It seems Representative Bachus has discovered the power of information. In particular, he has been accused of leveraging his position in Congress to learn things that other participants in the stock market would have no way to possibly learn. This is called Insider Trading, it is highly illegal and carries significant penalty. The Washington Post (which never seems to fail to rapidly identify the partisan affiliation of a !REPUBLICAN! under an ethics investigation) is dutifully on the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred.

The case is the first of its kind involving a member of Congress. It comes at a time of intense public scrutiny of congressional ethics, with the House passing legislation Thursday to tighten rules against insider trading by lawmakers. The impetus for the legislation, a version of which passed in the Senate a week earlier, came from a “60 Minutes” report and a book mentioning Bachus’s trades, “Throw Them All Out,” by Peter Schweizer.

Blatant embarrassment and public humiliation work wonders in getting The House of Representatives motivated and doing their jobs. Perhaps a similar scourge needs to be applied to the backsides of the voters who kept saying “Bah-Bah!!” and returning this ethical Philistine to the House of Representatives for ten terms. Spencer Bachus’ inexcusable career longevity is a prime example of the evils resident in our current systems of gerrymandering and seniority.

I’ve previously pointed out the base moral turpitude of Democrat James Moran of The Great State of Virginia. It wouldn’t be right or fitting to cut a Republican any more slack. Thus I call upon the membership of the Republican Party of Alabama to primary Spencer Bachus. A process that is fortunately beginning to get underway.

Three candidates have announced plans to oppose Congressman Bacchus. Perhaps the most formidable challenge is from State Senator Scott Beason. He is the author of Alabama’s Immigration Reform Bill and is also hated by The Alabama Democratic Party for role in sending several of their richest backers to jail during the Alabama Gambling Scandal of 2010. He has also aggressively intervened in the corrupt affairs of Jefferson County and championed legislation to resist Obamacare and restrict abortions.

Local salesman and military veteran Al Mickle has also joined the race to replace Spencer Bacchus. He argues that his experiences in combat and in running a business make him uniquely qualified to represent the average American. He further states that the experiences from his daily life will make him more representative of the average American than someone who is a career politician.

The 3rd candidate, Judge David Standridge has worked in law enforcement, served as a County Commissioner in Blount County, Alabama, and is currently a Probate Judge in Blount County. Judge Standridge reminds potential voters that as a County Commissioner in Blount County, he helped pay off a major debt that the locality had accrued. He claims the National Deficit is America’s biggest problem, and that as a member of Congress, reducing the debt by reducing government spending will be his number one priority.

For Redstate readers in the State of Alabama, the three candidates seeking to end the corrupt shenanigans of Spencer Bachus will be speaking at an Alabama District 6 Candidate Forum. The event is sponsored by Rainy Day Patriots which describes itself as a Tea Party organization that operates in and around Birmingham, Al. It takes place 1 March and offers you an opportunity to get involved in securing our nation’s precarious future.

The man the Republican Party has sent to Washington, DC from the 6th Congressional District in Alabama is both corrupt and venal. He is a parasite; not a patriot. He needs to be replaced, and not by a Democrat who would probably be no better. The Republican Party has got to police its own. The 6th District Primary offers us many options to do this. (One of whom is even as ex-cop). This needs to happen. We have the means in our hands. Let’s get it done.

.

What Is It with Massachusettes Governors and Armored Vehicles?

There are actually some reasons to vote for Mitt Romney in this year’s GOP Primaries. I don’t personally find them compelling, and have endorsed one of Gov. Romney’s opponents. I admire the man’s ability to manage large projects and he does know how an executive office works. Voting for Mitt Romney may not be my personal predilection, but it isn’t quite as pointless as wearing a rally cap or tossing maidens down a well for good luck.

People have also offered sales pitches on Romney’s behalf that are about as believable as SpongeBob Squarepants discovering the Higgs Boson. One of the sadder aspects of Mitt Romney’s mild ride this year has been watching people I have deemed intellectually powerful perform about as well at ratiocination as my little boy’s favorite cartoon character would at advancing particle physics. When Jonah Goldberg of National Review Magazine wrote The Case For Romney about a week ago, I remembered what outstanding work he had done in the past, and therefore delayed this post until it could age a bit and marinate. I felt I owed him a better expression of my angst than “WTF?”

Goldberg states the hypothesis that Mitt Romney would make a great president for Conservatives because he would owe us. He states the following:

…there is an instrumental case to be made for him: It is better to have a president who owes you than to have one who claims to own you…..If elected, Romney must follow through for conservatives and honor his vows to repeal Obamacare, implement Representative Paul Ryan’s agenda, and stay true to his pro-life commitments.

Oh my! Is that really so? When he was Governor of Massachusetts, how did he repay all the Republicans he owed up there? Romneycare? Was it the complete and utter destruction of the state’s GOP infrastructure and popularity in his wake? Martha Coakley has done far more to help Republicans win high office in Massachusetts than Mitt Romney.

Jonah Goldberg tries to explain why Mitt Romney doesn’t quite gel with Middle Class and Working Class Conservative voters. He makes Romney sound like the slightly nerdy white guy sitting around studying mathematics problems in Southside Richmond, VA. Romney doesn’t dislike these people as much as he doesn’t grok their folkways quite, and can’t make himself look authentic.

I think this dramatically understates Mitt Romney’s problems with Conservative voters. To Governor Romney, Southern and Mid-Western Social Conservatives are like Dustin Hoffman’s character in the great Western Little Big Man was to the Cheyenne Indians who rescued him from death. Mitt Romney doesn’t even subconsciously believe he comes from the same species. The word Cheyenne, when translated literally, means “human being.” Those who were not Cheyenne were considered something else.

Mitt Romney, I’ve come to sincerely believe, considers those not from his own rather isolated Cheyenne Village to be something else. It explains how he could even accidently articulate the fact that he doesn’t worry about the very poor. He’s willing to be nice to people like myself, but it’s not like he’ll any more use for me after Election Day than he would for a prophylactic after an act of sexual intercourse.

I couldn’t make Mitt Romney understand who I am and where I come from even if he was really bored one afternoon and decide to amuse himself by actually giving a rat’s anus. There simply isn’t any way on God’s Green Earth that Mitt Romney would ever afford me the status of someone he would actually owe something to. If I ever were presumptuous enough to suggest such a thing it would serve as a profound affront to his self-image and dignity.

Like Ann Coulter in the wake of her “THREE CHEERS FOR ROMNEYCARE” debacle and the Massachusetts GOP, anyone foolish enough to believe Mitt Romney owed them something in return for a vote would quickly discover the finite limits of Lord Willard’s sense of noblesse oblige. Some reasons actually exist to support to support Mitt Romney for President. One or two of them might even be worthwhile. However, any sense that he feels a bond of honor to movement Conservatism is simply delusional.

I look back at all the great, wise and hilarious things Jonah Goldberg has written for National Review Magazine. This body of superb political commentary gives me reason to hope this endorsement he penned of Mitt Romney was just the lower tail of his Bell Curve. Jonah, for the sake of your honor as a man of intellect; climb down from the Mitt Romney Tank.

It is “unacceptable that HHS fails to maintain accurate financial records and fails to adhere to federal law designed to protect taxpayer dollars from mismanagement and waste,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., wrote in a Monday letter to the department’s secretary, Kathleen Sebelius.

(HT:Federal Times)

The USG may not appear to have a very tight wrap on how and where it’s dollars (expropriated or borrowed) get dispersed. This is particularly true when the US Senate has gone over 1,000 days without the benefit of an actual budget resolution instead of a legislative gimmick that relieves them of that responsibility.

However, in the street-level reality inhabited by people who actually handle government funds, tight and exacting regulations do exist. One very important one is The Anti-Deficiancy Act which is described below.

The Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits federal employees from
• making or authorizing an expenditure from, or creating or authorizing an obligation under, any appropriation or fund in excess of the amount available in the appropriation or fund unless authorized by law. 31 U.S.C. § 1341(a)(1)(A).
• involving the government in any obligation to pay money before funds have been appropriated for that purpose, unless otherwise allowed by law. 31 U.S.C. § 1341(a)(1)(B).
• accepting voluntary services for the United States, or employing personal services not authorized by law, except in cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. 31 U.S.C. § 1342.
• making obligations or expenditures in excess of an apportionment or reapportionment, or in excess of the amount permitted by agency regulations. 31 U.S.C. § 1517(a).

(HT: Gao.gov)

It seems the accounting firm of Ernest and Young has audited the books at HHS. This occurred in response to HHS identifying and declaring several violations of the Anti-Deficiancy Act. The audit turned over several large rocks and found even more things that stunk in the books of the HHS.

At present, HHS reports $500M in discrepancies between what they admit to have spent and what the US Treasury agrees that they were authorized and should have spent. Ernest and Young claims the discrepancy involves an additional $900M that the HHS does not currently adequately account for. Sen. Coburn and Rep. Boustany want to know exactly who in HHS made these regrettable “oversights” and if they were related to the American Affordable Care Act.

