And if you can’t bring yourself to directly address the condition of elected Democrats’ hearts, at least go as far as the late pastor of my hometown Baptist Church, who, when asked if he thought so and so was a Christian would reply:

I don’t have a soul-meter, but if I were directed to gather evidence of their faith, I doubt I could introduce enough into evidence for a jury to convict them of being a Christian.

I haven’t been able to find any evidence to convict the Democratic Party in DC of caring about the poor and middle class for the last 40 years, by a preponderance of the evidence, much less beyond a reasonable doubt, especially after Cap and Trade passed the House, despite restrained and oftentimes apologetic rhetoric of Republican prosecutors.

Democratic Party assault on the poor and middle class

Last week, we left “it to you to decide which party cares ‘more’ for the poor”, but after the Democrat Party’s passage of the Cap and Trade assault on the poor and middle class, this member of “you” aka We the People announces his decision, at least with respect to the elected members of the parties.

The Democratic Party has held itself out as the party of the “little guy” and the “working man” since the 1930s. We concede that the portions of FDR’s first New Deal providing temporary welfare relief and the  Social Security Act, including its provisions for Unemployment Compensation, have proven to be comforts for those constituencies that both parties have long embraced as part of what Reagan dubbed the federal “safety net for the truly needy”.

But, ObamaDems are more accurately defined as having turned their backs on the poor (pictured).

Policies that produce less poor people and elevate more peoples’ prosperity eschewed by Democrats

But I am hard pressed to identify any policies of the Democratic Party since JFKs tax rate cuts in the early 1960s that have done anything but make the little guy smaller and working men more poorly compensated.

The un-de-Newted Bill Clinton advocated policies that extended the Reagan Recovery to historic proportions which President George W. Bush and the GOP prolonged until 2006 thanks to JFK/Reagan-like supply side tax rate cuts, until the Democratic Party-protected Fannie/Freddie mortgage credit policies, combined with Greenspan’s loose money FED and Democrat Congress promised hostile to investors policies sent investors on strike and launched a recession in late 2007 until the credit crunch in the Fall of 2008 made it the current Great Recession.

President Barack Obama was elected in large part due to the Hope that he would bring the Change needed to end the recession. We were told that GOP policies that “favored the rich” caused the downturn. Of course, we have been fed this stale line since the 1930s, and even all thru the late 80s as the Reagan policies the left loathed worked magic before our eyes. Then we heard the same line in the 90s as Bill Clinton backed cap gains tax cuts that “favored” the rich.

ObamaDems’ differing goals and definitions for helping little guys and working people?

President Obama and the Democrats claim to favor the poor as they decry the suffering of the poor. As a Democrat of 18 years, so did I. In fact, I cared so much that I left the Dem Party in 2000 convinced by two decades of evidence before my eyes that the policies democrats pursue are proven failures at alleviating the suffering of the poor.

I assumed that the suffering we all alluded to was peoples’ inability to afford necessities via the fruits of the labor and have an opportunity for moving up the economic ladder or for the middle class to increase their wealth and prosperity over time.

Over time it became increasingly difficult to maintain the notion that Democratic Party leaders shared the same definition. After the Cap and Trade vote it is impossible.

The Cap and Trade bill passed by the House would directly do to the poor and middle class what we decry is done to them by recessions. Cap and Trade would intentionally raise the price of necessities, i.e. food and energy.

Didn’t the Democrats see the suffering caused by $4/gallon gasoline last year as lower income families had to choose between balanced meals and the fuel to get to work?

How long will Dems/Independents keep hands over their ears still hoping for change we can believe in?

They couldn’t miss it, yet they pass a law that defines the air we breathe out a pollutant with measures to “save the planet” via skyrocketing electricity rates?

Does that phrase sound familiar, or are you one of the millions of Democrats still holding their hands over their ears when candidate Obama was caught on tape saying anthing but “hope”, “change” and “I’m not George Bush”?

Obama told us, but too many refused to listen (links provided upon request so as to identify the truly ignorant)

Senator Obama is on tape from last year saying, variously, the following precursors to his style of “caring” for poor little guys and the middle class, that:

• Americans need to learn a lesson from high fuel costs that should be at or above $4/gallon; albeit at a more gradual rate;
• His cap and trade plan would necessarily lead to skyrocketing electricity rates and bankrupt the coal industry;
• We can’t continue to consume as much as we do and drive our SUVs and have the world say, OK.

Last summer lower income families were choosing between Kroger brand and Le Seur Peas so that they might get an extra gallon of gas to make it to work. Forget that trip to the next town to see Grandma kids.

Apparently ObamaDems’ definition of suffering is when people aren’t on his welfare (no longer to work version repealed by the “stimulus”) program or working for the government.

A still denial self-described “Independent” Obama voter justifies the Cap and Trade assault as acceptable since it “encourages” the development of alternative energy. No matter that what it actually encourages is the importation of more imported oil since no carbon was expelled on American soil in its production, but I digress.

Given that Spain went bankrupt trying to perform alchemy via legislative fiat; given that even Kennedys in Massachusetts and Greenies in the Mohave Desert won’t allow Holland to land in the Lower Forty-Eight; given the fact that wind power is 1% of what meets our energy needs now; and given that their is no prospect that any alternative energy breakthru is in sight much less that could be utilized within any foreseeable future that could be substituted for oil and coal, one must conclude that the supporters of Cap and Trade desire a precipitous reduction of our standard of living with the main alternatives being horse, donkey, firewood and human walking power.

GOP must eschew the euphemisms designed to give Democrats’ moral cover

We must pray that the Senate will reject the bill, but for that to happen, I would suggest that, despite Minority Leader John Boehner’s “Hour long filibuster” the GOP needs to rake off the gentlemanly gloves for Twenty-Four hours a day and quit referring merely to the bill’s effect on “consumers” and certain coal energy-intensive states, or the, as Representative Eric Cantor (and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell), “laudable goal” of reducing greenhouse gases.

Re-engagement with reality is among the recession’s benefits

What is laudable about it? When even the acolytes of the Church of Manmade Global “warming” now only refer to “climate change”, given a decade of the non-warming event we call “cooling”, isn’t it time for those of us to quit the PC cowering, especially when the whole concept is now a secretly held joke during this Great Recession? Or as George Will says:

Now, say Nordhaus and Shellenberger, “the green bubble” has burst, pricked by Americans’ intensified reluctance to pursue greenness at a cost to economic growth. The dark side of utopianism is “escapism and a disengagement from reality that marks all bubbles, green or financial.” Re-engagement with reality is among the recession’s benefits.

The bill hurts “consumers”?

Can someone please identify any non-consumer that isn’t dead. Earth to GOP: All human beings are consumers.

The bill hurts some states more than others?

Earth to GOP: Can someone identify any state not populated by people that have to consume to live.

Cap and trade would raise the price of nearly every good produced and transported to consumers in every state.

Translation: the price of food will rise in every state. All people have to eat. Many will be unable to eat enough.

The Cap and Trade bill is nothing less than an immoral assault on the poor and lower and middle income families.

GOP: Chuck the euphemisms. We have been inaccurately assaulted as not caring for the poor and middle class for decades. Now, under Obama, the Dems have overreached and revealed themselves in the raw.

Call the ObamaDems out on the immorality of only wanting the votes of the poor, rather than caring if the results of their policies actually improve their lot.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

What Clinton and President Barack Obama have in common that uniquely condemns the Democratic Party

As the Democrats’ majority in the House prepare to pass President Obama’s desired skyrocketing electricity bill-causing “cap and trade” bill, a column by former President Clinton emphasizing how much FDR cared for the poor appears in Time that reminds this former Democrat of what his former party cared for more than the poor and why I was compelled to quit being a Clinton-like front-man for the Obama-like true-believing kooks.

Moderate Democrats as front men for the far left

The penultimate straw that broke my donkey’s back were the words of Bill Clinton discussing his signing of the Gingrich-GOP Congress passed welfare reform bill that he had twice vetoed due to objections from many liberals in the Democratic Party concerning the requirements that recipients work to qualify for certain benefits.

