who got 122,001 votes;
Jill Stein, various Green Parties, who got 469,501 votes; and
Gary Johnson, Libertarian, who got 1,275,804 votes (0.99%%).

Clearly Gary Johnson was the winning loser. And while “None of These Candidates” got 5,770 votes, a vote for any of the also-rans was a wasted vote with the only hope being that it would send a message. In that regard it was impressive that over a million voters wanted a libertarian for president. Of the two front runners, Romney would have been closer to libertarianism than Obama, but even with Johnson's votes Romney still would have lost.

Then there's Rossanne Barr with over 67 thousand votes. Wow! If she had that many viewers she might still be on TV.

Dianne Feinstein has a hissy fit

At a televised Senate conference Ted Cruz asks Dianne Feinstein a question with which he sought to get an answer to whether she would apply the restrictions she wished to apply to the 2nd amendment to the 1st or 4th as well. Watch it here.

Whoa, hold on. A junior Senator asking the esteemed Senator Feinstein a question she can't answer? She got huffy and exclaimed, “I'm not a 6th grader,” in the tone of the celebrity's “Do you know who I am???” It was reminiscent of Barbara Boxer's, “Don't call me Ma’am” moment.

Feinstein went on to describe her qualifications in terms of the years spent as a politician.  But she didn't answer the Cruz's question. A smarter aid whispered into her ear, and she came back with a remark that yes indeed there were restrictions on the 1st amendment, and those were in the form of prohibitions against child porn.

So in effect she was equating gun ownership with kiddie porn production. And if there is ever a need for an example of how liberals use gun control to claim cultural superiority, there it is.

Hat tip to GF for the youtube link and Instapundit for the AEI link.

Mike Conaway redefines town hall meeting

What is a town hall meeting?

The morning paper had this front page headline: "TOWN HALL MEETING Conaway Discusses Sequestration, Immigration."

One might think that if a town hall meeting deserved a front page headline the newspaper would have published an announcement about it prior to that meeting. I looked through the papers from the past two days (Sunday and Monday), and couldn't find anything. If there was an announcement it must have been in the classifieds hiding between the found terrier and the lost retriever.

Representative Mike Conaway has held real town hall meetings in the past, but he found out that many of his constituents were not too pleased with the Republican spending programs he championed. So at some point his town hall meetings became private meetings called "town hall meetings." Newspaper Newspeak.

Meanwhile, here's the definition of a town hall meeting from Wikipedia:

A town hall meeting is an American term given to an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings of New England. Everybody in a town community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the responses from public figures and (if applicable) elected officials about shared subjects of interest. Attendees rarely vote on an issue or propose an alternative to a situation. It is not used outside of this secular context.

So who do we blame for this distortion of the old phrase, Mr. Conaway or the newspaper? Maybe the Urban Dictionary folks can come up with a new definition that somehow correlates these private meetings with town hall meeting.

Mike Conaway – a masterful politician

We really have to admire the guy's political skills. He's the U.S. Representative of Texas District 11 who gets reelected easily each time.  Though to be fair, we must acknowledge the strong wind at his back from all the glowing publicity he gets locally.

Let's look at those political skills in action. Our own morning paper touts his ranking as the fifth most conservative representative in 2012.

Note that four others tied him for that fifth place spot and two tied for 10th place. So that gave us a total of 11 Representatives in the top 10. One thing all 11 have in common is that they all voted "no" on 1/1/13 fiscal cliff deal.

Here's where the mastery came in. He voted "no," but one of his pet projects, the farm bill, was renewed in the fiscal cliff deal. He was quoted in the newspaper after that vote as saying he's glad they extended the farm bill. Well he should. Had it not been renewed, consumers would have had to swallow a poison pill, or as theatlantic.com calls it the dairy cliff. That would occur if the farm bill didn't get renewed because decades old law would force the government to buy large quantities of dairy products and other food staples at prices fixed to an outdated index which would cause some food prices to skyrocket.