The Members of Congress in question apparently don’t believe that not reporting $900M in spending is an acceptable methodology by which healthcare can become more affordable. The rest of us shouldn’t either. But then again, when the US Senate cannot even be bothered with debating and formulating a budget for over 1,000 days, it’s not exactly surprising to see mid-level bureaucrats honoring Federal Budgetary Jurisprudence in the breach.

The people writing these essays described in the YouTube above are the future of our nation. Someone who believes that “As human beings, we are not really responsible for our own acts,…” may be the person performing open heart surgery on someone you care about in a not-so-pleasant future. Regrettably, the quote continued. “and so we need government to control those who don’t care about others.” (HT: Karl Denninger)

Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) gets into the resource costs of this sort of belief system. In his column “It’s takers versus makers and these days the takers are winning” he points out the ultimate fallacy of this line of reasoning.

If you tried to hold a series of potluck dinners where a majority brought nothing to the table, but felt entitled to eat their fill, it would probably work out badly. Yet that’s essentially what we’re doing.

Dr. Reynolds brings up a valid concern. Lady Thatcher stated this more succinctly when she pointed out that the Socialists always run out of other people’s money. It took a while, but the Soviet Union, which boasted far and away more military might than any nation that had previously existed, was finally reduced to sending their conscript legions of doom to harvest a failing potato crop. What worries me more, however, is what this entire mentality (socialism, Communism, “Hope and Change”, whatever…) does to people on the way to having the potato crops fail.

Everyone cringed in 2008 when this video hit the YouTube.

The scariest thing here is not that some star-struck fan of a politician believed this. What scares me is that in just three years, this belief is becoming ingrained and institutionalized. You take the Federal Dollars today because it’s the American Way, Baby! There’s a word for idiots who don’t take the subsidy; a derisive pejorative. “Taxpayer!”

In just three years of Barack Obama’s Presidency, we’ve gone from an ignorant few holding this view to it becoming commonplace amongst second year Econ students on the nation’s college campuses. And it’s not because these students are stupid. It’s because they are keen observers of modernity and see exactly what gets you paid and laid these days. There’s just no percentage anymore in being productive when every moocher in Obamaville gets to take their vig.

So what do we learn from all of this? We learn from whence the cheesy zombie movies get their cheese-dog zombies. We learn why Winston Smith got happy with The Victory Gin. It’s because the helping hand is always the hand that controls. No state-empowered selector of who wins and losses will ever provide victory to a person of foresight, initiative, and genuine productivity. Otherwise, the government couldn’t step in control all those greedy (expletive deleted)s that just don’t care about others.

There’s a part of me that hopes that the Rap-Artist known as Chapter engaged in evil satire when she wrote and performed the song portrayed in the video above. I also hope that GOP Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney was engaging in satire when he made the following comment.

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans,” Romney said. “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”

With only one foot in his mouth, Romney still remained hungry after his tiring victory in the Florida Primary. He rides further into his dung heap below.

“I’m not concerned about the very rich,” he continued. “They’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

Reaction from the Left was predictable. Chuck Todd tweeted his predictably nausea-inducing bilge.

Many a POTUS prayer breakfast speech includes talk of caring about the poor but today when one hears it, seems to take on a diff meaning?

Austin Goolsbee scored higher on the sense-of-humor metric.

Headline: Romney not worried about the very poor, has nice roof cages available for any that “like fresh air.

(HT: The Hill)

But just how do we approach this gob-smacking gaffe from The Right? Clearly it disqualifies Mitt Romney from professional consideration as a future conservative leader. Clearly it inspires all of those in America who want to trash the Conservative Movement, and run the welfare spending odometer well into the tens of trillions.

It was political equivalent of drinking strychnine, and we need to get this political cadaver named Romney embalmed and buried as rapidly as possible. But how do we critique this without opening the floodgates to dependency nation? We start by learning from one of our most intellectually-gifted political opponents; Former Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Moynihan served as one of Lyndon Johnson’s Assistant Secretaries of Labor. In this position he wrote an famous/infamous federal report entitled The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. Apparently “Safety Net” Mittens hasn’t given this work any perusal.

The Moynihan Report has had long-lasting and important implications. Writing to President Lyndon Johnson, then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Patrick Moynihan argued that, without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers. This would cause rates of divorce, abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in the black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s)—leading to vast increases in the numbers of female-headed households and the high rates of poverty, low educational outcomes, and inflated rates of abuse that are associated with them.

(HT:Wikipedia)

The obvious tragedy and failing of Moynihan’s brilliance is that it focused solely on blacks. This led critics to just write off the truth as racism. Anyone diligent enough to make it all the way to the end of Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant will quickly realize that it’s not just African-American families that are disintegrating under the perverse incentives of the modern safety net. The lower ten percent of African-Americans are far from the only group of people in America just living for free; off the EBT. Even Ann Coulter now seems to be drinking the RomneyCare Bug Juice. (HT: Jeff Emanuel).

When Mitt Romney says not to worry about the poor, they have a safety net, he’s telling us to get over our foolish and anachronistic Conservatism. We don’t empower people to improve themselves and thereby redeem their particular corner of our tragically fallen world. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day…” is out the window in Mitt Romney’s version of the GOP. It’s more like give every ten of them a ball and hope you don’t have too many armed robberies next Saturday Night.

The Poor know when they are condescended to. They know when they are being treated like cattle. They know when they are being bribed with transfer payments not to put the torch to Los Angeles. This may not always be articulated, but the poor are not human if that simmering anger and resentment isn’t there.

My family comes from working-class roots. My Father worked on the farm to help his Dad make both ends meet. I know enough of what Lower Income America goes through to know good and well that our current safety net is one of the worst things that ever happened to America’s working poor. If we really intend to nominate “Safety Net” Mittens and bribe the poor with EBT Cards not to riot for the next four years, then the poor are morally right to hate The Republican Party.

Pro-Life's Last Stand In 2012

If you watch politics long enough, you’ll see a moment where the tragedy of a losing campaign gets so bad that you actually stop and laugh. It was the “Taliban Dan” ad back in 2010 that convinced me that Alan Grayson was off to his next stop on his professional career. Examples of this have abounded in the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary. Who can forget the Michelle Bachman “Retardasil Interview?” By throwing in with Dr. Wakefield and the vaccination nut-jobs, she ended her campaign before the first Caucus convened. With Governor Perry, it was the “Vulture Capitalism” comment that finally branded him as ready for the Presidency as Ronald Reagan – in 1968.

So suffice it to say, there seems to be a conspiracy afoot to force me into supporting Mitt Romney athwart my instinct, values and will. The latest member of The Borg, attempting to assimilate me into the unpalatable, was none other than Newton Leroy Gingrich. Once you’ve ordered up a few thousand robocalls that accuse your opponent of denying holocaust survivors a proper kosher menu, Stephen Colbert throws up his hands. You are now impossible to effectively parody. Like Herman Cain just now realizing that The People’s Liberation Army liked developing nuclear weapons, “Nuke” Gingrich has successfully self-immolated. He’s cute, funny, but should now do Conservatism one final favor and please just go away.

So where does that leave us. Wasting away again, in Obama-Cronyville? Looking for that lost shaker of salt? Not. Just. Yet….There still stands one plausible Anti-Mitt.

His name is Rick Santorum, and he is the last Pro-Life Candidate who is still electorally viable. He has never signed a Planned Parenthood petition supporting the principles of The USSC decision reached in Roe Vs. Wade. He has never hired an environmental advisor who co-authored a book with the Ehrlichs entitled Ecoscience which called for forced abortions and sterilizations.

If the issue in question is Environmental extremism and energy policy, Rick Santorum wins hands-down. Mitt Romney tells us the following about Anthropogenic Global Warming.

“I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,” he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire. “It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”

(HT: Rueters.com)

Rick Santorum also takes a position on Anthropogenic Global Warming. It is diametrically opposed to Mitt Romney’s. Rick Santorum beautifully describes the Global Warming problem below.

….it’s a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm. It’s been on a warming trend so they said, “Oh, let’s take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it’s getting warmer,” just like they did in the seventies when it was getting cool, they needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it’s getting cooler. It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life, and I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.

(HT: Rush Limbaugh)

Now the detractors point out problems with Rick Santorum. He spent too much in the US Senate and thereby added to the problem of our over-empowered government..This is a valid criticism. It would disqualify him if he were running against a solid Club For Growth Conservative. Against Mitt, I’m left to ask the following. “Opposed to what? RomneyCare? Take away the Death Panel and RomneyCare is a guaranteed fiscal sucking chest wound.”

