Congressmen Complain as IRS Harasses Tea Party

John McLaughlin

Congressmen from 63 districts have challenged the IRS to explain a series of events indicating a systematic harassment of Tea Party chapters around the nation 

As disclosed on a major Tea Party website, beginning in January and February, chapters around the country reported receiving unusual letters mailed from the same Ohio IRS office.  The letters requested identification of all volunteers and donors, even though contributions to a 501(c)(4) tax exempt organization are not tax deductible.  This led members to worry about harassment audits to chill Tea Party participation.

Representative Tom McClintock (R, CA), in remarks presented on the House floor earlier this week, spoke of the difficulties experienced by Tea Party volunteers attempting to obtain 501(c)(4) status for their new chapter:

A Tea Party group in my district is typical of the reports we are hearing from all across the country.  This group submitted articles of incorporation as a non-profit to the state of California, and received approval within a month.  Then, they tried to register as a non-profit with the IRS.  Despite repeated and numerous inquiries, the IRS stonewalled this group for a year and a half, at which time it demanded thousands of pages of documentation - and gave the group less than three weeks to produce it. 

The IRS demanded the names of every participant at every meeting held over the last two years, transcripts of every speech given at those meetings, what positions they had taken on issues, the names of their volunteers and donors, and copies of  communications they had with elected officials and on and on. 

Perhaps most chilling of all, the organizer of this particular group soon found herself the object of a personal income tax audit by the IRS.

Alarmed by these events, McClintock and the other congressmen have sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Schulman asking him to explain how the recent IRS demands "are consistent with precedent and supported by law" and requesting that further such "additional unwarranted and excessive information demands and other dilatory tactics" cease.

McClintock summarizes the Tea Party fear:

No such tactics have been reported by any similar civic groups on the political left, so the conclusion is inescapable - that this administration is very clearly, very pointedly and very deliberately attempting to intimidate, harass and threaten civic minded groups with which they disagree using one of the most feared and powerful agencies of the United States Government to do so.  

Don't hold your breath awaiting a positive response..  As reported on The Hill website:

A spokesman from the IRS said in a statement, "By law, the IRS cannot discuss any specific taxpayer situation or case."

Republicans more open-minded, better informed than Democrats

By Neil Munro - The Daily Caller 

 

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Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.
On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”
The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.
“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.
The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans —- correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”
The widest difference that favored Democrats was only 8 percent, when 59 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats recognized the liberal party as “more [supportive] of reducing the defense budget.”
The survey quizzed 1,000 people, including 239 Republicans and 334 Democrats.
However, Pew’s data suggests that the Democrats’ low average rating likely is a consequence of its bipolar political coalition, which combines well-credentialed post-graduate progressives who score well in quizzes with a much larger number of poorly educated supporters, who score badly.
For example, the survey reported that 90 percent of college grads recognized the GOP as the party most supportive of cutting the federal government. But that number fell to 54 percent of people with a high-school education or less.
In contrast, the Republican party coalition is more consistent, and has few poorly educated people and fewer post-graduates.
Pew’s new study echoes the results of many other reports and studies that show GOP supporters are better educated, more empathetic and more open to criticism than Democrats.
A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely that conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them.
“In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,” said the report, tiled “Social networking sites and politics.”
The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from their social networks after disagreeing with their politics.
A March Washington Post poll showed that Democrats were more willing to change their views about a subject to make their team look good. For example, in 2006, 73 percent of Democrats said the GOP-controlled White House could lower gas prices, but that number fell by more than half to 33 percent in 2012 once a Democrat was in the White House.
In contrast, the opinions of GOP supporters were more consistent. Their collective opinion shifted by only a third, according to the data. In 2006, 47 percent in believed the White House could influence gas prices. By 2012, that number had risen to 65 percent up 17 points compared to the Democrats’ 40 point shift.
Much of this polling and survey work has been backed up by novel research from the University of Virginia.
UVA researchers have used a massive online survey to show that conservatives better understand the ideas of liberals than vice versa. The results are described in a new book by UVA researcher Jonathan Haidt, “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.”
The book uses a variety of data to argue that conservatives have a balanced set of moral intuitions, while liberals are focused on aiding victims, fairness and individual liberty. Conservatives recognize how liberals think because they share those intuitions, but liberals don’t understand how conservatives think because they don’t recognize conservatives’ additional intuitions about loyalty, authority and sanctity, Haidt argues.
The academics’ work is also being backed up by commercial research into the tastes and political views of potential customers.
For example, researchers have learned that Internet sites offering financial information, sports scores, online-auctions attract far more interest from Republicans than from Democrats, according to a 2010 study by National Media Research, Planning and Placement, based in Alexandria, Va.
In contrast, Democrats outnumber Republicans at online dating sites, job-searches sites, online TV and online video-game sites, said the firm.
This commercial data-analysis is often used by companies to identify and attract customers. For example, the firm also conducted a study of chain restaurants’ customers, which concluded that the customers of Popeyes, White Castle, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chuck E Cheese were mostly Democratic, while the customers at Cracker Barrel, Chik-fil-A, Panera and Bob Evans were mostly Republican.
The same restaurants study showed that the customers at Cracker Barrel, Panera and Bob Evans were the most likely to vote in elections.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/#ixzz1ssAuxmvH

The coming conservative landslide

By Michael Patrick Leahy  

 

Wishful liberals and Chicken Little conservatives who watch the weekly fluctuations in the presidential polls have concluded that President Obama is a shoo-in for re-election. They point out that Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, can’t connect with women, has a large likability gap and is slightly behind Obama in most national polls as well as in the key swing states of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio.

