Another liberal pulled down on Romney's coattails. At least it was a fair fight.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Libertarian In UT 4th District Helps Dem. Incumbent Get Re-elected
Libertarians in Utah's 4th Congressional District narrowly helped keep the Democrat the incumbent in 2012. The rest of Utah is a sea of red.
Matheson was a key figure in the arithmetic to passage of ObamaCare in 2010, subsequently got re-elected in November 2010 and again now in 2012, thanks this time to a libertarian who spoiled the chance for the GOP candidate.
Michael Tanner Is So Wrong. ObamaCare Is Emblematic Only Of The Congress.
 |
| The House version of healthcare reform, left, and the Senate version, right. |
Michael Tanner for National Review, here:
The new health-care law is generally regarded as the signature achievement of the president’s first term. It’s certainly emblematic of Obama’s entire approach to government and what we can expect from his second-term initiatives.
Everything Mr. Tanner says about ObamaCare sounds right. The problem is, Obama played no role in it. The community organizer organized the legislative community under Democrat leadership, and they designed it, not him.
Obama provided zero leadership formulating what we call ObamaCare. He relinquished his leadership role entirely, allowing Pelosi's House and Reid's Senate to draft their versions of it and to hash the thing out, which ended up being an amalgam of the creations of the two chambers of the legislature. Obama contributed zero, zip, nada, nothing, and Michael Tanner misses entirely that ObamaCare turned out to look like the camel it is when it was supposed to look like a horse.
ObamaCare is healthcare disform, because Obama is a president who is largely absent and not up to the task in any case. Without control of both houses of the legislature, the future will provide no more such camels designed to be horses, unless the Republicans permit it.
Gridlock. Embrace it. Love it. Depend on it.
Gridlock. Embrace it. Love it. Depend on it.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
David Stockman Of Reagan Admin. Fame Wins Mish Raffle?
A certain David Stockman, mirabile dictu, is named as a raffle winner in Mish's ALS raffle contest, here.
If that's the David Stockman we all know, that explains a lot. Libertarian birds of a feather flock together.
Stockman's Wikipedia entry says he lives in Greenwich, CT.
Nice work if you can get it.
Libertarian Mish Is Happy Republican Mourdock Lost In Indiana
Mish is on the side of the Democrats, plain and simple, here, referencing a story at the Christian Science Monitor:
Yet this is what happens when views are too extreme. I am very pleased to report "'Red' Indiana sends Democrat to US Senate, as women fled Mourdock".
Of course Mish is happy the Democrat won in Indiana. Libertarians ran a spoiler candidate in that race to throw the race to the Democrat. When it comes down to it, social freedom is more important to libertarians than economic freedom. They cry "Freedom" all the while they mean only "License!"
Libertarians are not on the side of conservatives or Republicans. They are on the side of the Democrats, the party of death to the unborn, and soon the party of death to the elderly under ObamaCare, and eventually the party of death to the middle class, which will not long exist because of Obama.
The middle class stands in the way of the Alinskyites' real objective: the rich. Middle class people, after all, would like to be rich some day, too, not poor. So they must go first in order to get at the rich. If the middle class had any brains they'd understand that Obama's invective against the rich is primarily aimed at them because, compared to the poor, the middle class is rich. Unfortunately, they went to public schools.
One thing at a time, making use of the useful idiots, the libertarians.
Libertarian Party Boasts Of Stopping Republican Senate Hopefuls In IN and MT
A reader points out that the Libertarian Party is actually boasting here about how well two of its Senate candidates performed in the elections a week ago, one in Montana and one in Indiana, because they threw the races to the Democrats. By doing so they prevented Republicans from winning precious seats needed in the contest against the Obama agenda.
He's right. I quote from the post:
"[T]hese are exceptionally good results:
Dan Cox (MT) 31,476 votes - 6.5% - high impact: more than margin of victory for Democrat over Republican ...
Andrew Horning (IN) 143,790 votes - 5.8% - high impact: more than margin of victory for Democrat over Republican"
It's obvious from this that Libertarians view themselves as spoilers who count Republican defeats as victories for themselves, which tells you everything you need to know about whose side the Libertarian Party is on.