He also bears the dubious distinction as the man who endorsed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey for the US Senate in 2004. That’s bad. If had gone any further to the port side of the GOP that year, he could perhaps have endorsed Mitt Romney. I hated Arlen Specter with a passion and shed no tears when he went over to the Dems. However, I also understand that Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Chief Justice Roberts probably don’t sit on The Supreme Court without Arlen Specter watching each man’s six-o-clock. Even at his worst, Rick Santorum did some good.

And yes, there’s the electability thing. Rick Santorum was quite forcibly ejected from the US Senate by Governor Casey’s lick-spittle son. Would he be similarly thrashed by Barack Obama? It’s a fair question. He polls behind Obama in hypothetical match-ups right now. But then again, compare how John F. Kerry polled against George W. Bush before he was well on his way to being nominated in May 2004 to afterwards.

To me, this election will be far more than just “jobs, jobs, jobs.” Do not believe that “it’s the economy, Stupid” unless you typically let people address you as Stupid. Mitt Romney believes that Roe Vs. Wade was morally valid jurisprudence, Global Warming justifies government regulation and that Individual Mandate healthcare plans are not a fundamental violation of our rights as Americans. Perhaps he stands oblivious as to how Barack Obama just sawed The Catholic Church off a limb.

Mitt Romney believes all of these crazy and stupid things because he ultimately believes that empowering the government is a greater good than protecting the life and welfare of individuals. It thus surprises me none whatsoever when Soledad O’Brien reports that Mitt Romney just told us the following.

Romney says, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich…. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

(HT:CNN.com)

What we need is a President who is concerned about the value of every life. We need a President who isn’t concerned about what group you are in or how big that group happens to be on the first Tuesday of November. We need a President who will focus on returning as much power as possible to individual at the expense of the overgrown state. On that criteria, by a substantial margin, Rick Santorum more is suited to the Presidency than Mitt Romney. Rick Santorum 2012.

“Conscience is the most sacred of all property.”

James Madison

Yet another aspect of the American Affordable Care Act has caused the Obama Administration to come-a-cropper with the United States Constitution. The act has already inspired a dense thicket of law suits over its individual mandate provision that forces people to buy insurance or pay a penalty tax for not so doing. Recently, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sibelius, has added more fuel to the legal bonfire that has erupted over ObamaCare.

The law entails that all health plans provide “preventive services” free of charge. This previously included the sorts of things you would want to have to prevent disease. This would include child vaccinations, physical check-ups and other practical medical services that wise people would want from time to time. Now Kathleen Sibelius has decided to add contraception to include RU-486. Secretary Sibelius issued the following news release.

Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forego these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services.

(www.hhs.gov)

Archbishop Timothy Dolan had previously made his concerns about this plan known to President Obama in a personal audience with the president at the White House. He had been informed that the Obamacare mandate would not be forced upon the various services and schools run by The American Catholic Church.

However, like most of what Barack Obama promises, this guarantee came with an expiration date. That expiration date was 20 January 2012. Secretary Sibelius explains below.

After evaluating comments, we have decided to add an additional element to the final rule. Nonprofit employers who, based on religious beliefs, do not currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plan, will be provided an additional year, until August 1, 2013, to comply with the new law.

Timothy Dolan responded to this obvious betrayal in language that was about as forceful as you could expect to hear from a man of the cloth. He explains how the decision has now forced The Catholic Church to start funding insurance coverage for abortions and sterilizations as of 1 August 2013.

On Friday, the administration reaffirmed the mandate, and offered only a one-year delay in enforcement in some cases — as if we might suddenly be more willing to violate our consciences 12 months from now. As a result, all but a few employers will be forced to purchase coverage for contraception, abortion drugs and sterilization services even when they seriously object to them. All who share the cost of health plans that include such services will be forced to pay for them as well. (See individual mandate).

I’m not a Catholic. On a very limited, personal level, I have no skin in this particular power-struggle. But then I stop and realize the fact that our current, statist administration has once more done rough and intentional violence to the fundamental precepts of the US Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights. The First Amendment thereof reads as follows.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(HT: Wikipedia)

Catholics are bound by the Law of Moses expressed in The Decalogue not to commit murder. The Catholic Church considers an unborn child a fully-corporate, living human being. Abortion, kinetic or chemical, terminates this life and hence violates the Sixth Commandment of the Ten. Paying for this act to take place (by buying insurance or paying the penalty fee for not providing the insurance) would make the Church morally culpable for every one of these murders that occurred under the auspices of an ObamaCare-approved employer insurance plan. Sec. Sibelius has just ordered the Catholic Church to directly violate a fundamental precept of their faith.

To understand where to go from here, the church will have to ask itself a lot of questions. Do they actively enforce a moral law, or do they just dress a guy up in a clown-suit on Sunday and pass around the collection plate? Do they limit their activities to legalistic challenges and then accept any ruling that goes against their stated doctrine on when human life begins? Do they change church doctrine to appease Barack Obama and NARAL?

If they do enforce a moral law and they will not change it in search of political consensus, does The American Catholic Church shut down in protest and put The United States under interdict until our government changes its regulatory course? Or if they don’t believe they are directly subsidizing the murder of unborn children through their compliance with the mandates of ObamaCare, do they now believe in Leprechauns? Such are the questions that the power-hungry statists have posed to one of the oldest religious organizations on the face of the planet.

Prosecutor: Where did you go to high school?
Cabrera: In 1986.
Where at?
In, um…in 1983.
Excuse me—I asked you when—where did you go to high school?
[Pause] Yes.
What school?
After, uh, high school, um, I went to college.
And where did you go—
[Judge Nelson interrupts]
Nelson: Just a moment. Mrs. Cabrera, you can step down. You can go back there.

-Alejandrina Cabrera (HT: Takimag.com)

It was clear from the judicial hearing above that poor Alejandrina Cabrera encounters significant difficulties communicating in the English language. This handicap did not seem to deter Mrs. Cabrera from seeking a seat on the San Luis City, AZ City Council. Judge Nelson, asked to rule on her fitness to serve on a city council, decided that fundamental literacy in the English language was a basic job requirement to govern in an American municipality. Carbrera’s attorney predictably demurred. The case is pending appeal.

While an undercurrent of failed immigration policies flows through Alejandrina Cabrera’s travails, it should shock no sentient reader that she graduated an American public high school an illiterate sporting a diploma. She then graduated an American university still an English illiterate. This involves an American public school not properly teaching her English. She only speaks proper Spanish because her parents put effort into teaching her to properly communicate.

American public education has abandoned what works. Many failured American public schools have invested heavily in new technology, but have failed to teach the childrenwhat to do with these machines. Schools have also opted to treat behavioral problems with pharmaceutical cocktails. If a child is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), they won’t let him even enroll unless he’s on Ritalin.

We now see evidence that spending on computers is not producing the workforce of the future. Instead, we are sliding backwards. The computer, like a pick-axe, can be useful when applied to a certain type of task. However, the computer is no more likely to make your child a genius than the pick-axe. It cannot improve either the teachers or the curriculum. A New York Times article describes the results of computer-based curriculums.

Since 2005,(when the classroom digitized) scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen….In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.

– Matt Richtel (New York Times)

Ritalin also became a popular treatment for students with ADD. Students not paying adequate attention to school lessons were diagnosed with ADD and rapidly put on Ritalin. This appeared to be an intelligent solution to the problems these children were having.

In 1973, I reviewed the literature on drug treatment of children for The New England Journal of Medicine. Dozens of well-controlled studies showed that these drugs immediately improved children’s performance on repetitive tasks requiring concentration and diligence. I had conducted one of these studies myself. Teachers and parents also reported improved behavior in almost every short-term study.

– L. Alan Sroufe (New York Times)

But then human physiology kicks in. The children react to Ritalin the same way they would react to any other addictive substance. The human body develops a tolerance, and it doesn’t produce the desired effect at a safe dosage. The body is simply used to the drugs being there. Dr. Sroufe explains this effect.

But in fact, the loss of appetite and sleeplessness in children first prescribed attention-deficit drugs do fade, and, as we now know, so do the effects on behavior. They apparently develop a tolerance to the drug, and thus its efficacy disappears.

Dr. Sroufe goes further in his indictment of Ritalin prescription.

To date, no study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve….Drugs get everyone — politicians, scientists, teachers and parents — off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is.

This problem is one that we can help solve on a local level. Municipal School Board elections have notoriously low turnout. Get 500 other parents concerned about whether the local school makes prescription drugs mandatory for any child diagnosed as ADD, and you really could swing a School Board District in a mid-sized municipality.

People often pay no more attention to the politics of a school system than the “ADD” children pay to their lessons. As taxpayers in most communities and municipalities we will be subsidizing the public school system with every deduction from our paycheck or sales tax at the local grocery store.

If parents aggressively asked questions to the school personnel, maybe these same parents would no longer have to pay private school tuitions to make sure their children learned reading, writing and arithmetic. How will technology be used to enhance instead of replace vital basic intellectual skills? Is it there to help or replace the teachers? Can the school psychologist in your district order an ADD child onto Ritalin at the threat of expulsion from the public school system?