Those work requirements have since been eliminated from what even Clinton’s most vociferous critics admit was his most significant achievement in reducing the welfare rolls, in the ObamaDems’ non-stimulus bill. But even Clinton himself felt the need to appease his left, which included then Illinois State Senator Obama, when signing the bill fulfilling his campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it.”

President Clinton asserted at the time that the third iteration from the Republican Congress was spared the veto pen since it better protected the most vulnerable. I came to see myself as a fellow enabler for the kooks in the party and my eventual conservative epiphany was set in stone.

Caring for the poor since Hoover

You see, Democrats “care more” for the poor than Republican, don’t you know (I do because I was told this when in the party and bought into it myself for a time), and have since 1932:

My grandfather was a dirt farmer with only a sixth-grade education. During the Depression, he eked out a living selling blocks of ice. But in those days, even though he was poor, he knew someone special: from listening to the fireside chats on the radio, he knew Franklin Roosevelt. And he believed that Roosevelt knew what his life was like — and cared about it too.

Besides having a deep personal connection to ordinary citizens, Roosevelt got the big things right. When he came into office during the Depression, he saw that the ills of the country could not be addressed without more aggressive involvement by the government. He ran for President as a fiscal conservative, promising to balance the budget. But unlike his predecessor, he quickly realized that, with prices collapsing and unemployment exploding, only the Federal Government could step into the breach and restart the economy.

The genesis of the Democrats’ Manichean religion, unlike the Judeo-Christian one that begins with Moses’ Genesis, casts God (FDR) and the Devil (Hoover) as equals. Given Clinton’s later praise of President Teddy Roosevelt’s progressive advocacy of a government big enough to “[limit] the abuses and [spread] the benefits of industrial capitalism” it appears that the Grand Old Party only lost its grandeur due to President Hoover’s supposed reluctance to have the federal government “step into the breach and re-start the economy.”

The problem with that narrative  is that Hoover did nothing but big government breach-steppings from 1929-1932, especially the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff and higher tax rates, neither of which were repealed by FDR. Moreover, given that the average unemployment rate under FDR remained in mid to high double digits, and higher than Hoover’s average, for the seven-year New Deal period before the mobilization for WWII, no fair person can conclude that the billions spent by FDR’s federal government ever “re-started” the economy.

Blindness to policies that prevent wealth creation and its necessity

Yes, FDR cared about the poor. But no more than Hoover did. FDR was a better communicator and politician than Hoover, but Bill Clinton shows more evidence of false religion-causing blindness when he asserts that:

F.D.R. had another quality important in a President: the self-confidence to abandon a policy that wasn’t working. He believed in experimentation, but he didn’t deny the evidence when an experiment proved unsuccessful.

Well, yes and no (mostly no). Yes, FDR did change policies a lot. In fact, he changed them so much that he made it impossible for investors, taxed at top rate of 90%, to ever have enough confidence to take any investment risks, given that the rules of the game could change before they ever had a chance to make a profit.

Moreover, many of FDR’s policies were changed because they were struck down as unconstitutional. But no matter the policy changes, the “experiments” always had one element in common that FDR had ingrained in him by his former Democrat employer,  President Woodrow Wilson, and that was: big government.

FDR’s successors have no excuse for not learning lessons from FDR’s mistakes

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a great president primarily due to his leadership in WWII, but also for his ability to inspire millions like Clinton’s grandfather despite their dire economic circumstances, but FDR made great economic mistakes that we now know prolonged the Depression and caused it to be “Great”.

While Wendell Wilkie and some other Republicans opposed many of FDR’s policies and have been proven right by history, their theory was only that, a theory, at a time of great crisis that called for action. So, I can give FDR a pass for not having the opportunity to learn the lessons that were made manifest only after his death, that both parties have ignored as they expanded the size of government since 1945 beyond even many of FDR’s wildest dreams.

We know now that tight monetary policy by the Federal Reserve; the raising of tax rates; trade wars; and anti-investment policies of both Hoover and FDR, respectively, caused and/or prolonged the Great Depression.

Clinton not a “true-believer”

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have no excuse to have not learned those lessons.

Bill Clinton’s record as president shows that his desire for actual prosperity overrides his Democratic Party belief in a government produced utopia, at least when faced with upcoming elections.

He campaigned on a middle-class tax cut that he angrily abandoned at Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s insistence as necessary to calm the bond markets and bring down interest rates. He supported NAFTA’s free trade and later a capital gains tax cut that helped extend the Reagan Recovery to historic proportions.

But he never quit surrounding his conservative actions with the hymns of his liberal religion. His actions indicate that he “cared” more about the actual circumstance of the poor and middle class than he did ideological purity.

Barack Obama is another case altogether

In his Time piece, Clinton reveals that a portion of his heart remains tethered to the Obama religion to “fundamentally change” America when he says:

I thought of both Roosevelts when I told Americans that we needed a new social contract for the 21st century, one that would keep us moving toward a “more perfect union” in a highly interdependent, complex, ever changing world.

That is the challenge President Obama has inherited. I believe he will succeed in his efforts at economic recovery, health-care reform and taking big steps on climate change. Along the way, I hope he will be inspired by F.D.R.’s concern for all Americans, his relentless optimism, his penchant for experimentation, his relish for spirited debate among brilliant advisers and his unshakable faith in the promise of America.

New “social contract”? Climate change? FDR’s concern? Brilliant advisors?

Ah, the humongous conceit of the left, when history screams for humility.

Hearts aside, Democrat policies hurt the poor and middle class

I don’t judge hearts like so many Democrats in my former party do, but I did begin to question how they could pursue policies advocated to help the poor that had proved ad nauseum to hurt them. How, after the manifest success of supply-side tax rate cut-driven recoveries that made so many less poor, did they cling to their class envy driven love of taxing the rich? Why did they desire policies that made more Americans dependent on government after the success of welfare to work and the entrepreneurial boom of the 80s and 90s?

Is it a lust for power? Is it a religious zeal that desires to see their faith proven as true?

Finally, Clinton waxes on tenets of the Dem Church that hint at the motive:

The Depression gave F.D.R. the chance to use the power of government to complete the work his cousin had begun: to build a great middle class, help the poor work their way into it and give Americans a modicum of security in old age. His leadership during World War II and the plans he made for the U.N. and a permanent leadership role for the U.S. on the world stage cemented his legacy as one of our greatest Presidents.

I am troubled by the phrase “Depression gave FDR the chance” in light of history both before and after the terms of both Roosevelts.

The actual miracle wrought by free market capitalism vs. the imagined big government-fashioned Utopia

The citizens of the United States have enjoyed the greatest standard of living and prosperity of any humans on Earth since at least the 1830s.

It seems “the work” to build a middle class began with free market capitalism and private property rights. The Democrats’ religion blinds them to the fact that the wealth required for government to build their imagined Utopia is not a given. They are blind to the effect of their policies on the motivations required for producers to expend their time and energy to produce in the first place.

Bill Clinton’s eyes were not so blinded that he didn’t understand this fact, which separates him from the true believers he nevertheless ran interference for while triangulating them and the GOP enough to keep the private sector healthy under a Gingrich-wielded whip.

Clearly the majority of his party either hasn’t learned that lesson or cares more about goals like spreading existing wealth rather than actual economic prosperity and the creation of more wealth.

Investors went on strike after the election of 2006 when the Democrats took over Congress and the picket lines have only grown with the election of the truest believer of them all. Clearly Obama believes in big Government and himself in the rarefied air he breathes upon high as Chief Citizen of the World.

The only remaining question is if actual economic circumstances on the ground of the Fruited Plain will allow the President to re-visit the compromises of his Democrat predecessor as election days approach.

I will leave it to you to decide which party cares “more” for the poor. I believe that most people of both parties that I know, care for the poor. But as for me, one of the main motivating factors in my flight from the Dem Party is that I care so much for the poor that I favor policies that actually reduce the number of those in poverty and enable more to increase their wealth and prosperity.

And despite the dem-lite policies of too many Republicans this decade, the Democrats’ currency-destroying deficits and debt thrice the size of Bush’s worst and an energy bill soon to be voted on that can only be characterized as an attack on the standard of living of the poor and middle class more devastating than a thousand Katrinas, the main lessons of my common sense-affirming religion teach me to vote for the GOP.