The despair of faint-hearted conservatives deepens when they contemplate President Obama’s disastrous performance in office. His record of fiscally reckless extremism is unparalleled in American history. In three short years, federal spending as a percentage of GDP has climbed from 20% to 24% while the national debt has exploded from $10 trillion to $15.5 trillion. By the end of his term, Obama will have increased the national debt by a staggering 67%.
Add to this record President Obama’s continual disrespect for the Constitution, his unceasing regulatory attacks on free enterprise and small businesses, his rhetoric of class warfare, his deceptive demagoguery and his spendthrift economic policies that have fattened the wallets of his political cronies but created so few jobs that millions of Americans have simply dropped out of the labor force, and many conservatives can offer only one explanation for Obama’s current lead in the polls.
America, they conclude, must have lost its can-do spirit of rugged individualism and replaced it with what Governor Chris Christie recently called an attitude of “paternalistic entitlement” championed by a coalition of political elites, acolytes in the mainstream media, crony capitalists and an ever-growing dependency class.
Conservatives across the nation should be of good cheer, however. The United States remains a center-right nation. This November, voters will choose common sense over fiscally reckless extremism in what will be a landslide conservative victory. Republicans will retain the House, gain the Senate and win back the presidency with a 2-to-1 Electoral College margin.
The most recent Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney ahead of President Obama, 48% to 44%. Obama’s support has softened significantly since 2008, and opposition continues to grow on all sides. In that election, Obama defeated John McCain by a 53% to 46% margin in the popular vote. Since then, as the Rasmussen poll demonstrates, Obama has lost the support of 9% of the voting population. Much of that loss is permanent. Defectors include disappointed voters under 30 who supported him by a 2-to-1 margin in 2008 but can’t find a job in today’s lackluster economy, disaffected Catholics turned off by his high-handed tactics and virtually every small business person in the country, to say nothing of disillusioned Democrats opposed to his individual healthcare mandate.
But the polls are missing one key ingredient: the intensity of feeling and the level of determination among the 28% of American adults (66 million people) who consider themselves part of the tea party or are supportive of it. To these people, 2012 is not “just another election.” It is the defining political battle of our lifetime.
Most of these 66 million tea partiers will vote in November. But they will do much more than vote. They will also make unprecedented personal sacrifices in time and money to help get out the vote. To a person, these 66 million Americans believe that if Barack Obama is re-elected, the constitutional republic as we know it will be destroyed. They are determined not to let this happen on their watch.
Reports that the tea party movement has lost steam are entirely the creation of a mainstream media that wants the movement to go away. Recent polls show that support for the movement is higher today than it was two years ago, in the spring of 2010. The tactics of this large and growing group have evolved from the high-profile rallies of 2009-2010 to a more organized and focused national get-out-the-vote effort. Every night, the country is honeycombed with a series of local and regional conference calls among the local leaders of this dedicated group. New tea party groups — estimated at around 3,000 at the start of the year — are being formed at an accelerating rate. These new groups are smaller, more localized and highly focused on one objective: getting out the vote in November.
A national poll, of course, is not all that helpful in predicting presidential election outcomes, which are decided based on the results of 51 separate electoral contests (the 50 states plus the District of Columbia). When the 9% President Obama has lost across the board is subtracted from his 2008 results in each state, the dimensions of the coming conservative landslide become apparent.
Obama can count on winning only the 10 states he won with more than 60% in 2008 — California, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Illinois. Add the three Electoral College votes from the District of Columbia, and President Obama has only 146 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 392.
To these 10 “certain” Obama states, add four “blue” states that Obama won in 2008 with 56% to 57% of the vote — Washington, Maine, Oregon and New Jersey — and Obama’s electoral count edges up to only 186, barely half of the 352 Electoral College votes Romney will receive from the other 36 states where Obama received 57% or less of the vote in 2008. But even these four states aren’t guaranteed. All four of them have active and engaged local tea parties, and New Jersey has Chris Christie, the popular governor and big Romney backer.
The only hope Democrats have of narrowing the gap is to win the ground battle. In that effort they have several advantages over the tea party movement. Unions and left-wing organizations will spend millions of dollars to pay people to get out the vote this fall. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s get-out-the vote efforts will be laughably anemic.
Only the tea party has the enthusiasm and manpower to get out the vote for Mitt Romney, but it’s financed by the spare change found in the couches of local leaders. Nonetheless, as the critical role it played in the 2011 Republican takeover of the Virginia State Senate proved, the tea party is very effective.
The big question is whether wealthy conservative donors will wake up to face the political realities and help local and regional tea party groups finance get-out-the-vote efforts. To date, they have ignored the tea party, giving their donations instead to Washington-based organizations that are more interested in building their own brands than in building effective local get-out-the-vote capabilities.
If local grassroots activists are forced to finance their get-out-the-vote efforts from the spare change in their couches, Obama could pick up six additional states where he won between 54% and 57% of the vote in 2008 — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico. This would give Romney a solid, but not spectacular, 296-242 Electoral College victory.
But conservatives around the country should take heart because that’s an unlikely scenario. As we’re beginning to see, conservative donors are finally realizing that the scope of the conservative victory in November will be determined by the level of financial support they provide to local grassroots conservatives. They understand that when it comes to political return on investment, local tea party groups provide the biggest bang for the buck.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/18/the-coming-conservative-landslide/#ixzz1sbBxCOJF

Obama: The Lying King

By Lloyd Marcus

I confess to being amongst those who have said, "Obama voters are stupid."  Unquestionably, Obama's re-election campaign strategy is designed to appeal to the stupid, our "sin" nature, and the lowest common denominator of our character.
Obama thrives on pitting the have-nots against the haves.  Obama divides Americans by demonizing the haves.  Obama's rhetoric proclaims that the masses have too little because the rich have too much.  Can we get real for a moment?  The so-called "poor" in America live pretty darn well; two TVs, cable, and two cars.
Alongside race (black hate and white guilt), Obama is exploiting the sin of covetousness to get re-elected.
On Liberty Island in New York Harbor stands a lady, a worldwide icon of freedom and of the United States.  Engraved on a bronze plaque at her feet for those legally seeking a better life, she welcomes: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
For re-election, Obama is perverting Lady Liberty's message: Give me your stupid, class-envious, your trifling masses seeking (for free) the fruit of other peoples' labor, the illegal refuse invading our shore. Send these, the racist, entitlement-minded to me, I lift my voice promising government freebies forever more.
However, now that I think about it, calling "all" Obama voters stupid may not be fair.  I suspect that my fellow Tea Party patriots are like me.  Though I read as much as possible, time does not permit me to keep up with the Obama administration's daily trashing of our Constitution and attacks on our freedoms which flood my inbox.
Most Americans are like my relatives. They go to work, church, bowling; take the kids to soccer; and get their news from the three major networks -- thus leaving them clueless as to what is really going on in our country.  So it probably isn't fair to call those who think Obama is doing a great job or that every problem is Bush's fault "stupid."  Ill-informed, yes -- stupid, no.
The real problem is that Obama lies!  For the first time in U.S. history, we have a president who boldly and arrogantly lies about everything, and his lies go unchallenged by the mainstream media. How the heck do we deal with that?
Obama said we are drilling for oil.  Obama is lying.
Obama said the rich do not pay their fair share.  Obama is lying.
Obama said that under ObamaCare, if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it.  Obama is lying.
Obama's administration says Republicans want to ban contraception.  Obama's minions are lying.
Obama's lies are too numerous to list in this article.
Obama lies and lies and lies and lies.  Not only does the media never confront him, but they protect and provide cover for his lies.
Is it disrespectful to the office of the presidency to call Obama a liar?  Yes.  But it pains me to have such a dishonest man occupying the Oval Office.  I have always naively believed that it takes an extraordinary person to become president of the United States.
So what are we patriots supposed to do when our president displays such extraordinary unprecedented disdain and disrespect for the American people by looking into the camera and lying to us -- in essence, urinating on us and telling us it is raining?
Again I ask you: how do we deal with a commander-in-chief who is a shameless liar, with the majority of the media covering for him?  Frankly, I do not know.  All I know to do is to keep writing articles, keep recording my songs, keep touring the country -- speaking out, singing, and inspiring the troops (Tea Party patriots).  And yes, keep on praying.
To all of you, keep organizing, meeting, rallying, writing books, producing videos, social-networking, and doing your part.  That's the Tea Party!
I like what Ted Nugent instructed patriots to do.  Ted asked every patriot to get everyone in his life to vote for Mitt Romney in November.  Ted's passionate rant was a call to vote Obama out and nothing more.  And yet the Secret Service is investigating Nugent.
Meanwhile, Minister Farrakhan's frightening rant, which could easily be interrupted as a threat against Obama, gets a yawn.  This is the media bias and Obama administration bully tactics we are up against, folks.
Brother Ted Nugent's strategy is excellent.  Every patriot must enlighten everyone in his or her sphere of influence to how vital everyone's vote for the Republican nominee is to saving America as we know it.