You may be pleasantly surprised by how your particular school system answers all of the questions above. However, if you aren’t asking them, and you still send your kids to the local public school, you may not like what your children tell you when they get home. Be an active and participating citizen when the school board and the town council stand for local elections. If you want your kids to have good and effective public schools, set a positive example as a parent and do this homework assignment.

P.S. The author of this blog is an active and participating parent at The Montessori School where his oldest child attends Kindergarten.

New Warning Signs Were Installed In DC The First Time Joe Biden Was Elected

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults… Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice..

(HT: Yahoo.com)

I used to pity Vice President Joe Biden. I wondered how a man with decades in the Senate and a degree from THE Gawd-Almiddy Hahvad University could sometimes appear to be so insensitive. Now I understand. Fightin’ Scranton Joe must be a stealth Conservative.

Being a Rethuglican from (gasp of horror) Huntsville, AL, (/gasp of horror) I’m a humble, provincial soul. In fact, my very ideology stresses hierarchies and resistance to change. Thus, I was totally unaware of what accent I needed to buy coffee or nachos from the local 7-11s until Good Old Joe set me straight. The man is such a total cosmopolitan.

Now some crazy people accuse Joe Biden of being racist. They imply it was wrong to make fun of the rich and ancient culture of East India by implying that they talk funny when they answer phones at call centers.

But no. All kidding aside, Joe Biden is a good liberal. He can’t possibly be racist. When he says something completely unfair about an entire group of people based on their race or ethnicity, that’s different from racism because Joe Biden is liberal. We have scientific proof that he can’t be racist and liberal at the same time.

I think he meant to say that the greedy corporations were hiring East Indians instead of Americans so that the people that answer your phone calls would speak grammatically correct English. Or maybe this is just a foreign aid program. Our corporations are hiring these people to help out our new partner in the developing world. Biden was only imitating their accents out of admiration and solidarity. Just like people used to do when they performed comedy skits in blackface.

The Obama Economy: Built. To. Last.

“The 65% of our population who are imbeciles really love it, so it must be best!”

– Brett Stevens (in full-metal sarcasm mode) (HT:Amerika.org)

I’ll let Sir Charles Darwin explain why the entire premise of Barack Obama’s recent smug-fest campaign ad known as a State of The Union Address was an utter joke. Barack Obama thinks a welfare state with more tentacles than a sea monster from a Homeric Epic can give us an economy that is built to last. Darwin would explain reality as follows.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

(HT:Thinkexist.com)

So if that VIC-20 I had in my room, (The one I used to stash my copies of Street Chopper Magazine under when I was 12) had been built to last, would it be doing me very much good? Of course not, but that seems to be the prevailing economic zeitgeist of the Obama Whitehouse. If he can just prevent the future from taking place, no more travel agents will lose their jobs to Internet Apps on Orbitz.com. And he promises to the absolute best he can to make this happen to the American People.

The future frightens the citizens of an economically weak and culturally dying nation. A savvy political leader sees this and plays to these fears. Government can make this scary future go away, but only if it’s given more and more power to do all that is necessary. But for all the power this government assumes nothing is ever their fault. As Derek Thompson of The Atlantic put it.

Americans are struggling, Obama said, not only because of the credit crunch of the Great Recession, but also because of efficiency monster that delivered a greater recession long before 2007. Manufacturing jobs were already disappearing, wages were already stagnating, technology was already eating our work, medical and education prices were already galloping while earnings were trotting.

How do you fix a problem like the greater recession and income inequality? The honest, realistic answer is that solving such a problem is likely beyond the reach of a president or Congress. But the purpose of the State of the Union is precisely to make oversized promises that Congress can underdeliver, so the president offered a laundry-list of measures guaranteed to please liberals and infuriate conservatives for basically the same reason: They cost money.

(HT:Yahoo Finance)

So there it is. The problems Barack Obama attempts to fix are not the sort any government should be attempting to intervene in. Other nations of the world really do work harder, demand less in remuneration, and require less out of employers that work there than the workers and government of the United States. Machines and algorithms really do perform precise and highly detail-oriented tasks better than any human being outside the top 1% in agility and mental acuity. No Internet App ever requires health insurance or sick leave. These are realities, not lies told by the E-VIL Mitt Romney and his vile minions at Bain Capital.

What Barack Obama’s economy that is built to last would amount to is a museum. It would be a snapshot of a former time when his grandfather really did perform hard manual labor on a WWII assembly line. The government would curate that museum and dust off the exhibits if they got a bit run down. The government would also soon find itself having to buy all the products because they were years behind anything that people would ever want to purchase or own. The museum would eventually close when every patron the museum wanted to charge for admission (i.e. tax) was too broke to afford it and clamoring for a job on the staff (i.e. a tax-break, a grant or a bailout).

This is why Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, said more in his 10-minute response than President Barack Obama has said in 3-plus years of droning, atonal Un-Leadership.

“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!

And that is the essence of the Un-Leadership Barack Obama has provided for the last three years. He doesn’t call on all Americans to look upon government so that he can save them. He calls on all Americans to look upon government so that they will forget that there is any such thing as an intelligent alternative. This is a call for the peasants to return to their serfdom, for the low-born to pay their Dhimmitude, for Americans to turn into something lesser.

Our President, for the sake of improving his own odds, calls upon us to do the things that will make us more dependent upon others. Just get on the team. Just line up for the program. Forget about adapting to change. And most of all; forget the implicit prediction that Charles Darwin offers will befall those who forget how to adapt to the rapid steady-state of change all around us.

Eat The Rich Like Prometheus' Liver!!!! (sarc/

Mitt Romney offered a partial snapshot of his vast personal fortune late Monday, disclosing income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year — virtually all of it profits, dividends or interest from investments.

(HT: Washington Post)

It’s not just official – it’s officially official. Mitt Romney isn’t just bad. Mitt Romney is E-VIL! You see, according to Pravda on The Potomac, Mitt Romney doesn’t get income the same way normal Americans do. His is entirely derived from dividends and such while poor, humble schlubs such as little, old moi rely on those bi-weekly paychecks.

He even gives more to charity than he pays in taxes. He gives almost as much to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ($4.2M) as he does to the IRS ($6.2M). The apostasy of the man! This definitely means he isn’t like the Average American.™ However; I’m no fan of liberal agitprop. I don’t think everyone should be forced into some common mold in order to be good presidential material.

For starters, Mitt Romney actually reports and pays taxes on his Caribbean investments. If this were Charlie Rangel’s tax return, you wouldn’t even know what was in The Caymans until the Congressional Ethics Committees convened.

So Mitt got something in the neighborhood of 8% on his capital. He didn’t even have to break a sweat to self-enrich. He like Jimmy Page or Stephen King can pretty much live off the royalties of things he did earlier in his life. The new American Gospel is to hate the man. As Barack Obama all but announced in his speech in Kansas last year: Prometheus had it coming!

Romney is successful. We have an entire OWS Movement convinced that you can’t spell success without S-A-T-A-N. (I’ll have to go check a dictionary and get back to you on that). To Speaker Gingrich, President Obama, and to anyone else slugging Mitt Romney for living off of royalties instead of paycheck-to-paycheck, I have one message. Stop doing this if you like the idea of Americans attempting to succeed.

If you think a guy who plans his life and finances with a little more acumen than a typical Kardashian Sister is the epitome of E-VIL, then don’t be too shocked if the Good Ol’ US of A goes another 1000 days without a properly legislated Federal Budget. We as a nation may not deserve to have a properly legislated budget, a decent Armed Forces, a vibrant culture, or a thriving technological base if we hate success. Our political leadership will accurately mirror the results of our moral values as a nation.

And success is cool with that. If you hate it, it shrugs and walks away; far away. If you go through life hating success (like I was once stupid enough to do in my youth) it won’t burden your life with its oppressive presence. It hangs with people who appreciate it, work for it and never forget how hard it is to attain.

Do I want a President who can relate to The Average American™? Not necessarily. It doesn’t guaruntee fair or decent governance. Sometimes people don’t eat very well when they are governed by someone who is too much of a man of the people. It was American Fascist Huey Long who said “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.”

In conclusion, I’d rather not see Mitt Romney win the GOP Nomination. I have fulsomely critiqued the man (here, here, here, and here). He ranks only above Ron Paul in my personal estimate of who should be the GOP nominee this year. But all of that being caveat; his ability to manage his life and his fortune well enough to cruise comfortably on an 8% return and still give heavily to his church is a reason to vote FOR Mitt Romney, not against. People criticizing his wealth and personal success are criticizing a legitimate vehicle of American aspiration and renewal.

What The GOP Voters Would Like To Do With Their Party Elite Some Days.