Bill Clinton tried to have the government take over health care before Newt took the House, and even after his successful partnership with conservatism, he still preaches from Obama’s leftist hymnal. Obama has no Newt, and we see the results. Untempered by an elephant, the donkeys run wild, whether they are true believers or not.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Resign, repent, reconcile, rehabilitate and return

South Carolina lost a truly great governor today and America lost one its purest conservative voices, at least for a time. I know that Governor Sanford didn’t resign today, but he will within days. And he should. It is a sad day for South Carolina.

The revelation that the first Republican I ever voted for is separated from his wife due to a five-month plus ongoing affair with a married Argentinian disqualifies him from continuing as the Palmetto State’s chief executive under the circumstances.

I don’t expect politicians to be saints and am especially tolerant of the character flaws of legislators who are mere glorified yea/nay voters on written bills for all to see. But as regards executive leadership where character matters in the decisions they make within a wide grant of discretion, the bar must be higher.

I might could be persuaded that a Governor who was not separated from his family and who ended the affair, could remain in office. But when that sworn leader is leading a double life with another man’s wife it is simply beyond the pale. Especially so when that double life has already manifested its effect on the expected dysfunction of the office held by the man.

Moreover, the conduct of the Governor in traveling incommunicado for a week out of the country who, when caught, then holds a press conference in which he praises his mistress and refuses to state the affair is over, I can only conclude that Sanford is not in a healthy emotional state and is unfit. It appears to me that Sanford wanted to get caught.

I am saddened to have to say this. As I have related in two previous columns this week on the missing and then found Governor, I came to respect a man that I had previously been no fan of, even after my conservative conversion in 2000. But his consistent policy positions and stands on principle won my respect and admiration. He was among those at the top of my current preferences for the 2012 GOP nomination for President.

I pray for Mark and his family and friends.

I am confident that, unlike as is usually the case among Democrats, this Republican will accept the logical consequence of his actions. Republicans nearly always discipline their own. Democrats now only usually don’t punish their wrongdoers, they often promote and/or celebrate them. Examples available upon request.

The GOP is also in favor of forgiveness, but forgiveness doesn’t mean you get to keep your current status. Leadership is not a right. No one wants to kick people when they are down, but betrayers of trust kick themselves down.

My hope is that Sanford will repent (change his behavior), reconcile with his wife, and show himself to be rehabilitated enough to re-enter public life before 2016.

In case you are wondering, while I was a Democrat at the time, I would have applied the same standard to President Clinton, but with a caveat. Had he confessed and repented immediately upon the disclosure of his affair, I would have been willing that he stay in office given that he and Hillary were not separated. I would say though that Miss Lewinsky’s age and vulnerable intern position makes this a close call. We have also learned that his affair did affect his attention from the effort to kill Osama bin Laden much as we know that JFK’s affairs were detrimental to his work and this Country.

But after Clinton lied for months even to the point of perjury, I do think he should have resigned. I did not favor removing him from office nor Impeachment, but he deserved both.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Iraq and Iran prove facts on the ground matter more than Drive-by media defined “perception”

Conservative Republicans are often cowed into defeatism during political battles against liberal Democrats with the refrain that “perception matters more than reality.” I always recoil from this scoffers’ rationalization for surrender to the power of the Leftist-dominated media.

The facts on the ground in Iran and Iraq justify such re-coilings.

One can’t deny that perceptions of reality matter, nor that words, even and especially those of President Barack Obama, matter. In fact, the words of Presidents are “actions” in a very real sense.

The problem with these concepts are not their inherent truth, but rather, the inexact applications of same that we are most often subjected to.

Whose perceptions?

Since the beginning of the “Bush-lied” era in 2003, we were told that we were “losing in Iraq”, before we won. We were told that Reagan was an amiable dunce that would provoke WWIII, before we won the Cold War. We were told that Gitmo and waterboarding made us less safe, while we weren’t attacked for seven years.

Despite the liberal press and some political results in the United States caused by the false perceptions they conveyed, the fact of the new Liberty option exercised by Arabs on full display to their Persian neighbors mattered more. It should also be noted that, despite perceptions, Bush was re-elected in 2004 and launched the surge in 2007 despite the 2006 elections that returned Congress to the Democrats.

Which words?

Obama and many of his sychophants in the press point to his Cairo speech as having inspired the massive election turnout in Iran. Certainly, the words utterd in Cairo “mattered”, but surely his lengthy appeals to working with the powers that be mattered more than his fleeting utterances to those aspiring to power.

Obama’s own, incredible words complimenting the Supreme Leader’s “obvious concern about possible election irregularities” in the first few days after the street protests in Tehran began, together with his appeasing appeals to the mullahs in Cairo are better evidence that his words emboldened Iran’s ACORNs to keep their President in office that makes ours so subservient.

Define “meddle”

Obama claimed that he didn’t want to “meddle” in Iran’s affairs by denouncing the Iranian regime. He has since decided he should so meddle, after all but Ron Paul Kim Jung Il have joined the meddling. But Obama had already meddled in his own way with words that emboldened the regime.

Moreover, Obama seems to care more about perceptions in the World Press than about the reality on the ground in Iran. Apparently, if the Supreme Leader claims that we cause street protests and the New York Times agrees, then it is a fact. He tries to justify his departure from 200+ years of American Free World leadership with references to past CIA aided coups.

But again, that business is all down the drain today. Obama is now the meddler in cheif.

Bush was right

The real reason behind Obama’s reluctance to meddle is that to do so is to implicitly concede that Bush was right in his Democracy Project and he and the Democrats are again on the wrong side of history.

Obama’s words matter alright, just like Carter’s “inordinate fear of Communism” emboldened a USSR with designs on Kabul. Obama’s words advocating inaction remind of how Osama bin Laden interpreted Clinton’s inactions in the 90s made him thinkal Qaida could defeat the “weak horse”/”paper tiger” US on 911.

Paper covers rock. Scissors cut paper.

A cowboy on a strong horse showed this tiger’s paper covered I-rock!

It appears Obama’s words are scissors insisting on cutting US paper.

Deterrence vs Aggression-inviting Weakness

Lech Walesa and numerous East Europeans said that Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire speech undercut the Soviet Union’s credibility and emboldened them to tear down the Berlin Wall. Of course, Reagan’s words were back up with credibility-enforcing actions with missiles in Europe, massive defense spending, Grenada and Star Wars.

What message is Obama sending and to whom? What is the perception of the Obama reality in the minds of oppressors and the oppressed?

That matters more than what the liberal press perceive.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

[update - June 24, 2009]

I was wrong in my initial conclusion that the Drive-by media was doing a hit job on the first Republican I ever voted for. It is now clear to me that South Carolina’s Governor was reckless in the conduct of his office. I initially relied upon the seeming contradiction between “missing” headlines and this statement in the body of the stories about Mark Sanford’s whereabouts:

His communications director, Joel Sawyer, wouldn’t disclose Sanford’s location but said that before the governor left town last week “he let staff know his whereabouts and that he’d be difficult to reach.”

Given Governor Sanford’s admission yesterday that he has been in Argentina together with statements from his staff that he was on the Appalachian Trail, it is clear that Sanford was not in sufficient communication with his staff so as to be diligent in the conduct of the responsibilities of his office.

I suspect the reporters of the initial story could tell by the body language of Sanford’s aides that they were lying.

I have no problem with a governor getting away from it all, but he must stay in touch with the situation in his state. An astute political observer assured me early on that she was sure he had a second cell phone in another name for this purpose. I agree, but it is obvious that he didn’t utilize any sufficient communication medium for at least 48-72 hours, or he was aware of the controversy and decided to let it continue.

That may have been ok, by itself. After all, if he is aware of the fact that no hurricane has hit the state nor that any other emergency event has occurred, then he knows that he can at any time, appear on the scene. But when your staff is lying to cover for you, then the situation is unacceptable.

I draw no conclusions about his marital/family situation, but would only say that the same rule I applied to Bill Clinton applies to Sanford. That rule is that it is not acceptable for executive office holders to put themselves in a position to be blackmailed.