Of course there is no reflection on the libertarians' bad faith in this election in the media in general, nor from conservative talk radio in particular which boasts self-professed libertarian sympathizers in people like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.
h/t Housman2000
What A Shock. Mish Voted Libertarian In Illinois.
Mish says so, here:
"I voted for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and I am proud of my vote. Can those voting for the lesser of two evils say the same thing?"
Russell Kirk didn't call libertarians chirping sectaries for nothing. They have their very vocal advocates like Mish, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul, but no following of real consequence. As fringe candidates they view themselves as troublemakers mostly, fanatical idealists at war with reality whose only hope is to act as spoilers. Gary Johnson said as much of himself, here, as recently as August:
“I hope that I would get labeled as a ‘spoiler’ from the standpoint of people actually focusing on what it is I am saying, and that this changes the way whoever wins governs,” Johnson told Sunshine State News in an exclusive interview Saturday at the 2012 Ron Paul Festival.
Libertarians often claim they are "principled" in contrast to the rest of us. Evidently deliberately ruining someone else's chances is one of those principles, which vindictiveness is one reason they don't make progress as a party. While their extremism may scare people off, I think their natural lack of good will has more to do with it.
It's bad form, old boy.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Total Votes Cast In Presidential Elections Since 1968
Figures rounded to the nearest million:
1968.....73 million
1972.....78
1976.....81
1980.....87
1984.....93
1988.....92
1992...104
1996.....96
2000...105
2004...122
2008...131
2012...123.
The biggest "shrug" was in 1996 when Republicans ran me-too liberals Bob Dole and Jack Kemp against the real liberals, Billy Clinton and the Div. School Dropout, AlGore.
The second biggest shrug just occurred, when Republicans again ran me-too liberals, tax collectors for the welfare state who promised to preserve Medicare and keep certain parts of ObamaCare, against the real deal in Obama, who just expanded the welfare state with ObamaCare.
Republicans. They don't call them the stupid party for nothing.
If they had at least run conservatives who lost we could say conservatism lost. But they didn't, and we can't.
Total Votes Cast 2012 Presidential Election Now Up To 122.94 Million
Data here.
As of right now third party voting plus Romney's share still comes to less than Obama's, at 49.45%.
Who's More Willing To Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire? GOP Or Dems?
Josh Barro thinks it's the Republicans, here:
Democrats cannot force Republicans’ hand unless they are more willing than Republicans to let all the Bush tax cuts expire. And they won’t be. A full expiration might well cause a new recession, which would be even more politically damaging for the Barack Obama administration than for congressional Republicans. Congress is already about as unpopular as it can become, and Republicans know they are not going to get their legislative agenda enacted in the next two years anyway. But a new recession would greatly interfere with Obama’s second-term plans.
Republicans Attacked ObamaCare. Hispanics Overwhelmingly Supported It. Any Questions?
The idea that Republicans alienate (can I say that?) Hispanics because Republicans are against amnesty for illegal immigrants is ludicrous. Hispanics love the welfare state and the party which stands for it, especially its newest iteration in ObamaCare:
The poll, which surveyed 887 likely Latino voters, shows that 62 percent of respondents approve of the overall job Obama has done with health care while in office, including his creation of the controversial plan for comprehensive health care reform. The poll was conducted the Sept. 11-13 and the margin of sampling error is +/- three percentage points.
More here.
Heather Mac Donald gets it right, for National Review, here:
"It is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation."
Thomas Sowell Recognizes Tom Dewey In Mitt Romney
Thomas Sowell recognizes Tom Dewey in Mitt Romney here, as did we, and divines the horrible consequences of Romney's loss:
Quite aside from the immediate effects of particular policies, Barack Obama has repeatedly circumvented the laws, including the Constitution of the United States, in ways and on a scale that pushes this nation in the direction of arbitrary one-man rule.
Now that Obama will be in a position to appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his evasions of the law and usurpations of power, this country may be unrecognizable in a few years as the America that once led the world in freedom, as well as in many other things.
