Category Archives: morality

Tolerance

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Last Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention, Saratoga Springs, UT, Mayor and Congressional Candidate Mia Love spoke rousingly and favorably (see related, below) of the Republican ticket for President.  Oh, and she’s black.  And a woman.

Later that night and early last Wednesday, she was brutally assaulted in her virtual world.  Because she’s black, and a woman, and apparently a runaway from the Progressive plantation house.

Here’s a screen shot of her hacked Wikipedia page, captured by Tabitha Hale:

Here’s another example, from The Daily Dot:

An American citizen, Progressives say, is a “sell-out to the Right Wing Hate Machine,” a “dirty, worthless whore,” and a “House Nigger” when s/he doesn’t toe the Party Line.

The open bigotry isn’t all of it, though.  There’s also the soft bigotry of the Left, who’ve said…nothing…about this assault.  Which is why it’s legitimate to lump the “mainstream” Progressives into the same cesspool as these actors.

Moreover, Progressives also have actively ignored the diversity of the evil conservatives and of the Republican Party’s convention.  MSNBC, for instance, covered Nikki Haley’s (R, SC) speech that Tuesday night and…no one else’s.  This with a speech card that included Mayor Love, ex-Congressman Artur Davis (R, AL), Senate candidate Ted Cruz (R, TX), and Governor Brian Sandoval (R, NV).  And on Wednesday night?  Well, they had an article on Vice President-nominee Paul Ryan’s speech, but they completely ignored Governor Susana Martinez’ (R, NM) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speeches immediately preceding his.

Four More Years of This?

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Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, had some…interesting…things to say recently.

Well, I think that worker probably has a good understanding of what’s happened over the past four years in terms of the president coming in and seeing 800,000 jobs lost on the day that the president was being sworn in, and seeing the president moving pretty quickly to stem the losses, to turn the economy around.  And over the past, you know, 27 months we’ve created 4.5 million private-sector jobs. That’s more jobs than in the Bush recovery (or) in the Reagan recovery.

Hmm….

The Investor’s Business Daily editorialist had a few things to say about her claim.

She starts counting private-sector job growth under Obama in February 2010 and, sure enough, in the 29 months since then (not 27 as Cutter says), there have been 4.5 million private-sector jobs created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

February 2010 was fully eight months into the economic recovery.  So Cutter has simply picked the worst month under Obama as her starting point….  In the aftermath of the 1981-82 recession, private-sector jobs bottomed out in December 1982, the month after that recession ended.  Twenty-nine months later, the private sector under Reagan had created 8 million jobs—nearly twice as many as under Obama.  How about Bush?  …if you use the Cutter method, the private sector created 4.7 million jobs in the 29 months after July 2003, when the job market bottomed.  In other words, Bush beat Obama by his own preferred measuring technique by 200,000 jobs.

What’s more, after 29 months of allegedly stellar job growth under Obama, the jobless rate is still 8.3%.  By this point in the Reagan and Bush jobs recoveries, the unemployment rate was 7.2% and 4.9%, respectively.

It’s important to note, too, that Obama continues to offer not least minim of evidence that these created jobs have resulted from his policies in particular, and not from the normal economic business recovery that follows any recession—only now with the recovery rate suppressed by his policies.

And there’s this tidbit that bears on Cutter’s claim.

In January 2009, the month President Obama entered the Oval Office and shortly before he signed his stimulus spending bill, median household income was $54,983.  By June 2012, it had tumbled to $50,964, adjusted for inflation. … That’s $4,019 in lost real income, a little less than a month’s income every year.

[E]ven if you start the analysis when the recession ended in June 2009, the numbers are dismal.  Three years after the economy hit its trough, median household income is down $2,544, or nearly 5%.

Some jobs he’s “created.”

Now, isn’t Cutter the one who spoke Obama’s lie about his Republican opponent being a felon?  Isn’t she the one who carried Obama’s denial of all knowledge of his SuperPAC’s ad accusing his opponent of killing a woman with his practices at Bain?  Why, yes.  Yes, she is.  Can anyone take seriously anything her mouth talks about?

A larger question: can we afford four more years of an administration so plainly out of contact with the reality of our current economic strait?

 

h/t Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club

Extremes

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Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama gave an interview to the AP in which he described Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s positions as “extreme.”  Yet both Obama’s descriptions and his countervailing positions demonstrate pretty conclusively which of the two is extreme.

Obama had this non sequitur in his remarks about what he has “learned about [Romney] this campaign:

What we’ve also seen is Gov. Romney has not been willing to, I think, own up to some of the responsibilities that are required if you’re president of the United States. So there’s been obviously a lot of discussion about his unwillingness to release his tax returns.

Apparently honoring the law (here, concerning the required releasability of personal tax returns) is “not willing to own up to some of the responsibilities that are required if you’re president of the United States.”  But ignoring the law (vis., DOMA) is such a responsibility.  Ignoring the will of the Congress and implementing carbon cap-and-trade by Executive fiat is such a responsibility.  Ignoring the will of the Congress (the failed DREAM ACT) and implementing immigration parameters by Executive fiat is such a responsibility.  Refusing to enforce our borders while attacking states that do attempt to enforce them, using laws that ape Federal law, is such a responsibility.

Obama made this argument about Romney being short on facts in his campaign.