“The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue and the public will turn en masse against Barack Obama….Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea party hobbits could return to Middle-earth…This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP nominees. The reality is the debt limit will be raised one way or another.”

Sen. John McCain (HT:CNN)

It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to understand what happened Saturday in South Carolina. The GOP Establishment received a medicinal kiwi enema. Newt Gingrich served as a weapon of meme destruction. He just blew up the “Mitt Romney is Inevitable” meme that was fed to the voters of South Carolina like a direct order instead of a talking point. Of course, the GOP Establishment wouldn’t be the GOP Establishment if they weren’t too arrogant to understand what just took place.

To agree with Inner Party Screech-Harpy, Ann Coulter, you’d have to believe Newt Gingrich is in BIG TROUBLE. According to public opinion polls, everybody, and I mean everybody hates him. According to Rick Santorum, ““You look at someone who was speaker of the House, and again, these are friends, I know they are good people, but when Newt was speaker of the House, well, within three years the conservatives within the House of Representatives tried to throw him out, and in the fourth year they did…”

Mitt Romney adds additional scorn to the phlegm and bile attack being launched against Former House Speaker Gingrich as the GOP Primary circus moves to Florida. Romney called him a failure stating “He resigned after four years in disgrace. He was investigated under an ethics panel and had to make a payment associated with that and then his fellow Republicans, 88 percent of Republicans voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich. He has not had a record of successful leadership.”

Recent Florida polling suggests that this is working about as well as calling President George W. Bush a miserable failure worked for the Democrats in 2004. And yet the GOP establishment doesn’t grok the water on what just happened

In their (Team Romney’s) view, Gingrich has barely run a campaign. As they see it, Team Gingrich doesn’t have the money, professionalism, brains, or organization of the Romney campaign. They see the former Speaker as somewhat unstable and vulnerable to continued attack on issues of ethics and morals. And most of all, they see Gingrich as a candidate who owes his very existence to the never-ending series of Republican debates — and not much more.

-(HT: Washington Examiner)

The crosstabs of who voted for Newt Gingrich belie the above tomfoolery. Gingrich consistently beat Romney by 8-12 percent regardless of voter age. Gingrich dominated Romney and Santorum amongst voters with a HS Diploma or less. He beat all comers solidly amongst voters with Bachelor’s Degrees or lower. Only Republicans who had done Postgraduate study preferred Mitt Romney.

Gingrich surprisingly performed better with married voters than he did amongst singles. This suggested dragging one of Newt’s ex’s in front of a camera for a tell all was ill-advised. Romney took a plurality amongst voters earning $200,000 or more. He lost every other income group. He lost all voters with incomes less than $100K by over 15%. Gingrich won a near-majority amongst Conservative voters. He lost amongst voters who were Moderate or Liberal.

What all this demonstrates is that much of the GOP Electorate prefers anyone not endorsed by the GOP Establishment. This is particularly true amongst people not atop the educational or monetary ladder. They feel that way so strongly that in the 2010 Delaware Senate Primary, they actually preferred Christine O’Donnell to Mike Castle. A large number of Republicans not getting fat envelopes from the party apparatus actually preferred seeing a Democrat inherit that seat instead of Representative Castle. How could this be? Go back up to the Coulter link and listen to the woman if you can stand it.

The leaders of the GOP are more moderate than the rank-in-file. They consider themselves intellectually and culturally superior. They have no respect for the voters and activists who they need out walking the precincts next Fall to stand a prayer against the Obama Re-Election Juggernaut that will set upon the march from Charlotte, NC. They need to learn that respect the hard way. We can all hope that Newt Gingrich’s significant win in South Carolina is the 2X4 upside the head these people really needed.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

– Rudyard Kipling The Jeffersonian.com

There are certain things you should never be willing to do just to get ahead. In the end, the short-term gains never justify the cost of having sold out your ethics and principles. Yes, this diary is about another reason not to support Mitt Romney in the GOP Primaries this year. No, it has nothing to do with his business career or his tenure at Bain Capital. I think it addresses an issue that ultimately matters a whole lot more.

As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney kept a close relationship with Planned Parenthood. In the course of keeping this relationship, he signed away any possible Pro-Life convictions he would later attempt to lay claim to. Like Faust signing his soul over to Mephistopheles, Romney signed a document pledging strong support for almost all agenda points that Planned Parenthood wanted him to pursue as Governor of Massachusetts. Buzzfeed.com has a copy of the questionnaire Governor Romney prepared for Planned Parenthood.

Romney's Deal With The Devil

Now every Republican and every Democrat in DC can claim that they value human life. Perhaps the silver lining to the evil organization known as Planned Parenthood consists of the fact that their political lobbying activities give us a measure of exactly how much each politician values life. Planned Parenthood will pursue unabated nihilism and will pay what it needs to buy off political support. In order to pay a Danegeld of sorts to Pro-Abortion Movement in Massachusetts, Romney was willing to do the following:

1) Support the Roe v. Wade USSC decision.
2) Favor the use of Medicaid dollars to fund abortions for low income women.
3) Favor “safety zones” to keep protestors away from abortuaries.
4) Support emergency contraception via the morning after pill.

Of course, even Mitt Romney had his limits.
1) He wouldn’t favor government funding for contraceptive pills until he had studied the legislation.
2) He would not fight bans against partial birth abortions.
3) He didn’t sign on to support abortions for minors without parental consent.

This suggests to me that Romney has some Pro-Life tendencies when they are favored under political cost/benefit analysis. This is an issue he would rather either ignore, or buy himself silence on. In responding favorably to so much of Planned Parenthood’s 2002 abortion rights questionnaire, he showed himself willing to pay a significant Danegeld to pro-Abortion groups in order to avoid having to fight against them for the lives of unborn children.

Mitch Daniels talked of a truce on social issues. He was accused of being a traitor to the right and it ended any chance he had at running for President. Mitt Romney actually signed on to pay a Danegeld. He has sold out his principles and avoided a fight over abortion. This validates and perpetuates the continued existence of abortion on demand. Cowardice always serves the ends of evil. You cannot claim to be a Pro-Life political figure if you are too frightened of Planned Parenthood to actually fight abortion.

Suing for peace with Planned Parenthood has availed Mitt Romney very little. It was as if he had signed away his right to have morals and ethics in a deal with the devil. And when one of Rick Santorum’s campaign workers passed around copies of Mitt Romney’s Planned Parenthood questionnaire, it was like Mephistopheles reminding Faust that in the end, Old Scratch would always show up and collect.

You know who was money at the last GOP debate; the Great Green Newt. You know why? ‘Cuz he just jumped all over Juan Williams like a cheap, polyester Disco outfit. If you haven’t watched the YouTube of this, feast your very eyes!

Now; even if you have no intention of voting for Mr. Gingrich, watch this a 3rd time and learn how to tell the politically correct haters of free enterprise to go pound sand. I think four things from this response are useful in trending the American Zeitgeist away from the Left.

1) Newt refused to accept the implicit criticism of Conservatism lodged in Juan Williams’ loaded question. This is critical. Never let a Leftist preempt the logical category before the debate even starts. That is like playing a chess game where you voluntarily agree not to play with one of your bishops. Newt told Juan from Jump Street: “No, I don’t see that.” And also ”only the elites despise earning money.”

2) Newt found an articulate and entertaining way of turning around the name-calling and buzzwords.

Juan: “You saw some of this during your visit to a black church in South Carolina where a woman asked you why you refer to President Obama as “the food stamp president.” It sounds as if you’re seeking to belittle people.”

Newt: “The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.” (HT: Jim Geraghty, NRO)

3) Newt tied the issue directly to Barack Obama’s record in office. He showed how leading liberals talk the talk but never walk the walk on improving the lives of the poor and minorities.

Newt: “There’s an area on I-73 that was called by Barack Obama as an area of shame because of unemployment. Has it improved? No. They haven’t built a road, they haven’t help the people, they haven’t done anything.” (HT:Realclearpolitics.com)

4) Finally, he redirected Juan’s entire attempt at character assassination by redirecting the thrust of his answer into positive territory. One more hosanna for The Great Green Newt.

Newt: “One last thing. So here’s my point. I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness, and if that makes liberals unhappy, I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn to get a better job and learn some day to own the job.”

So let’s break it down one more time.
1) Directly and emphatically refute the typical preemption of categories the Left likes to engage in. “No, I don’t agree telling a hard truth is racist, sexist, bigoted, small-minded, etc…”
2) Turn it around and call them on their BS. “The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”
3) Tie the issue directly to a liberal in office. “There’s an area on I-73 that was called by Barack Obama as an area of shame…”
4) Give a positive alternative to the demoralizing and insulting Leftist fecal fertilizer. “You can own that job the way Newt just owned Juan Williams.”

Do those four things while in ideological combat with liberals and eyes will pop while heads explode. You can crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their metrosexuals. The Great Green Newt just showed us how it was done.

