Rasmussen Has Iowa As Toss-Up, Romney Slightly Ahead

The lefty?                                 Or the righty?

Scott Rasmussen still shows Iowa as a toss-up as of this hour, with Romney slightly ahead in the polling.

Its 6 Electoral College votes added to Romney's theoretical 279, assuming Romney wins the toss-ups where Rasmussen shows Romney currently polling ahead, would give Romney a final total of 285, 15 more than he needs to win the presidency.

Watch Florida and Virginia, says Rasmussen here:

"Florida and Virginia are absolute must-win states for the Romney campaign. If the president wins either, the election will be his. It is quite reasonable to think the challenger can win these states but far from a sure thing. If he can win those two states, Romney will then have to win either Ohio or Wisconsin to stay in the game.  It is possible that the president could win both and keep his job, but that outcome is far from certain as well."

Liberal NY Hypocrites Care More About Marathon Than Staten Islanders

Staten Island Councilman James Oddo said, “The notion of taking one cop, one first responder, one resource, one asset and diverting it so that they stand at a post to watch runners go by when we’re still searching for bodies? It’s sinful to me!’’

Brooklyn Councilman Vincent Gentile said, “With some neighborhoods still smoldering, I think postponing the marathon would be a better option.”

Obviously, one hurricane wasn't enough.

Story here.

Obama Seen Visiting Staten Island

Unemployment in October Ticks Up to 7.9%

Read the report from the BLS here.

This is the big picture:

"Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October. Employment growth has averaged 157,000 per month thus far in 2012, about the same as the average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011. In October, employment rose in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade."

The average jobs added per month of 155,000 in the last two years has been insufficient to alter significantly the rate of unemployment, seeing that unemployment ticked up 0.1 points from September. All year the unemployment rate has been no higher than 8.3%, and no lower than 7.8%.

Meanwhile the long-term unemployed, those part-timed, those no longer in the labor force and those entering the labor force for the first time, who all number in the tens of millions, fight for that small pool of jobs. At 300,000 new jobs per month, double the current rate, it would take over 8 years to suck up 30 million people.

There remains no driver for jobs in an economy barely growing at all at 2.0%.

NJ Gov. Christie To Housing Haters: "Nothing Is More Precious To People Than Home"

Quoted here:

"There's nothing more precious to people than their homes. Those are where their families are, their memories and possessions of their lives, and there's also a sense of safety to home," New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said late on Thursday.

"That sense of safety was violated with water rushing into people's homes at an enormous rate of speed and people having to literally swim, climb, jump for their lives," he said.

NRA Grades Dem. Pestka Better Than Rep. Amash In Michigan 3rd

Don't believe it? See for yourself, here.

Michigan Democrats are making hay with this. A four-color direct mail piece arrived in my mailbox today highlighting the fact, mailed from the party office in Lansing.

Amash's beef with the NRA is principled, based on his belief, which is correct, that the Commerce Clause of the constitution is not the basis for legislation for interstate reciprocity for concealed carry. The McDonald decision is another example of a "victory" for gun rights which was wrongly decided, but the NRA nonetheless cheered. The NRA is not infallible, and Amash is right to point it out, but in the political contest against the foes of gun rights, his trumpet makes an uncertain sound.

But while Pestka scores better than Amash with the NRA, you'll notice there's no endorsement by the NRA. That's because NRA members think they know Amash is a friend of gun ownership who just hasn't yet persuaded the NRA to improve its constitutional interpretation.

One might be tempted from this to think Pestka is an alternative to consider instead of Amash, especially since liberals haven't been too happy with Pestka for once voting to de-fund abortion providers, something Amash recently couldn't bring himself to do, alienating social conservatives, including me (a specialty of libertarians like Amash). See the HuffPo story, here. But Pestka now regrets his vote. His record is being used opportunistically.

Amash continues to defend his vote against de-funding Planned Parenthood because singling out PP for defunding is unprincipled, thus favoring others who still get funding. To which we say, so what? There is tons of spending in government which is unprincipled because it picks winners and losers, and is otherwise simply wrong. To err on the side of picking losers by cutting them off isn't a failing, it's a start! The journey to a clean room begins with one moldy sock.

We shouldn't make the good the enemy of the perfect as Amash does now and again. It's a lesson learned from life experience, which Amash hasn't had enough of yet. That's an argument against investing young people like him with political power until they are ready, something Aristotle understood long ago, and our Founders understood when they enshrined age requirements for office in the constitution. The young are to be tested and tried as they climb a ladder of offices, an idea which derives from the old Roman cursus honorum, with which the Founders were intimately familiar. A good boy is just that. It remains to be seen if he turns out to be a good man.

Not all matters are susceptible of resolution by appeal to the constitution. It is not an infallible holy book which dropped from the sky for our instruction in everything, as much as we rightly submit to it. For example, the constitution is now schizophrenic because it allows those aged 18 to vote, but only those aged 35 to serve as president. It is probably only theoretical that one day there could be a dearth of people in the country old enough to serve as president, or that there might one day be a surplus of people serving in Congress under 35. Nevertheless in the former case the pressure to change the constitution to lower the age requirement would fly in the face of the Founders' wisdom, experience and judgment on the matter. In the latter it could happen that the death of the president and vice president might mean a too young speaker of the house would be next in line to the presidency, in violation of the constitution.

