Election 2012: America Will Never Be the Same...

Nor will conservatism, if Obama wins and is left free to pursue his inner Che.
The world is dynamic rather than static, so constantly thinking ahead is the key to understanding. Recognize now that on the morning after the election, whatever the result, America will never be the same. The results themselves will have wrought basic, fundamental change for the body politic. That inevitability underlines and highlights what you should be doing now to influence those results.
Karl Marx's Last StandThe wildly overconfident Left is least attuned to what is at stake for them. If Barack Obama is routed this fall as he should be, it will be worse for the left-wing neo-Marxist views he represents than if he had never been elected at all. For then the voters will have seen what he is offering and rejected it. In retrospect, Reagan's landslide defeat of Carter followed by his landslide reelection ushered in a generation of Reaganite dominance of national politics. Clinton figured out a way for Democrats to accommodate that dominance, enabling them to hold public office as long as they did not interfere with the ongoing Reagan revolution. But the public did not fully accept and embrace Clinton until he accepted that bargain. See 1994.
The last four years have been a coming out party for the Democrats. For over a hundred years now, Progressivism, a polite, Americanized term for Marxism, has been infiltrating and taking over the Democrat party, the national media, academia, the courts. But until now they have effectively hidden what they are all about. Under Obama, however, the heart and soul of the party has been let out of the closet and revealed (only for those paying attention, however, not the millions who so stubbornly still are not). And that heart and soul is Che.
Having attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, I saw all of this first hand. I saw all those prep school Marxists pledging to each other life long fealty to the worldwide socialist revolution, and going on to pose as "liberal" reporters and commentators, "liberal" environmentalists plotting the destruction of capitalism and its middle class prosperity from within, "liberal" candidates moderated just enough to get elected in their districts or states, "liberal" academics tutoring the next generation in the proper, socially acceptable attitudes to worker revolution, and providing cover for each other on the acceptability of more and more radical views.
Hillary Rodham Clinton from Wellesley is a classic case of the Progressive committed from an early age to fomenting revolution from within. I saw the Barack Obama types as well, more openly radicalized because they realized as minorities polite society would have to accept their grievances and philosophy as legitimate. But I never thought a majority of Americans would be so foolish as to not see where they are coming from.
Let us scrap the social diplomacy so we can communicate most effectively. Barack Obama is not just a communist infiltrator. He is communist royalty, born and bred. He hails from a self-professed communist Kenyan as his father, and from an anti-American 1960s hippie as his mother. Left to be raised by his "progressive" grandparents, he was provided a personal mentor during his adolescent years who was an open member of the Communist Party USA, Franklin Marshall Davis.
In his own autobiographies he tells us how he favored Marxist professors and student radicals in the Ivy League colleges where they are fostered. After he graduates, he becomes not just a student but an instructor in the social manipulation methodologies of openly Marxist revolutionary Saul Alinsky. In the opening pages of his worshipped masterpiece Rules for Radicals, Alinsky dedicates the book to the first true radical -- Satan. One of Alinsky's rules is to pose as an advocate for the middle class as the most effective way to overturn what he and his cohorts see as the most worldwide blood sucking class in world history. ("White folks greed runs a world in need," they say.) Obama provides these classes in the employ of the nasty Marxist street agitator organization ACORN.
And it goes on and on. Obama launches his political career in the living room of confessed, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn. He attends the church of neo-Marxist Black Liberation Theologist Jeremiah Wright. I am not trying to break news here, just connect all the dots.
Following Alinsky, Obama campaigns today as an advocate for the middle class. But he and his compatriots see the American middle class as a moral embarrassment because we are so much richer and more prosperous than the rest of the world. That is what he was thinking when he was foolish enough to say "we just can't keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert, and keep consuming 25% of the world's resources with just 4% of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead we'll be fine."
Actually what we expect an American President to say to the rest of the world is that they have nothing to say about how we live, which stems overwhelmingly from voluntary transactions among a free people. And if you are unhappy with your standard of living, you can try that too, we are not stopping you, we are encouraging you, and probably defending you, at our expense. But Barack Obama will not say that because, wherever he was born, he is not culturally an American.
This is why Obama and his cohorts are not the least perturbed by the onrushing return to recession in 2013, first fully explained in my own Encounter Books Broadside No. 25, "Obama and the Crash of 2013," so obvious now that even the Washington establishment CBO is ringing the alarm bells. A second, double dip, recession before we have ever even recovered from the last one would just further plunder the resources and standard of living of the American people, especially the middle class. Moreover, Obama and his neo-Marxist strategists see New Deal style political benefits from that, as more and more Americans become dependent on government, and so vote to keep their paymasters in power.
Moreover, in a second Obama term, the plunder of the American middle class will accelerate well beyond this, easing the pain of the moral embarrassment over America's riches suffered by Obama and his cohorts. It is all explained further in Stanley Kurtz's new book, Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. He should have said how Obama will rob the suburbs to pay for the cities, because this will really blossom into full swing in a second term agenda.
Indeed, in a second term, the rule of law will collapse as well, as the checks and balances among the branches of government break down. By the second term, Obama will have appointed a majority of federal judges. This is particularly ominous as the liberal judges he appoints believe not in applying the law as it is, but making up the law as they think it should be. And, of course, they will think the law should be whatever it needs to be to enable Obama to do whatever he wants to do.
Expect as well in a second term for the Supreme Court to break down as well as a check and balance, as it already has in the case of Obamacare. Barely five aging men on the court cannot hold the line against the Obama onslaught for four more years. Obama just needs one more appointment to seize the court for his make it up as you go along judicial activist liberals. Gone then will be any judicial check on his illegal activities, such as making recess appointments without the consent of the Senate, when Congress is not in recess. Or creating bureaucracies operating outside the rule of law, such as Dodd-Franks' Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has the power to tax and regulate with no supervision from any branch of government, or the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which has the power to cut Medicare without Congressional approval.
