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

Election 2012: It's A Referendum On Obama, Not Romney

And a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Ron Radosh Skewers Filmmaker Oliver Stone's Mendacious Stalinism

Here:

According to his own testimony, if he had become president, Wallace would have made Harry Dexter White his secretary of the Treasury and given a position in government to Laurence Duggan. Both men were Soviet agents. As a KGB cable found in the Venona archives shows, the Soviets hoped that Duggan would aid them “by using his friendship” with Wallace for “extracting .  .  . interesting information.” ... Stone allows no critical opinions by scholars who have studied the Soviet archives to disturb his rehash of Communist propaganda themes. His sainted Henry Wallace opposed the creation of NATO, advocated abandoning Berlin in response to the Soviet blockade, denounced the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction as “the martial plan,” and justified the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia as a measure to thwart a plot by fascist forces. Precisely the Kremlin line.

Hillary Clinton's Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

Patrick J. Buchanan, here:

On Aug. 16, a cable went to the State Department describing the imminent danger, saying the compound could not defend itself against a “coordinated attack.”

The cable was sent to Hillary Clinton – and signed by Ambassador Chris Stevens.

On Sept. 11, Ambassador Stevens died in a coordinated attack on the Benghazi compound by elements of Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaida.

Catherine Herridge of Fox News, who unearthed the Aug. 16 cable, calls it the “smoking gun.”

The Devil Knows Latin

"When asked whether he would perform a baptism in the vernacular, he declined, replying that 'the baby doesn’t understand English and the Devil knows Latin.'"

Election 2012: Love? Or Revenge? Easy Choice!

love

revenge

Videos here, and here.

Why Obama Will Lose Ohio: Only 2,800 Show Up To Meet POTUS 4 Days B4 Election

Reported here:

“I’ve said I will work with anybody of any party to move this country forward,” President Obama told a crowd of 2,800 this morning in Hilliard, Ohio. “If you want to break the gridlock in Congress, you’ll vote for leaders who feel the same way whether they’re Democrat, Republican or independent.”

Has Anybody Noticed Hillary Clinton Is A First Class F&%K Up?

At least it ain't KoolAid

The historical high water marks of her incompetence will include HillaryCare, which got Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in control of Congress in 1994, and Benghazi, which sure looks like she doesn't have the first clue about running anything foreign either, and looks to get her boss unelected right quick like, as they say down Arkansas way.

Michael Barone Thinks Romney Could Get 285 Electoral College Votes

Just now on Hannity.

Half NYC Hurricane Death Toll Comes From Staten Island

Reported here:

On Thursday, police recovered the bodies of two brothers, ages 2 and 4, who were swept away after the SUV driven by their mother, Glenda Moore, stalled in Sandy's floodwaters Monday evening. ... The discovery was another heartbreaking blow to Staten Island, a hard-hit borough that residents say has been largely forgotten. At least 19 people have been killed in Staten Island, about half the death toll for all of New York City.

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.