We adhere to the spirit of the constitution, but to which part? Shall we make the 26th Amendment the enemy of Article II. Section 1, or the other way around? Shall we stifle youth and enthusiasm utterly, or channel it and shape it?

Not everything is reducible to the letter on the page, or to a single principle one only imagines superintends our deliberations. What were once thought remedies on later reflection turn out to have been mistakes, which only the good mind can conclude. 

It Takes One To Know One: Carl Bernstein Smells Radicalism In The Air

Carl Bernstein of Woodward-Bernstein fame thinks he's caught a whiff of radicalism in Mitt Romney and the Tea Party, here at The Daily Beast, imagining all sort of vain things about both of them.

By the end of the hysterical tirade he calms down a little and realizes his own progressivism qualifies as radicalism, too, but he'd much rather call his beloved progressivism a "transformational movement". In other words, "progressivism good, radicalism bad", sort of like how liberalism got a bad name and had to be replaced at all costs if liberalism were to continue to retain influence.

The reality is the Tea Party is a reactionary movement trying to forestall the radicalism of Barack Obama. Reactionary movements often are mistaken for radical movements because in order to succeed in their objective they have to get to the root being yanked out of the ground by others, by the revolutionaries, and replant it. As such reactionaries, the Tea Partiers are counter-revolutionaries: "Put It Back!"

This is not to say that reactionary movements cannot be hijacked by ideologues any less than true revolutionary movements are inspired by them. The American revolutionaries are a case in point. They never embraced the idealisms which turned into a class war against aristocrats in France. It is unthinkable that the history of the early American independence movement would have turned out as it did had it otherwise been a movement about liberty, equality and fraternity. Former loyalists were welcomed back. While enthusiasm for the idealism of natural rights among Tea Party activists is reminiscent of this, especially among the libertarian elements, the genesis of the movement was in reaction to Obama's proposed mortgage bailouts of deadbeat homeowners, many of whom were becoming infamous for "walking away". Like a good reactionary, Rick Santelli gave voice to his indignation at these people on national television in February but characteristically planned a Tea Party protest on the beach of Lake Michigan for months later, during his summer vacation. In the interim, he had to go to work.

The people, however, had other ideas about waiting. But unlike real radicals such as the Occupy Wall Street types, their protests were peaceful, orderly, clean, and came to an end, and then transformed themselves into the constructive activity of political action, retaking the US House in 2010 for the Republicans in order to stop Obama. As a political movement, it should be understood in those practical prophylactic terms despite the efforts of Republicans to co-opt the movement. The Tea Party is a movement of Americans who are radical only in the sense that they have rediscovered their roots in the constitution and the world which gave it birth.

The true radicals in the bad sense are those who would extirpate them.  

Basel III Capital Requirements May Cause 30% Of Banks To Merge

So says Victor Nava, here:

Community banks are generally defined as banks with less than $1 billion in assets. There are approximately 6,800 community banks which represent about 8% of total assets in the banking sector, but they account for almost 40% of all small business loans. The proposed Basel III regulatory capital requirements are an immense and unnecessary burden that will actually threaten their existence. Community banks were already having a hard time re-establishing themselves in a period of weak loan demand, low interest rates, and thinning profit margins. In 2011, only 3 new community banks were chartered, down from 181 new charters in 2007.

But these new regulations will further drive consolidation between them into bigger banks. Community banks that can't find affordable ways of raising capital will be left without many options other than to find a merging partner. Some on Wall Street, like mergers and acquisitions expert John Slater, predict that Basel III's compliance costs will lead to a merger boom, and that in the next 3-5 years 20-30 percent of all banks will merge.

What Did Hurricane Sandy Do In 1 Night That Obama Couldn't Do In 4 Yrs?

Create thousands of shovel ready jobs.

This Is Not Conservatism: Romney Will Move The Country Leftward

When liberals win, they make conservatives come in their direction. But so-called conservatives have never made liberals compromise to the right. This is why liberals detest them, because they are weak.

Ronald Reagan, former Democrat, didn't do it, and neither has anyone else since. The result has been a constant shift of politics in America to the left. It has never shifted to the right on any social, economic or foreign policy issue. Today's Republican Party is indistinguishable from the Democrat Party of 1960, except on paper, while the Democrat Party struggles mightily to remain American as more and more Democrats openly support self-consciously socialist and even communist ideas.

The country moves inexorably leftward, relaxing moral absolutes from divorce to abortion to homosexuality; growing government and government interference in our lives through mandates while defending old progressive achievements like the income tax, Social Security and Medicare; and ideologizing "democracy" and using it like a cudgel to nation-build abroad.

Mitt Romney will only contribute to this process if he is elected because he has stated explicitly, once again just two days ago in Ohio, that it will be his policy to compromise, to "get things done" as the feeble-minded everywhere like to say:

"We're going to have to do something that has been done in the past in this country and that is we're going to have to reach across the aisle we're going to have to find good Democrats, by the way Democrats love America too, we've got to reach across the aisle find ways to bring in people from the other party work together, collaborate, meet regularly and fight for the American people and we will!," Romney said.