Wall Street Vampire? Or Just Another False Caricature?

Mitt Romney has been depicted as a blood-sucking, Wall Street Vampire. If only that were the simple truth. Having an iniquitous personality would be better than the public persona he exudes right now. It would add a certain cache to his otherwise soporific blandwagon of a campaign.

Newt Gingrich represents the anti-Romney persecution with a 28 minute political ad entitled “When Mitt Romney Came to Town.” The ad could be a Michael Moore “documentary” about E-VIL, Greeeee-dy, Rethuglicans snorting fine, Columbian Cocaine off the succulent rear-end of a hooker through rolled up $100 bills. Cicero was more fair and balanced in his indictments during The Cataline Conspiracy.

Candidate Romney has predictably fired back with an ad that portrays Bain Capital as pretty much the good guys from The Lord of The Rings. His ad “Bright Future” paints Romney as a creator of wealth and jobs. It shows the names of hugely successful businesses that presumably would still be vending their wares out of pushcarts or bucket shops without the Benevolent Mittman. Like much we see in the heated skirmishes of a Presidential Primary, neither view of Bain Capital seems exactly steeped in the light of justice and truth.

I’m not sold by either Mitt Romney or his opposition. I’ve tried to blog about this issue from the standpoint of a guy who just wants the fulsome, soiled laundry out of the gym bag so that it can be aired. Let’s settle this puppy in house, before David Axelrod tells America what to believe about this during next Fall’s Presidential Election. It would help to get some perspective on this not driven by Romney’s minions or detractors. Perhaps Fortune Magazine offers exactly that in a feature blog entitles “Fact or Fiction? Romney’s Private Equity Past.”

Dan Primack, author of the Fortune Blog issues a statement outlining his purpose. “Mitt Romney is running for president as a “job creator,” based on his time as a venture capitalist and private equity investor at Bain Capital. Some of his rivals are beginning to accuse Romney of being more of a job destroyer, citing some of Bain’s more troubled investments.”

”So we’ve decided to keep track of who is saying what about Romney’s tenure at Bain, and about private equity in the context of presidential politics. More importantly, we’re going to tell you if the statements are true, sort of true or false.”

He speaks out on several recent depictions of Romney’s role at Bain Capital. He begins with “When Mitt Romney Came To Town”. “Winning Our Future, a political action committee supporting Newt Gingrich, today released a 28-minute video titled ‘When Mitt Romney Came to Town.’ It focuses on the failures of four companies formerly owned by Bain Capital, and is so chock full of errors that it deserves its own post.”

His post goes on to say:
A) Unimac’s Florida plant was not closed until after Bain had sold Unimac to a different entity. He goes on to point out that Romney had stopped being a decision-making principal at Bain Capital five years prior to Bain’s sale of the asset and six years prior to Unimac’s plant closing.
B) KB Toys was purchased one year after Romney left Bin in 1999.
C) DDI Corporation was acquired under Romney’s watch. Romney and Bain acquired DDI in 1996, left the company in 1999. DDI Corp ran into trouble in 2000. However, contra-Primack, Romney isn’t completely in the clear because a 13D form suggests Romney was still involved in DDI as late as 2000. (Although not as a member of the Bain Board). So I’m not as willing as Mr. Primack to completely absolve Mitt on DDI as Primack does later in the post.

Primack does not, however, paint a completely rosy picture of Romney’s activities at Bain. Primack takes issue with National Review Online for stating “Bain is involved in, among other things, leveraged buyouts, meaning that the firm and its investors borrow money from banks to acquire companies, usually firms that are in trouble but believed to be salvageable.”

Primack notes factual discrepancies and omissions in the National Review Online Article. Primack points out the PE firms often arrange the finance so that they aren’t 100% on the hook if the deal goes Ka-Bloom! I take no great moral umbrage to them managing risk to avoid blowing themselves up. However, it is somewhat self-serving to claim Bain took on more actual risk than it really did. It sort of reminds me of a soldier that embellishes his old war stories a bit to look more heroic in front of the ladies.

Primack further delves into this risk management issue and indicts National Review for not properly describing how Bain Capital took dividends out of money that they sometimes forced firms to borrow. This is a major and significant failure on the part of National Review Online.

It also is worth noting that National Review completely ignored the issue of dividend recaps, which is the real issue that keeps getting glossed over because it doesn’t fit into a 30-second soundbite. Dividend recaps are when a private equity firm raises even more debt for an existing portfolio company, and then takes a dividend out of the debt proceeds (rather than from profits). That is how a private equity firm can profit on an investment whether the company later thrives or fails (although, typically, dividend recaps alone do not generate the type of returns that PE firms promise their investors).

This issue needs to get aired out. If I were cursed by the gods with being Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for a fun-filled evening of barking at the moon and chasing parked cars, that’s the one I’d demagogue to the hilt. I’d talk about Romney eating these companies’ seed-corn like it was a box full of Cracker Jacks.

Primack astutely and correctly points out: “Sometimes, however, such companies later fail and cite their heavy leverage load as a contributing factor. That is why Romney and Bain Capital are sometimes accused of profiting from bankrupting companies, even though that’s really some sloppy shorthand for what actually happens.” Believe you me, the Democrats running ads this Fall would cite heavy leverage load as a reason for these companies going under and tell you the personal life history of every line worker who was ever fired.

Primack’s entire blog is long, detailed and well-researched. If you actually care about what happened when Mitt Romney came to town, Primack gives us about as good and as fair-minded a view of it as anyone else I’ve seen out there. No, Mitt’s still not charismatic enough to be Dracula. However, he’s not clear of Bain Capital by a long shot. The GOP voting public can and should demand of him more answers.

Did Bain Capital Ever Do This To Factory Workers?

I can think of one excellent side-effect of the argument over Mitt Romney‘s work at Bain Capital. It reminds me of the fun and foolish days when I could still set foot on a rugby pitch and expect to walk off in one piece. A broken, old prop’s reminiscence begins below.

It was a wet, cold, drizzly Saturday. However, the day was awesome. It was Rugby Day, I was young and better yet, I was stupid enough to suit up and hit the pitch. I was playing tight-head prop and over in the bad guys’ scrum was a loose forward who would make himself a total blight on my joy of competition.

The game quickly degenerated into a wallow in the mud. The park that rented us the field would no doubt regret their decision as our cleats plowed grooves in the muddy ground. The backs were handling the ball about as well as I would handle having a red hot hunk of metal tossed into my lap. Another knock-on led to yet another (expletive-deleted) scrum down. And ten minutes into play things started getting chippy.

I drew first blood, yet unfortunately made myself a marked number for the other side’s cheap-shot artiste cum hockey enforcer. The other side attempted to form a maul. Their ball carrier turned his back to me and his support took its sweet, relaxing time in arriving at the breakdown point.

My eyes lit up like a lucky slot player on the Vegas Strip. I laid that dude out like he was next up for the autopsy table. It was one of the hardest and most aggressive tackles I ever remember getting off during a match. From then on, the rest of the first half of that match got a lot less gentlemanly and pleasant.

The next time I hit a ruck, I ended up prone and near the bottom. My head got stomped and then raked. I looked up at the ref with my best WTF expression. Neither I nor the culprit who stomped my head and raked cleats got carded. The scene repeated itself when I carried the ball on a couple of phases of possession. Once I got my hand over my left ear just in time. I had a bloody, red welt on my wrist as a reward.

The ref seemed to be enjoying his pleasant time in the park despite what Mel Gibson’s character in Braveheart once described as “Good Old Scottish Weather.” He didn’t seem to want to interrupt his pleasant reverie to blow his (expletive) whistle and prevent this guy from stomping on my head during rucks and breakdowns.

Now a guy who deliberately stomps hands, heads and other appendages during rucks and mauls is a form of classless rugby scum. Whether he gets sin-binned or not is irrelevant to the question of his status among peers. I would have been well within my rights under the unwritten rules of rugby ethics to have hauled off and cold-cocked the son of a female canine any time during the first half.

Finally, at half-time I had exhausted my patience with the head-stomping. I took my Gatorade bottle, slammed it like a post-match libation and threw it against a nearby chain-link fence. I stomped around a bit throwing an expletive-laden tantrum about getting my head stomped. At this point our 8-man, ARN (short for Argentinean Rugby Ninja) took me aside for some performance counseling and attitude adjustment. “What the (expletive), Dude?” He inquired. “We’ve gotta’ huddle!”

“17’s been stomping me all (expletive) match!” I responded.

“We’ve got him.” He explained. “You worry about your (expletive) job. You pay his sorry (expletive, expletive) back by winning!”

We actually did manage to win the match. The weather was miserable; neither side could handle the ball. Our scrum was 150 lbs heavier than theirs and our fly-half could pick off a penalty kick even when his boot had five extra pounds of mud and water attached. (It seemed the ref did get around to calling things that weren’t at least somewhat carefully hidden.)