In a second term, Obama will be free as well to fix the second great moral embarrassment that so troubles him -- America's global military dominance. Already underway is his great military builddown, slashing America's Navy to it's lowest number of ships since 1916, or adding the fewest number of planes to America's Air Force since 1947. Most dangerous will be Obama's unilateral nuclear disarmament, which is also already underway as a result. When America's military is cut down to size, then America can sit at the table of nations as one equal among all the others, and Obama can sleep at night with the satisfaction of a job well done. Just as Reagan gave us Peace through Strength, I expect a second Obama term to give us War through Weakness, as Obama's military builddown successfully induces some foreign enemies to attack us, with battle loss size domestic casualties as a result. Don't expect any gauche effective American military response either, as that would go back to the big, bad white bullies beating up the little people, which would be another moral embarrassment keeping Obama up at night.
All of this is not just Obama. It is the heart and soul of today's Democrat party, more publicly revealed to America now then ever before, as more and more Democrats have felt free under Obama to drop their mask, and reveal their inner Che. What is now revealed is America's Democrat party as one of the most left-wing political parties in the entire world. That is why it is no longer a respectable institution that ordinary Americans can support, with their votes, their volunteer time, and their contributions.
This is what is on the ballot now for political offices all over America. If the Democrats go down to another stinging defeat this year as in 2010, then this progressive, neo-Marxist, radical left, Che Guevara vision will be more thoroughly discredited and repudiated than it ever has in any debate anywhere. The Marxists who are still fighting in reaction to the rise of capitalism centuries ago, and the industrial revolution that ushered in capitalist prosperity and dominance in the 1800s, will have been defeated for at least a generation, and maybe for good. Half of remaining Democrat office holders will turn to collaborating with the new Republican majorities and President to enact a more free market, Romney/Ryan vision than even was implemented under Reagan, ushering in a new American century of economic and military dominance.
Given how Obama has so religiously pursued the opposite of everything Reagan did, it will only be just deserts now if instead of being re-elected in a landslide and validated by the voters, as Reagan was, he is defeated in a landslide and discredited by the voters, as he deserves.
Can Conservatism Survive?But the other half of the picture is what happens to conservatism if Obama manages to win. Obama is running an in your face campaign against conservatism. He has now openly embraced gay marriage. The Democrat theme of a Republican War on Women is morphing into an unrestrained embrace of abortion without limits. That will be featured all the more at the Democrat convention. Obama is even campaigning on forcing the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptives and medical procedures that transgress their political beliefs. Let Obama have one more Supreme Court appointment in a second term, and the historic Second Amendment victory the American people won in the recognition of an individual right to keep and bear arms in Heller v. DC will be gone in a matter of months.
If Obama wins campaigning like this, his victory will be taken as a rout of social conservatives and their pro-family values. You could expect even Republicans to start to fall from the social conservative platform, convinced it is a loser, particularly those running in the Northeast, Midwest, and Far West. Expect to see the explosive return of gun control.
Moreover, Obama is the first presidential candidate to run on a tax increase since Walter Mondale in 1984. Even in his first campaign, Obama did not run promising to increase taxes. He just promised not to increase them for singles making less than $200,000 a year, and couples making less than $250,000, a promise he broke and smashed to bits in Obamacare.
But now even more than Mondale, Obama is running on very specific, multiple tax increases for a second term. On January 1, the tax increases of Obamacare go into effect, and the Bush tax cuts expire, which Obama is pledged not to renew for the nation's successful small businesses, job creators, and investors.
Who gets hurt the most by that is, surprise, the middle class, and working people, as that will throw America back into a double dip recession before we have even had any real recovery from the last one. The unemployment rate will soar back into double digits, the deficit will soar well over $2 trillion, real wagers and income will decline further, and poverty will soar. Again, even the Washington establishment CBO is already ringing alarm bells over that.
Another problem is that rhetorically Obama is running against "the failed policies of the past" as the cause of the 2008 financial crisis. He has explicitly made clear that means Reagan style deregulation. But listen to him more carefully recently and you will see he has effectively been saying that prior tax rate cuts were the cause of the crisis and recession as well.
There is no economic theory under which tax rate cuts cause recession. Not even Marxism. Even Keynesianism recognizes tax rate reductions as expansionary. But that doesn't stop Obama from leading his Obamabots over the fiscal cliff.
If Obama wins having broken his pledge in the 2008 campaign not to raise taxes on the middle class and working people, while promising still more sweeping tax increases, and fingering tax rate cuts as the cause of the financial crisis, conservatives will have lost the tax issue as well, perhaps for a generation. The media will much more aggressively label anyone who even criticizes a reelected and therefore deified Obama in any way as a racist.
And despite what even some conservatives are saying, if Obama wins there is no way he will back down on his tax increases now already scheduled in current law for January 1. The "rich" already pay almost all the income taxes in America, and the federal income tax is already the most "progressive" in the world, and so there is no reason to Obama's charge that the rich are not paying their fair share. But raiding them still more is a major reason Obama ran for office. After winning a second term, there is no way he is going to back down from a victory he has already won. When the economy turns south again, he will just blame it again on the Bush tax cuts, and after he has been reelected, even disputing him on anything will start to look like a racist civil rights violation justifying jail time. More people on welfare as a result just means more Democrat voters to him.
Moreover, if Obama wins, Paul Ryan and his brave, courageous, innovative budgets will have been discredited and repudiated as well. Don't expect to see even Republicans bring up entitlement reform again, nor any more even the discredited tax cuts that "caused" the financial crisis. There will be no political hope or stopping point before fiscal collapse for America.
This is what is at stake for conservatives in this election. If they lose, the entire Reagan coalition will be taken as politically discredited and repudiated. These very stark different contrasts as to the future posed by this election are why this election is a decision point for the American people no less dramatic than 1776.