Why conservatives will vote for this I can only answer with the example of Esau, who was so hungry that he sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.

It would be far better to elect the intransigent radical Obama and a principled Republican US House to maintain the status quo than to risk "progress", because that is what you are going to get with Mitt Romney, progress . . . to the left.

Conservatives don't have to vote for Obama to vote for gridlock. Virgil Goode will do. 

UK Finance Minister Speaks Up For More Fascism

the flag of the Blackshorts

Quoted here:

"I wanted Lord Heseltine to do what he does best: challenge received wisdom and give us ideas on how to bring government and industry together. He has done exactly that. This is a report bursting with ideas and we will study it very carefully," finance minister George Osborne said.

Hurricane Sandy Creams Right Coast Liberals. Country Cheers!

a thing of beauty

Like Liberals, Libertarians Hate Homeowners

Like liberals, libertarians hate homeowners.

Liberals resent the competition and don't want them "moving on up" to the East Side or to their gated communities, ruining the neighborhood, and libertarians hate homeowners' bourgeois values, especially the fact that homeowners resist becoming interchangeable parts in their global corporate pursuit of economic efficiency, rather resent being treated like depreciating assets, and often think the most important gift they can give the country is future taxpayers and productive workers raised in stable, safe, socially well-adjusted environments.

But there is also a shared reason: because homeowners tend to be neither liberal nor libertarian, but conservative.

From libertarian Arnold Kling, in his own words:

'If there is a tendency for property owners to become libertarians, I find this difficult to observe. Clearly, most home owners are not libertarians. Some owners, in fact, become decidedly unlibertarian NIMBYs, where “not in my backyard” becomes their byword for infringing on the liberties of others.'

Damn right, Arnold, homeowners do tend to infringe on others' rights, just like the Decalogue infringes on my right to say everything that's on my mind, murder, steal, commit adultery, covet, practice idolatry and ignore filial responsibilities.

If you want to act like a reprobate, it's a free country, but not in my backyard.

Camille Paglia Blames Obama's Libya Mistake On Women, ObamaCare On Stalinism

Both of which we have said.

The material is transcribed by Ann Althouse, here.

Rasmussen Polling Shows Romney's Path To Victory

With a week and a day to go, Rasmussen's polling as of right now shows Romney's path to victory with 270 Electoral College votes.

With the map showing Romney likely owning 206 Electoral College votes as of today, polling in Florida (29), Virginia (13), New Hampshire (4) and Ohio (18) all show Romney marginally ahead by at least two points in a close race, but together they are sufficient to give him the presidency.

If you add Colorado (9) where Romney is also ahead by four points he will win with 279.

Blame Walmart For The Part-Timing Of America, And ObamaCare For Ramping It Up

From a very good story by the New York Times, reproduced here:

The rise of big-box retailers like Walmart . . . with their long operating hours and complex staffing needs, has contributed to the increase in part-timers.

Mr. Flickinger, the retail consultant, said when Walmart spread nationwide and opened hundreds of 24-hour stores in the 1990s, that created intense competitive pressures and prompted many retailers to copy the company’s cost-cutting practices, including its heavy reliance on part-timers.

Susan J. Lambert, an expert on part-time work and a professor of organizational theory at the University of Chicago, said the use of part-timers had also escalated because of the declining power of labor unions. “They set a standard for what a real job was — Monday through Friday with full-time hours,” she said. “We’ve moved away from that.”

ObamaCare will now put this part-timing trend into high gear as more and more employers seek to avoid ObamaCare's 30 hour rule, at which employers must provide a healthcare benefit. More and more employers are going to schedule people for up to 29 hours per week, and not one more.

If you read the full story excerpted above you'll wonder to yourself how $15,000 per year part-time earners are going to be able to afford to purchase healthcare at Obama's healthcare exchanges, especially since holding two part-time jobs is already impossible in the experience of most part-timers. The answer is they won't be able to afford to purchase insurance, and will be shuffled off to crappy care under Medicaid, which is going bust already.

The healthcare debacle in America is only just beginning, thanks to Obama and the Democrats.

Obama Believes Winning Will Be Mandate To Raise Taxes, "Reform" Immigration

Obama has stated explicitly his intent is, if he wins, to raise taxes and "reform" immigration, which is code for amnesty, as reported here:

"If we won, then I believe that's a mandate for doing it in a balanced way."

"We can do some more cuts, we could look at how we deal with the health care costs in particular under Medicaid and Medicare in a serious way, but we are also going to need some revenue."

"If we get [the debt and deficit] done, then immigration reform, I think, is there to get done."

"And I think [the Republican Party] is going to need to get it done because you can't continue to alienate the fastest-growing segment of the country. And it's the right thing to do."

Of course, there are mandates and there are mandates. Obama likes mandates. He likes telling people how things will be, which is why we have ObamaCare shoved down our throats.