For years, I considered Sanford a bit of a flake with his Ron Paul-like voting record as a congressman and pig battles with big government state legislators in his own party. And, yes he is a flake. But that does not disqualify, and I actually admire his flakiness, even his daring to have a private life and not let the press lead him around by the nose. I had come, as you will see below in my original story from a few days ago, that he has won me over on his political positions on the stimulus and more.

But the position he put his staff in could well disqualify him from a credible presidential campaign even if, as is likely, he has learned a valuable lesson that he would never violate again.

[end update]

The only thing “missing” is the credibility of the leftist myth that we can’t function as a people without Big Brother government monitoring our every move 24/7 365.

Hence, the Drive-by media’s breathless non-story, aided and abetted by Democrats and big government Republican political opponents, to try and discredit him as “missing” for four days even though the press “reports” that he was missing, included the following:

His communications director, Joel Sawyer, wouldn’t disclose Sanford’s location but said that before the governor left town last week “he let staff know his whereabouts and that he’d be difficult to reach.”

Seems like everybody’s sore at S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford these days.

And for good reason – he talks like a crazy man.

Sanford says he doesn’t want to pour money on a fire.

Which is crazy talk. After all, it’s free money. Straight from Washington.

As part of the recovery plan, federal stimuluteers earmarked $700 million for S.C. education. Sanford balked.

Sanford says things like, when you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Which is crazy talk. After all, who cares how deep it gets?

Mark Washburn of The Charlotte Observer gets who is really crazy, as he continues:

But he said more than 10 percent of S.C. taxpayer money goes to debt service. If he took the $700 million, he said, he’d rather spend it on paying down the principal.

Sanford says things like, we ought to put some hay in the barn like farmers do, knowing winter is coming.

Which is crazy talk. After all, winter is far away. And the problem is here now.

Washington, wise in its ways, said take the money. But give it to schools, now.

But he argued that taking the money would just cause more problems. South Carolina would spend the cash over the next two years, then be left with a huge hole in its budget when the windfall ran out.

Sanford says things like, I don’t want to just kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

Which is crazy talk. After all, he’d be out of office by then.

Folks went to court and got an order telling him to take the money. After all, they said, we must think of the children. We must pay for education.

Sanford says things like, it will be those children who will pay the money back.

Which is crazy talk. After all, we’ve been sticking our kids with the bill for years. That’s how it works.

Sanford was one of those politicians who said when he was running that he’d be an agent for effective but efficient government. He said he’d make the hard decisions when they came along. He said he’d do the right thing, even if it was unpopular.

Which, as it turns out, isn’t crazy talk.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what he did.

So, hop in governor. Traffic is pretty light on that road you want to go down. And even though there’s plenty of room in the car, I happen to like where you’re headed.

Gamecock likes where Sanford is headed, too.

Call me crazy, but it seems that what the fears that Sanford could lead a movement that would a lot of big government nanny-state jobs missing from future budgets.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

First, we noticed during the 2008 campaign that Senator Barack Hussein Obama always referred to America’s Number One Racist with the honorific of “Minister” Farrakhan and never merely as Mister or Louis.

Then, President Obama greets the King of Saudi Arabia with a deep, subservient bow during a foreign apology tour last month.

This week, the Leader of the Free World refers to Ayatollah Khamenei, the architect of Iran’s sham election,  thusly:

You have seen in Iran some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people had deep concerns about the election.

Malcolm X was assassinated when he could no longer abide, much less honor the anti-Semitic theology of the Nation of Islam which teaches that all White people are devils.

Yet, the Christian?, Chicago Hate-America Church of Obama’s 20 year pew-parked butt, honored the “Minister” in their church literature and from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s pulpit.

Two weeks ago Obama’s Justice Department dropped voter intimidation charges against Black Panther thugs caught on tape in Philly harassing voters at the polls. His first nominee to the nation’s highest court deems herself superior to white males due to her Latina blood and estrogen.

Presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush never found it necessary to genuflect before foreign potentates even during oil embargoes. Yet, they also never insulted Queens with back slaps and Blockbuster DVD’s; returned 911 solidarity gifts; nor re-located graduates of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida training camps to Kingdom tropical paradises.

Finally, even President Jimmy Carter understood the “ordinate” fear of communism as Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul.

Should freedom-seeking Iranians succeed in toppling the despotic, tyrannical Mullahs and become the true “supreme” leaders of Iran, how receptive will they be to a man that bent over backwards to appease their oppressor?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Charlotte, N.C. (TMR) – As delegates to its 37th annual convention gather here tomorrow in the Queen City, they are greeted with shameless agenda driven journalism by the largest newspaper in the Carolinas.

The Charlotte Observer, for whom I recently served as the conservative voice, continues its self destructive bent (most apparent in its vendetta against the city’s biggest employer) with misleading characterizations of the environment surrounding the National Right to Life’s (NRTL) second trip to Charlotte:

The convention will also feature a screening of “The Terri Schiavo Story,” a new film hosted by writer-speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic and evangelical Christian. The case of Schiavo, a brain-damaged young woman, became a national news story in 2005 when her parents and some Republican members of Congress tried to legally bar her husband from removing a life-sustaining feeding tube. Schiavo died in March 2005.

In the weeks leading up to this year’s convention, abortion has been much in the news: Anti-abortion activists protested President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame, a Catholic university, and a man was arrested in Kansas for allegedly gunning down Dr. George Tiller, a physician who performed late-term abortions. (National Right to Life condemned the killing in a recent news release.)

We call the above Foghorns, i.e. misleading “fog” meant to advance an agenda, rather than reporting.

Now, the Leghorns, i.e. truth.

Yes, Schiavo’s parents tried to save their severely disabled daughter from being killed by her adulterous husband. But isn’t it more significant that no Democrats in Congress voted against the Bush-backed bill to require federal court review, i.e. due preocess before the state sanctioned a deprivation of life, rather than that a few Republicans supported the parents?

Obviously?

And when one recounts what has been “in the news leading up to the convention”, shouldn’t executive orders issued by President Obama that encourage more abortions be deemed more significant, and hence more worthy of mention than one murder or a commencment speech?

We think so.

This is the kind of “coverage” NRTL can expect from the local dead-tree drive-by, as coverage for the 49 million and counting victims of Roe v. Wade goes wanting.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ The HinzSight Report/TMR

All verification links may be accessed @ Examiner.com.

Axis shows its evil; Stimulus fails to stimulate and ABC becomes WHBC

Generally, much like radio talk show host Dennis Prager, I much prefer clarity to agreement, and especially so in politics. Most bi-partisan “solutions” neither solve the problem nor educate voters on which of the partisan positions would more likely have been the solution.

Hence, an America prosperous and free due to conservative Republican solutions to foreign and domestic problems, but afflicted by the recent Elephant-memory killing bipartisan past that Left No Child Behind in accumulating debt and a Republican candidate made famous as a maverick at kissing Jack Asses, chose to elect as President of the United States (POTUS) the most liberal candidate any major party ever nominated.

As a result though, clarity has returned to Washington, D.C. The most egregious taxing, spending and social policy bills passed by the ObamaDem Congress have garnered hardly any GOP votes and the President has received harsh criticism from most Republicans for his foreign apology tours.

So, come Election Day 2010, We the People will have no problem rendering a verdict on the ObamaDems, beyond any reasonable doubt.

The bad news is that the educational reality mugging by failed liberal policies usually necessary to convert liberals into conservatives will be especially harsh this time around, especially by an electorate so populated by spoiled yutes too young to remember the last one from 1979-1982.

Axis of Evil remains so in the Age of Obama

Last week, President Obama, no longer in de-Nile about his assumption of the Office of Citizen of the World (COTW), traveled to that river in Egypt to prove the effectiveness of his “words matter” campaign mantra, especially when delivered by an American largely disgusted with American policies before his Inauguration.

The Drive-by media universally praised the homily, er..speech and, Obama was right. Words do matter. Iran’s mullahs (pictured with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khatami in middle) heard the COTW/POTUS’s Chamberlainesque Peace in our Time declaration as he excused Iran’s terrorism directed against his World and American citizens for the last 30 years. They heard his acquiescence to Iran as an equal nuclear power partner while forbidding Israel from building any more screened in porch add-ons on the West Bank.