I love the smell of Optimism in the morning...

The Generic Ballot Bomb

By Bruce Walker

At this point in a presidential election year, Americans are inundated with polls.  Often these polls provide no real information at all, except the bias and the population samples of the polling organization.
As one example, consider this polling data released for April 16 showing the matchup between Obama and Romney.  Depending upon the polling organization, Romney leads Obama by 2 (Gallup), trails Obama by 9 (CNN/Opinion Research), trails Obama by 4 (Reuters/Ipsos), or leads Obama by 3 (Rasmussen). 
Presidential match-up polls are notoriously unpredictable six months before an election.  Will the recent scandal involving Secret Service agents and prostitutes -- some perhaps even underage prostitutes -- during the president's visit to Colombia suppress his approval for a few weeks?  Probably, but that is highly unlikely to swing a presidential election.  Moreover, it is almost certain not to have much effect on the other races in 2012 -- Senate races, House races, six governorships, and thousands of state legislative seats.
There is, however, a poll which does show the partisan leaning of America: the generic congressional ballot.  When a voter goes to the polls in November, a "generic" favoring of one party over another will often be the decisive factor in casting a ballot.  Indeed, the huge sweep of Republicans up and down the ballot in 2010 can only be explained by this massive and generic rejection of Democrats.  So this poll is as close to a straightforward question about which political party a respondent will support in the next election as any question asked in polls.
What does the generic congressional ballot say about 2012?  Rasmussen asks likely voters which party the respondent intends to support in the next congressional election each week and announces the results every Monday.  Over the last three years, likely voters in this poll have favored Republicans over Democrats almost every single week.  At this time last year, the Republican edge was 42% to 40%.  One week, in November, the parties tied at 41% to 41%, and one week, at the end of January, Democrats held a one-point 41%-to-40% advantage.  Since March, however, the Republican advantage has been growing -- the practical end of the Republican fighting for the nomination is a logical explanation for the change -- and since the beginning of March, the Republican advantage per week has progressed thus: +3%, +6%, +4%, +5%, +6%, +5%, +10%. 
The trend of other generic congressional ballot polls is the same.  Ipsos, which asks "all voters," rather than "likely voters" -- a polling population which favors Democrats -- shows this trend in its last seven polls, dating back to October 2011: -8%, -5%, -6%, -4%, -2%, -4%, -1%.  Quinnipiac has asked this question three times since last October, and the trend for Republicans is -8%, -4%, +2%.  USA Today/Gallup asked this question twice in the last six months, with the trend being -7%, -2%, and tie.  So the trend in all the polls since last August has been a steady movement of voters away from the "generic" Democrat to the "generic" Republican.       
Rasmussen, which asks the same question every week and which asks "likely voters," ought to be taken seriously.  A ten-percent advantage in the generic ballot, if carried over into other races, would mean a Republican landslide in November.  This would mean not just that Romney defeats Obama, but that Republicans win a slew of Senate races that are undecided now (Human Events, for example, is showing that Republicans have an excellent chance of defeating Senator Manchin in West Virginia).  The new congressional districts will have an inherent volatility, and a Republican wave could mean that Republicans might actually increase their majority in the House. 
The real story, though, may be in state elections.  As we have learned since 2010, stout-hearted and conservative Republicans in state government, like Walker in Wisconsin and Brewer in Arizona, if supported by Republican state legislatures, can move our agenda forward on many fronts.  Going into 2012, Republicans completely control 22 state governments (counting "nonpartisan" Nebraska's legislature as Republican), while Democrats control only 11 state governments.  It is easy to see several states -- Alaska, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina -- falling under Republican control.  Nevada and Washington could also, in a strong Republican year, be Republican states.  Additionally, Arkansas and Illinois could shift from a Democrat-controlled state to a split-control state.
A conservative political revolution with beginnings as much in the fifty states as in a Republican-controlled federal government would be an irresistible force.  Already Republicans in states have ended the mandatory deduction of union dues, passed voter ID laws, enacted laws to enforce existing immigration law, tackled the public school mafia, and passed laws to curtail or end abortion on demand. 
The "perfect storm" for conservatives would be a federal government, supported by a Supreme Court, which respects the Constitution and devolves most policy issues back to the states, with robust conservatives in state government enacting an agenda which shows the leftist parts of America the benefits of lower taxes and regulations, tort reform, wholesome social values, and true reform of public and college education.  Could this happen?  If the generic congressional ballot trend continues, it almost certainly will happen.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/04/the_generic_ballot_bomb.html at April 20, 2012 - 10:53:00 AM CDT

Dehumanization and the Ultimate Combat Photo

By Kerry Patton

As an avid bow hunter, I can't think of anything quite like watching that twelve-point buck aimlessly walk into the kill zone.  I take that one deep breath, calming myself, before I release the arrow.
Never would I think of that buck sleeping with its doe, snuggling nearby babies in the pasture during the late hours.  No, I am a hunter.  Those thoughts must be totally cleared from my head in order to make the kill as quick and painless as possible.
I cannot think about that buck's love life because if I did, it would simply be too difficult to execute my mission.  I am the predator.  As a predator, I often take photographs of my kill, for it is my prized possession. 
Some anti-hunting critics would say I am crazy for my passion for the hunt.  Others can easily relate to my passion for getting that annual prized kill.  Only those who actually hunt could ever understand.
Hunting an animal has similarities to hunting America's enemies.  The prey may be different, but the critical psychological demands are quite similar.  As I immediately leave the comforts of my dwelling, I turn on a switch and psychologically begin to alter my state of consciousness.  I'm on the hunt.
Our troops, like our enemies, go through a very similar psychological process.  This is known as demonization and dehumanization.  Demonization is the psychological state of understanding your enemy as pure evil.  Dehumanization is the psychological state conducted by an individual willing to kill another.  Interestingly, the killer does not view his prey as a human, but rather as anything but human.
These psychological alterations are critical during combat.  If a person cannot alter his mental state when engaging the enemy, he can very likely turn into the prey. It's all part of survivability.
During World War II, America's survivability was secured as we fought our enemies.  It was secured because every American embraced our warrior's dehumanization capabilities.  In fact, even Franklin D. Roosevelt partook in the dehumanization process as he accepted a unique gift from Congressman Francis Walter -- a letter opener made from a deceased Japanese soldier's arm bone.  Congressman Walter is noted as apologizing to FDR, saying, "I'm sorry it's so small a part of the Japanese anatomy."
On May 22^nd, 1944, Life Magazine's picture of the week was that of a woman, a U.S. person, holding the head of a deceased Japanese soldier.  Her boyfriend, a lieutenant serving in the Pacific, sent it to her as a gift.  She held it with pride, knowing that her lover killed one of America's enemies.
This was a time when the United States Marine Corps used dehumanizing recruitment tools.  During World War II, the Corp handed out official-looking hunting licenses which said, "Open Season, No Limit...Japanese Hunting License...Free Ammo and Free Equipment with Pay...Join the Marine Corp."
World War II was the last war, without any question, the United States and our allies actually won.  Dehumanization worked, but with time, specific guidelines were created for our troops to protect and preserve the dignity of the deceased.
Approximately seventy years later, our troops have engaged in America's longest war.  Many media outlets have criticized some of our troops' derogatory actions, like Koran-burnings and urinating on Taliban.  Now the LA Times has released two-year-old photographs of U.S. soldiers from the prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division posing with killed Taliban terrorists.  Of the critics, how many have actually pulled the trigger, taking the life of another human being?
I am not advocating any derogatory acts conducted by our troops like the aforementioned, but it is critical to understand the psychological alterations our troops go through for survivability.  Striking that pose with my prized buck makes sense to the avid hunter.  Avid hunters understand.  While we may not like it, many combat vets understand the glory of taking a photo of your dead enemy as well.  It is wrong because socially and culturally, we say it is wrong, but psychologically, it makes perfect sense.  History proves this.