In 2008 Obama interpreted his victory as a mandate when his margin of victory in the formerly Red States which went for Bush was merely 1.4 million votes. He lost that "mandate" such as it was in 2010, and if the Republicans keep the US House in 2012 that will still be the conclusion whether or not Romney wins the presidency.

Imported British "Conservative" Condescends To Instruct Us About Communism

John Derbyshire

Here:

"But Barack Obama was never about the downtrodden masses. If he associated with revolutionaries such as Bill Ayers, it was only to feed off them and advance himself. Once he’d advanced, they went under the proverbial bus, as did the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama has always been about Barack Obama. ...

"To be a real communist is to make a serious commitment to a cause. Communism is a hard dogma, completely at odds with the soft-handed girlish narcissism of a late-20th-century American leftist such as Obama, who has never risked, fought, struggled, or suffered."

Well, by this standard most businessmen, and most people who work with and for them, aren't real Americans either because the only thing they're committed to is the advancement of number 1. Nor are they real capitalists, but fascists, ever seeking preferments in law to protect their fiefdoms. Nor are they real Christians, eschewing renunciation of the world and service to the poor.

Serious commitment to anything hardly exists anywhere at any time for very long. There are only degrees of commitment, the few outstanding examples of which momentarily intrude upon our attention, as when devotees of a 7th century bandit religion would just as soon blow them- and ourselves to smithereens as live another day.

Just because Obama is a hypocritical communist fellow-traveler doesn't invalidate classifying him as one. After all, Obama also claims to be a Christian but believes things about the unborn and human sexuality which many a Catholic bishop would say destine him for hell, but people still say he is a Christian. Obama's lavish expenditures on his own presidency, which mark him out as a tyrant according to Aristotle ("the good of one man only"), stand alongside his belief in redistribution of income, in spreading the wealth around, in the same way that his friendship with and fundraising among the rich coexists with his sustained inveighing against them because in his opinion they do not pay their fair share in taxes.

The real problem with calling Obama a communist isn't that it isn't true but that the term doesn't exhaust the possibilities. What is instructive about Obama is that he is a blend of enthusiasms and idealisms, a character Herbert Hoover would have recognized as in the mould of FDR who admired the strong men of Europe, who were at once fascist, Nazi and communist. Obama may be a dilettante communist, but you'll still get an alphabet soup of statist experiments at his dinner table. 

But, of course, communist purists would demur at this point, Stalin having been an "aberration". Yet we still call Stalin a communist dictator and his rule a communist dictatorship even though Stalin's partnership with capitalism and people like Henry Ford arguably aligned Stalinism more with fascism than with communism.

Over time the terms lose their adequacy, primarily because they are invented by human beings who will do nothing if not disappoint, eventually. There's a word for that, but like "communist" the word "sinner", to quote our British instructor, is just not "ironic enough for our very ironic age".

It's Democrats Who Overwhelmingly Hate The Electoral College

The reason Democrats hate the Electoral College is that the Electoral College gives too much power to small population states, which sometimes vote in such a way as to prevent winners of the national popular vote in presidential contests from being elected.

Nevermind that that's how the founders intended it, in order to keep minorities from being dictated to by majorities. It is suitably hypocritical of the Democrats to want to oppress minorities, seeing how they have taken minorities for granted for decades, always promising them the moon but never delivering them so much as a sandwich let alone a sub so fast they'll freak.

TheHill.com has a story here on the subject of the Electoral College, referencing the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign which proposes to make an end-run around the Electoral College provision of the constitution. You know, kind of like seceding from the Union was an end run, because that's what the NPV amounts to. The normal process of amending election procedures involves a constitutional amendment, but the Democrats have hatched a plan, the NPV, which amounts to an affront and challenge to the existing system, agreed to only amongst the states participating without benefit of legitimacy conferred by constitutional amendment. The legitimacy consists entirely in the agreement of the states. As such the NPV represents an insurrection against the rest of the states who do not participate. 

Mostly Democrats favor doing away with the Electoral College, which is in keeping with what animates the Democrats, namely democracy, especially direct democracy. Despite all its problems and blemishes, it is the Republican Party which stands for constitutional arrangements as they exist, notably Sen. Mitch McConnell of the US Senate, the Republican minority leader in the Senate. His support for the Electoral College covers a multitude of sins, and I do mean a multitude.

The Republicans would sound more convincing in their support for the Electoral College, however, if they were to support also repeal of Amendment 17, ratified in 1913.

The reason is that it would show that the Republicans are serious about constitutional principles of representation.

The original constitution envisaged bodies of electors who were different in identity in order to separate the powers of government to prevent tyranny, it is true, but also to spread representation effectively not just to the individuals who make up the nation but also to the governmental institutions which the constitution created as creatures of the people.

The electors originally were three.

The people who elected their US Representatives. These number 435 but should today number 10,267. The process of representation growing with population was halted in the 1920s. Arguably this concentration of power in fewer hands was a response to arrogation of democratic power by the Senate in 1913.