Mr. Conaway must have known that the fiscal cliff bill would pass without his vote. So he basically got a free ride, and his ranking a "conservative" remains intact. Masterful.

Too bad Congress doesn't repeal those old laws. But then farm bill proponents wouldn't be able to hold it like a knife to our necks each time the farm bill comes up for renewal.

It's hard to gross out a libertarian

That's the title to a article at Ricochet by Judith Levy about the Reason.com video of Jonathan Haidt at Youtube of the same name. (Any of those links will get you to the video.)

Basically, Haidt makes a connection between general cultural attitudes -- liberal, conservative and libertarian -- with one's level of disgust. The mouth was the first and most important portal, and we developed a disgust to things that would make us ill. Extrapolating this concept he sees different levels of disgust toward cultural issues, gay marriage, for example. So the hypothesis is that conservatives have more sensitivity to things that disgust them whereas libertarians have the least.

But that's too simplistic for such a complex idea. Go watch the 35 minute video and see for yourself.

His audience was mostly libertarian, and while they gave him positive feedback, he did challenge them with some interesting hypothetical situations. After describing the situation, he asked the audience whether they were (A) totally OK with it, (B) morally ambivalent, or (C) thought it was morally wrong. Here were the scenarios:

First: Birth control that prevents conception.
Second: Chemical abortion one week after conception.
Third: Abortion at six months after conception assuming the fetus feels no pain.
Fourth: A rich man would like to have sex with young girls, but he would never want to cause any harm. So he purchases human eggs and has a lab fertilize them with his own sperm for a female fetus. He pays a woman to be the surrogate mother. At five months gestation he pays a surgeon to sever the fetus' brain stem so that it will never have any cognition. The result would be a living female body with no feeling or awareness. Then at around age 13 he begins having sex with it.

I think he found a way to gross out libertarians.

The Democrats' advantage over all opponents in the Big Data arena

Shortly after the 2012 election we began hearing the boasting from the individuals involved in the DNC's Big Data system about how they won the election for President Obama. And they were probably right. The accumulation of all the available information about citizens at this point in our technological advancement is immense. And the techno whizzes working for Mr. Obama probably got everything they could get their hands on.

The question then was what to do with that information. Enter the psychologists who, applying what they know about why people do what they do, figured out how to get people to vote a certain way. Put someone in charge who believes that the end justifies the means, and they won.

Republican politicians could never get away with that. And until Democrat voters begin to see through the manipulations, then Republicans will be at a disadvantage. The only way my feeble mind can see a Republican get elected as President would be for some cult like figure to come along, survive the Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, msm gauntlet, and dazzle the public. That's a tall order.

This post was inspired by Michael Turk's pessimistic piece The One Scary Thing About the GOP’s Tech Deficiency. The problem he sees is the lack of access to academia. Excerpt:

When behavioral psychologists, behavioral economists, and behavioral political theorists unite to identify ways of shaping behavior, you start to see possibilities the best propaganda machines in history could not have imagined. ...

Our challenge is not in data or technologists. Our challenge is competing in the realm of academic investigation and the brainpower represented by professors with tenure who do nothing but come up with ideas to explore. Now they have access to a free, unrestricted laboratory to test their theories, and a party willing to foot the bill. It is a perfect storm from which the GOP may truly be unable to escape.

The other problem is putting aside ones' outdated scruples and adopting the notion that the end justifies the means.

A winning strategy for Republicans in 2016 - free weed

A friend made a casual remark that may contain the seeds of a Republican presidential victory in 2016. The remark was that Gary Johnson got elected as Republican governor of New Mexico because he favored legalizing marijuana. He may be onto something.

Think about it. As long as an Obama like Democrat can make promises he won't keep and yet count on low information voters to sweep him into office like he did in 2012, then Republicans can't win. So Republicans have to beat Democrats at their own game. And a promise to legalize marijuana will capture the low information voters' attention like nothing else would. Add to that a promise to give a free marijuana joint to each voter, and the Republicans would be unstoppable.