Obama's Coalition of the Enraged

By Fay Voshell

The president and his allies are wooing various groups of angry and disaffected minorities.  These, along with unhappy entitlement dependents, are to constitute most of the voters Obama seeks to lure into granting him another term, during which he hopes to complete his promise to "fundamentally transform" America.
In an ironic reversal of the emphases of Madison's Federalist Paper #10, in which that great thinker carefully outlined the dangers of factionalism and pressed for the need for stability of the Republic of the United States, Obama and his supporters are seeking to achieve electoral hegemony by playing to minorities and supporting factionalism.
Anger, rather than hope, is to be the glue which keeps the disparate minorities together.
In turn, the rage of minorities against fellow Americans is to be the president's means to re-election.  The result, should Obama be re-elected, will be a new class order characterized by the tyranny of minority rule.
The encouragement and incitements offered to the enraged have been numerous. 
Among the factors is the White House's telling silence concerning the New Black Panthers' bounty on George Zimmerman, shooter of Trayvon Martin.  More silence has greeted the Panthers' threats to wage war.  Unless wiser heads prevail, Trayvon Martin, whose early death is truly and grievously lamentable, may become the Panthers' equivalent to Horst Wessel.
The president's own comment -- "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" -- could be interpreted not as genuine sympathy for Trayvon's family, but as outrageous pandering for black votes.  His comments and calculated silences also could serve as the matches that ignite race warfare.  The president may literally be playing with fire.  Anyone who recalls the 1960s will remember the conflagrations in cities like Los Angeles.  Huge sections of the city were torched or trashed beyond recognition by enraged blacks protesting the arrest of Marquette Frye, 1965s near-equivalent of today's Trayvon Martin. 
Meanwhile, the administration's incessant attacks against the "rich" continue unabated.  Such are the unserious proclivities of our president that he puts forth the absurd "Buffett rule" -- which would rake in approximately 31 billion dollars over the next eleven years -- as a legitimate remedy for our economic ills, among which is a seven-trillion-dollar national debt.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the real purpose of the so-called "Buffett Rule" is to gather votes from the less well-off by inflaming their resentment of wealthier citizens.
The demonization of conservative women, as witnessed by the recent salvo against Ann Romney by Hilary Rosen, indicates an attempt to divide women into two camps: the liberals vs. the conservatives -- with the hope that independents will join liberals in voting for Obama.  This is to say nothing of the attempts to tar the Republican Party as anti-woman by declaring that it is trying to keep women from obtaining birth control.
The war against Arizona and other states' attempts to secure borders, as continued undiminished as the Obama camp, could be a ploy to anger Hispanics enough to cause their stampede to the election booths.  
The recent ominous attack against the Supreme Court indicates the administration's utter contempt for the constitutionally established balance of power.   A seed of doubt as to the Court's integrity has been sown in the minds of millions who may have been persuaded that the Court doesn't care about the average citizen, but Obama does.  Ergo, more votes for him and his odious agenda.
All the above are worrying indicators that the president's aim is to create a coalition of the disaffected and the angry while marginalizing the majority and bypassing constitutionally established institutions.
The president and his allies fail to see that there is a huge distinction between righteous indignation and raw rage.  Righteous indignation is a struggle against genuine injustices.  Such a struggle was the driving force behind the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s.
Who among those who lived during those decades then can forget the signature injustices that characterized racial apartheid in America?  Who can forget the separate drinking fountains, the back door entrances, the segregated lunch counters and schools?  Who can forget the intransigence of racists like Bull Conner and George Wallace of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever" infamy?  Who can erase the memory of the 1963 KKK church bombing and the deaths of four innocent little girls?  Who still remembers the fire hoses turned on innocent protestors?
We should never forget.
But there is a big difference between righteous indignation and ginned-up rage that divides classes and races in order that votes are garnered and wealth redistributed.  The first is salutary, absolutely necessary, and transformative of society, as it speaks to universal rights as human beings standing as equals before God and mankind. 
But what we see being incited in recent incidents, including the Trayvon Martin incident, is ginned-up rage that bears little or no resemblance to righteous indignation.  On the contrary, it is tantamount to malicious pandering to anger.  It smells like an attempt to divide Americans and garner votes from the disaffected and enraged.  It looks like duplicitous behavior designed to foster war among American classes and ethnicities.
In sum, it is the kind of anger that resembles "Burn, baby, burn" more than "We shall overcome one day."
Leaders of the new faux race rage, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson among them, are like old soldiers who had their little hour but want to continue strutting their stuff on a tiny stage.  The background sets are faded imitations of the truly great civil rights battles of the past.
In contrast to the current administration's and race warfare-mongers' agenda of anger expressed in class and ethnic warfare, conservatives of every stripe must offer not only blunt analyses of what this administration is up to, but also a plan of real hope -- not hype.
A good beginning would be to heed Madison's advice to promote a "well constructed Union" which controls by the constitutionally appointed and balanced means of government institutions "the violence of faction" while ensuring that minorities retain their full rights and privileges as citizens. 
Real "hope and change" cannot possibly be engendered by rage characterized by class warfare.  Unbridled rage always results in destruction of societal order and human happiness.  Peaceful change based on righteous indignation and the desire to reform existing institutions and to soften class rigidities that prevent upward mobility has far more potential to create and sustain a stable, orderly, and happy society.
If we are to be friends of our own country as Madison was, we must resist with all that is within us the anger of factionalism and any "instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils" in order that this great land not perish from the face of the earth by means of division, strife and anger.
Fay Voshell may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.  She is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.