So, Iran’s totalitarians fixed this week’s election to retain as President the megalomanical Anti-Semite that Obama surrendered to and continue to mow down (see Kill, seven and counting at this publication) down non-violent protesters.

Not to worry though. Seventy-two hours after the fix, Obama is “troubled” by “the violence” (No mention of whose violence, much like he was troubling violence of Georgian bodies striking Russian bullets in Ossetia, but I digress…) but is even more troubled by the worry of offending the re-elected MembersOnlyJacket-ijad by seeming to “interfere” in an equal nation’s affairs with a statement supporting the freedom seekers.

Clarity on Iran should have arrived earlier than this week given their sponsorship of Hizbollah, with whom they killed more Americans than any other terrorist group before 911, and given their Quds forces that killed Americans in Iraq. The Drive-bys were too busy bashing Bush to make those facts clear.

Keynesian economics still doesn’t stimulate anything but government growth

The same Joe Biden that was elected Vice-President while warning that his youthful running mate would face a serious international test within six months, admitted this week that the Administration’s efforts to revive the economy had failed.

Clarity on that subject almost arrived earlier this month with the Labor Department’s release of the report that unemployment rose to its highest level in 27 years, but the Drive-bys dutifully ran interference by reporting that 9.4% was a good sign that the stimulus was working since the rate of job losses had slowed.

Rumors have it that the last act of the American Broadcasting Company, before the relocation of its headquarters and name change, was to send its employees out armed with spray paint to vandalized gasoline station pump prices and Bank mortgage rate windows.

1984 plus 25 equals White House Broadcasting Company’s (WHBC) voluntary merger with Big Brother

Charlie Gibson will anchor the first broadcast of the network made famous by Howard K. Smith, Howard Cosell and Jim McKay as WHBC from its new headquarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when COTW/POTUS Obama, as new network President, issues his Health Care reform directives later this month.

The media famous for drive-by character assassination hits will merge with an Administration whose Justice Department recently dropped voter intimidation charges against Philadelphia BlackPanthers.

No word yet on when the Democratic National Committee aka ACORN will join their corporate partners in public housing.

Given the above relationships, it is not surprising that Americans became so ignorant about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic party and the results of their failed liberal policies. But now, we don’t have to guess if Obama’s ears prove he is Barbara Walters’ son. Arrogance has shoved shameless First Amendment incest into the fore to bring clarity.

And we we thought gay marriage was only a “slippery slope?

The Slope Done Slipped

Incumbent republicans must needs no longer fear the Citizen of the World and the Democrats that aid and abet his clarity. Citizens of the World like Iran’s mullahs and Kim Jong Il don’t get to vote in our mid-terms. American citizens out of work, unable to afford gasoline to visit grandma or Myrtle Beach, and/or still keeping investment dollars on strike do get to vote, and clarity dictates a favorable GOP result.

Meanwhile, a number of Democrats and liberals are finding the new clarity requires revising their verdict on none other that George W. Bush aka Satan (translates Great Satan in Mullah-Persian). Thomas Friedman of the New York Times saw fit to print the news that Bush deserves credit for the now obvious success of the democracy project in Iraq and the Lebanese electoral defeat of the Hezbos. Christopher Hitchens reports that Hamas would lose a second election in Gaza.

I am reminded of a Hezbo supporter in Southern Lebanon who lost his house and a barber in Gaza who lost his barber shop, both lost to Israeli bombs retaliating against rocket launchers in their respective neighborhoods who blamed the terrorists and vowed never to support them again. They wanted their boys to play soccer, sans rubble.

Clarity sometimes takes time.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

They regularly lose to conservatives like Sarah

The Governor of Alaska is an unapologetic, unabashed Reagan conservative who echos the truth to power messages rarely heard from other elected conservatives too afraid of Obama and the Drive-by political correctness media police. Democrats have won the past two election cycles and now hold large majorities in both houses of Congress.

Yet, despite the triumph of liberalism, the Left doesn’t use its precious media time to attack potential threats to its power from moderate Republicans that the Drive-bys’ conventional wisdom deems more “electable” in the Age of Obama.

Rather, they regularly, relentlessly, and viciously attack the Sarah Palin, the Vice-Presidential loser that failed the Katie Couric test and returned to viewing Russia from her backyard.

Why does the Left perceive as the number one threat to retaining their power, a Republican loathed by a large and vocal minority of the GOP?

Why? Maybe because the Left has never lost its power to that particular minority of the GOP represented by Colin Powell and much of the beltway, country club blue blood Rockefeller elites.

When they lose, they lose to Republicans like Sarah Palin, and many recall their most anxious moments during the 2008 general election campaign were those weeks after Palin’s nomination was announced when McCain actually lead for the first time, before he blew the race by embracing the bank bailout.

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans are now pro-life, that conservatives now out-number moderates, and that women are much more likely to vote Democrats.

Palin is a walking, talking repudiation of the entire feminist myth of the Left that declares liberalism as the only enlightened view. And her decision to bring to term a baby in her womb confirmed as having Downs Syndrome grossly exposes the barbarity of the Leftists’ religious sacrament of abortion. DC wasn’t down with her, baby?

Moreover, Palin defends herself and conservatism when attacked, unlike former President George “new tone” W. Bush and John maverick McCain. Democrats don’t like Republicans that “break the rules” by questioning the liberal templates of the beltway that never allow conservatives to question the motives and judgment of the Left.

Sarah Palin is in a position to own the conservative base that Gallup now measures as 40% of the American people. She has the fighting quality akin to that of the kind of Republicans that win over Reagan Democrats.

And, she is a woman.  And we have seen this past week in the aftermath of the David Letterman affair, even feminists that regularly stand mute when abortion rights-protecting Democrats abuse women and when conservative pro-life women are abused, have come to her defense.

Palin can take the heat even with Obama at 62% approval. As his ratings drop, some elected Republicans in DC will grow a little courage. They are puny compared to Sarah.

The Left fears her. They should. It seems that donkeys have better memories than many elephants these days.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Despite President Obama’s and The Charlotte Observer’s best efforts, Ken Lewis lives on as the CEO of a non-nationalized bank that alchemized force-fed Merrill Lynch granite into gold.

Admittedly though, his testimony before a Congressional committee on Thursday was not Lewis’ finest hour. In fact, Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, compared Lewis’ testimony to a case of Stockholm syndrome:

“You’re still regulated, and it seems like you still identify with your captors, with your regulators,” Flake said, as others laughed. “We’d like to have a candid answer here. I don’t know if you can wiggle your pinkie finger or something.”

But given the smoking gun Fed Chief Ben Bernanke had held to Ken’s head in December, that was revealed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, the incredible success of Bank of America Corporation (BAC) since the Merrill Lynch deal despite assaults from the Obama Administration and the continuing regulatory circumstances, the behavior of the Chief Operating Officer of the nation’s second largest bank is understandable and excused.

The smoking gun is proof in the form of internal documents and memos that Ben Bernanke’s Federal reserve threatened Ken Lewis and BAC with retaliatory action if they backed out of last Fall’s deal to buy Merrill Lynch and revealed Merrill’s newly discovered losses.

Ben Bernanke had previously denied the threats in sworn testimony before Congress earlier this year, albeit in a Clintonian, what are meaning of “I” and “we” kind of way, as it appears the most explicit threat came from his Richmond, Va. bank surrogate. Thankfully, Elijah Cummings (D-MD) understands that when the Fed Chief says “I” and “we” when speaking in his official capacity, he speaks for the mob he leads, eh ah, I mean the whole Federal Reserve Board.

Speaking of mobs though, remember that the object of Bernanke’s threat has also been  the target of Chicago South-Sider, President Barack Hussein Obama, who threatened to remove himself from between Ken Lewis and the pitchforks when Lewis had the temerity to stand up to the regulators trying to force nationalization of his bank earlier this Spring. This is also the same Lewis that has survived a Drive-by media, led by his hometown dead tree Disturber’s vendetta, attempt to have him removed as BAC’s leader.

Ken Lewis has survived all of the assaults, including the recent “stress tests”, in such good shape that it has raised private funds in the billions to remove the threat of nationalization.