The beauty of this is that legalizing marijuana could have a positive effect. It not only would be a revenue source, but it would hit the cartels harder than the war on drugs could ever do. Reduce the deficit and reduce crime. It's win win.

Assuming a 25 pack of legal marijuana cigarettes would cost $7, about the same as a pack of cigarettes, a single joint of marijuana would cost about 28 cents. Multiply .28 times the number of votes counted in the 2012 election, 130 million, and we get a cost of $36.4 million. Given that Romney/Ryan spent $483 million in their losing campaign, that's not an extraordinary expense.

Better get moving, Republicans. Once Democrats get wind of this idea they'll snap it up like a free Obama phone.

Whigs and Republicans

There's a split in the Republican party between the status quo big government faction and the deficit reduction small government faction. Plenty of observers have written about it, but here's a very interesting article at Spectator.org titled Karl Rove and the Cotton Conservatives in which Jeffrey Lord makes a comparison with today's Republican party and the Whigs of the mid 19th century.

The Whig party partisans were split between the pro-slavery (Cotton Whigs) and anti-slavery factions (Conscience Whigs). Mr. Lord compares the current split within the Republican party with the Whig party of back then with the big-government faction equivalent to the pro-slavery Whigs and the faction wanting small government and reduced debt and deficit equivalent to the anti-slavery Whigs. Excerpt:

In short order, with Conscience Whigs and Free Soilers and others streaming into a brand new anti-slavery party called the Republicans, Cotton Whigs chose at last to formally join up with pro-slavery Democrats, revealing their true ideological beliefs. At that point the Whig Party simply imploded. It collapsed and died.

To use the now familiar phrase, the Whigs went the way of the Whigs.

That's when the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was elected.

The title, Karl Rove and the Cotton Conservatives ties all this in with Karl Rove's announcement of a new fund raising group called “Conservative Victory Project” which is ostensibly an effort to get conservative elected but which Mr. Lord and others cited by him see as an effort to preserve the status quo and marginalize the small government Republicans.

Mr. Lord notes that the big political issue in the 19th century was slavery, while a big political issue of the 20th century was the cold war. Both of those issues were resolved by Conscience Conservatives, and now the big political issue is the size of the government which includes the debt and deficit.

Whether or not the pro-slavery comparison with establishment Republicans is fair, it's going to be up to the small government Republicans to solve the current problem.

Joe Biden demonstrates he too can shoot at skeet

President Obama authorized the release of a photo of him shooting a shotgun to back up a claim that he shoots skeet all the time.

Not to be outdone, Joe Biden released a photo of his own effort to shoot a skeet.

Norman Lear tries to equate Wayne LaPierre with Archie Bunker

All in the Family was a sitcom from decades ago featuring a lovable curmudgeon at odds with his hipster daughter and son-in-law. Norman Lear gave us a TV show to serve as a primer on political correctness, and Archie Bunker was presented as a caricature so as not to leave any question about which side was the correct side.

These days Lear is pulling out scene from the show in an effort to ridicule gun owners. Link.

In the scene the audience sees a spot Archie did on a public access channel about gun rights. The audience gets a good laugh, and Norman Lear wants to remind us of that now with this remark:

[Archie] finds himself suggesting that the best answer to avoid skyjacking is to "arm every passenger" and the audience erupts in laughter. You can see the clip:

Can we possibly have any other reaction to Wayne LaPierre's similarly insane idea to provide armed guards for every school but to laugh? Or cry. I find myself doing a lot of both lately.

Lear, who is old enough to have been shocked by the Tate/LaBianca knife murders, is probably no stranger to armed guards himself.

Lear has overlooked the fact that many of the people who laughed along with him back then have grown up and now look with deep suspicion at the progressive causes he promotes. Taking rights away from the people and giving more power to government is not progress.

"All in the Family," by the way, was a knock off of a British TV show called, Til Death Us Do Part about a working class conservative and his socialist son in law.