About the Author

Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, and Senior Fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (HarperCollins).

Bring Back Child Labor?...

 
It was time for our beach trip, the one I take with my wife and daughter every summer. On a beautiful early morning a month ago, we packed the family car (okay, my wife packed it) and headed from our home in Oxford, Miss., to Florida’s Gulf Coast for a week of fun and sun.
Some call it the Redneck Riviera. This Jersey transplant and his Mississippi girls call it paradise.
It’s the same Gulf Coast, by the way, that the media predicted — even seemed to hope — would be flooded with crude oil and destroyed as a result of the BP oil spill. That apocalypse never happened, but the region needed two years to recover from the really bad publicity spill, which the media never bothered to clean up.
We hit the road at 6 a.m. so as not to lose a day at the beach, and by 10 a.m. we were all getting hungry, so we stopped at a Subway shop in a small town somewhere in rural Alabama.
As we entered, we were greeted by an Indian-immigrant couple in their mid-30s and their daughter, who appeared to be no older than twelve. I didn’t ask.
While we were thinking about what to order, the young girl was busily making trip after trip from a prep area in the back of the family’s franchise to the counter, filling each of the bins with produce. First it was thinly sliced fresh tomatoes, then lettuce, then onions. Then it was olives, and jalapeƱo peppers.
When we ordered our lunch, she removed her plastic gloves and cheerfully switched roles. The prep girl was now the sandwich dresser.
“What would you like on your sandwiches?” she asked us, and then dutifully complied with our odd choices.
That’s the great thing about Subway. They’ve got all those toppings, and no matter how weird the request — and boy! have I heard some weird ones — they always comply.
The girl’s parents, probably without realizing this is what they were doing, were teaching their daughter that empowering customers to have the sandwich they want, and not the sandwich the store wants them to have, is good business.
The girl then switched roles again, going from sandwich dresser to cashier.
“Would you like some chips and a large drink with that?” she asked. I said yes. Who could say no to a cute twelve-year-old?
Her parents had also taught her the art of the upsell. And she was not yet a teenager!
The girl then rang up our order, took our cash, gave us our change quickly (and accurately), and did it all cheerfully and professionally. She was clearly having a good time. There was no sulking, no pouting, and no sense at all that she was mad at her parents for making her work on a beautiful summer Saturday.
And all the while, she was learning some important life lessons. Lessons that are not being taught in our nation’s schools. And are not being taught in far too many American homes. Lessons like these:
Serving a good fresh product at a fair price can lead to a profit, if you watch your expenses.
Customers like choices, and they like good service.
Kids can actually contribute to the GFP — the Gross Family Product.
The free market works.
It’s sad to say this, but that girl in the Subway shop knows more about what makes a small business hum than anyone in the Obama administration. And she has more knowledge of entrepreneurialism than many MBAs.
But she was also learning some other important life lessons. Lessons that build something few people like to talk about these days — character.
She was learning that work is good. That she is not entitled to anything. That money doesn’t grow on trees. That to have money, one must earn it.
She was learning that her parents are not an ATM, and that it takes a lot of work to pay for things like food and cable and a house.
You have to sell a whole lot of Subway sandwiches to pay for an iPhone, let alone a car.
The couple who own that Subway shop should get a parenting award, because they have dared to do something that many modern parents refuse to do: expose their kids early to the exigencies and realities of life. They heaped adult responsibility on their twelve-year-old daughter, and she ate it up. They gave her duties and responsibilities, and she owned them. They permitted her to be a part of the family business, and she was grateful.
Many parents I know do the opposite. Instead of making their kids work for what they want, they simply give them stuff. Instead of making them work for an Android or an iPad or a car, parents simply give their kids these goodies, and ask for nothing in return. Not a thing.
These are the same coddling parents who try to protect their children from all of life’s problems. Skinned knees? Let’s get our precious little ones some kneepads. A bad bump at the playground? Rubberize the place.
A bad grade from the teacher? Who needs grades? Let’s just give everyone a gold star.
Or worse, let’s appeal that bad grade.
In their endless desire to raise their children’s self-esteem, those parents are creating spoiled, entitled kids, and actually hurting their chances of succeeding in an ever more competitive work force.
That twelve-year-old in the Subway shop has real self-esteem. The kind you get only by earning it.
The kids who get what they want, when they want it, have the look of bored adults by the time they reach 18. They are insufferable before they’ve ever suffered. Indeed, that’s why they are insufferable. They get everything they want, and nothing seems to satisfy them.
I was reading the Ole Miss newspaper the other day (Oxford is home to the state’s flagship university campus), and there was a full-page ad for what appeared to be a beautiful retirement condo complex. Upon closer inspection, I learned it wasn’t for seniors at all, but rather for students.
The complex was called “The Retreat.” As if college kids need a “retreat” from their tough grind of 15 hours of classes a week.
Then came the list of amenities: “Fitness center. Movie theater. Sand volleyball court. Basketball court. Golf simulator. Fire pit. Green space. Swimming pool. Tanning domes. Computer lounge.”
Golf simulators? Sand volleyball courts? Is this a college dorm parents are paying for, or a Club Med?
When did a bed, a desk, a chair, a lamp, good study tools (today a laptop is actually essential), and a hot plate stop being a sufficient starting place for learning?
This is the great culture war no one is talking about right now in America. It’s the battle of the parents with common sense who want to raise responsible kids against the parents who give their kids what they want, when they want it.
Time after time in this bucolic town, my wife and I see college students — some of them all of 18 — walk out of gyms or restaurants in the middle of the day and step into Range Rovers or Mercedes-Benzes. We always do one of those double-takes you see in movies.
What the heck?” we say to ourselves. Because it shocks us to see young people casually strut into $70,000 vehicles and act as if those cars are theirs.
We make a very good living, and we don’t own cars like that.
I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been at a fancy steakhouse in town, and there next to us are eight college kids laughing it up, well dressed and having a good ole time. And when the bill arrives, out comes mom and dad’s credit card.
I didn’t take a girl to a fancy restaurant until I was 25. Until then, my dates got the Denny’s special.
And when I talk to these students and ask them if they have a job, they look at me as if I had just sprung a second head. “A job? Are you kidding me?” is the look I get. They don’t even bother to respond verbally.
And our little girl, Reagan — who is seven years old — sees all of this. She sees the stuff other kids have, and she will soon be asking us why we don’t give her the stuff those other parents give their kids.
We will tell Reagan, once she’s old enough, that if she wants that stuff, she’ll have to work to get it. That we’ll help, but she has to have some skin in the game, so that she’ll appreciate the work it takes.
She won’t like it at first. What kid does? But this I know: If more of us parents who think this way will simply stick to our guns, we can beat back those crazy parents who give their kids everything.
We need to fight back against the coddling culture and ask of our kids what our parents asked of us, and what their parents asked of them: Do your part. Work hard. And help pay your own way. Just a bit.
So on this Labor Day, I have an idea that I hope will soon spread around the country like a virus: Let’s extol the virtues of work, and of working children.
Not the sweatshop, indentured-servitude kind of child labor. I’m talking about the kind we all experienced when we were kids: the paper route, the job at McDonald’s or 7-Eleven, which was my first job. Or a lawn-mowing service in the neighborhood.
Labor Day as it is celebrated is really Union Day. And unions in the past 30 years have been all about slowing down work and pitting worker against owner.
I say we parents — we Americans — who care about work must make Labor Day a celebration of all work.
And while we’re at it, bring back child labor once and for all.
— Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network, which syndicates Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. 