Oh, and ARN totally had #17. He tackled him so that his opposing shoulder went down wrong and popped out of its joint. The enjoyable manliness ritual where two guys on the other team’s sideline pop the dislocated shoulder back into socket ensued on the other sideline. The only thing missing from a worthy Hollywood Movie Scene was the drunk, old country doctor telling #17 to have a shot “Wuskey” and bite down hard on a stick.

But that old experience reminds me of Romney’s Bain Capital work because it raises a vexing issue of what is legal and what constitutes ethics. Romney, as far as we know, broke no laws. But did his actions lead to people getting fired who otherwise would have been able to earn an honest living?

Is Bain Capital engaged in “Vulture Capitalism?” I tend to find that rhetorical turn of phrase distasteful, intemperate and an indirect contribution-in-kind to Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. However, (maybe once or twice a decade) I’ve been known to be wrong.

If this is one of those times, then I can totally understand Newt Gingrich going into ARN-mode here and doing everything in his mortal power to slam Mitt Romney’s shoulder hard into the sodden pitch. If this is one of those times, then Mitt Romney is absolutely legal but still morally wrong.

In that case, the 2012 Presidential Election is over the second Mitt Romney wins the GOP nomination. The MSM is already down in SC interviewing people who got fired from manufacturing jobs as a result of Bain Capital’s acquisitions. They are actively searching out bloody, gushing head-wounds from Mitt Romney’s behavior on Private Equity’s savage rugby pitch.

There is a valid argument that all sound-bytes aside, “Greed, is good.” Romney began to hit that rhetorical stride in his Primary Victory Speech last night.

President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. In these difficult times, we cannot abandon the core values that define us as unique — We are One Nation, Under God.

Candidate Romney went on to frame this election in terms of being a values election; not just “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”

Our campaign is about more than replacing a President; it is about saving the soul of America. This election is a choice between two very different destinies.

If what Governor Perry said about Bain Capital is truth; Mitt Romney has no business attempting to win a values-based election. If what Governor Perry said was inaccurate, but still serves as resonant propaganda, Mitt Romney’s job just got much harder. America will not elect a President who manipulates the rules to get away with stomping people’s heads on life’s rugby pitch out of spite. Candidate Romney will have to labor hard to vigorously refute this characterization of his tenure at Bain Capital.

Nordlinger considers himself to be a Conservative. He believes strongly in free enterprise. He sees his favored candidate, Mitt Romney, being lambasted for aggressively participating in a harsh form of free enterprise. This lambasting is by other Republicans, who ostensibly all claim to represent Conservatism. It pees in his Cheerios; as he expounds below.

The last two presidential election cycles have revealed a stinking hypocrisy in conservatives: They profess their love of capitalism and entrepreneurship, but when offered a real capitalist and entrepreneur, they go, “Eek, a mouse!” And they tear him down in proud social-democrat fashion. In the off season, they sound like Friedrich Hayek. When the game is on, they sound like Huey Long, Bella Abzug, or Bob Shrum.

Perhaps he had Governor Perry in mind with the comparison to Bob Shrum. Perry describes Mitt Romney’s work at Bain Capital below.

“I will suggest they’re just vultures,” he said of firms that “loot” other companies. “They’re vultures that are sitting out there on the tree limb, waiting for a company to get sick. And then they swoop in, they eat the carcass, they leave with that and they leave the skeleton.”

Ka-Pow! Schmack! LBO that, Vile Mittman!

It all sounds like populist gibberish. Whatever is Repair_Man_Jack to do? All of the GOP candidates he’s willing to vote for have gone crazier than Ron Paul and started playing bongo drums in an OWS Encampment? Unlike the candidates in the gladiatorial arena, I get to take a step back and examine this a bit. Having done so, I reach the following conclusions.

The GOP candidates attacking Bain Capital are not strictly anti-capitalism. They are implying that it exploits people, but would all agree to a man that this result is a negative externality. The people playing bongos at the DNC; or any other OWS encampment, see capitalism in the same vain as Karl Marx before them. The exploitation they attribute to capitalism is a deliberate result of the system and it must therefore be hobbled or destroyed.

Many GOP Candidates, driven by desperation, opportunity and a certain level of personal conviction are taking a position on Capitalism that has been a force in so-called “Compassionate Conservatism” for a long time. We often decry this moderation and blame it for GOP Congressional overspending. However, it does come from a legitimate ideological fountainhead and deserves addressing. Cardinal Ratzinger (prior to his election as PM) wrote the following about how he saw the free market economies of the 1980’s evolving.

It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse.

– (HT: David Goldman, Asia Times)

More and more it looks like 2012 may turn into a values election instead of just “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!” Even the economy, producer of the aforementioned “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!,” is only a reflection of the society in which that operating system functions. Operate a market system among pirates, ne’er-do-wells, and dope-slingers and you’ll get really efficient markets for Nazi-Crank and sexual slavery.

I’m thinking a lot of new Tea-Party GOP voters internalize this ethos. It doesn’t cause them to hate free markets, the way a well-indoctrinated Leftist would. However, it causes them to think twice before they ever actually trust one. This is particularly true of Jacksonian voters amongst the low-income white working class.

In conclusion, a lot of Republican voters, particularly those who aren’t currently subscribed to Investor’s Business Daily or National Review, have ambivalent feelings towards capitalism. They understand the principle, but question the current people in charge of the execution. They don’t consider these question trivial and don’t consider themselves anywhere near as duplicitous as Huey Long or as deracinated as Bella Abzug.

Therefore, Mitt Romney has some ‘splaining to do if he wants to put the Bain Capital issue to bed well enough to get the Tea Party and the Social Conservatives out to the polls on his behalf. If the best Mr. Romney can come up with is “Villains ye were and LBO targets your employers remain!,” he has just either forfeited the nomination or worse. “I like firing people” could become this year’s version of “I supported the War in Iraq before I was against it.”

The "Chicken Hawk" Argument Is Elitist Pig Behavior

I’ll bet you’ve never personally performed open heart surgery. You haven’t? Really? In that case, I don’t want your stinkin’ opinion on how the government should best distort the health insurance markets with artificial incentives. You probably also haven’t dropped acid in the last ten years. Given that painful deficiency on your CV, I don’t want to hear any of your sanctimonious blithering about The War on Drugs.

I assume, furthermore, that you’ve never been behind enemy lines, staggering home through the bad guys’ wire with your small intestine in one your canteen cups.* If such is the case; then you, like Newt Gingrich, have no right to have an opinion on issues of international military involvements.

So argues Dr. Ron Paul, who has the unique moral authority to decide whether John Huntsman really has American values. As Devine Emperor of Truth and Logic; Dr. Paul hath (self)-righteously decreed that Newt Gingrich has no right to an opinion on matters of war and peace.

“I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments aren’t — they have no right to send our kids off to war, and not be even against the wars that we have, (My bolding)” Paul, a former Air Force flight surgeon, said. “I’m trying to stop the wars. But at least, you know, I went when they called me up.”

– Congressman Ron Paul.

The entire reason people serve in the US Military is to defend and uphold the US Constitution. The entire reason that politicians and their enemies make arguments based upon “Chicken-Hawking” is to deprive people who have not been under enemy fire, of the right to participate in the vital national conversation involving war and peace. It’s a way for great and courageous defenders of the US Constitution like Dr. Ron Paul to strip others of their rights under the 1st Amendment.

This would make Dr. Paul a smug and arrogant elitist pig. He is as revolting on the issues of war and peace as President Obama is with regards to social issues. It makes me think that Dr. Paul is a bitter clinger who desperately holds on to his 9-11 Conspiracy Theories and his Racist literature and his proposed Fed audit.

As one who wore the uniform briefly, I can understand a teaspoon’s measure of Ron Paul’s frustration over the civilian leadership of the armed forces. It has to be one of the more vexing aspects of the entire US Constitution when Von Clausewitz of the 9-11 LIHOP Theories ponders the document. But that’s exactly the point. You and I don’t have to like Mr. Gingrich’s resume on military issues in order for him to have a right to express his views.

Ultimately, “Chicken Hawking” is the revolting logical inverse of the argument that a former military person would make a great foreign policy president. I doubt there is a single opponent of the Iraq War who spent all of 2005 thinking “Ya know what? I don’t like this whole Iraq War thing. However, George W. Bush and John McCain have landed fighter jets on an aircraft carrier before. Based upon that, I have no valid point of view on whether the GOP has a correct policy via-avis the Iraq War.”

That’s the astonishing thing about the entire “Chicken Hawk” branch of logical fallacy. Not a single practitioner of it will ever admit that a more experienced member of the military that holds a diametrically opposed point of view on some defense-related issue has a God-Given right to serve the Ron Pauls of the world a big, steaming cup of STFU. This situation sends them appealing to all-important bastions of authority like Gen Wesley Clark.