The True American Achilles Heel

By Charles Payne

4/18/2012

 

Once again I think market watchers missed the most important news of the day yesterday, because it's the most important news of the millennium and the true American Achilles heel. The Empire State Report was chocked with a lot of useful data on prices, employment and demand.
The supplemental report is what shocked and disappointed me most. The headline was ominous: Firms Cite Increased Difficulty Finding Workers with Math and Computer Skills.
It's really amazing there could be this much trouble finding competent workers. Showing up for work on time and being reliable were things in past generations that were common. I think the problem began about twenty years ago and has gotten worse.
As a business owner, I've heard many reasons over the years for people having to be out or coming to work late, ranging from the implausible to Aesop. There is a direct correlation between people coming in on time, or early and working late, and overall production. You simply can't mail it in even if you have talent.

With damn near 75% of employers voicing difficulty finding people willing to come to work on time, you wonder how we can compete in a competitive global market. I don't think this number would register as high if the survey was taken in Shanghai or Mumbai, and I'm being polite. Maybe that's the real problem. Maybe we are being too polite about people not doing the kind of heavy lifting needed for success. Not that coming to work on time is heavy lifting. There has to be some kind of clarion call for people to wake up and simply get the job done the right way. This is a national crisis, and it is getting worse, but politicians fear losing votes, so they stay mum.

What Time is it?
I'm not overstating it to say a nation of people that ignore their alarm clocks will not be able to dominate the global economy for long. It's this kind of stuff that drives me crazy. Gosh, it's been bash businesses all day, every day, for the last several years when in fact businesses want to expand and want to compete and want to grow. It's really time to wake up and smell the coffee. Heck, its one thing to say there aren't enough people with advanced computer skills but to have so many lacking in basic math and computers is unacceptable. It's not from a lack of access to computers, which needs to be tossed out there before someone screams we need to get the government to buy computers for the underprivileged.

There are 800,000,000 people on Facebook and I guarantee 90% would be categorized as lower middle class or poor. There was a time when a parent bought a kid a computer and thought it would open a world to science, business, exploration, and other intellectual pursuits. It's not happening. By the way, that cyber world these kids live in is harsh and ugly. I pick up on trends about things like the size of baseball parks that descend into hateful barbs within the first six postings. That's another area that gets little ink or discussion in this unfair world. The lack of interpersonal skills is a damn shame. I'm sure there's a connection to declining morals and a "me, me, me society."

So, you have no basic computer skills, can't make it to work on time, and your attitude sucks and somehow you are a victim.

It's time to wake up and find out how to become the most productive nation we can be, and it's not by punishing people that wake up and take a shower when their alarm clocks go off or put in the time to get good on the computer and are pleasant to work with. The Buffett Rule isn't going to give people any of those skills. On the contrary, such attitudes and approaches to life are being rewarded in rhetoric, and I'm sure in a few crumbs to come. It's time to wake up, it's time to make accountability applicable to all, and it's time to stop self-destructing. I understand people aren't paying enough attention to those alarm clocks to hear that other ticking sound.

It's the time bomb that will blow and seal our fate.

Kicking Up Dust
Now that the Buffett Rule has been defeated in the Senate, maybe we could get down to policy that will truly help the nation, inspire people to succeed, and instill pride in reaching the American Dream. This whole thing has just been about kicking up dust and raising hackles by stoking basic instincts of envy and jealousy. I do think, however, the most magnanimous of gestures could be made that might spark a tidal wave of imitators. Why doesn't Warren Buffett simply donate all of his money to the Federal government, and then it would match the $47.00 billion that would be confiscated from others over the next ten years had Congress made the mistake of passing the rule?

Okay, there wouldn't be a flood of people looking to do the same but it would be a lot harder for President Obama, Hollywood stars and others to at least contribute more to the government's coffers. That would be something. The fact is this administration wants to spend so much money it must raise taxes dramatically. The first thing to do is to get people to agree to the notion of higher taxes for the higher good. Then spring it on them.
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WELL SAID CHARLES...

THIS U.S. CITIZEN

Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich

By Daniel J. Mitchell

4/18/2012

 

Whether it’s through the Buffett Rule, higher income-tax rates or double taxation of dividends and capital gains, President Obama often demands that “rich” taxpayers and big corporations send more money to Washington.

But as Americans pay their taxes by today’s deadline, we might note that trying to get more money from upper-income taxpayers is like playing whack-a-mole. So long as tax rates are high, rich people will figure out ways to protect their income.
It doesn’t take a tax genius; any rich person can make a phone call or hit a few computer keys and shift his or her investments to tax-free municipal bonds. It’s not good for the economy when capital gets diverted to help finance the excess spending of Detroit or California, but it’s an effective way of stiff-arming the IRS.

"Work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn't make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates."

Or the rich can play the green-energy scam, getting all sorts of credits to offset their tax liabilities. That’s one way General Electric made lots of money and kept it all for shareholders.
Statists often will respond by arguing that we should reform the tax code. But instead of a flat tax, which would rid us of loopholes and would lower tax rates, they just want to end the loopholes and keep tax rates high — or raise them even higher.
Even if lawmakers abolished the various tax-code distortions, they might still be disappointed. The one sure way for rich people to lower their tax bills is by generating less income.
Here’s a quick economics lesson for the class-warfare crowd: When the government taxes income, it raises the price of work compared to leisure. And because the tax code penalizes capital gains with higher rates, it also raises the price of saving and investment compared to consumption.

Daniel J. Mitchell is a top expert on tax reform and supply-side tax policy at the Cato Institute.

More by Daniel J. Mitchell

Yet work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn’t make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates.
This isn’t some sort of modern-day revelation. Andrew Mellon, a Treasury secretary during the 1920s, noted that “the history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business.”
Unlike the rest of us, the rich have a great ability to alter the timing, amount and composition of their income. That’s because, according to IRS data, those with more than $1 million of adjusted gross income get only 33 percent of it from wages and salaries. The super-rich (those with income above $10 million) rely on wages and salaries for only 19 percent of their income.
In 1980, when the top tax rate was 70 percent, rich people (those with incomes of more than $200,000) reported about $36 billion of income; the IRS collected about $19 billion of that amount. So what happened when President Ronald Reagan lowered the top tax rate to 28 percent by 1988? Did revenue fall proportionately, to about $8 billion?
Folks on the left thought that would happen, complaining that Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” would starve the government of revenue and give upper-income taxpayers a free ride.
But if we look at the 1988 IRS data, rich people paid more than $99 billion to Uncle Sam. That is, because rich taxpayers were willing to earn and report much more income, the government collected five times as much revenue with a lower rate.
To be sure, many other factors helped account for the explosion of taxable income, including inflation, population growth and other pro-growth policies. So we don’t know whether the lower tax rates on the rich caused revenues to merely double, triple or quadruple.
But we do know that the rich paid much more when the tax rate was much lower.
Now Obama wants to run the experiment in reverse. He hasn’t proposed to push the top tax rate up to 70 percent, thank goodness, but the combined effect of his class-warfare policies would mean a big increase in marginal tax rates.
That might be good for workers in China, India or Ireland, because American jobs and investment would migrate to those places. But it’s not the right policy for the United States.