Is Mitt Becoming More Conservative?

By Rosslyn Smith
It is axiomatic that all political campaigns move towards the political center as election day approaches.  That doesn't seem to happening in this one.  In "It's the Ideology, Stupid," Josh Kraushaar of the National Journal notes that the Romney campaign has actually become more ideologically based as the campaign has progressed.  
After spending the spring and summer muddled in a neck-and-neck race by focusing exclusively on the economy, he's brought entitlements, health care, welfare, debt and American exceptionalism to the forefront of an increasingly ideological race.
Critics have scratched their heads, wondering why he would appeal to the conservative base when he badly needs to win over the remaining undecided voters in the middle. Why, when the economy is by far the biggest issue for voters, is the Republican ticket focused on secondary issues? But by running on charged ideological issues, he has the potential to fit the missing piece of the puzzle -- connecting voters' vague dissatisfaction with the president's performance with a series of unpopular policies he's pursued.
Kraushaar then spins the media's usual stale baloney about Obama appealing to the center. 
Remember: Obama isn't actively campaigning on most of the policies he advanced during his three years in office, save for the bailout of GM and Chrysler. He's relying on caricaturing Romney as a crude capitalist, while broadly contrasting his agenda as protecting the middle class. No mention of the stimulus, with only sparing mentions of his health care law and historic support of gay marriage -- usually to his most ardent supporters at fundraisers.
Protecting the middle class might be the theme of Obama's campaign ads, but the defining movement of this campaign came when Obama belittled the efforts of Main Street America when he stated that "you didn't build that."  Those sneering words about smart, hardworking people revealed the ugly side of Obama's redistributionalist ideology.  As in 2008,  most of the media accept all the carefully scripted images of Obama as Gospel truth while they busy themselves trying to either hide or spin away all those extemporaneous words and deeds that display Obama's true beliefs and character as being either out of context or aberrational.  Nor do I expect that we will be being seeing many middle-American values on display in the promised parade of abortion-loving feminists at next week's Democrat convention. 
This campaign is coming down to two competing views of America.  As it plays out, I think something very profound may be happening to Mitt Romney.  Romney reminds me of a good many smart businessmen I have known.  They live their own lives by a set of solid small-c conservative rules, but they are too busy solving smaller daily problems to think much about political conservatism as a coherent system.  Such people often pay lip service to the left-of-center conventional media wisdom about big government and public morality even as they rigorously practice all the bourgeois virtues of thrift, hard work, neighborliness, sobriety, and sexual continence in their personal affairs. 
As long as the conventional wisdom doesn't impact their daily lives in a concrete way, why bother challenging it?  They have better uses for their time.  Now this very smart, very competitive man is facing an opponent who is perhaps the most rigidly ideological man ever to become president.  Romney doesn't like what he sees happening to the nation, nor does he much like the person he is running against.  Confronted with the problem of beating not just the person, but also the ideology, and then fixing what is broken, Romney may be discovering for the very first time that he is actually far more ideological than he ever thought he was.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/is_mitt_becoming_more_conservative.html#ixzz257xBNIoA

‘I'll be damned, we're Republicans.’