Thus, Ron Paul’s use of the “Chicken Hawk” smear to demean one of his opponents in the GOP Primary reminds me of what is wrong with American Democracy. Here we have a former military member, sworn to uphold and defend the US Constitution, attempting to deprive an opponent of his right to speak based on pure CV snobbery. This is not courageous libertarian constitutionalism. It is post-modern feudalism instead. Elitist Pigs like Ron Paul, who use their resumes and life experiences as a weapon to silence the points of view they don’t want to hear, are an enemy of American Democracy.

* – If any members of our rich and vibrant RS community have done all three, than what in the heck are you doing wasting time on the Internet? Get out there and fix all the world’s problems!

The 2012 GOP Nominee (If Obama Gets Away With It)

He’s out there. Public Enemy #1. Emmanuel Goldstein to Barack Obama’s INGSOC. And what’s worse is that he’s running for President!

That Goldstein sure is a shady critter. For a time, he was believed to be the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. In this clever disguise, he went around forcibly vaccinating innocent teenage girls until they were so retarded that they sounded like a philosophical debate between Kim Kardashian and Meghan McCain. But than his numbers dropped, so the iniquitous Goldstein assumed another identity.

You see, Goldstein turned his skin black and became Herman Cain. He proposed an overhaul of the Federal Tax system called “9-9-9”. That one scared the BaJeebus out of The Inner Party. Turn it upside down, and you get 6-6-6. But what ultimately did this version of Goldstein in was that he had Bill Clinton issues, serious Bill Clinton issues. The sort of Bill Clinton issues you can’t get away with if you are not a Democrat. Cain was proven unable, so Goldstein adopted a new disguise.

Then he became a former House Speaker from Georgia. He became a guy with more personal baggage than your average Southwest Airlines Flight. He became the guy who debated John F. Kerry from the left on Global Warming. Emmanuel Goldstein was now Newt Gingrich.

But then we learned that he had multiple wives, three-headed kids and lobbied for E-VIL corporations. Also, he supported something similar to RomneyCare, which is similar to ObamaCare, which will drive innumerable small businesses into bankruptcy unless they kiss some politician’s butt and get a waiver from HHS. You not only have to know Nancy Pelosi to get one of those; you have to be willing to admit it.

Then Emmanuel Goldstein switched forms. He changed religions from Judaism to Old-Line Catholic. Home states from DC to Pennsylvania; and houses of Congress from House to Senate. Presto! Emmanuel Goldstein was now Rick Santorum.

But Rick Santorum is mean, man! He’s mean! In Congress, he was,…wait for it, wait for it, – sanctimonious.

When you live in a culture which elevates the Kardashian Sisters to stardom for doing nothing other than “accidentally” releasing amateur porn movies via You-Tube, I’m failing to see the problem with a remediating dose of good, old-school hypocrisy and sanctimony. It would be nice to live in a culture that wasn’t a lifestyle septic tank. People are going to appreciate Rick Santorum saying mean things about abortion, gay marriage and America’s 1 million births per year out of wedlock. They are getting sick and bleeping tired of paying the negative externalities of other people’s blatant disregard for the basic tenants of traditional morality. But Goldstein fears the potential media backlash of these unpopular viewpoints.

So now Goldstein has a really clever disguise. Not Batman; but Mittman! He’s nice, well-groomed, and Moderate. He’s the last GOP candidate that the average listener of NPR wouldn’t chase off the porch. So guess what? Now it’s Mitt’s time in the barrel.

Get ready to hear all about Bain Capital (AKA. The Deathstar). Even as Barack Obama’s jobs council includes the CEO of soon-to-be bankrupt Eastman Kodak, we will be regaled with horror-stories about how Mitt Romney stood back and watched Bain Capital cut jobs at Ampad in 1995. The Inner Party has already recycled an old polemic from 2008. It seems one worker wrote Mitt Romney a personal letter. It didn’t read “Save us, Romney-Won!” but it might as well have.

“We really thought you might help,” Johnson said in the handwritten note, “but instead we heard excuses that were unacceptable from a man of your prominent position.”

(HT: Boston.com)

Then, there are things the letter didn’t mention. The author worked in a typewriter plant in 1995. If his job was on the blocks, he needed to write his impassioned appeal to Mr. Gates; not Mr. Romney. His problems weren’t the fault of Mitt Romney. He was up against Microsoft Office instead.

Ampad was working in an obsolete industry. If I went to shop for an electric typewriter today, it would probably take me awhile to actually find one. Any business manager that allocated tens of thousands dollars of capital a day to manufacture obsolete product lines is far more of an enemy to the US economy than a Wall Street Lay-Off Artist.

But this was just part and parcel to what the GOP allows the MSM to get away with. The continuing drumbeat of this sort of garbage is why I suggested yesterday that Rick Santorum should never have accepted Alan Colmes’ apology for making dead baby jokes about his stillborn child. By not fighting back when the media pushes these distorted and disgusting narratives about our candidates, we are allowing the MSM to serve as an unpaid and hyper-powerful advertising agency for the Democratic Party.

We have a President that has destroyed more economic growth and divided our nation more completely than anyone else I can remember. We have a President who thrives off of ethnic and social division. We have a President who holds much of the people he leads in utter and total contempt. But we have played into this man’s hands. We have let him and his media sycophants turn our current frontrunner in the GOP Primary into Emmanuel Goldstein; Enemy of The State. It’s time to stop worrying about war with Eastasia (or is it Eurasia) and address our real enemy – Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

Like taking his two-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real.

- The always-classy Alan Colmes explains why he thinks Rick Santorum is weird.

We are usually taught to accept the apologies of others when they transgress. This facilitates a necessary peaceful coexistence amongst people who would never be able to abide one another. Society functions because others forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And yet, there are occasions when accepting an apology is worse for the overall commonweal and general peace than turning one down. We should deliberately and thoughtfully expel some transgressors from the circle of socially acceptable people.

This is particularly true when a transgressor understands the intricate mechanics of how society peacefully coexists and then manipulates these rules to seek personal advantage at the expense of the overall level of decency. Alan Colmes is just such a pusillanimous, advantage-seeking degenerate. He does this to bolster his credibility amongst social liberals by “counting coup” against socially conservative political figures and then offering up a completely insincere apology to avoid being ostracized. He operates via the following modus operandi.

1) He selects a socially Conservative target to demonize and ridicule for being strongly and unabashedly pro-life. Rick Santorum and previously; Sarah Palin perfectly fit the mode.

2) He makes a deliberately and intentionally barbaric and mocking insult that ridicules that individual’s pro-life beliefs.

3) He basks in all the web hits and attention he gets for his “daring” contravention of accepted norms.

4) He accuses anyone who doesn’t praise his cuteness and utter comic wit of being intolerant or not getting the hilarious dead-baby joke.

5) He offers his totally insincere and dishonest apologies that he feels secure the offended party will then accept. He is relying upon two factors in so doing. The person offended will not want to appear ungracious and that the person will consider Alan Colmes about as unimportant as a flea-bite on the posterior of a toad.

Rick Santorum (and Governor Palin before him) screwed up and did the Conservative Movement no favors when they accepted Alan Colmes’ disingenuous apologies. What Colmes is doing here is nothing new and nothing different. It’s a choreographed song and dance that we should not be party to in any fashion.

Here is the Alan Colmes LiberalLand post where he accuses Sarah Palin of increasing the risk of her child’s birth by not taking proper pre-natal care. (HT: Wizbang, after Colmes tried to scrub the webpost!)

Now, fast-forward to Primary Campaign 2012. Here’s Alan Colmes mocking Rick Santorum’s dead baby. If these two events look similar; they are not coincidence. This is not accidental. It is studied. As such, it is despicable and should be condemned by everyone, including the offended party most of all. Rick Santorum should have told Alan COlmes to wad up his apology and go burn it.

Some will ask “What about the New Tone™? How can you violate The Golden Rule?” I would reply “This one is easy. Alan Colmes is a barbarian. We damage society and common decency when we fail in our condign duty to shun this morally corrosive parasite.” Although I totally admit that Hilaire Belloc explains my contempt and disdain for Alan Colmes far better than I can.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

Thus we Conservatives need to stop dignifying liberal barbarians by pretending that Alan Colmes, Bill Maher, Michael Moore and many of the rest are decent human beings who “accidentally” say these things. They are not accidentally saying any of it and when they apologize, they believe you are stupid for accepting it. When they laugh at Rick Santorum for “playing with his dead baby”, or contemptuously ridicule “pre-natal Palin”, the mask has slipped off of the demon-head.

This is what Liberals believe. This is the opposite of pro-life. Liberals like Alan Colmes are as concerned for the well-being of others as Ward Churchill was about the babies in The World Trade Center day care centers on September 11, 2001. I get sick and utterly tired of Alan Colmes being treated like anything other than the detestable enemy of decency and goodness that he is.