Good Economists

By Walter E. Williams

4/18/2012

 

It's difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use "caring" terminology and view reality as optional.

Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with considerable emotional appeal that politicians exploit but have absolutely no useful meaning or analytical worth. For example, can anyone tell me in actual dollars and cents the price of an affordable car, house or myomectomy? It's probably more pleasant to pretend that there is universal agreement about what is or is not affordable.
If you think my criticism of affordability is unpleasant, you'll hate my vision of harm. A good economist recognizes that harm is not a one-way street; it's reciprocal. For example, if I own a lot and erect a house in front of your house and block your view of a beautiful scene, I've harmed you; however, if I am prevented from building my house in front of yours, I'm harmed. Whose harm is more important? You say, "Williams, you can't tell." You can stop me from harming you by persuading some government thugs to stop me from building. It's the same thing with smoking. If I smoke a cigarette, you're harmed -- or at least bothered. If I'm prevented from smoking a cigarette, I'm harmed by reduced pleasure. Whose harm is more important? Again, you can't tell. But as in the building example, the person who is harmed can use government thugs to have things his way.
How many times have we heard that "if it will save just one human life, it's worth it" or that "human life is priceless"? Both are nonsense statements. If either statement were true, we'd see lower speed limits, bans on auto racing and fewer airplanes in the sky. We can always be safer than we are. For example, cars could be produced such that occupants could survive unscathed in a 50-mph head-on collision, but how many of us could buy such a car? Don't get me wrong; I might think my life is priceless, but I don't view yours in the same light. I admire Greta Garbo's objectivity about her life. She said, "I'm a completely worthless woman, and no man should risk his life for me."
Speaking of worthlessness, I'd be worthless as an adviser to either the White House or Congress because if they asked me what they should do to get the economy going, I'd answer, "Do nothing!" Let's look at it. Between 1787 and 1930, our nation suffered both mild and severe economic downturns. There was no intervention to stimulate the economy, but the economy always recovered.
During the 1930s, there were massive interventions, starting with President Herbert Hoover and later with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their actions turned what would have been a sharp three- or four-year economic downturn into a 10-year affair. In 1930, when Hoover began to "fix" the economy, unemployment was 6 percent. FDR did even more to "fix" the economy. As a result, unemployment remained in double digits throughout the decade and reached 20 percent in 1939. President Roosevelt blamed the high unemployment on his predecessor. Presidential blaming of predecessors is a practice that continues to this day.
You say, "Williams, the White House and Congress should do something." The track record of doing nothing is pretty good compared with doing something. None of our economic downturns in the century and a half prior to 1930 lasted as long as the Great Depression.
It would be political suicide for a politician to follow my counsel -- and for good reason. Americans have been miseducated into thinking that Roosevelt's New Deal saved our economy. That miseducation extends to most academics, including economists, at our universities, who are arrogant enough to believe that it's possible for a few people in Washington to have the information and knowledge necessary to manage the economic lives of 313 million people. Good economists recognize our limitations, making us not nice people to be around.

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BEING NICE SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH REALITY,

THIS U.S. CITIZEN

U.S. Republican has no regrets calling Democrats communists

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Congressman Allen West on Tuesday refused to back away from earlier remarks to constituents in Florida that dozens of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives were communists.
The freshman Republican who is backed by conservative Tea Party activists was asked at a forum whether he had second thoughts about calling the 78 members of the House Progressive Caucus communists.
"I don't regret it whatsoever," said West, who is facing a tough race for re-election in November.
"There is a very thin line between communism, progressivism, Marxism, Socialism ... it's about nationalizing production, it's about creating and expanding the welfare state. It's about this idea of social and economic justice," said the retired military officer.
West first talked about Progressive Caucus Democrats being communists in response to a constituent's question last week at a town hall meeting in his Florida district.
His remarks sparked comparisons to the 1950's "red scare" rhetoric of then-Senator Joseph McCarthy who launched investigations into claims that communists had infiltrated the government.
Progressive Caucus co-chairmen Representatives Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison issued a statement at the time accusing West of polarizing the country. They had no further comment following West's remarks on Tuesday.
West also has turned the controversy into a fundraising pitch to fellow conservatives asking them for their help and repeating his belief that members of the Progressive Caucus were akin to communists.
(Reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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AT LAST, SOMEONE WITH SOME GUTS...

SIGNED,
THIS U.S. CITIZEN

Will the Supreme Court Let the Death Panel Stand?

By David Catron

Unless Obamacare is struck down in its entirety, IPAB will remain.

With the possible exception of the individual mandate, the most pernicious contrivance of Obamacare is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the fifteen-member committee whose purpose is to ration health care to seniors by manipulating Medicare payment rates. Before the advent of Obamacare, only Congress had the power to make changes to Medicare's reimbursement scheme. Now, unless the Supreme Court strikes down the "reform" law in its entirety, that power will be transferred to the unaccountable political appointees of IPAB. The members of this death panel, as it has been appropriately dubbed, will be able to meddle with the fiscal machinery of Medicare without having to worry about the ire of the pesky electorate. IPAB is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to repeal.
As Clint Bolick of the Hoover Institution writes, "Under the statute, any bill to repeal IPAB must be introduced within the one-month period between January 1 and February 1, 2017. If introduced, it must be enacted by a three-fifths super-majority no later than August 15, 2017." These bizarre limits were obviously put in place by the Democrats to prevent any future Republican-controlled Congress from getting rid of IPAB. Thus, the fate of the death panel depends on how the Court rules on the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate and whether the justices believe it is severable from the rest of the law. If the Court decides to invalidate the mandate and also rules that it is inseverable from the remaining provisions, IPAB will be struck down with the rest of Obamacare.
It is, however, by no means a given that the justices will issue such a ruling. During last month's hearings before the Supreme Court the states challenging Obamacare argued for just such a decision, claiming that the mandate is unconstitutional and cannot be severed from the remainder of the statute. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that the individual mandate is constitutional, of course, but admitted that it isn't severable from two other provisions -- guaranteed issue and community rating. In other words, only these two provisions would also have to be struck down if the Court rules the mandate unconstitutional. If the Court does indeed rule the mandate invalid, but accepts the Justice Department's narrow view of severability, IPAB will emerge unscathed.
That will not good be news for seniors. No matter how many whoppers we're told by the White House and its accomplices in Congress, the purpose of IPAB is to ration care to the elderly. If the Supreme Court shrinks from striking down Obamacare in its entirety, Americans will soon become the unfortunate subjects of news stories like this one about a man in Great Britain who was denied cancer care merely because he was 78 years old. Britain's socialized medical system routinely denies care to seniors because its bureaucrats have determined that it isn't cost effective to treat the elderly: "According to shocking new research by Macmillan Cancer Support, every year many thousands of older people are routinely denied life-saving NHS treatments because their doctors write them off as too old to treat."
And the inspiration for IPAB was the very bureaucracy responsible for denying care to these patients, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). In Britain's government-run health care system, NICE is the bureaucracy responsible for determining the value and effectiveness of medical treatments and procedures. NICE only makes "recommendations" to the NHS concerning what treatments are cost effective for which patients, but its deadly advice is rarely overruled. Thus, in effect, it regularly hands down death sentences to people like Kenneth Warden, the patient mentioned above whose age precluded him from receiving the treatment he needed. Due to the tireless efforts of his daughter the NHS finally condescended to treat Warden, but many have not been so fortunate.
Like NICE, IPAB will in theory only propose Medicare cuts, but its recommendations will take effect automatically unless Congress and the President intervene with some alternative to its recommendations. This means that the welfare of patients will inevitably take a back seat to the political exigencies of the moment. Indeed, the political dynamics of the 2012 election cycle are already dictating the actions or lack thereof by both the Republicans and the Democrats where IPAB is concerned. Knowing full well that the bill hasn't a prayer of going anywhere in the Senate, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a measure repealing IPAB last month. And the President, who doesn't want to spend time talking about death panels in the run-up to November 6, has declined to appoint anyone to the panel.
There has, on the other hand, been substantive action in the court system. The plaintiffs in one high-profile lawsuit, Coons et al. v. Geithner et al., have challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare in part because the creation of IPAB did considerable violence to the separation of powers envisioned by the founders: "The Act's delegation of vast legislative powers to IPAB without intelligible standards, with attenuated congressional review and without judicial review violates the doctrine of separation of powers." In other words, Congress does not have the right to transfer its authority to the executive branch simply because the exercise of that authority is politically inconvenient. Unfortunately, like several other Obamacare challenges, Coons has been temporarily stayed while we await the pleasure of the Supremes.
Ironically, the die has already been cast. The justices met in conference on March 30 to vote on the Obamacare case. So, unless one of the justices has a change of heart -- as they occasionally do -- the fate of the law has already been decided. One of the justices is even now working on the majority opinion and at least one of his colleagues is probably writing a sharply-worded dissent. We will be permitted to read these arcane effusions sometime in June. And, if the Court has decided to split the baby by striking down the mandate while allowing the bulk of Obamacare to stand, your ultimate fate may be decided by IPAB.