Martinez's Pitch

How 'The Shy Republican' Could Be Masking a Landslide

By Adam Shaw
At time of writing, polls show the race for the presidency to be tight.  General consensus seems to be that whoever wins, the 2012 election will be won by a bat squeak.
Yet to many, especially those of us on the right, it seems peculiar that Obama is still remotely in the race.  With high unemployment, minimal GDP growth, a 100% increase in food stamp costs, and out-of-control spending, many conservatives are asking how just under half of the American population can possibly want more of the same.
While it is not possible now to get into the many reasons certain people will vote Democrat in November, I propose that all polls, not just left-leaning polls, may be being strongly misled by their data, and Romney/Ryan may actually have a huge lead not seen in polls.
It is my contention that this is due to a mix of the infamous Bradley effect and what is known in Britain as "the Shy Tory Factor," with both coming together to exaggerate just how popular Obama is in America.
The Bradley effect is a much-debated polling distortion that is easy to demonstrate but difficult to prove.  The idea that when a black or minority candidate is on the ticket against a white candidate, certain voters may lie under pressure from a pollster, worried about being seen as a racist for choosing the white candidate over the minority, sounds highly plausible.  The consequence, should the Bradley effect be in play, would be a skewed poll indicating that the minority candidate is in better political shape than his or her opponent.
Some argued that while it may have been a factor in the past, it was not a factor in the 2008 election, when Barack Obama was elected convincingly, just as polls predicted.
Yet this dismissal may be premature.  A closer look at the statistics shows that predictions for how much of the white vote Obama would win were strongly exaggerated by polling companies.  For instance, a CBS poll near election day predicted that McCain would win the white vote by a mere 3%, and on election day the Republican actually brought in 12% more of the vote than the Democrat.  Had it not been for an unusually high turnout among blacks and minorities, Obama's landslide would have been a lot closer.
Therefore, there is no reason why we cannot expect at least a similar Bradley effect this year.  In fact, it could possibly be even stronger -- after all, the liberal smear that those who oppose Obama are racist is one that really took off since Obama took office, specifically with the rise of the Tea Party.  This could serve only to magnify the Bradley effect, as some white voters may feel ashamed of being seen as sympathetic to a "racist" organization.
Yet there is another factor that, mixed with Bradley, could radically distort the numbers -- and it is a concept not known in America, but known very well in the United Kingdom.  Called "The Shy Tory Effect," it could be the little-known variable that could be hiding a landslide for Mitt Romney.
The concept was coined after the British general election of 1992, the result of which stunned the pollsters, the politicians, and the media.  After 13 years in office, the ruling Conservative Party was Thatcher-less and divided.  Led by their extreme Welsh socialist leader Neil Kinnock (the same Neil Kinnock whose speeches Joe Biden had already ripped off), the left-wing Labour Party were firmly ahead in the polls.  Britain was drifting toward a socialist authoritarianism that they hadn't experienced since the 1970s.
As election day approached, Labour held a chunky lead, causing Kinnock to yell giddily into the microphone in his final speech to the Party before election day, "We're all right, we're all right" repeatedly, to rapturous applause.  
It seemed Labour had it in the bag.  The only exception was the cool and collected Tory prime minister, John Major, whose internal polling suggested that things were not as they seemed.
As the results came in on election night, Labour started off celebrating.  However, by 10 o'clock, the BBC's exit poll predicted that Labour might not win, but there would be a hung parliament, which would still probably cause Kinnock to be prime minister of a coalition. 
Yet the final result was a total shock -- a comfortable win for the Tories, losing a few seats, but picking up the highest total number of votes for any political party since 1951.  Left-wing pundits couldn't explain what had happened.
The explanation for the gap between polls and reality was eventually named "The Shy Tory Factor."  Since the ascension of Thatcher to Downing Street in 1979, the Tories had been presented as a nasty, evil party that wanted to destroy communities in their war against the miners, gut health care, and take money from the poor to give to the rich via the poll tax [i].  Does this sound familiar to any Americans at all?
While the policies of the Conservative Party were popular, the media and the screeching left had helped turn the Tory brand into a toxic one that many people didn't want to be associated with in spite of their secret support.  Therefore, when polled, the shy Tories answered Labour, but voted Conservative.
Although this happened twenty years ago and in a different country, I propose that the important characteristics that make up the Shy Tory Factor are present in America in 2012.  According to the mainstream media, the Republicans want to deny people health care, throw Granny off a cliff, and generally reduce the country to a Dickensian nightmare when the rich get richer, and do so by pulling bread out of the mouths of the hungry.  Mixed with the aforementioned labeling of Republicans and Tea Partiers as racist, this is quite a suppressive combination.
While this blend of the Bradley effect and Shy Tory Factor may not affect voters in red states, in purple states it is not difficult to see why those intending to vote Republican may not wish to publicly identify as so, even to a pollster promising anonymity, in fear of being judged as the new Jim Crow.
The other note worth mentioning is that, in the Shy Tory Factor, the only person who knew of its existence before the election was the leader, whose internal polling is usually more accurate.  Could this be why Obama's team seems to have gone into panic in recent weeks?  Do they know something the polling companies don't?
The Bradley effect has been influential, if at all, only by a few overall percentage points.  But if it is wrapped up with an American version of the much more powerful "Shy Tory Factor," we conservatives may be in for a treat in the form of a massive landslide come the first Tuesday in November.
Adam Shaw is a British conservative writer based in New York.  His blog is The Anglo-American Debate.  Follow him on Twitter: @ACShaw



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/how_the_shy_republican_could_be_masking_a_landslide.html#ixzz25259vbwe

The GOP’s '76ers

Top Union Leaders’ Salaries...