The states originally elected their US Senators, "chosen by the Legislature[s] thereof". Elected as they are now, popularly because of the 17th Amendment, they do nothing but make a redundancy of the US House of Representatives. And not just a redundancy but a trump. The Senate possesses much more power because they are not answerable to the people but every sixth year instead of every second. If anyone is responsible for gridlock in our times, it is this new imperious US Senate since 1913, not the political parties who duke it out in the House. The US Senate literally lords it over the US House as a kind of Super House. They only occasionally answer to the same people as the US House when they should be answering to, and representing, the states. The latter now possess next to no voice at the federal level except through the court system, where they must sue to be heard. A fine kettle of fish, that.

The Electoral College is now the last bastion of representation left to the states as states, and Democrats seem bent on taking it. The Electoral College is composed of persons appointed by the states in number equal to the number of Representatives and Senators, and they elect the president. The electors cast their votes now more or less everywhere based on which candidate wins the popular vote in the presidential election in each state. It is a winner take all system which blends popular sovereignty with states' rights. But the NPV would nullify this, casting the votes of the electors not for whomever wins the state, but for whomever wins the country.

As sketched above, the history of these developments is a history of lost representation. A US House member should represent 30,000 people max, but today supposedly speaks for over 700,000 on average in each district. State legislatures no longer have a voice in the halls of Congress because Senators are popularly elected just like the House. And if the Democrats get their way, smaller states will also lose their voice in electing the president because no matter what the citizens of Wyoming, New Hampshire and Montana want, the citizens of California, Florida and New York who are more numerous will dictate otherwise.

And Democrats are about nothing if not dictation. 

Already Got A Free ObamaPhone? Now Get A Free ObamaCar!

Just put a "Romney" campaign sign in your yard and you, too, can get a free Obama Car just like this guy, whose car was vandalized with the word "Obama" keyed into his hood just for parking in front of the house where the sign was.

Just be advised: The Obama Car comes without the "e", available only in the "ObamaCare" model.

Story here.

Blame Utopianism On Christians Like Joshua D. Hawley

Blame utopianism on Christians like Joshua D. Hawley.

He's an example of a contemporary who understands full well the implications of the broad expanse of Christian teaching as understood from "Scripture", namely an ideological view of reality wholly in keeping with secularized ideologies like Marxism. The key similarity is the denial of reality and the assertion of an alternate one.

Christians of a prior age in America were not "enthusiasts" like this guy who, ominously, clerked for John Roberts (all italics are the author's own):

Isn’t immanentizing the eschaton precisely what Christians citizens should be doing? ... The New Testament teaches that this long-looked-for kingdom has dawned now, in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Christ has become king and, as Scripture says, presently rules over the world and over earthly government. That last point is central. Scripture teaches that political government is mandated by God for his service and is one means by which the enthroned Christ carries out his rule.

Ongoing suffering, death and injustice mean nothing to such people. Those things are inconvenient truths incapable of penetrating the ideological mind. To call it the fanatical mind in a political age is to short-change it because so many no longer have such religious understanding. For religious ideologues unjust government must be endured or ignored, but always obeyed.

People who think such things would never oppose kings like George III, let alone totalitarian dictators, with force of arms. Europe would still be in the grip of Hitlers and Stalins, and so might we, had American Christians had such scruples in 1776 and 1941, or British Christians in 1939.

There is no such thing as immanentizing the eschaton, only instantiating the fall. If it were otherwise, there would be no such thing as a Christian cemetary.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Rasmussen Puts Florida Back Into Toss-Up As Race Narrows

Rasmussen's Electoral College map which recently had Florida leaning Romney makes it a toss-up once again as polling there narrows to a two-point contest but still favoring Romney.

CA Governor Jerry Brown Invokes Bible To Justify Higher Taxes On Rich

Quoted here:

To further promote Prop 30 and appeal to religious voters, Brown cited the bible. "Luke 12:48 says: 'For those of whom much has been given, much is required.' Those at the high end can brace themselves for seven years and lend school kids a helping hand. I appeal to their sense of loyalty and fairness," he told the FT.

Christian theology is convenient to liberals only when it plays the grandmother of Bolshevism. At that point suddenly the wall separating church and state disappears.

The problem for such interpretation is that it is completely one-sided and ahistorical. Luke's Gospel goes on to state that whether much or little is given to this one or that one, it is all required from each regardless:

"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." -- Luke 14:33

The liberals never tell the poor they want all of what little the poor have, too. That would be fine, perhaps, if the world were really coming to an end and the kingdom of God were about to appear, as Jesus once thought. It's the kind of thinking, injected into temporal affairs, which goes a long way to explain the alarums of liberalism, the latest of which has been that global warming will be the end of us all.

Yeah right.

If we could just agree that Christianity taught that the cost of discipleship is the same outrageous demand on everybody, we could dispense with the class warfare once and for all, and with such unseemly appeals to theocratic reasoning.

Gold To Oil Ratio Ends Week At 19.84

Oil gets even more "on sale" than a week ago.

Clearly gold is priced way too high, despite its recent decline. Hell, both gold and oil are priced way too high.

Romney would fix that.