Barack Obama's boast, on the eve of the election of 2008-- "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America"-- can now be carried out, without fear of ever having to face the voters again.
This "transforming" project extends far beyond fundamental internal institutions, or even the polarization and corruption of the people themselves, with goodies handed out in exchange for their surrendering their birthright of freedom.
Obama will now also have more "flexibility," as he told Russian President Medvedev, to transform the international order, where he has long shown that he thinks America has too much power and influence. A nuclear Iran can change that. Forever.
Have you noticed how many of our enemies in other countries have been rooting for Obama? You or your children may yet have reason to recall that as a bitter memory of a warning sign ignored on election day in 2012.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Hurricane Sandy Victims Search For Gasoline
In the Mad Max movies, it took an apocalypse to start the war for gasoline. In 2012 in New York and New Jersey it only took a Category 1 hurricane.
Oh yeah. We're so advanced.
Republicans Lose Again Because They Offered No Conservative Alternative
Andrew McCarthy for National Review here gets it, even if I would quibble about the precision of his election results:
In truth, millions of Americans have decided that Republicans are not a viable alternative because they are already too much like Democrats. ...
Washington’s Republican establishment is progressive, not conservative. ...
[T]he Republican campaign called for enlarging a military our current spending on which dwarfs the combined defense budgets of the next several highest-spending nations. When was the last time you heard a Republican explain what departments and entitlements he’d slash to pay for that? ...
Republicans talk about limited central government, but they do not believe in it ... They look at a money-hemorrhaging disaster like Medicare, whose unsustainability is precisely caused by the intrusion of government, and they say, “Let’s preserve it — in fact, let’s make its preservation the centerpiece of our campaign.” ...
Truth be told, most of today’s GOP does not believe Washington makes things worse. Republicans think the federal government — by confiscating, borrowing, and printing money — is the answer to every problem, rather than the source of most. That is why those running the party today, when they ran Washington during the Bush years, orchestrated an expansion of government size, scope, and spending that would still boggle the mind had Obama not come along. ... No matter what they say in campaigns, today’s Republicans are champions of massive, centralized government. They just think it needs to be run smarter — as if the problem were not human nature and the nature of government, but just that we haven’t quite gotten the org-chart right yet.
That is not materially different from what the Democrats believe. ... Tuesday pitted proud progressives against reticent progressives; slightly more preferred the true-believers. For Americans who don’t see much daylight between the two parties — one led by the president who keeps spending money we don’t have and the other by congressional Republicans who keep writing the checks and extending the credit line — voting wasn’t worth the effort.
McCarthy thinks about 2 million fewer voters showed up in 2012 than in 2004, which is "staggering", except that his election math already looks just a little off. Today I'm showing 122.5 million total votes in 2012, and 122.3 million in 2004, eight years and two elections ago. Still, that is a staggering comparison when you realize that the population has grown by a net 21 million over the period.
Clearly, as McCarthy says, the voters in 2012 "shrugged", but the shrug was actually bigger in 1996 when Republicans again characteristically picked two other moderate losers in Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. Fully 8% fewer ended up voting in 1996 than in 1992 (1% fewer voted in 1988 than in 1984).
Starting with 1968 and ending with 2008, the average increase in total votes cast in the presidential from election to election has been 6%. 2012 compared to 2008 shows 6% fewer votes cast. The slightly smaller shrug over moderate Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may reflect the distance in time and understanding from the debates over conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s.
The single biggest gains in total votes cast, incidentally, occurred in 2004 in Bush 43 v. Kerry (16% more votes cast than in 2000) when war in Iraq put patriotism center stage (just barely 51% voted for that despite buying off seniors with Medicare Part D in 2003), followed by 1992 in Bush 41 v. Clinton (13% more votes cast than in 1988) when the issues were breaking the no new taxes pledge (43% voted against that) and "that giant sucking sound" (19% voted against that).
Republicans still haven't learned how to put conservatism all together and wrap it in a bow.