CLICK: Top Union Leaders’ Salaries...

AP File
 
Washington Examiner compiles a list of annual salaries and benefits earned by the nation’s top labor officials, according to the Labor Department. This data is based on 2011 filings...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka – $293,750.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel – $460,060

Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry – $290,334.

American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee – $512,489.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James P. Hoffa , Jr. – $372,489.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten – $493,859.

International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger – $323,811.

American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage – $198,690. (Gage retired this month)

United Food and Commercial Workers President Joseph Hansen – $361,124


Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/union-bosses/2012/08/24/click-top-union-leaders-salaries#ixzz24UMcX0OI

Durable goods orders drop for 4th month out of last 5

by Rick Moran

 
Bad news all around for American factories. Two leading indices have dropped for the 4th time in 5 months while last month's dismal numbers have been revised downward.
Bloomberg:
Signs that U.S. manufacturing is faltering emerged from a report Friday that orders for long-lasting factory goods, excluding the volatile transportation category, fell in July for the fourth time in five months.
Overall orders for durable goods rose a seasonally adjusted 4.2 percent in July, the Commerce Department said. But excluding aircraft and other transportation goods, orders dropped 0.4 percent.
Durable goods are items meant to last at least three years. Orders for so-called core capital goods, a key measure of business investment plans, fell 3.4 percent. That's the biggest drop since November and the fourth decline in five months. And June's figure was revised down to show a drop of 2.7 percent -- much worse than the initial estimate of a 1.7 percent fall.
"This is a very weak report," Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, said in a note to clients.
Core capital goods include computers, industrial machinery and steel. The steady decline in such orders suggests that companies are worried that the economy will slow and are reducing investment. Europe's financial crisis has pushed that region to the brink of recession, threatening exports of U.S. goods. Economies in China, India and Brazil are also growing more slowly.
The manufacturing sector is a much smaller component of the overall economy than it used to be, but is the most sensitive employment wise to downturns. Factory jobs are usually the first to show improvement when coming out of a recession and the first to show decline when a downturn looms. These numbers are worrisome, but surprisingly, overall factory employment has remained fairly steady over these last few months. This may mean we can avoid a double dip recession - as long as we avoid the fiscal cliff next January.

How to Read the Polls

Morning Jay: How to Read the Polls


Analysis of election factors points to Romney win...

Analysis of election factors points to Romney win, University of Colorado study says

August 22, 2012
 
A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.
The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.
“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.
According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.
“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”
Their model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran strongly, 1980 and 1992. It also correctly predicted the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore received the most popular vote but George W. Bush won the election.
The study will be published this month in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. It will be among about a dozen election prediction models, but one of only two to focus on the Electoral College.
While many forecast models are based on the popular vote, the Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.
In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income, which indicates the extent to which people have more or less disposable income. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.
Accordingly -- and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time -- each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.
Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said.  The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”
In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had any statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention; the home state of the vice president; or the partisanship of state governors.
In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.
In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.
The authors also provided caveats. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and close tallies in certain states. The current data was taken five months in advance of the Nov. 6 election and they plan to update it with more current economic data in September. A second factor is that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall an unexpected direction.
“As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict,” Berry said.
Election prediction models “suggest that presidential elections are about big things and the stewardship of the national economy,” Bickers said. “It’s not about gaffes, political commercials or day-to-day campaign tactics. I find that heartening for our democracy.”
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This is good news, except for the last word in the article; democracy. We are a republic, not a democracy.
I with more people would use the right terminology.