[T]he most prominent argument that he’s been making for why voters should vote for him is this notion that Obama took the work requirement out of welfare, and he’ll put it back.

Never mind that the explicit requirement for actual work has been withdrawn, and the states’ “flexibility” includes the option to not require work or work training.

And without a trace of irony, Obama had this to say:

Well, I think that if you don’t have a good argument for how you’re going to make things better, then you stay focused on how you can discredit the incumbent.

After accusing Romney of being responsible for the cancer death of a woman (he did say in a separate interview that he didn’t really believe that, but in that same interview, he refused to repudiate the ad that made the accusation, or to call out the SuperPAC (run by his ex-Deputy Press Secretary) for having run it).  And after accusing Romney of being a felon over Romney’s position at Bain while rescuing the Olympics—stemming from Obama’s own “misunderstanding” of SEC filings.

On those extreme positions themselves, Obama had this:

[Romney] has signed up for positions, extreme positions that are very consistent with positions that a number of House Republicans have taken.

Obama then listed the Republicans’ $5 trillion tax cut proposal, the elimination of tax credits for wind energy, and an amorphous objection to the Republicans’ Medicare proposals as those “extreme” positions.

If I understand Obama aright, then, it’s extreme to cut taxes, especially in a recession: it’s extreme to leave more of private citizens’ money in the hands of the original private citizens instead of those of whom Obama favors.

It’s extreme, in a time of enormous government spending and debt buildup, to cut spending—especially to fringe energy sources like wind power.  Obama proudly pointed out that he’s doubled the output of wind-generated electricity with his tax credits.  Let’s see: total electricity generated in the US in 2008 was nearly 3.5 Terawatts.  Wind-generated electricity in 2011 was nearly 47 Megawatts.  Obama has pushed wind energy from nearly nothing to twice nearly nothing.  And that doubling came, as he so proudly said, only with the aid of government subsidy.  Wind-generated electricity is fringe not because it’s an idiotic idea, but because it cannot compete in the free market on its own; it needs a constant propping up.

Finally, it’s extreme to take steps to reform Medicare so as to preserve it for tomorrow’s seniors, while leaving it alone for today’s seniors and near-seniors (who have no chance of adjusting to any changes).

But what are Obama’s plans?  He’s carefully nebulous about those, but we can look to his record and see his plans.

Obama intends to ratchet up the taxes on Americans of whom he disapproves.  He intends to ratchet up his spendinginvesting in his favored companies and in his favored unions.  He already has taken the (not at all extreme, he says) measure of removing $700 billion from the present form of Medicare in putting it into his Obamacare to pay for that.

Who’s extreme?

Cheap?

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The Democratic National Committee has told Westport, CT, that it will not be reimbursed for the $15 thousand the city spent on security, traffic control, fire, emergency planning, and so on for Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s fundraising trip in early August.

The candidate held two fundraisers in the small town, one at Sherwood Island State Park and the other a $36 thousand per person dinner at movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s digs.  The town’s First Selectman, Gordon Joseloff, noted that the tightwad-ness could have been softened had the candidate at least held a public event in the form of a visit to the town’s 9/11 memorial—just yards from the helipad used by the candidate to pop in and back out.  Candidate Obama had no time for such things, though.

At $36k per, it would seem half a meal—or just the table scraps—would have covered the town’s costs for the fundraisers.  I have to ask, then: is the Obama campaign that broke, or just that cheap?  And is it broke/cheap only fiscally, or morally, also?

Standards

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Much has been made of the media’s bias, both in favor of liberal incumbents and candidates for office and against conservative incumbents and candidates for office.  Much also has been made of why the bias exists—to preserve access to Power, to sell articles and newspapers and gain/preserve viewership, even to support heartfelt beliefs.

Here are a couple of examples of misbehavior and the reactions to them.  Missouri Republican candidate for Senator Todd Akin said some completely reprehensible things concerning rape and pregnancy few days ago, and Republicans and conservatives are, en masse demanding he withdraw from the race, even though this is a critical race in the coming struggle for control of the Senate.

Minnesota State Congressman Kerry Gauthier (D) was caught at a truck stop engaging in a sex act with a 17-year-old boy.  Even the local papers, including Minnesota’s largest, the Star-Tribune, are largely ignoring it.  The Star-Tribune has a single, pro forma article, and that’s it.

I’d like to offer a different reason for the bias in the media.  Maybe the reason is that conservatives simply believe in their fellow Americans and in the inherent goodness and wisdom of Americans, both individually, and collectively.  From that, conservatives expect more from their fellow Americans and especially from those they elect to represent them or who are asking for that privilege.  Conservatives simply have higher standards.

When a Republican or a conservative politician misbehaves, then, it’s news.  When a Democrat or a liberal politician misbehaves, it isn’t news; it’s business as usual.

Update: Fox News reported Wednesday that Minnesota’s state Democratic Party leaders are asking for Gauthier to withdraw from re-election–but not to resign from the state’s legislature before the end of his term.  The National Democratic Party leadership remains silent.  Hmm….

Up-Update: Yesterday, after discussions with state party leaders, Gauthier decided not to run for re-election, after all.  This was reported by Fox News; I saw little to no reporting by members of the NLMSM like CNN or MSNBC.