Al Jazeera Gore

Al Gore has been rightly criticized for selling his TV network to Al Jazeera. But give the guy a break. By selling to the highest bidder he was trying to teach his fellow Americans that greed is good. By beating the tax hike he was merely demonstrating good business sense separate from political propaganda. By accepting oil money he was only demonstrating that U.S. dollars are the same color whether they come from green energy or black gold.

Forbes lays out an issue not so obvious. The Real Problem With Al Gore's $100 Million Payday From Selling Current To Al Jazeera. Excerpt:

For a channel available in 60 million households, Current has a tiny audience ...

Almost all of its value, therefore, was tied up in its reach. That distribution to 60 million homes was what underlay Al Jazeera’s willingness to spend a half billion dollars ...

Distribution is dear because it’s hard to build. So how did Current succeed in building so much so fast? Through “a combination of personal lobbying and arm-twisting of industry giants” by Gore himself, according to Brian Stelter of The New York Times. Gore “leaned on” Rupert Murdoch, then in control of DirecTV, and other operators of cable and satellite systems, not only to carry Current but to pay it a carriage fee out of proportion to its actual viewership.

If Murdoch et al didn’t push back too hard, it’s because they knew they could simply pass the carriage fee along to their subscribers

Al Gore has certainly proved that he is a good business man. One has to wonder, has there ever been a President or Vice President who parlayed his former government job into a greater profit?

Those secessionist petitions really must have scared Dems

Back in '04 lefties were circulating that Jesusland map with the suggestion that the enlightened, i.e. blue, states should secede and join Canada. It was a popular enough meme that the hippest among them wore T-shirts featuring the map.

This time around its the non-lefties signing petitions for secession. It really lit a fire under editorial writers, and the knee jerk reaction to brand the signers as kooks was swift. That suggests the movement really must have frightened some people.

They needn't worry. No one who signed that thing could have possibly thought an online petition -- through an administration website no less -- requesting that their state be able to break off from the U.S. would get the time of day from the administration. They merely used this device as a way to alert Obama to the news flash that he earned no respect from the people he punished in his first term.

Speaking of breakups, Igor Panarin doesn't get much press these days. He's the Russian academic and former KGB analyst who predicted that in 2010 the U.S. would break up into six entities -- Alaska would go back to Russia, Hawaii would go to Japan or China, and the other four would form separate republics. From WSJ in December, 2008:

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles," he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

Well, he got the first part right. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's voters still believe in miracles.

As for secession, it would simply trade one budget buster for another. Building a defense network would break the bank, even without Iron Domes over the major cities to protect citizens from Obama drones.

Election provided a civic lesson for the young -- debt is good

The issue was very clear going into the presidential election three weeks ago -- do voters want a big government or a shot at a smaller government? A majority of voters let the minority know that they wanted the large and growing government the reelection of Barack Obama would ensure.

Here locally we've taught our youth a more direct lesson: Making do with what you've got is bad. Big spending with borrowed money is good. And so we see a headline like this: Midlanders pass largest bond in city’s history referring to the school board supporters' successful effort to get voter approval to add a $163 million bond to the existing taxpayer debt.

Maybe it's our educational system that's to blame, not just for that particular bond, but for the casual acceptance of debt as a part life. After all, that same educational system encourages college students to incur mountains of school loan debt.

Midland, Texas, is experiencing an economic boom in the boom/bust cycle that typifies the oil and gas industry. But a boom has a mind altering effect -- it creates the belief that things will be different this time. So when the bust occurs it comes as a big surprise.

Here's another headline to ponder: Texas voters’ local bond approvals create future generations’ debt legacy. That article concludes:

Media reports regularly indicate voters’ “overwhelming” approval of bond proposals. If voters fail to adopt new responsibility with regard to these decisions, perhaps the hindsight takeaway from the Nov. 6 election will become that not only did voters “overwhelmingly” approve bond proposals, but they overwhelmingly approved saddling future generations – including their children and grandchildren – with an unmanageable, unsustainable level of debt for decades to come.

Voters should start practicing this mantra, "But we did it for you," as those children and grandchildren grow up and vote with their feet to escape the debt they inherited from all those well intentioned citizens. See California.

Photo source.