The Decline of Greenism

By Bruce Walker

An April 9 Gallup Poll shows that since 2006, radical environmentalism has been losing influence  in America.  Gallup results are even  more dramatic when viewed over the last couple of decades: worry about water pollution dropped from consuming 72% of Americans in 1989 to perturbing 46% in March 2011; worry about air pollution since 1989 dropped from 63% to 36% in 2011.  When Gallup asks Americans to prioritize environmental concerns or economic concerns, the same pattern emerges.  In the latest poll on the subject, 54% favor economic growth and 36% favor the environment.  
Pew Research polls on global warming show a similar loss of trust in radical environmentalism.  In 2006, the percentage of Americans who believe that there is "solid evidence" of global warming was 77%, but in 2011, only 63% believed that.  Pew also shows that the percentage of Americans who do not believe in global warming or feel that there is not enough evidence rose in those five years from 33% to 43%.  Pew shows that even among Americans who believe in global warming, fewer and fewer attribute that rise in temperature to man.  In 2006, 47% of Americans believed that we were experiencing man-made global warming, but by 2011, only 38% of Americans believed in man-made global warming.
Rasmussen last August published a poll which indicates a serious credibility gap that the scientific establishment has with America: 69% of Americans believe that scientists have falsified global warming research.  Gallup two years ago published a twelve-year trend which showed that the percentage of Americans who believe that the seriousness of global warming has been exaggerated has grown steadily to an all-time high of 48% in 2010.
What has happened to environmentalism?  Conservatives were strong supporters of conservationism, which was the first name given to contemporary environmentalism.  Strong conservatives like Calvin Coolidge and Barry Goldwater were champions of conservationism long before the left discovered this issue.
The loss of political support for the environmentalism reflects the disgust of conservatives today, and this is based upon three distinct failures: (1) the Green rejection of common sense and market operations, (2) worship of dirt replacing stewardship of Creation,  and (3) the willingness of Greenies to win arguments through unsavory means.
(1) Conservatives grasp that living in the real world requires common sense and a grasp of market forces.  Flushing the toilet too much is wasteful, but flushing the toilet only once a day threatens health as well as comfort.  Recycling aluminum makes economic sense, but recycling everything is dumb.
Forty years ago, environmentalism made sense to Americans concerned about industrial pollution.  Regulations which required inexpensive changes in factories to reduce air pollutants by 95% made for a prudent exercise of state power for the common welfare, but requiring businesses to spend huge amounts of money to reduce another 2% of air pollution did not help ordinary Americans and cost them millions of good-paying jobs. 
Sportsmen have historically been among the strongest supporters of reasonable limits on hunting and fishing and the preservation of the natural beauty of our woodlands and streams.  Lumber companies have no interest in cutting down trees at a faster rate than thoughtful reforesting will support.  Green radicals who attack reasonable and good Americans, who know much more about the outdoors than Al Gore will ever know, display not an interest in nature, but instead another less pleasant motive.
(2) Conservative support for wise stewardship of the world has deep roots in Judeo-Christian values.  Stewardship of Creation, however, is the antithesis of the worship of Creation.  Praying to trees and to mountains is a grave sin to religiously serious Christians and Jews.
(3) Conservatives have learned that academia and taxpayer-sponsored research have been overrun with infestations of leftists with no interest in objective study.  Climategate is, perhaps, the most notorious example, but the very disappearance of what were once called in academia "schools of thought" is a more sinister general condition.  Anyone in any discipline who wants tenure, grants, and other perks of pampered pseudo-science  must toe the line of party leftism.
Conservatives perceive the same dull pattern of all leftism: it lusts for power, and it schemes to increase our misery while loudly proclaiming its wish to do us well.  If the planet is warming, for example, is that not a good reason to expand freedom and diminish the state?  Individuals, families, and communities are much more agile and wise than government, especially remote government by insulated bureaucrats.
If industries are polluting communities, then members of the community have the greatest interest and the most influence in moderating the pollution to safe levels.  Why are Washingtonians or New York media bosses more invested in the preservation of natural beauty than native Alaskans, Louisianans, West Virginians, and other folks who live in states with fossil fuels we need?
Ordinary people whose lives are impoverished by edicts which leftists living luxuriously on our tax dollars have enacted are waking up.  They invent new problems which only the brute power of government can solve, and always at our expense.  Just as racism is a problem which no leftist ever wants to solve, so the environment is a condition which requires eternal overlords comprising prissy and nasty radicals.  That is, until we wake up -- which is exactly what we are doing. 

DIVERSIONARY TACTICS

[Cartoons by Michael Ramirez]

In psychological displacement, the focus of psychic attention is shifted from an important element on to another, which is relatively unimportant. Displacement operates in the mind unconsciously and involves emotions, ideas, or wishes being transferred from their original object to a more acceptable substitute. It is most often used to allay anxiety; and can lead to the re-direction of aggressive or hostile impulses to less threatening.

Distraction, OTOH, is the divided attention of an individual or group from the chosen object of attention onto the source of distraction. Distraction is caused by: the lack of ability to pay attention; lack of interest in the object of attention; or the great intensity, novelty or attractiveness of something other than the object of attention. Distractions come from both external sources, and internal sources.