Obamas Spend Millions On State Dinners, Put Millions On Food Stamps

The numbers reported in this story are truly appalling, three to five times more expensive than Clinton's most expensive state dinners:

A knowledgeable government official who made the documents available to The Examiner said the extravagant spending seemed unfair with so many Americans out of work.

"It just kind of takes your breath away to see the expenditure of money that has occurred since 2009," the official said.

Obama Keeps "Super Joe" A Heartbeat Away From Presidency

What's cheaper than a bullet-proof vest? More stupid than a frontal lobotomy? Able to tell tall tales faster than an astrologer?

It's Super Joe!

Fox News reports here.

Obama Sings His Version Of "If I Had A Hammer"

Well I've had a hammer

I've hammered in the morning

I've hammered in the evening

All over this land

I've hammered out class war

I've hammered out en-mi-ty

I've hammered out hate between the rich and the poor

All over this land

Well I've had a sickle

It's a lopper in the morning

It's a lopper in the evening

All over this land

I've lopped off full-time jobs

I've lopped off G-D-P

I've lopped off home-owners' e-qui-ty

All over this land

Well I've had a checkbook

I've used it in the morning

I've used it in the evening

All over this land

I've milked it for traveling

I've milked it for par-ty-ing

I've spent a wad on my brothers and my sisters

All over this land

Well I've got a hammer

And I've got a sickle

And I've got your checkbook

All over this land

I'll smash you middle class

I'll cut you down to size

I'm making you equal and equally poor

All over this land

h/t Tomas

Obama Racks Up Worst GDP Record In Post-War Period

President Obama has the dubious distinction for the very worst GDP record, measured November on November, of any president in the post-war period.

And that's saying a lot when you consider that George W. Bush had been the worst before Obama,  with his average report of GDP over 32 quarters of just 2.0%, which was worse than his dad who over four years posted a 2.2% average report. Hell, Jimmy Carter's record at 3.0% is to die for compared to the Bushes.

But Obama comes in with a pathetic, ridiculous average report of GDP over 16 quarters of just 0.86%, over twice as bad as Bush.

No wonder it seems like a depression. Considering Obama had complete control of the government in 2009 and 2010, his 1.9% average report for just 2011 and 2012 to date speaks for itself. We're not working. What Obama is doing isn't working. He may have a nice crease in his trousers, but the suit is as empty as the chair in The Oval. 

Here's the table from the pdf of today's report of GDP from the BEA:

First Estimate Of Q3 2012 GDP Comes In At 2%

The first estimate of Q3 2012 GDP growth comes in at 2.0%, with growth in Q2 remaining at 1.3%. The growth rate in Q3 is now back to the rate prevailing in Q1. Big whoop.

The BEA reports here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the third quarter of 2012 (that is, from the second quarter to the third quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 1.3 percent.

The Bureau emphasized that the third-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency . . .. The "second" estimate for the third quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on November 29, 2012.

The rate of growth at 2.0% remains a pathetic performance in a series of pathetic reports of an economy moving at near stall speed. And in a month the figure for Q3 could easily come in much lower in the first revision. At this late stage in a "recovery" GDP should be far more robust.

Real Clear Politics' Electoral College Map Gets More Ridiculous

More and more states are ending up as toss-ups in the Real Clear Politics' Electoral College Map as we get within days of the November presidential election. The map just took North Carolina out of Romney's total and put it back into toss-up, making the votes for Obama look, well, like more! Big deal.

That's what happens when all polls are equal, and you average them.

As time goes by this map is looking less and less important. How could it not when nearly more states are toss-ups than likely/leans one or the other candidate because you are just averaging the polls? Is polling that meaningless? Then why bother?

See it here.

Rasmussen Shows MN Shifting To Only "Leans Obama"

Here.

The liberal state of Minnesota was solid for Obama until just recently, joining Pennsylvania and Connecticut among the states where support for Obama has softened in Rasmussen's polling.

As of this morning 7 states remain toss-ups: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Conservatives Have Become Wrong-Headed About Taxes

Conservatives have become wrong-headed about the tax code.

Steven Malanga provides an exasperating take on "tax reform", here, which was really a liberal Democrat conceit from the beginning but became a so-called conservative one under Ronald Reagan, who was, need we remind everyone, a "former" Democrat:

Most conservatives (though certainly not most Republicans) have come to see the range of incentives and exemptions in the tax code as wrongheaded, including those for businesses which smack of little more than corporate cronyism. This is in sharp contrast to 1986, when many Republicans in Congress resisted reform until a popular GOP president came along willing to take on the business community.

Sacre bleu. The liberal Democrats are nothing if they are not great simplifiers, and if conservatives join them in that enthusiasm, it doesn't mean they are right. Little ideologues all, regardless of party.

Prior to the income tax, a president had to be a pretty smart cookie to figure out all the ins and outs of the tariff system if he wanted his federal government to have enough revenue to continue operations. By 1909, however, the whole country seemed to have wound down so far intellectually that it was just too tired to carry on any longer with that rigorous enterprise and bowed instead to the simplicity of an income tax. Tax reformers today, take note. It doesn't speak well of you that you admit the code is too much for you.