TUSC

The Herd of Independent Minds

By Victor Volsky
Just about any gregarious conservative can register the same complaint: his friends of a liberal persuasion firmly believe in evolution, the hydrocarbon menace, technogenic global warming, and the virtues of green energy; they are convinced that racism is still rampant in America, that all the ills of inner-city schools can be cured by throwing more money at them, that criminals are actually victims of society, that voter fraud is a myth concocted by evil conservatives, that cheating at the polls is a sacred right of minorities, that illegal immigrants have committed no crime even though the word "illegal" is self-explanatory, that George Bush attacked Iraq at the behest of Halliburton to grab Iraqi oil...
In short, it is always the same mantra, demonstrably stupid and illogical, yet fervently espoused by all ardent liberals, irrespective of their social status or educational attainments.
How to account for it?  And why are liberals totally impervious to any counter-arguments -- on those rare occasions, that is, when they actually deign to listen to the contrary views?  The easiest explanation, of course, would be that those who persevere in beliefs glaringly devoid of any meaning or logic are just plain dumb.  But no, there are a lot of highly intelligent people -- in fact, almost the entirety of academia -- among the most vocal proponents of that idiocy.  So there must be some other explanation.  And as a matter of fact, there is.
The estimable Lee Harris, in his wonderful book The Suicide of Reason (Basic Books, 2007), explores the concept of the shaming code developed by Thomas Huxley.  Huxley, widely known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his ferocious defense of evolutionary theory, thought long and hard  about the inherent contradiction between  man's "innate tendency to self-assertion ... as the condition of victory in the struggle for existence and the obvious fact that in the struggle for survival loners are losers and individuals who banded together increased their chances of survival."  Upon reflection, Huxley came to the conclusion that the glue that holds together individuals in a group is the collective shaming code.
"It is this code that makes the members of the group feel as one," writes Lee Harris.  "They are disgusted, angered, delighted and shamed by the same things. The unanimity of their visceral response is what provides the powerful sense of collective identity. It makes them feel and think as a tribal Us, in contrast to those tribes who are not disgusted by what disgusts us, or made angry by what makes us angry, and who feel no shame at what we think of as shameful[.] ... A tribe that shares a powerful visceral code that inhibits the natural tendency of the individual to self-assertion will present a united front against its enemies."
Therein lies the explanation of the total information blockade built around the highly dubious figure of Barack Obama by the left-leaning salons and the mainstream media, even including the respectable conservative media.  It doesn't take unusual intelligence to see that the 44th president is a patent mediocrity with a totally contrived past.  And yet, crickets.  In 1600, Sir John Harrington penned these immortal words: "Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."  In other words, treason attains respectability once it becomes a prevalent trait of the social mores, part and parcel of society's shaming code.  Today, it is the very same shaming code that causes polite society to rally around the "right-thinking" Obama and rebuff all attempts to expose him as the fraud that he is.  Even the late, utterly fearless Andrew Breitbart refused to wade into the controversy around Obama's birth certificate, advising his followers not to "go there," because he believed that it was unproductive and harmful to the conservative cause.  He understood the power of the shaming code.
But why is today's social and political scene dominated by the left, allowing it to impose its shaming code on society?  In the struggle for survival and supremacy, the advantage invariably goes to those who are more committed to maintaining and expanding their cultural traditions and who, because of the strength of that commitment, are united by the more powerful sense of group feeling.  Hence the liberals' domination of the public discourse.
Conservatives are usually reluctant ideological warriors.  For the most part, they want only to be left alone, to live and let live.  Having won a battle, they sigh with relief and waste no time beating their swords into ploughshares.  Not so the liberals.  They never tire or despair in their attempts to impose their views on all others; if they lose a fight, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and, undaunted, continue to slog toward their goals.  And in the struggle of opposites, the more fanatical will always win.
The vicious hatred of the left for its conservative opponents, belied by the liberals' constant protestations of their high-mindedness and tolerance, is also easily explainable in tribal terms.  It is the hatred of the righteous for the sinner, of the acolyte of the one true faith for the heretic.  Distilled to its essence, it is the hatred for "the other," of "us" for "them."  It is also the reason why liberals so liberally lie and cheat in their dealings with the conservative "enemy."  Everything is fair in love and war, and politics is war by other means.  Why are liberals infinitely understanding and patient toward the Islamic terrorists who threaten to destroy Western civilization?  Not only because the Islamofascists are of the third world and thus automatically endowed with virtue, but also because they offer no competition to the left for supremacy in American society, while conservatives do.
Today's left is every bit a tribe with its unthinking, fanatical devotion to the tribal code and animal fear of being ostracized.  The ancient Greeks believed banishment from the tribe to be the harshest of all punishments, worse than death.  Human nature has not changed, and the dread of being cast into outer darkness is still as strong as ever.  Sure, there are some exceptions, but they pay a heavy price for their bravery.  That's why so many bright people, eager to toe the line, join the fawning fandom of Obama; it's the price of admission to the club.  They may have some doubts in the beginning, but as time goes by, they undoubtedly lose their qualms.  The mask fuses with the face; they convince themselves of the truth of the cult and internalize its code, for to acknowledge the truth and rebel against the tribe is too painful and too dangerous.
Emerging from the questioning by the grand jury investigating President Clinton, Vernon Jordan loudly declared that he had "kept the faith" -- i.e., lied to save Bill Clinton's bacon.  Jordan's standing with the tribe was more important to him than the potential perjury charge.  The handlers assigned by John McCain to guide his inexperienced VP candidate, Sarah Palin, through the dangerous shoals of the 2008 presidential campaign chose to throw her to the media wolves.  They failed in their duty not due to incompetence, but because their primary concern was preserving their credentials with the Washington in-crowd, paying obeisance to the tribal values.  And so they blithely sacrificed their ward to safeguard their social status.
The astute Robert Heinlein in his 1961 best-selling SF novel Stranger in a Strange Land invented a special word, grok, to describe the phenomenon of tribal consciousness carried to its extreme: "Grok means ... to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience[.]"  The practical corollary of the dissolution of one's identity in groupthink is that all Republican outreach efforts are a total waste of time, money, and hope.  It's just too much trouble to open one's mind; how much more comfortable just to go on grokking in the tribal Nest!
Liberal intellectuals like to pose as bearers of the culture of reason, as fiercely independent thinkers.  But they are kidding themselves.  They have traded their intellectual primogeniture for the mess of pottage of group identity.  They are fully integrated into the socially and politically dominant tribe, sharing the same visceral likes and dislikes, the same shaming code.  Rather than being autonomous rational actors, they are merely an assemblage of cipher units marching in lock step to the tribal drumbeat.  Harold Rosenberg mordantly branded them the herd of independent minds.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/the_herd_of_independent_minds.html#ixzz24HWzn2sB