What the Obama Administration is doing, deliberately and calculatedly, is to distract and divide American's attention onto issues that Obama and his cronies believe will benefit them in the coming election. By doing this, they hope to redirect and displace Americans' anger, frustration, and sense of hopelessness about the economy, jobs, and the precarious state of the world, AWAY from Obama and focus all our psychic energy onto the manufactured class, race and gender crises over which Obama believes he has the upper hand.

The abysmal record of the Obama Adminsitration on dealing with the economy and on dealing with our allies and enemies abroad hardly matches up with the promises of "hope and change" that the Obamessiah promised.

Even the most devoted of his acolytes have likely begun to suspect that this messiah is a false god; and that his promises are nothing but obvious diversionary tactitcs and attmepts to mislead.

But mis-leadership is really all that can be expected from the pretentious and bullying demagogue who is currently our President.
- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity

Lessons from Rome about Liberal Unity

By Jeremy Egerer

Rome, I have been told by a certain Titus Livius, was a city founded upon the principle of clemency.  Romulus, knowing well that his survival depended partially upon numbers, granted safe haven to any man, foreigner and Italian alike, in search of a new life.  The city being filled with men on the lam, it soon took on a reputation of its own: Rome was known as a place in which aspiring Mediterranean foreigners could forego social and legal encumbrances and, if they had particular nobility of character -- or, at least, an upwardly mobile character -- could thrive according to their own personal merits.
The Roman identity, of course, took quite a while to set in the citizens' minds.  Livius actually attributes the cohesion of the young nation to a long period of monarchy, in which authorities such as Numa codified the religious and cultural qualities of Rome from a cacophonous mess into a unified whole, and an actual Roman identity began to form from the process.  It was this personality, Livius says, which allowed the Republic itself existence, since bands of foreigners with no loyalty or common identity would have been unlikely to imagine any public good beyond the personal, or to possess a romantic passion for so youthful a state.  These patriotic virtues, of course, would come in later years, and in many ways, men still view Rome with a certain fondness, a glory rebirthed in many aspects in Western culture not only according to style, but in certain republican forms of substance.
But for a very long time, particularly in the younger years of the Republic, Rome was far from being intact.  Two particularly troublesome matters, those addressed in biblical law and almost entirely ignored by modern Westerners, brought Rome to the brink of civil war for decades.  That is, the lower classes became so entirely indebted, and property so predominantly divided amongst the wealthiest class, that a sharp division permeated Roman consciousness.  And when debts and landlessness became unbearable, morale plunged beneath safe levels, empty rhetoric and slander prevailed, the people's anger mounted, and violence overflowed into the streets.
Yet Rome survived.  Between an understandable class warfare and an originally liberal immigration policy (the latter of which was responsible for both the first Tarquin, one of Rome's most notable monarchs, and Numa himself), one can only marvel at her cohesion.  It would be a mistake, though, to attribute Roman solidarity entirely to Numa's laws, as no identity-related policy can counter two inequalities so ominous.  In fact, it seemed that for quite some time, every year Rome appeared on the brink of collapse.
There was one particular issue, according to Livius, which accounted for Rome's survival, and, though disclosure may disappoint conservatives, it was not entirely national culture.  And, though disclosure may likewise disappoint leftists, it was not forcing the wealthy to bear greater burdens, as patricians already shouldered the majority of the nation's duties (the poorest class, historians note, was not even permitted to serve in the armed forces, and the rich bore a higher proportion in taxation for quite some time).  Rather, Rome survived because she was repeatedly threatened and invaded by foreign armies.
"Shared danger," writes Livius, "is the strongest of bonds.  It will keep men united in spite of mutual dislike and suspicion."  And united it kept Rome.  For the most part, Roman soldiers, though they considered one another enemies at home, became brothers on the battlefield: squabbling except on a few disastrous occasions was left behind, and when more ominous threats appeared on the horizon, men ceased rejecting their neighbors.  In comparison with countrymen, the oncoming foe seemed more oppressive, and so both poor and rich, immigrant and native joined hands in self-defense.
This, really, is a parable for the ages.  Men who find no reason to reside in the same cabin suddenly feel quite comfortable together when a bear is noticeably lurking outside, and even irreverent cinema, an industry increasingly void of morality and sensibility, acknowledges that when alien invaders spot the sky, mankind's differences become comparatively negligible.  Then man fights not for issue, but for existence; he wars not over the particulars of wealth and identity, but rather so that he can have wealth or identity at all.
And this brings me to a particular issue about the modern left, and particularly about the Democratic Party.   On some level, I've in recent years been perplexed by their cohesion, a union mysterious in itself, since those under its umbrella have so little in common.  Within the party are so many cultures and classes that one almost expects that at any moment, the party itself could collapse.  It manages to conglomerate Jews and Arabs alike, blacks and Hispanics, citizens and hostile illegal aliens, and perhaps most puzzlingly, Muslims and homosexuals and feminists, all the while -- somehow -- being able to march in a cohesive direction, feet closely in step, hauling the nation with every passing season into baser forms of barbarianism.
But if one considers closely the existence of so diverse a party, one aspect becomes almost blindingly obvious.  In short, these peoples have no real reason to cohere together on their own.  Yes, they pretend to include all, that no enemy exists, that there is room for each and every one's beliefs inside the tent of benevolence; and yes, they march uneasily in step, to the tune of a sole piper.  But benevolence does not alone cement their noticeably flimsy bonds.  Rather, they unite because they have a common enemy.
It is unnecessary to even define the enemy they oppose; enough can be determined from the nature of their laws, which overtly punish certain people without mercy and reward leftist-friendly parties with specific, unelected privileges.  And if one happens to belong to any one of the categories demonized by the educational and media elite, the trajectory of Democratic salvos is anything but unclear.  Their enemy, so viciously opposed, is historical America itself, and should a man engender those qualities of civilization so properly credited for the very value of Western existence and liberty, he will undoubtedly find himself a host of assailants parading as his fellow citizens, who behind their poorly constructed façade are really nothing more than national, cultural, and even religious traitors.
But unlike the people of ancient Rome, these Democratic partisans are not defending themselves from invasion; they are the invaders.  They have no historical root in America -- their contemptible ideologies would have gotten them tarred and feathered in the great majority of American history -- and they possess neither patriotism nor heritage by which to bond blood and soil.  As a rebel army, they sack both present and future generations of inheritance, taking plunder for themselves as though the nation itself were burning, enslaving children with unmanageable burdens and permeating so virulently our American institutions that the endeavor might as well be considered biological warfare.  In short, they are united, e pluribus unum, against America.  And should Americans so highly value their national and religious heritage as to consider both worthy not just of admiration and preservation, but of restoration and propagation, it is of utmost importance not just to define who we were and who we are, but who we aren't and who we are committed to never be.  Let liberty in righteousness, integrity in camaraderie, and heavenly justice constitute our identity, and let any who oppose these find themselves another nation.