Of 7000 Banks, 3500 Need Recapitalization, 2000 Need To Sell
So note various experts in this story by Stephen Gandel for Fortune, who concludes:
Mortgage rates are about one percentage point higher than they would be if we had more competition. Apply that to all mortgages, and that higher interest rate costs consumers about $100 billion a year in extra interest. Not to mention all those who can't actually get refinanced. I'd say that's pretty good evidence that we should figure out a way to keep small banks around.
The bottom line: Dodd-Frank will not go away because Obama is not going away, so up to as many as 6300 banks may go away, destroying what's left of free market competition in banking. The people are already the losers, and stand to lose even more.
Since the beginning of 2008, 460 banks have failed.
Larry Kudlow Slanders Christ On His Radio Program
Larry Kudlow, former Democrat, member of SDS, drug addict and alcoholic, and supposedly a Jewish convert to Christianity, slandered Christ in the final hour of his radio program yesterday. That's a lot of "formers".
He did so while attacking Paul Krugman for advocating that the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire as a remedy for the fiscal cliff, ridiculing the idea with the ever popular provincialism "for Christ's sake".
Obviously the defeat of Mitt Romney has pushed all of Kudlow's buttons at once. He began the program with a full-throated denunciation of the Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party and its anti-amnesty stance on illegal immigrants, saying it must be "crushed".
You can take the man out of the SDS, but you can't take the SDS out of the man.
You can not hear a podcast of Kudlow's program anytime you don't want to, here.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Larry Kudlow Declares War On Pat Buchanan Wing Of Republican Party
Just now on the radio show, saying the anti-amnesty wing, the Pat Buchanan wing, of the Republican Party must be defeated and "crushed".
Two back to back defeats of liberal/moderate Republican candidates for president continue to be misinterpreted by the fifth column on the right.
They should join the Democrat Party once and for all.
David Frum Loves The 47%
Here:
"To be a patriot is to love your country as it is. Those who seem to despise half of America will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country's past will not be entrusted with its future."
David Frum should know a thing or two about patriotism. He's from Canada.
Did the Founders love England as it was, or any of the huddled masses yearning to be free love the hellholes they came from as they were?
Gold To Oil Ratio Skyrockets to 20.11
The action, however, is mostly on the side of gold, which is movin' on up because of Obama's re-election.
He aims to tax and spend, but the US House stands in the way of that, which takes some of the pressure off the need to borrow money or print it, which is negative for gold. But with Ben Bernanke serving at his pleasure at the Fed, dollar devaluation through quantitative easing is still positive for gold and negative for the dollar.
Gold doubled under Obama's first term, from $850 the ounce to $1,730 today. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again.
$3,400 the ounce in 2016?
Just the thought of it makes my nose bleed.
He aims to tax and spend, but the US House stands in the way of that, which takes some of the pressure off the need to borrow money or print it, which is negative for gold. But with Ben Bernanke serving at his pleasure at the Fed, dollar devaluation through quantitative easing is still positive for gold and negative for the dollar.
Gold doubled under Obama's first term, from $850 the ounce to $1,730 today. I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again.
$3,400 the ounce in 2016?
Just the thought of it makes my nose bleed.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Don't Blame The 47%
Don't blame the 47%.
- The percentage which Romney said wouldn't vote for him in the general (the takers)
- The percentage which did vote for him in the general (the makers)
- The percentage which didn't vote for him in the Republican primaries (the achers)
Instead, blame Romney (the faker).
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Why It's Too Early To Evaluate Election Turnout
Election turnout in 2012 as of right now is 117.5 million, dramatically lower than 2004, let alone 2008.
Turnout in 2008 was 131.5 million, in 2004 122.3 million, and in 2000 105.4 million.
Hurricane Sandy badly disrupted voting in densely populated areas of the eastern seaboard, especially in hard hit New York, namely in Queens, Long Island and Staten Island. The difference in New York alone between 2008 and 2012 to date is 1.6 million, and 600,000 in New Jersey.
Add to this the late voting arrangements for voters in New Jersey, and the absentee and military vote being tabulated after election day and the turnout numbers for 2012 could yet change significantly, even if relatively few races might be impacted by the outcome.