Bank of America, along with other banks and financial institutions, have been unfairly demonized since last year’s credit crisis as greedy, overpaid speculators that caused the housing crash. This demonization has rested on two myths:

1) Greedy Bankers Foisted Sub-Prime Loans on the Poor. Oh no they didn’t.  It was government.  You see, liberal politicians and activists were convinced that banks were unjustly denying loans to minorities and low-income borrowers.  They even had studies to show that minorities were discriminated against.  The solution?  Force.  Liberals would force the banks to loan money to less-qualified borrowers.

Various community activists across the country have been able to pressure banks into making concessions in money or in kind, in order to get those activists to withdraw their objections to pending mergers or to banks opening new branches in another state, for example.

2) Lack of Regulation Caused the Crisis. Actually the regulators were part of the problem.  With the politicians cheering them on, the regulators were all over the banks forcing them to lower their lending standards.  And when the regulators finally did try to restrain the banks, the politicians reined them in.

A timeline reveals Ken Lewis’ masterful job in saving BAC:

• The credit crisis/housing crash of last fall precipitates deepening recession and stock market crash
• Bank of America (and other large banks), at the behest of then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Bernanke, is forced to accept TARP funds, and the attendant influence and control attendant thereto, which causes BAC stock to decline
• BAC agrees to buy troubled Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch (and Countrywide Mortgage Co.) but then learns of greater losses than previously revealed before the deal is consummated. BAC threatned to reveal the loses to stockholders and seek another vote on the deal but agrees to go forward under threat from the Fed due to the “need for stability in the nation’s financial system”
• Merrill losses are revealed after the deal with BAC is consummated, causing Bac’s stock to plummet to near $3.00
• Lewis buys large number of shares of BAC with personal funds
• Obama Administration claims BAC and other banks are “insolvent” (despite the fact that BAC’s revenues exceeed liabilities and it always pays its bills); appears to desire nationalization; thus prompting BAC and other banks to offer to pay back TARP funds early
• President Obama rebuffs offers for early TARP paybacks with “pitchfork” threat
• BAC, against all odds, posts large profit for first quarter, with the acquisitions of Merrill and Countrywide leading the way via their customer bases
• Lewis wins re-election as CEO, loses re-election as Board Chairman, and remains in control of BAC operations and policy
• Bernanke urges Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to subject banks to “stress tests”
• BAC survives stress test and easily raises private investment funds to cover new capitalization requirements

Given that Lewis has excelled despite the threats and pressure of government regulators that still plague him, it is quite understandable he would be equivocal in retrospect about the the previous threats.

The bottom line that emerges is that there may not be a circumstance under which Ken Lewis can’t make money and his business not prosper.

BAC stockclosed yesterday at $13.62, up over 300% since its ObamaDemPaulsonBernanke low.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

TARP has worked, Indiana pension funds are bound by the Bankruptcy Court’s order authorizing the Chrysler-Fiat sale and the Second Amendment does not now apply to the states.

[Updates indicated by brackets below. Latest in bold and bracketed]

Let’s take our conservative cold shower is ascending stages of frigidness as measured by DeVine Gamecock Law’s (pictured) thermostat:

Indiana Secured Pension Funds Creditors vs. Barack Obama is how DeVine law accurately styles the controversy also known as In Re Chrysler LLL, et al in which we initially perceived a breakdown in the, cherished and indispensable to Liberty and prosperity, Rule of Law.

Certainly, a regular Chapter 11reorganization bankruptcy filing by Chrysler in 2008 would have been a proper and preferable course, especially given the billions of American taxpayer dollars already lost in loans meant to keep the company alive until President Obama was inaugurated.

But with respect to the treatment of the Indiana pensions, the rule of law appears to have been maintained and their ultimate financial fate essentially unchanged in the aftermath of the rulings of New York Federal Judge Arthur J. Gonzales’ rulings last week.

My main reasons for concluding that justice is being served are: the provisions of the Federal Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978; the Second Circuit court precedent on the court’s discretion enunciated in the 1983 Lionel case; the reduced vale of the collateral “securing” first lien holders including the Indiana pension funds; and the actions of the Collateral Trustee authorized by the first lien holders to act as their agent under the 2007 First Lien Credit Agreement as amended and the Security Agreement.

I did not start out wishing to conclude that Judge Gonzales was correct given my aversion to government directed economic dislocations anathema to the free market capitalism that has been instrumental in making this nation the most free, prosperous and generous in the history of Earth. But I report what I find, and what I find is that the Rule of Law grants very broad discretion to Bankruptcy courts in general, and especially in this case given the agreements Indiana pensions entered into with respect to collateral rights. The court did not abuse its discretion.

The only possible glimmer of hope for Indiana pensions could be that the Supreme Court itself has never ruled on the issues of discretion decided in the Lionel case. But as we are aware of no conflicting precedents from other circuits, and given the additional agreements signed by Indiana pensions and the grant of discretion contained therein, and further given the facts found by the court with respect to the value of the collateral that would be sold even if Indiana pensions were granted their relief, I see no hope for their appeal.

Quite frankly, all hope for creditors was lost years ago due to government over regulation of the auto industry and irresponsible union leadership and management of Chrysler that drove down the value of their collateral, if you please. The Second Circuit’s affirmation of Judge Gonzales’ order will not be reversed.

The only party that ever had “Hope”, and even then only a portion of those members that remain, is the United Auto Workers. Their Hope is named Barack Hussein Obama who is, as we speak, constructing the largest welfare/jobs program in history that will be known as the GM bankruptcy, in which the broad court discretion will be used to pay billions to the UAW to make cars only the government will by and to have taxpayers subsidize the whole pension, health care and welfare operation in perpetuity…or until conservatives convince Americans that our only real hope is with them.

[Justice Ruth Ginsburg astoundingly has extended the temporary stay prohibiting the sale to Fiat. DeVine Law suspects she is acting out of caution to study the matter further given that Fiat has given a deadline of June 15. Excellent summary of the arguments by Attorney Clyde Middleton here.]

TARP has worked [Financial system stabilized with rule of law the casualty]

[The Democtic Party controlled Congress allowed their Democratic Party President Barack Obama to complete the adulteration of the Rule of Law via the bankruptcy court proceeding of Chrysler, with a payoff to one of the biggest Democratic Party contributors, the United Auto Workers. And now, the Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from creditors objecting to the sale. Essentially, the Obama Administration is creating huge jobs/welfare programs thru taxpayer dollar payoffs in the billions in the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies. This matter is the kind in which Congress should be the jealous defenders of the taxpayers' money and their own institutional power, but so far, they seem unable to do anything against the President except have crocodile tear hearings abour closed dealerships. More later on this story under a new column heading later this week.]

Before the cold water is thrown back in the econ major rooster’s face, please notice the crowing on what “worked” means.

It does not mean that your local bank has now agreed to grant unsecured $50,000 loans to John Doe LLC to start a window washing business. There is more to such formerly normal loans to being flowing than that the banks have now been stabilized. As I said last year in my series of columns last fall during the credit crisis, that narrowly came out against TARP, and in columns since, we were always headed for a hard and long recession due to the Fannie/Freddie distortions of the market and the lack of savings of Americans after a 25-year boom.

I also said that given that investors had been on strike since the Democrats re-took Congress due to their policies of no tax cuts and even worse, tax hikes and increased regulation of business and given the proposed policies of Obama, that we would probably face longer hard times even if TARP worked to stabilize the banks.

Then came the real bad news with President Obama’s war against capital and job producers that now ensure a deep, long Great Recession for years to come despite the historic printing of money by the Federal Reserve which even now is starting to cause inflation and long-term interest rate increases.

But it does appear that the fears of bank nationalization have abated. The influx of private investment funds into Bank of America and the other TARP recipients after the stress tests Bernanke proposed, prove that Obama has been persuaded to back off his initial suspected motives with the banks.

I still believe that TARP was handled badly, especially with the broad discretion that allowed Paulson-Geithner to act as economy czars, even to the extent of using those funds to bail out auto companies, but I digress. TARP was bad.

The fact is though, that the banking industry is stabilized.