Actually real conservatism opposed the income tax way back when not because it would grow too complex but because it was wrong. When amending the constitution is necessary in order to make something legal, conservatives' first instinct is always to question the advisability of the idea before they conclude there is a defect in the constitution requiring a remedy. The income tax was one such idea. It took four years to gain ratification in the states. As an invention of progressivism the income tax eventually worked a revolution in government by allowing government to grow to gargantuan size with a ready pool of available cash, stolen by force from the population's income. And it is no coincidence that the first major expenditure financed by the income tax was US entry into The Great War. Not long after which came The Great Depression. If progressive ideas were good ones, no one seems to have paid much heed to the early evidence to the contrary.

Every effort by the people since the introduction of the income tax to obtain deductions, exemptions, credits and other incentives in the tax code should be understood by conservatives as wholesome reactionary, counter-revolutionary, rear-guard opposition to what the income tax represents, but today you can hardly find a conservative who will even entertain the idea of overthrowing the income tax, let alone any other of the so-called "achievements" of the progressive era. In fact, some so-called conservatives have become veritable cheerleaders for the income tax. Rush Limbaugh, for one, can't seem even to imagine an America without one for the first 137 years of its existence. An originalist in name only is he.

The problem with so-called Reagan conservatism, then and now, is that it makes peace with the tax code, just as it does with the social welfare state, including Social Security and especially Medicare. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan actually campaign on just such a platform of preserving Medicare for future generations. As Reagan compromised in the direction of liberalism in the 1986 tax reform, so will they.

These people wouldn't know conservatism if it ran up and bit them in the ass.

Tax reform is a fool's errand. You can't "reform" something which is fundamentally wrong in the first place.

Corporate Cash For S&P500 Swells To $1.5 Trillion

Story here:

Amid a lackluster earning season that has featured many companies missing sales expectations, cash balances have swelled 14 percent and are on track toward $1.5 trillion for the Standard & Poor's 500, according to JPMorgan. Both levels would be historic highs.

Neither ObamaCare Nor Ben Bernanke Go Away If . . .

Neither ObamaCare nor Ben Bernanke go away if . . . you vote Democrat.

It is astonishing that Republicans are not saying this more loudly, which is a good and strong reason to doubt their sincerity about getting rid of either ObamaCare or Ben Bernanke. But it is what it is.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the ideal.

There are no lost causes, because there are no won causes.

Obama had a complete grip on power for two years and squandered it, and the Tea Party stopped him cold in 2010.

You can do it again in 2012.

Obama Displayed His Servility To Foreigners Already In 2005 In Ukraine

I had forgotten this one, where Obama bows to Ukraine's then President Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko in 2005.

Transformation After Four Years: Lost AAA Credit Rating, 8.97% Average Unemployment, Average Report of GDP 0.825%, Housing Values Down 13%

"After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that's taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Columbia, Missouri

Fewer Jobs, And More Of Them Part-Time Because Of Obama

Population has increased 10.1 million from four years ago, from 304.5 million to 314.6 million.

Total civilian employment has decreased 2.1 million, from 145.1 million to 143.0 million.

Full-time jobs have fallen 4.5 million, from 119.7 million to 115.2 million.

Part-time jobs have increased 1.9 million, or 7.6%, from 25.1 million to 27.0 million today, and this number will continue to climb as employers turn full-timers into part-timers in order to avoid having to offer insurance to workers working 30 or more hours per week as required by ObamaCare.

'The question in this election is not "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" We know the answer to that. The real question is, "Will this country be better off four years from now?"'

-- Sen. Barack Obama, October 2008, Canton, Ohio

And the answer is No.

ObamaCare Raises Taxes On Middle Class By $200 Billion A Year By 2020

So say James Capretta and Tom Miller, here:

The president wants Americans to believe that ObamaCare is painless and without cost for the middle class, but most Americans, using their common sense, don’t believe him. They are right to be skeptical. It is certainly true that ObamaCare expands the entitlement rolls to some 30 million additional people, and thereby reduces — at least on paper — the numbers of uninsured Americans. But there is a massive cost to doing this, running more than $200 billion annually by the end of the decade. Who will pay for this? The middle class, of course. They will pay higher taxes and higher premiums for health insurance and get less back from the Medicare program in retirement. An honest debate would acknowledge these facts.

I Got Your Legitimate Rape Right Here

It's called the income tax.

New Rasmussen Electoral College Map Moves FL And NC To Romney

The newest update to Rasmussen's Electoral College map has both Florida and North Carolina leaning Romney to bring the match-up with Obama to a two-point race with 7 states still toss-ups: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire.

As of this moment, Rasmussen is showing Obama ahead in 6 of those 7 states. Romney leads in Virginia. So the race is still Obama's to lose based on this arithmetic. 

The Original American Foreign Policy: Separate And Equal

The original American foreign policy was . . . "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle" us.

Not American hegemony, not American greatness, not American leadership of the free world, just our own place in the world like everyone else.

It's right there in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

It would be nice if there were someone left here who actually believed this.