It's still too early to draw sweeping conclusions about the meaning of the turnout until we know more exactly what it is.
Rush Limbaugh Is Grasping At Straws To Explain Romney's Loss
Yesterday Rush informed us that maybe Romney lost because there are now more of "them" than of us.
In other words, we on the right are now demographically outnumbered by Democrat Hispanics, Blacks, etc. and won't be able to win anymore without more of "them" in the Republican Party. That is the reflexive interpretation of the Republican Establishment, as reported here:
"It's not about geography anymore with the Republican Party," said Margaret Hoover, a Republican strategist and CNN contributor. "It's about demographics, and we've got to start thinking about growing the party."
Today he's changing his tune. Today he's blaming . . . the white or conservative or Christian Republican base!
In other words, because Romney may have underperformed McCain's turnout (by 2.8 million) therefore Republicans didn't turn out for Romney.
Well, how does Rush know they were Republicans? What if they were independents?
I don't know how you can blame the base when for the first time ever I had to wait in line to vote on Tuesday, in deep red semi-rural Michigan, like many others all across the country.
And I don't know how you square that with the fact that it wasn't even close in South Carolina, ground zero for Tea Party antipathy toward Mitt Romney. The right everywhere held its nose and turned out, not for Romney it is true, but to defeat Barack Obama.
And now Rush is blaming US!
Gee, thanks Rush. You've just given the Establishment another reason to exclude conservatives from the Republican Party, and it isn't even true.
Turnout yesterday won't be precisely known for weeks, and it is important to wait, not just to learn the Republican turnout, but the Democrat contrary to what Rush is saying today.
In 2008 McCain slightly underperformed Bush in 2004 in the swing states, but in 2008 Obama way outperformed John Kerry from 2004, by 3 million in the swing states if I remember correctly. Obama won in those states by a margin of only 1.4 million. A half million Republicans weren't to blame for that.
"The Electorate Always Gets Things Right", Illustrated From The Bible
"The wisdom of crowds", according to Jude Wanniski, John Tamny and the libertarian quacks of Forbes Magazine, illustrated from the Bible:
"And all the people brake off the golden earrings which [were] in their ears, and brought [them] unto Aaron. And he received [them] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These [be] thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." -- Exodus 32:3f.
Hours After Re-election, Obama Moves Against Arms Industry
Obama's way of attacking our Second Amendment check on tyranny isn't overt. He takes the circuitous route by attacking capitalism generally and specifically the arms manufacturers, who thrive on trade.
Hours after re-election he's back in negotiations over the UN treaty which would control trading of arms. His Democrat-controlled Senate could ultimately ratify this treaty, thus by-passing the politics of the issue in the Republican-controlled US House.
Better stock up. Once he ruins a few companies here, and limits the import trade, guns are going to get harder to come by.
This is what giving Obama more time meant during the campaign season. And Republicans had a candidate who never brought it up or made it an issue.
Too late now.
Reuters reports here:
Hours after U.S. President Barack Obama was re-elected, the United States backed a U.N. committee's call on Wednesday to renew debate over a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Hey John Tamny! Did The Electorate Get It Right Last Night?
The invisible hand of the electorate and the invisible hand of capitalism cannot be falsified by anything, because they are, well, invisible, here:
Put plainly, Wanniski argued that the electorate always gets things right, or in his words:
“…the electorate as a whole is wiser than any individual member in understanding its interests, it is wiser than any economist or group of economists.”
No doubt many readers are scratching their heads in response to the above, but as Wanniski put it to the late William F. Buckley (paraphrase), “You’re likely smarter than every individual inside a packed football stadium, but collectively those individuals are smarter than you are.” The wisdom of crowds….
We may not have always liked the end result, but the electorate has always been right. ...
The electorate unhappily gave [George W. Bush] another shot; one it presumably came to regret. ...
Obama ... [i]s as a result presiding over a sick economy that should be strong, and as the electorate dislikes failures, Obama’s days in the White House are numbered. ...