We can’t yet pass judgment on Bernanke’s other moves to essentially compensate for the lack of a real stimulus. But the fact is that what is preventing recovery is not TARP. No, the main culprits are the Obama budget policies; Obama and the Democrats’ known hostility to free market capitalism; and their policies since 2007 through today including the government growthulus aka stimulus bill, in that order.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never “incorporated” the Second Amendment via the Fourteenth Amendment so as to apply it to the states

Now, you may dress in sackcloth and ashes and let the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes begin as we address supposed non sequiturs on the right to bear arms as recently chronicled by renowned conservative jurists in Chicago.

Last week, in the Seventh Circuit federal court case of NRA v City of Chicago, et al, Cheif Judge Frank Easterbrook, also joined by prolific conservative author and associate Judge Richard Posner, ruled that it could not entertain objections to restrictions on the right to posses firearms imposed by two cities in Illinois given that the Second Amendment, under present law, only appies to the federal government.

I saw this coming several years ago when cases began to be filed on this issue but had hesitated to jump into the fray given the convoluted nature of the whole “incorporation” doctrine and my then general apathy with respect to gun rights.

Then, after the brilliant D.C. Court of Appeals opinion by conservative icon Judge Silberman identified an individual right to bear arms that preceded the Declaration of Independence, much less the Constitution of the United States, I warned at the time of the appeal that the case would not settle the issue nearest the hearts of gun rights proponents (and I am one as well) once and for all.

Then, true to Cockstradamus form, Justice Scalia’s 2008 majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller explicitly stated that he was making no ruling nor intimation as to the applicability of the Second Amendment to the states given that the case before them only involved the constitutionality of a federal government’s restriction on the possession of a handgun in one’s home.

Their are good reasons to believe that this individual right to possess firearms for self defense on one’s property will be applied to the states, but first let me defend the Seventh Circuit court’s analysis, especially since it echos past rooster crowings on the issue:

• The states formed the national government via the U.S. Constitution
• The states all already had constitutions that secured their Liberty and rights
• The Bill of Rights was insisted upon by anti-federalists to make certain that the federal government could not abridge the rights they already enjoyed under state law, including the right to bear arms
• Mostly liberal activist judges have mostly misused the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to “incorporate” most, but not all, of the Bill of Rights and apply them to the states, often in ways wholly unrelated to the purpose of the post-Civil War amendments to make all races equal
• The 14th Amendment was written in an intentionally vague way so as to comport with the original Constitution Framer’s intent to treat people as individuals and not as members of groups
• The only cases concerning the applicability of the Second Amendment to the states were all decided before the Justices invented the incorporation doctrine and all ruled, correctly, that the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government
• The rationale for those cases is now defunct, but the Supreme Court has also ruled that lower courts are not to assume that the Supreme Court will reverse despite the obsolescence of rationales. The Supreme Court demands that only it can reverse its own precedents

Hence, the court has ruled correctly. Its succinct (short) and quite impressive analysis may be reviewed here.

For me, this issue of incorpration, much like the one of the regulation of interstate commerce cases and federalism generally, presents a real dilema for conservatives. The issues are what the law is; what we wish it to be; and how it gets to be the law.

Parenthetically though, let me state not all incorporations of the Bill of Rights have been without justification; that the inexplicable unused Privileges and Immunities [see update below] clause could well justify the application of all of the Bill of Rights and even more rights to the states; and that as an American, I do think that much of our basic rights ought to be afforded in all states.

I have simply preferred that we apply said rights via the amendment process or via state laws, rather than via a made of law of men. For, a Daniel Webster conservative, I revere the Constitution as the main instrument that stands between the Liberty we enjoy under the Rule of Law vs. the tyranny that inevitably results from the rule of men, whether they be a King or Five or more Judicial Oligarchs.

But as a non-rose colored glasses legal scholar and desirer of justice, I see an incorporation doctrine used to apply nearly all but the Second and would consider it quite un-just that the Second not be applied to the states.

I suspect that the Supreme Court as presently constituted will affirm a federally protected individual right to bear arms to the states when the Chicago case is appealed, but it will be a right that the states and the federal government can “reasonably” regulate, much as speech and abortion are. So, we impart upon a long journey where judges write a gun code over the next 40 years and lawyers make a lot of money, while we all perpetually wonder exactly what the law is.

[Privileges and Immunities argument for conservative originalist incorporation.]

Now, dry yourselves off and put on some clean clothes. I know must.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ The Minority Report, where all verification links may be accessed.

The main qualifications for a Justice of the Supreme Court are character and courage

This sixth DeVine Law analysis of the nomination process to fill the retiring Souter seat on in the nation’s highest court is less about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and more about refuting much of the conventional wisdom that even many conservatives accept concerning what is relevant in determining a nominee’s competence and other qualifications.

Supreme Court justices take an Oath to “uphold the Constitution”, so, let us focus on what makes it more likely that a nominee can be relied upon to so uphold the supreme law of the land.

Of course, a nominee must be “competent”, but too often, this component has been used to discredit nominees with false criteria so as to avoid the more relevant issues related to the Oath.

The liberal New Republic trashed Judge Sotomayor’s intellectual prowess and temperament weeks ago, soon after Justice Souter announced his retirement and word leaked that she was on Obama’s short list. These are red herrings that conservatives and Republicans would be wise to ignore, along with the recent talking point concerning the reversal rate of her Circuit Court opinions that have been reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Reversal rates tell one nothing without knowing the specifics, especially given the ideological split on court and the too frequent occasions for Justice Anthony Kennedy to uphold liberal precedents. I suspect that the more telling statistic would be all the unconstitutional opinions of Sotomayor that have been upheld.

Now, to the more primal aspects of “competence” that get passed around thanks in large part to elitist snobbery, beltway loyalty and an America culture raised on the deification of lawyers.

We arrive at the issue of how “smart” is the nominee. Of course, the liberal culture that dominates the media, press and academia equate the term with agreeing with liberal positions on issues, but it is also trotted out on behalf those that matriculated at Ivy League schools.

Eureka! Reagan, but I digress.

One assumption also used as a straw man to suggest that we need the more erudite literary writers is that one has to be able to “spar with a Breyer or Scalia”. We heard this in derogation of Harriet Miers with respect to the imagined as persuadable Breyer and we hear it now with respect to Soto’ going mano y mano with Scalia.

Its all Poppycock now, just as was when President George W. Bush nominated his ten-year vetted crony.

No one can name one significant case whose result was changed due to superior logic in the past 50 years. Is it preferable, all things being equal, that more talented writers draft opinions to make the law more preciselt defined? Of course, but what matters in the first instance is what the result will be, and on that, we arrive at the main point.

The Constitution is not a puzzle devised by the Framers to be divined to us by geniuses. It is written in plain English for We the People, and the relative advantage of having a Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard vs a Texas graduate interpret it is quite miniscule.

What matters is if they accurately comprehend what the Constitution says and intend to uphold it, or if they don’t comprehend it and can’t, or as is more often the problem, that they wish to re-write the Constitution while pretending to uphold it.

With respect to Miers, there was no reason to doubt that she would vote the same as Alito, but conservatives were resentful that Bush didn’t pick from the widely known as reliable conservative bench on the Circuit courts. That was understandable. What wasn’t, was the way the elites used red herrings about her intellect to slander her.

And so, we arrive at Sotomayor, who is obviously intellectually qualified to serve, even if whe hadn’t been Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton.

What makes her unfit to serve concerns her lack of character and courage.

Why character? Because I assume she truly does understand the plain meaning of the Constitution but chooses to treat it as suggestion rather than the law. I recognize that some otherwise smart people can be brainwashed to believe that it is legitimate to treat the Constitution as liberals do, but I confess I can’t diagnose the cause, and so don’t even try. It doesn’t matter why liberals do what they do, only that they do.

And what they do is commit what ought to be the impeachable offense of not upholding the Constitution, ad this goes for Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens as well.

They usurp the the Liberty of We the People to govern ourselves and install themselves as Oligarchs ruling over us as surely as did the King of England that we threw off in the Revolution.