Wargaming Termination of Tea Party Extremists

By Cameron Reddy
Our military planners are openly discussing how to kill "Tea Party extremists" who have taken over a small town in the USA.  Is this "operational lay-down" merely a "cartoonish and needlessly provocative scenario," as described by The Washington Times, or is it something much more malevolent?
The military scenario appears in the July 25, 2012 issue of the respected Small Wars Journal and posits that, while Obama will be thrown out of office in 2012, ten years of race- and immigrant-bashing by "right-wing demagogues" will have whipped white Americans into gang-like attacks on non-whites.
Then, in a carefully planned operation, a Tea Party-inspired militia occupies the city hall in Darlington, South Carolina, disbands the city council, detains the mayor, and disarms the local police and/or "turns" policemen to its cause.  The story continues:
With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish 'check points' -- in reality, something more like choke points -- on major transportation lines.  Traffic on ... [major roads] and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for 'illegal aliens.'  Citizens who complain are immediately detained.  Activists also collect 'tolls' from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition.  They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted[.] ...
The article goes on to explain how true Americans will expect the military to efficiently kill, dissuade, and demoralize the "enemy" as effectively "as if it were acting overseas."
Apart from being, as the The Washington Times opined, "dark, pessimistic and wrongheaded," this scenario is noteworthy not only for the venomous description of the insurrectionists -- leaving little doubt about the authors' views of the American militia movement -- but also for the linkage of the militia with the Tea Party.
This raises a series of questions hinted at by Mr. Cary, which I ask straight out: should those of us aligned with the Tea Party be concerned with our government's incendiary posturing?  Who, exactly, are these "extremists"?  And precisely what activity is it that may precipitate military action?
To answer some of this, let's go back to 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security prepared its infamous report on right-wing extremism.  There, we learned:
Rightwing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning.
While that report singled out disgruntled military veterans, in a footnote it explained who else is worthy of close scrutiny:
Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.  It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
Since we know that leftists equate disagreement with hate, this report made it clear that our federal government is "watching," which is to say it has "linked with the militia" basically anyone who objects to the platform of the Democratic Party.
Now look at the law under which our government is planning to act.  From the same article, and referring to Title 10 of the United States Code, we learn that the president may, at the request of a legislature or governor, use the military to:
§ 332 - Suppress unlawful obstruction or rebellion against the U.S.
§ 333 - Suppress insurrection or domestic violence if it (1) hinders the execution of the laws to the extent that a part or class of citizens are deprived of Constitutional rights and the State is unable or refuses to protect those rights or (2) obstructs the execution of any Federal law or impedes the course of justice under Federal laws.) (Emphasis in original.)
A comment following these statutory citations ought to raise eyebrows.  It indicates that the authors believe that the law is "broadly written" and "allows the flexibility needed to address a range of threats to the Republic."
As a lawyer, I'm always concerned when those tasked with enforcement praise as "broadly written" and "flexible" a law they use to prosecute citizens.  Beyond that, however, I'd like to know what the heck constitutes an "unlawful obstruction" or a "hindrance" of the execution of laws.  What activity might "obstruct" or "impede" the course of justice?
It's not too hard to see where this is going.  Listen to the likes of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and other leftist shills who claim we want to kill the elderly, pollute the environment, starve the poor, suppress minority votes, etc.  Is it a stretch to see these people argue we're already obstructing, depriving, and/or otherwise impeding the course of justice?  What would we be facing if they were the ones advising the president on the scope and applicability of these "broadly written" and "flexible" laws?
Oh, wait a minute.  They are the ones advising the president...
Let's add it up.
First, we have this "operational lay-down" in the Small Wars Journal which is as much a provocation as it is a threat.  Add the 2009 "watch list" lunacy that puts virtually all conservatives in the crosshairs.  Top it off with absurd accusations from the left that we are throwing Grandma and Grandpa off the cliff and blacks off the voter rolls...
What do we get?
Think of it.  With the federal government incessantly hammering Americans with leftist policy and politically correct dogma, with Americans reflexively and defensively moving to the political "right," we now find the government coolly describing how Tea Party "extremists" will be killed should their civil dissent cross some very indistinct and amorphous line.
Think about Alinsky's Rule 14:
RULE 14: "Push the enemy so hard with outrageous situations and allegations that he is forced to push back."  Whenever possible, cause the enemy to respond, and when he does, hold him up for ridicule; then push harder.  (By threatening his security and way of life, you will always elicit a reaction that can be turned against him.)
Of course, Alinsky created only twelve rules.  Rule Fourteen, like Rule Thirteen, is my creations.  But does anyone doubt their truth or applicability?
Further, note where Rule Fourteen puts us.  While on one hand, no one in the Tea Party is seriously thinking in terms of armed resistance, on the other, none of us could have envisioned that "occupying" a state house for redress of grievances might be considered "obstruction" or "impeding" of federal law, let alone civil unrest of a nature to possibly warrant military force!
Moreover, it's no cartoon that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams would be on Janet Napolitano's "watch" list.  Nor is it funny that today, as revealed by the Small Wars Journal, their actions in pushing back, in effectuating the Declaration of Independence, would be met with deadly military force.
Sobering stuff -- especially when we are staring in the face a second term of Barack Obama -- a term in which he will be more "flexible."
So what should we do?
First, we must have our eyes open to how the left is manipulating us -- pushing us -- with Alinsky's Rules One through Fourteen.  In baseball parlance, you can't hit a curve ball unless you know it's a curve ball.  Next, we must reinforce and broadcast to the world that violence is not the answer.  Finally, just as Tea Partiers effectively quashed the allegations of racism, we must police our ranks to insure that no one countenances anything even remotely close to what the Alinsky-inspired left is goading us to do.  As Mr. Cary adroitly suggested, and as I hope I have crystallized with Alinsky's Rule Fourteen, the threat of a manufactured crisis is not just real.  It's their goal.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/wargaming_termination_of_tea_party_extremists.html#ixzz24HRU029f
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I think stuff like this written by liberals is merely a projection of themselves. This is how THEY think and reflect what they would likely do. They merely assume conservatives are violent because that is what they really are. They cannot conceive that others are not like them. It is their downfall.

TUSC