The electorate is dying to fire Obama, history says it will given its aversion to failures, yet Romney’s timidity with regard to policies actually meant to grow the economy point to a close win for Romney when it should be a rout. Wanniski’s electoral model says so.
The libertarians are as bat-shit crazy as the Keynesians.
Presidential Aspirant Rep. Michele Bachmann Narrowly Re-elected In MN
Results here.
Her stand on many of the issues approximated real conservatism, but her district appears less inclined to vote for her after the presidential run.
Romney's Path From 206 Ended At 266
Romney was competitive only in Florida with 49.3% (29), Virginia with 47.8% (13) and Ohio with 48.2% (18), with no evidence beyond that suggesting a path to victory, just hope (!) for the best.
Where've we heard that before? From a real liberal, Barack Obama. The opposition could smell our weakness in our imitation of them. And the voters wisely recognized that faux liberalism is no substitute for the real thing. Republicans didn't offer the country a clear alternative to Obama, just a facsimile.
This suggests money spent in places like Michigan was a big mistake, where Obama finished with 53.5% to 45.6%. And believe me, I received numerous robocalls and a fair number of live calls from Republicans trying to win the presidential here. Romney should have arguably allocated more time and money in places like Pennsylvania and Colorado.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Power Companies Pretend News Doesn't Exist, Just Like Liberal Media
Power companies in Long Island and the Rockaways in Queens have simply removed some areas there from their outage maps because power cannot be restored to effectively destroyed service points, aka homes, reports CBS News here.
Kind of like how the media have pretended there's no there when it comes to problems with the Obama biography and record.
If you ignore them, they don't exist.
Gee, I wonder from whom the power companies learned that trick?
Benghazi? Who's that?
Rush Says Rasmussen Puts Republican Registrations +5.8 Over Democrats
Here:
Rasmussen's out with his final Summary of Party Affiliation, as of October 31st.
This is a huge sample of people that Scott Rasmussen asks are they Republican or Democrat or independent or what have you. He has the Republicans at their highest party affiliation he's ever recorded since he's been doing this. Basically it's Republicans plus six: Republicans 39, Democrats 33. The actual number is 5.8. We'll round it up to six points. Rasmussen had the exact turnout in 2008 at Democrats plus seven.
Rasmussen has a +/- 4 margin of error in his polling, which is basically dead even in the daily presidential tracking poll, so I'll go out on a limb and say Romney gets +5 in the popular because of his overwhelming advantage with independents and in Republican registrations, and maybe 285 in the Electoral College: 206 per Rasmussen's current assumptions, plus Florida (29, hello seniors), Virginia (13, hello defense industries), Ohio (18, Kasich and Co.), Wisconsin (10, Walker and Co./Paul Ryan) and Colorado (9, pro-family voters).
Monday, November 5, 2012
Male Median Earnings Are At 1960s Levels
"[T]he earnings of the guy in the middle have declined 20% over the last four decades. As a result, the median earnings of men are back to the levels that prevailed in the 1960s."
-- Michael Greenstone, MIT, quoted here
Your Congressman Could Be On His Parents' Insurance Under ObamaCare
Guess what?
Your Congressman could theoretically stay on his parents' healthcare insurance under ObamaCare, which allows a child to stay on his parents' plan until the age of 26.
How so?
"No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years." -- Article. I. Section. 1. of The Constitution of the United States of America
So an enterprising young individual could get himself elected to Congress at the age of 25 and still be on his parents' plan.
That's insane!
Neal Gabler Can't Face It That Democrats Have Betrayed Social Security
Here, for Reuters:
"There is no gainsaying that the basic purpose of the [Ryan] budget is to dismantle New Deal and Great Society programs that assist the poor and gradually remove the juice from the third rail by privatizing Social Security and essentially voucherizing Medicare. To save the country from the flood of debt, they must save us from FDR and LBJ."