Sotomayor fits the “living constitution” mold with her promises to “make policy” from the bench, not to mention her obsession with her superior “Latina-ness” and race-based Ricci decision, but seriously, how could we trust anyone nominated by a man that seeks to “break free” from the constraints of a negative Constitution?

So, with respect to Sotomayor, we don’t even reach the issue of courage, given her well-documented allegiance to the character-challenged, illegitimate view of the document she would be sworn to uphold.

Indeed, we only arrive at the character issue with Republican nominees like Souter, Kennedy and O’Connor that “grow” out of their character through cowardice.

Ideology or judicial philosophy matters most. The sad fact is that there is only one legitimate such philosophy, given the umpire-like task at hand. Read the words of the contract between the people and its government and faithfully interpret it according to the plain meaning and intent of those words where possible (most places), much like the “philosophy” one would apply to one’s mortgage contract and to their own words uttered in opinions.

For would one want a judge to interpret their principle, interest and mortgage payment provisions of their own home mortgage so as to increase same based on some other philosophy? Would one want their own judicial decrees re-interpreted to make black be white?

The Constitution is written.

[Just to be clear, I have no information to conclude that Harriet Miers wasn't an intellectual giant.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Will Obama passover the plague of terrorism in Egypt?

Apologies for the tortured paraphrase of Rameses II oft repeated defiant commands in between plagues The God of Moses visited upon Egypt until Pharaoh let his people go in The Ten Commandments.

But wouldn’t it be appropriate to recount the benevolence of America toward Egypt and much of the Muslim world in combating the plague of Islamist terrorism?

Wouldn’t it be apropos if President Barack Obama visited the grave of the man that made peace with Israel and, in his much anticipated first American Presidential address to the Muslim World, said:

I have just come from honoring your late, great leader Anwar Sadat to demonstrate, on your soil, America’s solidarity with that great Muslim leader and the like-minded of Islam who seek peace and to make clear our shared contempt his assailants and for all enemies of peace, no matter their professed faith.

For this reason, we have never been stingy in American dollars for Egypt’s military defense, nor in American blood to defeat those that seek the murder and even genocide against Americans, Muslims and peace seeking peoples across the globe, whether it be in Bosnia and Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq, and Afghanistan. Whether it be in The Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, or Europe.

That those terrorizing the peace loving claimed to be Christians, Muslims or atheists, mattered not a whit.

Today, in Pakistan, we stand with the Muslim government against al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists.

And we stand with all Muslims in Egypt and all people of all faiths or no faith across the world that seek peace and against all those that seek terror and totalitarianism.

We thank God for all those Muslims that are alive today due to the joint sacrifices of the armed forces of the United States and our allies, including the great sacrifices made at our side by Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Afghans, and Egyptians and all Muslims, Christians and Jews from around the world.

Saddam Hussein slaughters hundreds of thousands and starts wars killing millions no more. Osama bin Laden issues dated black market tapes rather than blowing Muslims to bits in Arabia and Africa. Mullah Omar no longer controls a nation-state to harbour mass murderers.

Thank God Muslims are so much more safe today.

On Memorial Day in America last week, I laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier where many Americans are buried that died defending the lives of Muslims so that they did not have the same fate as your beloved Sadat.

Praise be to God.

But, to more closely quote Yul Brenner (pictured above as Pharaoh Rameses II):

So, shall it be written? So ,shall it be done?

I suspect a plague of frogs is more likely, this time from the Celebrated Surrender Frog of Cook County!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

It comes as a shock to many black friends of mine when I reveal to them that for at least 25 years, possibly the worst social taboo among whites is to be labeled a racist. To be considered a racist has severe economic, social, personal and political consequences for white folks.

As a consequence, it is hard to find whites that utter racist epithets in private, much less in public; and much more so hard to find whites that act out racism in any venue.

The occasion of this long thought out exercise is, ironically, the blatantly racist words and acts of President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Sotomayor decision concerning job promotions.

No one has denied that her statement is racist on its face:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Defenders have said that she misspoke. Ok.

However, many people can make racist statements and not “be a racist.” And of course, the Drive-by left and leftist Democrats have convulsed over the racist label that the former Speaker of the House and the most prominent talk radio host have attached to Judge Sotomayor.

But, if one uses the criteria of the Left, specifically the criteria of liberal Democrats and the media against Republicans, then the racist label obviously applies.

Trent Lott (pictured) was forced to step down as Senate majority Leader position because he said that former (see 40+ years former) segregationist Strom Thurmond would have been a good president, on the occasion of his 100th birthday, as he was dying.

Robert Bork was denied a Supreme Court seat due to his academic suggestion that Brown v. Board relied upon the wrong argument in de-segregating schools. Mind you, Bork agreed with the result. He merely suggested that the best grounds would be to reverse Plessy and say that separate but equal was empirically not equal, rather than conclude that black children could only be equally educated if they occupied chairs next to whites in the classroom. Seems to me that Bork was opposing a racist rationalization.

Examples of racist appellations affixed to republicans by liberals are legion. But of course, the Left is not driven by logic or truth. Conversely, doesn’t the racist label attempt an impossibility, i.e to read one’s heart, and wouldn’t we be happier with a person who harbored racist ideas in his heart but who didn’t publicly express racist ideas nor, more importantly act upon them?

The classic definition of a racist is one that believes their race to be superior to another. Most whites in the 19 century believed this, yet slavery was outlawed by whites. Many believed this in the 20th, yet mostly whites outlawed de jure discrimination.

Many people would label a person as a racist for using the n-word, yet I have known many that use it, that have many black friends and hire black people and them well. Conversely, I know many, mostly liberal whites, who would ostracize people that would ever use the n-word, but who never hire blacks and have no close black friends.

We can’t read hearts; hence, I rarely label anyone a racist. But when I see a combination of statements and acts that lead to the inevitable conclusion, I have been known to affix it.

Surely Judge Sotomayor is guilty of same unless she can rebut the presumption her statements and acts have presented.

I don’t blame senators and other conservatives for not affixing the label as they state that the statement of Sotomayor was racist. But I don’t think it proper that they denounce those that verbalize the obvious conclusion one would draw from it.

What matters most is how this nominee will rule on cases that come before her, and on that, she has made it crystal clear that, not only that she cannot be trusted to dispense color-blind justice, but that she intends to start exacting racial and class reparations consistent with the leader of her party and the most powerful man on Earth.

A man that was elected by a majority white nation.

The burden of proof is on Sotomayor to rebut the racist charge.

Senator Cornyn and his colleagues would do well to focus on the outrageousness of her statements and acts than on those that state the obvious even by objective standards, by the usual standard the left applies to republicans.

Senator Cornyn as over the line in his NPR diatribe shot at Newt and Rush:

NPR REPORTER: “What do you make of the rhetoric that’s tumbling out of these people [Rush and Newt] these days, Senator Cornyn?”

CORNYN: I think it’s terrible. This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent. Neither one of these, uh, men (chuckles) are elected Republican officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate. I certainly don’t endorse it. I — I think it’s wrong.

My conclusion is that anyone is justified in calling Sotomayor a racist. The burden is on her to refute the obvious import of her words and acts. No one is justified in denying that her statement was racist, but anyone is also justified in refusing to conclude that she is “a racist”. No one is justified in denouncing those that conclude she is a racist given the evidence.

I don’t blame Republican senators, especially the GOP leader on the Judiciary Committee for not going there.

What I can’t abide are race based policies, hence my conversion from the Democratic Party to the GOP in 2000. No matter the condition of one’s heart nor the vile nature of one’s speech, what matters when it comes to lawmakers and judges is whether they promote race based policies.

The 14th Amendment outlawed such policies after a bloody war. Supreme Court justices with ideas akin to Sotomayor re-wrote that equal protection in Plessy and re-wrote the 1964 Civil Rights Act to allow race based policies and negate the 1th Amendment again even after Brown v. Board.

We now have a majority that rejects that racist policy with a Chief Justice that famously announced that:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts

I know that most Americans, including liberal democrats, reject policies that would deny them jobs, promotions, etc. based on racial reasons like those favored by Sotomayor in the Ricci case.

The problem is that no matter who Obama nominates, they will favor such policies, but a strong opposition to Sotomayor, whether she is conformed or not, is crucial in the long run for this country.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.