It would mean two things: one, an end to endless war as in Afghanistan, and an end to numerous military occupations and deployments around the globe to protect people who long since have been able to afford to protect themselves; and two, a decent respect to the idea that since our country is our country and your country is your country, you should stay out of ours if we are to stay out of yours.

It's why Americans identify with people around the world who desire political independence of their own. We can help them get it, but in the end it's their job, not ours. It's also why it is intolerable that while we're fighting for who knows what in Afghanistan a Russian nuclear attack sub spent much of this last summer undetected in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening our sub-base in Georgia.

Heard On The Vienna, Austria, Metro: Is It Just Me Or Is It Hot In Here?

The HuffingtonPuffington Post reports:

Vienna's public transport system reacted laconically earlier this week to reports that a young woman on a downtown subway line was dressed in nothing but knee-high boots.

"We know that everyone has a different temperature comfort zone," the agency said in a statement. "But we do not think that our subways are so warm that one has to get undressed."

Some people just need more appreciation than others . . . and boy do they sometimes deserve it.

Top Tax Loss Expenditures Projected For 2011-2015

From the Joint Committee on Taxation's January 2012 projection, here are the top individual categories of lost tax revenue, commonly referred to as tax loss expenditures (the revenue value of tax deductions, tax exclusions, and tax credits), for the five year period from 2011, annualized:

1. Healthcare, healthcare insurance, long term care insurance = $ 145 billion

2. Mortgage interest = $ 93 billion

3. Dividends, long term capital gains = $ 91 billion

4. 401k plans = $ 75 billion

5. Earned income credit = $ 59 billion

6. Pension plans = $ 53 billion

7. State, local income, sales, personal property taxes = $ 46 billion

7. Capital gains at death = $ 46 billion

8. Cafeteria plan benefits = $ 40 billion

9. Untaxed Social Security and Railroad Retirement = $ 38 billion

10. Charitable giving = $ 37 billion

11. State and local government bonds = $ 36 billion

12. Medicare Part A = $ 35 billion

13. Child tax credit = $ 34 billion

14. Life insurance and annuities = $ 30 billion

15. Medicare Part B = $ 27 billion

16. Capital gains on sale of primary residence = $ 25 billion

17. Property taxes on real property = $ 23 billion

Red = housing related ($ 118 billion)

Green = health related ($ 247 billion)

Blue = investment related ($ 137 billion)

Yellow = retirement related ($ 196 billion)

Purple = social welfare related ($ 130 billion)

Black = state and local government related ($ 105 billion)                                    

A State Run By A Tyrant Is Beset With Fear And Full Of Convulsions And Distractions

"[A]ll his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Socrates

Rasmussen Poll Finds 'Tea Party' Label Most Negative, 'Liberal' Second Most

Here:

"[T]he latest national telephone survey finds that 44% regard Tea Party as a negative description for a candidate."

This is what happens to a movement which allows others to define it and co-opt it. With most of the Republican Party skeptical of the movement at best, threatened at worst, there was none to defend the Tea Party from the outrageous insinuations from the left and its allies in the media. It has died by a thousand paper cuts.

The Tea Party's present bad rap is in many ways its own fault. It assiduously refused to unify as a national movement around a platform of ideas and candidates. As a consequence, it was variously captured by elements of Ron Paul's libertarian movement here and individual Republicans and Republican front-groups there.

As a protest movement the Tea Party needed to change because the initial outrage and emotion which brought it to life is not a sustainable or proper vehicle for conservatism. If it is, then conservatism becomes indistinguishable from the demagogic enemy. Unfortunately for the Tea Party, it opted for the change it got not by choice but by default. Refusing to coalesce as a party around a platform of ending bailouts and cronyism, limiting government spending, and endorsing the candidates who supported that as a matter of the utmost importance all doomed it. Republican interlopers like Michael Steele (who failed), Rep. Bachmann (the Lone Rangerette of the US House), and Sarah Palin (who got the bailout religion very late) pounced early and effectively to steal the limelight.

Political originality is no easy invention, but Tea Partiers were ill-served by devotees of the two-party system when true originalism and enthusiasm for the constitution should have taught the Tea Party that proper political representation is the sine qua non of republican government. And in that struggle for representation it is the two parties as we know them who are most at fault for circumscribing it in a US House of 435 members which should by now consist in 10,267. The coin of the realm has Republican on one side, Democrat on the other, but in the middle is nothing but worthless metal. 

Democrats and liberals were entirely happy to jeer from the sidelines as the neophytes were neutered by their political betters in the Republican Party. As usual, it is the Republicans who do the dirty work of liberalism, not the least of which is collecting its taxes and advancing its social agenda incrementally. The reaction of the Tea Party to the radicalism of Obama was profound and deep, as was its dismay by the failure of Republicanism to step up to it.

May the Tea Partiers learn, lick their wounds, and begin planning for another day. Freedom needs them.

Conservatives Forget Romney's Family Was Long Opposed To Conservatism

So sfgate.com, here and here.

The liberal Republicans like Mitt Romney's father George Romney didn't support the conservative candidate, Barry Goldwater, in 1964, but they still expect us to support them in 2012.

That's what you'll read when you look up "chutzpah" in the dictionary.

h/t 'Nita