The Ryan Budget isn't even the law of the land because Democrats have stopped it in the Senate. But for two years, two years!, Democrats have enthusiastically advocated and voted for reductions in the payroll tax, removing the juice from Social Security, in order to put cash into people's hands and stimulate the economy. Democrats did this in the lame duck session in December 2010, when they still had complete control of the US government: House, Senate, White House:
Looks to me like Democrats represent the biggest threat to the sacrosanctity of Social Security.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
If ObamaCare's Anything Like Feds' Response To Rockaways, We're In Deep Trouble
From a harrowing tale of narrow escape from Hurricane Sandy and subsequent abandonment of his neighborhood, Brian Kelly, a retired FDNY firefighter, in his own words in the NY Daily News, here:
“Listen, I was a firefighter, I know relief doesn’t happen overnight. But we’re four days out now. I’m staying with relatives in Staten Island. I drive back to Rockaway every day because I’m afraid of my house getting robbed. In that time I haven’t seen any help in Rockaway. There are some city cops. I saw just two city garbage trucks. I saw the National Guard drive by a few times. But I’m still waiting for the guard, FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, Red Cross to set up shop in Rockaway and start helping people back to a life. I’m not seeing it.”
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Michigan Gov. Snyder Is 83% Correct On Ballot Proposals
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is 83% correct on the 6 ballot proposals facing voters in Tuesday's elections. He's against all of them except Number 1, the emergency manager law, according to this story in the Detroit Free Press, here:
A gubernatorial bus tour hit Sterling Heights today to reinforce Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's message to vote yes on Proposal 1, no on the rest. ... Proposal 1 asks if the emergency manager law should stay in place. Proposal 2-6 are constitutional amendments that would protect collective bargaining, require utilities to use more renewable energy, put union rights in place for home health care workers, require a two-thirds vote in the legislature for any tax changes and require a vote of the people before an international bridge or tunnel could be built.
Amending the constitution is simply a way for legislators to avoid responsibility for taking a stand on these issues. And Michiganders seem hell bent on helping them do just that when they already have the option of punishing representatives at the polls for voting contrary to their wishes on the matters. They should exercise that option. If government isn't representing the people to their satisfaction, I suggest increasing representation, not sabotaging it by making such representation as we have even less representative by going over its head. Amending the constitution over and over again is nuclear warfare against our form of government.
The first proposal is really the same sort of thing, but if the voters really hate the emergency manager law then they should throw the bums out who passed it. Going over their heads to a ballot proposal really takes the heat off of them when it should really be on them all the more if it's such a bad law.
I happen to think it's a bad law, but I'd rather vote against my representatives who passed it.
Unfortunately, the horse is already out of the barn on this one.
Mayor Doomberg Cancels NY Marathon: Starting Line Was On Staten Island
Mayor Doomberg has canceled the NY Marathon because . . . it was to have started on Staten Island, and the optics of starting a race at ground zero for Hurricane Sandy were simply unthinkable. People there are still under water and without electricity, food and heat.
AP Obama reports here:
The storm forced cancellation of Sunday's New York City Marathon. Mayor Michael Bloomberg reversed himself Friday and yielded to mounting criticism about running the race, which starts on hard-hit Staten Island and wends through all five of the city's boroughs. ... [O]n Staten Island, there was grumbling that the borough was a lower priority to get its services restored. "You know it's true," said Tony Carmelengo, who lives in the St. George section of Staten Island and still does not have electricity. Added his neighbor, Anthony Como: "It's economics. Manhattan gets everything, let's face it."
Rasmussen Shows Obama Support Eroding In Michigan
Rasmussen today shows Michigan only leaning Obama, meaning his support in Michigan has eroded enough to lose that dark blue hue.
He also shows the candidates tied in Ohio instead of slightly favoring Romney.
Based on the math as of this moment, Romney will come up short with 267 Electoral College votes if he does not win Ohio, Wisconsin or Nevada, assuming he wins Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida.
Election 2012: Do It For The Geezers
One sunny day in January, 2013, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay," and walked away.
The following day the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer President and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and again just walked away.
The third day the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I've told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the President and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"
The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it." The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."
Don't forget to vote.
That old man is depending on you!
h/t Ruth
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